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 Studies in human nature, by J- B. Bailii 
 
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 3 1924 029 046 329 
 
STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
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STUDIES IN HUMAN 
 NATURE 
 
 J. B. BAILLIE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 
 1921 
 H 
 
P\&\5^? 
 
 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 OF MY FRIEND 
 
 S. S. LAURIE 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS 
 
 GRATEFULLY 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The aim of these studies is to examine with all possible freedom 
 from theoretical bias some phases of human nature which are 
 of great interest in themselves, and in the light of the analysis 
 to draw certain conclusions. It would have been natural to 
 have included in such a series the consideration of certain other 
 aspects of human nature, more especially those which concern 
 morality and civic institutions. Morality and the conditions of 
 citizenship are in many ways the most important forms of 
 human life which can engage our attention at the present time ; 
 and the influence of the recent upheaval in our experience has 
 brought before us many moral problems with a peculiar, and 
 perhaps even a new, prominence. It has seemed better, how- 
 ever, to reserve the consideration of these and kindred subjects 
 for another occasion. 
 
 It is not the purpose of these papers to defend or support 
 any of the familiarly accepted theories, whether of idealism or 
 realism. Human nature is far more interesting and much 
 more important than any theory, and on that account perhaps 
 is tolerant of many theories. It may be remarked, however, 
 that the momentum which carried forward one peculiar form 
 of idealism — the confident and confiding idealism of a genera- 
 tion ago — seems now to have spent its force ; and that a realism 
 which takes the form of a new materialism can hardly claim 
 to be in a position to show a better way. For, apart from the 
 shock which optimistic idealism has received from the inter- 
 national catastrophe of the recent war, the elaboration of a 
 theory of a completed and perfect universe, " all inclusive and 
 harmonious," (whether this be a demand or a fact, matters not), 
 leaves too little for the creative spirit of man to do ; while, on the 
 
viii PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 other hand, the exposition of the world in a way which treats 
 human suffering and human ends as derivative or secondary- 
 leaves for man nothing worth doing. We best avoid the defects 
 of one-sided theories if we follow the path of what Sidgwick 
 used to call critical common sense, and hold to the natural 
 solidarity of human experience to which it clings. This may 
 lead us to a theory, or it may not. But we may feel sure that 
 our reflection can never keep close enough to common sense. 
 " To the solid ground of nature trusts the mind that builds 
 for aye." 
 
 The best service which philosophy can render at any time 
 is that of supplying a criticism of life. At a time like the 
 present, when so much of the past has broken from us, and 
 our main hopes for security lie in the future, this service seems 
 all the more necessary. It should have its effect more particu- 
 larly on the higher aims of the education of a nation, on the 
 proper direction of which so much of the future depends. It 
 is not promising in these days to see this great agency for 
 advance operating without convincing plan of action or clear 
 guidance, and, in default of these requirements for success, with- 
 drawing behind mediaeval defences slightly altered to meet the 
 demands of modern economic efficiency. Men want confidence 
 in the future as well as confidence in the past to make life 
 tolerable in the present. And this confidence can only come 
 from a fuller insight into the resources of human nature. 
 
 J. B. BAILLIE. 
 
 King's College, 
 Aberdeen. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Introduction 1-12 
 
 Want of continuity in the history of philosophy — No agreement 
 between philosophers on the nature or on the solution of 
 fundamental problems — Sources of defects in philosophical 
 theories — The position of common sense and the claims of 
 philosophy — The purpose of human experience. 
 
 I. Anthropomorphism and Truth 13-46 
 
 The problem of truth, why raised, 13 — Present-day views of 
 truth as an independent system and as practical success, 14 — 
 Both views neglect two essential conditions of experience, 15. 
 
 Individuality fundamental for the problem and what this involves, 
 17 — Anthropomorphism, 21. 
 
 Nature of intellectual activity, 22 — Meaning of universality, 24 '- 
 — And objectivity, 26. 
 
 Anthropomorphic origin of conceptions, 29— No pure intellectual 
 activity, 30 — Contradiction, 31. 
 
 Meaning of the term " limits of thought," 34. 
 
 Other ways of approaching reality than that of thought, 37 — 
 Significance of beauty and goodness, 39. 
 
 Intellectual activity involves emotion and effort, 40. 
 
 Convergence of various avenues to reality on fulfilment of individ- 
 uality, 44 — Significance of faith, 45 — Anthropomorphism and 
 ultimate Reality, 46. 
 
 II. The Realistic Character of Knowledge . 47-76 
 
 Linear direction of knowledge and its influence on our view of 
 knowledge, 47 — Whole individuality involved in knowledge, 
 49 — Mind seeks continuity with its world, 50. 
 
 Desire the starting point of knowlege, 51 — Possible explanations 
 of knowledge, 51 — Knowledge secures independence of individ- 
 uality, 52 — Object lower than subject in knowledge, 53 — 
 Knowledge of other minds and of God, 54 — World interpreted 
 in terms of individuality by stages of knowledge, 56 — View of 
 knowledge as copying and reproducing reality, 57. 
 
 Stages of process of knowledge, 59— Qualitative uniqueness of 
 perception, 60 — -And of reflective thought, 6l. 
 
 Unity of mind engaged in conceptual activity, 66 — Origin of 
 plurality of conceptions, 67 . 
 
 The increasing complexity of the object realised by reflection, 71 
 — Significance of judgment and inference, zVSza'.— Judgment, 72. 
 
 Inference, 74 — ^End of knowledge is both truth and self-realisation 
 of the mind, 75. 
 
<■ CONTENTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 III. Certain Non-logical Factors in the Process of 
 
 Knowledge .... . . 77-104 
 
 Mechanical view of knowledge, 77 — End in knowledge funda- 
 mental, 78 — Emotional interest in ends, 79 — Practical interest 
 in knowledge not primary, 80 — Significance of selection, 82 — 
 Course of knowledge controlled by emotion, 84. 
 
 Place of imagination in knowledge, 88 — Imagination higher than 
 reason, 90 — Comparison of imagination and perception, iiiii. 
 — Memory operates in knowledge, 91 — Intellects differ in 
 calibre, 92 — And in sense of logical cogency, 95 — Mental 
 elation in knowledge, 96 — Satisfaction essential to knowledge 
 and relative to individuals, 98 — Social influences on the course ' 
 of knowledge, 100 — -Effect of social prejudices on knowledge, , 
 102 — Illustration from theory of evolution, 103. 
 
 IV. The Nature of Memory-Knowledge . . . 105-132 
 
 The judgment of memory distinctive in character, 105 — Impor- 
 tance of the problem presented by memory-judgment, 106 — 
 Its three aspects, 107. 
 
 The object of memory, 108 — Its essential nature is the continuity 
 of individual experience, no — Feeling of continuity distinct 
 from memory. III — Specific memory-judgments are selective, 
 III — Any past content may be selected, 113 — Reference to 
 specific time or order of events not essential, 113 — Distinction 
 between past and present and future, 114. 
 
 Character of memory-judgment, 116 — Does not transcend indi- 
 vidual experience, 117 — Memory-judgment is synthetic and 
 unites part of continuity in past to present content of self, 118 
 — Past suggested by content of present, 119 — Memory- 
 judgments involve consciousness of self, 120. 
 
 Memory -judgment complex and ultimate, 122 — And immediate, 
 124 — Forms of memory experience, 125. 
 
 Value and certainty of memory-judgment, 126 — Distinct from 
 inference, 126 — Memory-judgments isolated, 127 — But true 
 though isolated, 128. 
 
 Conclusions from the preceding analysis, 130 — External world 
 not the only basis for theory of knowledge, 130 — Knowledge 
 not extension of present sensation, 131 — Knowledge anthropo- 
 centric, 131 — Objectivity not simply due to common experience, 
 131 — System not the sole guarantee of truth, 132 — Intuition 
 an essential form of knowledge, 132. 
 
 V. The Function of Emotion in the Consciousness of 
 
 the Real .... .... 133-171 
 
 Consciousness of reality varies in degree and kind from individual 
 to individual, 133. 
 
 Emotion is one way in which man becomes conscious of reality, 
 134 — Prejudice against emotion and in favour of intellect, 135 
 — -Emotion misleads and needs control, as also do ideas, 136— 
 Emotion supplies sense of organic unity with the world, 137 — 
 And is a clue to the nature of other beings, 138. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Emotions are anthropomorphic, 139 — Supplement rational know- 
 ledge, 141 — -Emotions of various kinds are different ways of 
 experiencing the real, 143 — They involve body and mind 
 together, 144 — And give sense of individuality, 145 — Emotions 
 are independent of reasons, 146 — And give more reality than 
 knowledge, 147 — They discover the-individual to himself, 148 
 — And promote sense of distinctiveness of individuality, 149— 
 Development and discipline of emotion, 150. 
 
 Education of emotions, 152. 
 
 Purpose of differentiation of emotions, 153 — Degrees of kinship 
 with kinds of reality established by emotion, 154 — Complete 
 kinship with beings of the same nature, society, 155. •" 
 
 Emotions develop in the interest of self-maintenance, 159 — 
 Emotional consciousness of all inclusive Reality, i6o — Of two 
 kinds, (a) impersonal, beauty, 161 — Art, 163 — (li") Personal, 
 165 — Religion — lower limit, fear, l66 — Upper limit, love, 167. 
 
 Notes on theories of emotion, 170. 
 
 VI. The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism . 172-194 
 
 Scepticism is natural, 172 — ^Its sources, 173 — Different from doubt 
 or denial, 1 73 — Or mental hesitation, 1 74. 
 
 Forms of scepticism, 1 74 — Does not apply to emotion, or action, 
 or to mental states, 175 — Scepticism regarding perception, 176 
 — And regarding ideas, 178. 
 
 Scepticism deals with knowledge, 184 — But insists on the signifi- 
 cance of the particular against the claims of the universal, 184. 
 
 Suggested explanation of scepticism, 186 — Analogy between 
 sceptical attitude and self-will, 187 — Scepticism and the moral 
 life, 190. 
 
 Scepticism a recurrent attitude, 191 — Attempts to refute scepti- 
 cism, 192. 
 
 VII. The Place of Philosophy in Human Nature . 195-330 
 
 Philosophy the interest of a few minds, 195 — Philosophers not 
 
 representative of humanity, 197. 
 Philosophy seeks to give a special and peculiar form of satisfaction, 
 
 203 — Argument and inference of limited value, 205. 
 Importance of philosophy lies in the object considered, 207 — 
 
 Philosophy socially conditioned, 208. 
 General ideas embodied in language the starting point of philo- 
 sophy, 210 — Maximum of satisfaction sought by philosophy, 
 
 211 — Divergence of philosophies according to the problem, 212. 
 Individuality the basis of thinking, 213 — Effect of mechanical 
 
 views of thought, 215. 
 No supreme unity of thought need be assumed, 216 — Analogous 
 
 cases of art and morality, 219-^Artistic interest in systems of 
 
 thought, 221. 
 Philosophy one way of gaining a deeper consciousness of reality, 
 
 222 — And is distinctive in its form, 225. 
 Selective interest in the problems of philosophy, 227 — No single 
 
 method in philosophy, 228 — And no continuous progress in 
 
 philosophy, 229. 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 VIII. Science and the Humanities . . • 231-253 
 
 Supposed opposition of science and the humanities due to the 
 object matter and conclusions of scientific procedure, 231. 
 
 Scientists' one-sided view of nature, 233 — Man a part of nature, 
 234 — Procedure of science suggests that mind is passive in 
 reflection, 235— Science the creation of mental activity of 
 various kinds, 235 — Logical necessity obtained in obedience to 
 laws of intellect, 237. 
 
 Process and result of science alike involve human mind, 238— 
 This true of abstract sciences equally with concrete sciences, 239 
 — Science an historical phenomenon peculiar to certain peoples, 
 241 — Point of view of East and West, 243. 
 
 The three primary ends of human life, 245 — All necessary and all 
 claim fulfilment, 247 — Yet distinct, 249. 
 
 Science and practical welfare, 249. 
 
 Practical results, 250. 
 
 IX. Laughter and Tears : the Sense of Incongruity 254-293 
 
 These emotions complementary, 254 — Consciousness of the 
 ludicrous implies a. judgment of appreciation as distinct from 
 judgment of understanding, 255. 
 
 No single end involved in all kinds of laughter, 258 — But end 
 must not be defeated by incongruous process, 259 — Specific 
 incongruity involved in laughter, 260. 
 
 Illustrations of this view, 260 — Three sources of the socially 
 comic, 263. 
 
 Comic drama and laughter, 265. 
 
 Different kinds of laughter, 267 — Conventional laughter, 270 — / 
 
 Social character of laughter, 271 — Erroneous views, 272. 
 
 Tears due to discordance of process with an end accepted as lost, 
 273 — End must be a personal good, 275 — Loss may be due to 
 nature or to will, 275 — Spontaneity of tears, 277. 
 
 Tearful emotion primarily individual, 278 — But secondarily social, 
 281 — Cosmic emotion may lead to tears, 283. 
 
 Tears and tragedy, 284. 
 
 . Significance of laughter and tears in economy of experience, 287 
 — Bergson's view of laughter, 288 — Laughter and tears are 
 inarticulate adjustments of the unity of the mind to the unin- 
 telligible element in experience, 291. 
 
 Note on physiological aspect of these emotions, 293. 
 
 INDEX .... 295-296 
 
STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " Oh, qu'il est difficile d'etre k la fois ingenieux et sense."— Joubert. 
 
 I 
 
 Consideration of the history of philosophical theories lends 
 little or no support to the opinion, which appears to be held in 
 certain quarters, that philosophy reveals a progressive continuity 
 in its history. The theories have indeed one element in common : 
 their purpose is the same from one generation to another. Their 
 aim is to undertake a critical investigation or exposition of " first 
 principles." There the similarity ends ; for even the meaning of 
 " first principles " is not a matter on which all philosophers are 
 agreed. Doubtless we can trace a certain limited continuity for 
 a short period ; and then we have a school or again a reaction 
 from a type of thought which has for a time become dominant. 
 But the controlling influence of one thinker has ere long to give 
 way before the stronger claim of the instinct to examine or re- 
 examine afresh ultimate principles. What ;s true of the history 
 of philosophy is equally true of contempoi'ary philosophy. Not 
 merely are the problems discussed different, but the most diverse 
 theories on the same topics are expounded and defended at one 
 and the same period of time, with no resulting concurrence and 
 very little convergence of opinion. 
 
 This want of unanimity would not be of great moment were 
 it not for an underlying conviction which many scientists and 
 some philosophers seem to share, that in the region of the intellect 
 human minds have common ground, and that in the operations 
 of the reason, if anywhere, all men may be expected to agree. 
 In the ordinary way of human intercourse such a conviction is 
 certainly not supported ; but when we find that those whose 
 
 I E 
 
2 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 metier it is to cultivate rationality for its own sake equally fail 
 to secure intellectual concord, the conviction in question loses 
 all authority or self-evidence, and becomes little more than an 
 aspiration or a point of view. Neither in the realm of pure 
 philosophy, nor in the minor matters of daily life, nor in the 
 greater affairs of civilisation, does there seem to plain common 
 sense any solid foundation in experience for maintaining that in- 
 tellectual activity as such is a sure pathway to unanimity between 
 human individuals. The recent overwhelming catastrophe to 
 the civilisation of Europe has made it all too painfully evident, 
 though not for the first time in history, that neither man's reason 
 nor his ideals are proof against the onslaughts of chaos and the 
 agencies of disorder which reserve their impending ruin for the 
 purposes of mankind till the appointed time. It may be said, 
 indeed, that if all men did follow the leading of intellectual 
 insight they would come to an understanding. There is, how- 
 ever, not much satisfaction in this hypothesis. The fact which 
 has to be recognised is rather that man's concrete individuality 
 is all compact of many functions besides that of the intellect ; 
 and it is in the inseparable co-operation and interaction of all the 
 various factors of his individual being that his real life consists. 
 In the day's business and in the task of the philosopher this 
 complexity of his nature dominates the entire situation with 
 which he is confronted, and from this there is no successful escape 
 by any process of mere abstraction. 
 
 II 
 
 When we turn to the specific fields of philosophy, not merely 
 do we find that there is recurring diversity of treatment, but in 
 no sphere can it be held that a single comprehensive problem 
 has been solved beyond further dispute. The problem of human 
 knowledge is handled differently according as one or other of 
 the three most prominent types of knowledge is taken to be of 
 primary importance for the attainment of the truth about reality. 
 These types are sense-perception, judgment, and the process of 
 inference. A theory of knowledge or system of logical doctrine 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 will be found to take one of these as fundamental for all know- 
 ledge and to treat the others as relatively subordinate.^ The 
 form and substance of the theory will vary accordingly. To one 
 philosopher truth is obtained mainly through the channel of 
 sense-perception ; judgment and inference are processes which 
 assist in realising, and which are essentially concerned with, the 
 varied content of perceptual truth. To another the chief problem 
 of knowledge is concentrated in the nature of judgment to which 
 sense-perception supplies " material," and for which inference has 
 significance because and in so far as it can issue in a correct 
 judgment. While to other thinkers truth is essentially ex- 
 pressible as an explicitly connected arrangement of thoughts or 
 process of inference, relatively to which both sense-perception 
 and judgment are subordinate, either in the sense of providing 
 the material for inference in different ways, or of being imper- 
 fectly developed stages in the realisation of systematically 
 connected thought.^ Which of these types of knowledge is 
 adopted as primary depends, as far as we can see, not on any 
 intellectual necessity, but on the individual constitution of the 
 thinker and his mental attitude to the world. It is, in a word, 
 a selective interest in the truth rather than a logical necessity 
 which determines the choice ; while this selective interest again 
 is controlled largely by historical associations and development. 
 
 ' It is strange to find Mr. Bosanquet stating that "Logic has no criterion of 
 truth or test of reasoning " (Logic, vol. i. p. 3). One may fairly ask how he can 
 maintain such a position in the face of his declaration that for " logic at all events it 
 is a postulate that the truth is the vphole " ? What is such a proposition except a 
 " criterion of truth," a criterion, moreover, which he is at pains to apply throughout 
 his entire work ? 
 
 ' It is indeed remarkable to observe how these types of logical theory repeatedly 
 recur in the history of philosophy, without bringing philosophers any nearer to 
 unanimity. In Greek philosophy we have the problem of knowledge handled by 
 the Sophists from the point of view of sense-perception ; to Plato the chief interest 
 in knowledge was concentrated in the question of predication or the nature of judg- 
 ment ; while for Aristotle knowledge was supremely reahsed in the form of demon- 
 strative proof or inference. When attention was directed to the question of knowledge 
 in the eighteenth century the same theories recur ; Locke laying stress on the funda- 
 mental importance of truth as revealed by sense-perception, Kant on truth as expressed 
 in the function of judgment, while after him Hegel placed the main emphasis on 
 rational connection or inference. And in more recent years we have a similar 
 sequence of theories of knowledge in Mill, Bradley, and Bosanquet. 
 
4 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 There is no way of securing agreement between thinkers who 
 start from essentially different primary convictions, and no ex- 
 pectation, therefore, that the problem of knowledge will be solved 
 in a form which will meet with universal assent. 
 
 In the sphere of Ethics, it cannot be maintained by the most 
 sympathetic interpreter of theories of the good, that the funda- 
 mental questions raised by the moral life have been answered in 
 a way which meets with general assent from those who have 
 considered the subject. What we find in the history of Ethics 
 is the discussion of morality from the most diverse points of 
 view, and the promulgation of theories having little or nothing 
 in common except their subject-matter and the confident assur- 
 ance of each philosopher in the soundness of his own particular 
 theory.^ 
 
 As to Metaphysics, few would maintain in the light of the 
 history of philosophy that agreement amongst philosophers on 
 this subject was even to be expected, much less that it had been 
 secured. Each theory stands by itself in splendid isolation, a 
 monument to the daring of some heaven-scaling intellectual 
 adventurer with neither ancestor nor posterity. It is not merely 
 that the structure created by one mind does not meet the 
 requirements of another : what is equally important is that the 
 style of architecture adopted by one does not adequately satisfy 
 the artistic sense of another, whose individuality must find 
 expression in a different way. The composition of one acts as a 
 stimulus to another not so much because of the failure of the 
 first as because of the awakening of a new inspiration in the 
 second. Hence no metaphysician is daunted or hindered by his 
 predecessors' work ; and in the generously vast territory of reality 
 there is abundance of room for different structures of thought 
 with freehold property in perpetuity for the builder. Each builds 
 as he may and as he can for his own sake. 
 
 ' It seems needless to illustrate this in detail. If we take the three chief works 
 in the history of Ethics, where the moral life is handled with equal intellectual frank- 
 ness and with unbiassed insight into the actual facts of moral experience — Aristotle's 
 Ethics, Von Hartmann's Phdnomenologie des sittUchen Bamisstseins, and Sidgwick's 
 Methods of Ethics — we shall find that neither in method nor in results is there any 
 essential agreement. 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 " If tired with systems, each in its degree 
 Substantial, and all crumbling in their turn, 
 Let him build systems of his own, and smile 
 At the fond work, demolished with a touch." ' 
 
 So great is the diversity of theories propounded by meta- 
 physicians that some philosophers in despair of finding unanimity 
 in this sphere of intellectual activity maintain that the problem 
 is insoluble, while some have sought to prove that the human 
 intellect is not in a position to undertake it at all. But such 
 views cannot fail to manifest their own ineptitude by the very 
 attempt to establish them. It is at once ironical and ridiculous 
 to offer our incompetence as our supreme sacrifice on the altar of 
 truth.^ If what is most worth knowing is incapable of being 
 known, one naturally asks whether knowledge is of any serious 
 importance to human life. It may not be the business of 
 metaphysics to provide intellectual finality, but it is certainly 
 folly to try to give a final proof that finality is unattainable. We 
 can only find out how much we can know by making the attempt. 
 Very few indeed are capable of composing the " dialectical 
 hymn " of philosophy ; and the hymns which are composed 
 generally seem to be but the swan songs of passing epochs of 
 human thought. But those who feel called upon to propound 
 metaphysical theories have never been and will never be deterred 
 from doing so by the failure of metaphysicians to agree amongst 
 themselves. The disagreement in fact is part of the interest of 
 the undertaking. 
 
 The mere formulation of the problem shows that diversity of 
 views is inevitable. Metaphysicians claim to start on their way 
 " without presuppositions." This is manifestly impossible both 
 in fact and in logic. Left without presuppositions from which to 
 begin, the thinker has no absolute starting point at all. The 
 starting point is therefore a matter of choice or even caprice, 
 and must depend on the interest of the historically placed 
 individuality of each thinker. And this is precisely what takes 
 
 * Wordsworth, Excursion, IV. 
 
 ^ It reminds one of certain primitive tribes who in their religious ceremonies 
 consume all the parts of the animal that are fit to eat and offer to the god the parts 
 that are unfit for human consumption. 
 
6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 place. Each makes his own assumptions, and proceeds as he 
 thinks best. 
 
 Moreover, it is quite clear that most metaphysicians do start 
 with some presuppositions. One of the commonest of these is 
 that Reality is a completed whole, fixed in its constitution and 
 final in its arrangement. This is surely a profoundly important 
 assumption, which seriously governs the interpretation of the 
 metaphysician. Nor is the assumption self-evident or beyond 
 question. Why should not Reality be ever changing or, like life, 
 ever growing, with aeons instead of epochs for its units of change . 
 At each stage it would be constant or fixed for beings with so 
 small a time-span and so imperfectly developed as ourselves. 
 Yet for itself it would never be a fixed or final whole in any 
 logically exact sense.^ 
 
 It is useless therefore to condemn metaphysicians for offering 
 essentially different answers to what ostensibly seems the same 
 problem, or to find fault with the human mind for undertaking 
 to give a solution. Each interpretation is but a point of 
 view, and each individual thinker has his own perspective 
 of his subject. Those thinkers will be found to make the most 
 hazardous adventure who most strongly claim finality for their 
 theories. An excellent illustration of this is provided by a 
 recent theory which presents an impressive and persuasive 
 argument for universal acceptance — that of Mr. Bosanquet. Not 
 merely do the logical foundations of his theory seem insecure,^ 
 
 ' The view that Reality is absolutely fixed in its scope and substance seems to me 
 an illustration of the powerful influence which the spatially constituted physical 
 world of science always exerts on the mind of the philosopher as of other men. It 
 is so difficult for thought to grasp the significance of life and mind for the nature 
 of reality. 
 
 ^ See Logic, vol. i. , Introduction, 2 and 3 and especially 7. I refer more particularly 
 (a) to his effort to get the logical idea absolutely clear of the psychological occurrence 
 in the individual mind ; (b] to the identification of the phrase the "meaning of the 
 world " with the hardly intelligible phrase a " world of meanings " ; (<r) to the 
 paradox that "the world as known to each of us is constructed and sustained by his 
 individual consciousness," when it seems all too evident that it is not we who sustain 
 our world but our world which sustains us, whether we are awake or asleep ; and 
 (d) to the transparent ambiguity in the use of the term "reality " as applying at once 
 to a " construction" of thought and to a world brought home to the intelligence as 
 real by sense-perception which is not thought but a "point of contact" with reality 
 as thought. 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 and his method of procedure unworkable,^ but certain legitimate 
 and admitted developments of the argument seem to produce 
 confusion in the whole system. It is held that in the Absolute 
 all finite individuality requires and receives such supplementation 
 and internal transformation that what constitutes its peculiar 
 character as a finite and therefore imperfect individuality com- 
 pletely disappears ; and in particular that all finite truth is so 
 transformed by its setting in the absolute truth that in the long 
 run finite truth cannot be said to be really true. But if this is 
 so it must apply in all its force to the truth contained or 
 presented in the system of the philosopher who is propounding 
 this theory, for that is transparently a truth delivered by a 
 finite being and holding for a finite being with all his limi- 
 tations. The truth of this system is " in the long run " not 
 true. Moreover, truth which is not true in the long run 
 cannot be accepted as true even in the short run of finite 
 experience, for the only truth worth having, at any rate in 
 metaphysics, is that which holds in the long run. Thus the 
 theory which claims to be absolute truth turns out to be only 
 relatively true. It is in a worse position than pure relativism ; 
 for absolute relativism is at the worst inconsistent, but a relative 
 absolutism is meaningless. Such is the penalty of trying to 
 establish absolute truth by means of " the dialectic of finitude." 2 
 
 ' For even if, in justice to the Absolute, we accept the proposition that absolute 
 Reality is devoid of contradiction, is all inclusive and harmonious, and that finite 
 reality is inherently contradictory, how is it possible for a finite being either to 
 establish such a result or to remove final contradiction ? Transparently the finite 
 individuality of the philosopher as of everything else is inherently contradictory, and 
 his mind therefore never can transcend the state or stage of contradiction in which 
 his nature consists and which, being essential, must infect all his processes. 
 
 This school seems to take a satisfaction in showing that finite reality is ' ' contra- 
 dictory " or "self-contradictory," or " internally discordant." It is surely dangerous 
 to attack finitude with such a double-edged weapon as the principle of contradiction. 
 Why should the " contradiction " not be our own creation ? If Reality is 
 indeed so perfect and self-complete why should we quarrel with its component 
 factors ? 
 
 * In another connection I have tried to show that by the dialectic development 
 of thought or of experience it is impossible to reach the finality of an absolute system. 
 See The Origin of HegeVs Logic, chap. xii. 
 
 ( Perhaps every system which claims to be final is open to a similar line of 
 criticism. Dr. Ward remarks (in his paper on " Method," in the Transactions of the 
 
8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 It is indeed a curious irony that a logical development of a 
 "final system" should be hardly distinguishable from pure 
 scepticism. 
 
 Again, it is maintained that all finite individuals are predicates 
 of a subject, and in the long run of an absolute subject, and that 
 as predicates they have no substantiality. They are transient. 
 As substantiated they are torn from their real substance and are 
 in effect illusory. If this be so, it holds of the individual thinker 
 who maintains this theory, and still more of his theory as a 
 quality or predicate of his being. Ultimately, therefore, the 
 philosopher himself has no substantiality. What then becomes 
 of his theory ? Moreover, if all finite individuals are ultimately 
 predicates of one subject, the distinction between finite subject 
 and predicate becomes purely relative. The finite subject is in 
 the long run not real and has no real predicates ; for a subject 
 without real predicates ceases to be a subject. But if in the 
 sphere of finitude, in which our experience is rooted, the reality 
 of the distinction between subject and predicate disappears, we 
 have removed the basis on which to rest the relation of an abso- 
 lute subject to its predicates, for this derives its significance 
 primarily from our finite experience. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This review of the want of unanimity between philosophers 
 and the failure of philosophy to reach certainty on the main 
 issues discussed, must give any candid mind ground for reflection 
 concerning the claims of the philosopher to supply the final or 
 the whole meaning of reality.^ The diverse results seem so 
 
 Aristotelian Society, 1919) that it is more important that a philosophy should be 
 systematic than that it should be complete. 
 
 1 It is often said that the explanation of the disagreement amongst philosophers 
 is to be found in the ambiguity of words, or again in the total inadequacy of ordinary 
 language to convey their ideas. Hence the various attempts vvhich have been made 
 to invent or establish a conventional philosophical language, a system of agreed 
 symbols which all philosophers should accept and use in expounding philosophical 
 truth. Such attempts are doomed to failure, and in fact have never succeeded. 
 Philosophy is too closely bound up with the issues of living experience, deals with 
 too concrete material, and is too intimately associated with the purposes of per- 
 sonality, to be confined arbitrarily to one type of language or deprived of the full 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 inadequate and unsatisfying in face of the complex riches and 
 teeming life of the world. Philosophy, no doubt, seeks by the 
 concentrated use of the intellect to bring us nearer to reality. 
 But unless the philosopher can offer in his theory a better and 
 a deeper sense of reality than men ordinarily have, no one will 
 thank him for his pains. Sandpapered concepts and ingeniously 
 soldered systems seem far removed from the vivid intensity of 
 actual experience. The divergence of views doubtless partly 
 arises from a difference of personality which inevitably creates a 
 difference in perspective. But the inadequacy of their results 
 seems to a great extent due to a want of responsiveness to the 
 immense resources of reality. Reality requires an uncommonly 
 rich and full personality to do it complete justice in a system. 
 Most philosophers have been seriously handicapped in their task 
 
 resources of literary exposition. Science can aflford to be teclinical, and to utilise 
 the unvarying and, by the nature of the case, invariable terminology supplied by the 
 vanished civilisations of Greece and Rome. This secures constancy of meaning, 
 which corresponds aptly to the fixity of scientific concepts. But a technical language 
 in philosophy would alienate philosophy from the restless and inexhaustible spirit of 
 truth which is its ceaseless inspiration, and would in consequence quickly terminate 
 its enterprise. 
 
 This attempt to ensure philosophical certainty by a technical form of exposition 
 has always been as attractive as it is ingenuous, and it constantly recurs. For reasons 
 which are obvious it appeals perhaps most frequently to those whose minds have 
 been much influenced by the orderliness and aesthetic symmetry of mathematical 
 reasoning. It seems natural to suppose that a manner of exposition which is so 
 serviceable in an exact science might with advantage be adapted to knowledge 
 generally and in particular to philosophy. This easily leads the mind to entertain 
 the still more perilous suggestion that somehow the manner of exposition adopted in 
 mathematics has an essential connection with the truth expressed. 
 
 We find at the present day a reappearance of this artifice. Certain writers seem 
 to imagine that philosophical ideas gain in clearness and cogency when formulated in 
 the language of algebraical symbol. If this be their assumption it seems a strange 
 illusion. A man does not alter his character by changing his tailor. We cannot 
 escape the risks of contradiction by writing in shorthand. Nor does truth become 
 any more valuable by a process of condensation. And when words of ordinary speech 
 are contracted or mutilated to serve the purposes of symbolic philosophical writing, 
 the procedure loses even the appearance of seriousness and becomes ridiculous. This 
 is illustrated in a recent article, by an ingenious writer of this school, when in all 
 solemnity he proposes to escape the risks of using such words as " imply " or "infer " 
 by a symbolic adoption of " ent " in place of the word "entail." What special 
 advantage can be gained by such a process of mutilation, or why this writer should 
 have made off with one end of the word rather than with the other, are questions 
 which it is not easy for any one with a sense of humour to answer. 
 
lo STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 by the inadequacy of their mental equipment and the compara- 
 tive narrowness of their outlook : and it is neither easy nor 
 satisfactory to make up for the want of penetrating insight by 
 the industrious pedantry of logic. For human life vision and 
 prevision are far more important than logical technique. Too 
 often the philosopher's work shows a second-hand knowledge 
 of human nature, a precarious acquaintance with science, and a 
 naive ignorance of the world. But defects of personality are not 
 the only source of the unsatisfactoriness of their results. It is 
 perhaps mainly due to their attempt to concentrate the entire 
 meaning of the world into the processes of the abstract intellect. 
 Against this plain common sense maintains and will always assert 
 that the intellect is but one activity of man's soul, that it never 
 acts by itself but always in co-operation with the many other 
 functions of his life, that all his functions act and re-act on each 
 other, and that through each and all of these in distinction as 
 well as together he acquires his full sense of reality. In this 
 contention I cannot doubt that common sense is amply justified 
 by the facts of actual experience. 
 
 It seems to me important to point out not merely what 
 knowledge in general and philosophy in particular can do, but 
 what they cannot accomplish, and to insist that the complex 
 individuality of man is the best clue to the nature of reality 
 and not intellectual activity alone. It is with this in view that 
 I have sought in these essays to show how thought is in fact 
 affected and influenced by other factors of our mental life ; and 
 to maintain the position, which I take to be that of common 
 sense, that we require and use all our functions to sustain the 
 equilibrium of our individuality with the real and to become 
 alive to what reality is for us. Even with all our powers 
 working at their best and to their utmost, we shall not exhaust 
 or realise in conscious experience the fullness of the world in 
 communion with which we seek to discover our souls. Know- 
 ledge alone is insufficient for our ends. It is one form of 
 experience, and neither the whole of experience nor a substitute 
 for any other kind. Men encounter reality through the secondary 
 mind of their organic senses, through their interaction with their 
 fellow-creatures or through the unheard melodies of memory, as 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 well as through the strenuous energy of intellectual reflection. 
 And if it be said that the deliverances of these various channels 
 of approach to reality which experience provides, are too diverse 
 or even discordant to be accepted, and that systematic reflection 
 is necessary to reduce them somehow to consistency, the reply 
 of common sense is unanswerable : it prefers the apparent dis- 
 cordance of healthy natural sanity to the artificial symmetry of 
 a philosophical system. The philosopher is too eager to find 
 contradictions and in too great a hurry to reconcile them. The 
 man of common sense thinks the philosopher s truths are self- 
 created, and that, having identified the apparent incongruities of 
 actual experience with the inconsistencies of his own thought, 
 he puts the blame on the nature of things. Common sense 
 points to the historical failure of philosophy to create a fuller 
 sense of reality. Judged by results, indeed, it would even 
 appear that the human intellect is less fitted for its task than 
 almost every other function of the human mind. For whereas 
 most functions of the mind adjust us with apparent adequacy 
 to the world, the intellect never seems adequately to realise its 
 end. It would seem that this part of man's constitution is not 
 yet sufficiently developed to accomplish what it undertakes, and 
 hence its constant defeat. The philosopher would have nature 
 and human life expressed in terms of reason, consistent and 
 complete. But, looking no further afield than the recent appalling 
 calamity in our history, one is bound to conclude that in the 
 cosmic ordering of human life the Spirit of the World must have 
 something else to do than to be reasonable as we count reason- 
 ableness. It is possible that not reasonableness but dramatic 
 completeness may be the chief unifying quality of man's life. 
 Human life is not a scientific enterprise, nor the uhiverse a mere 
 riddle for philosophers. Nor when we are face to face with 
 physical nature can we seriously maintain that it will offer up 
 its whole secret to the human intellect. No one who has seen 
 a summer sunrise transmute the rocks and hills into diaphanous 
 jewels set upon the regal robes of dawn will ever imagine that 
 the full significance of the scene is reserved for the text-books 
 of the geologist or the cosmology of the philosopher. Know- 
 ledge is but one channel of satisfaction for the mind. It fulfils 
 
12 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 its purpose in the larger plan of experience, and makes its special 
 contribution to the process by which man discovers the real. 
 
 Human experience seems an experiment or a venture for the 
 conservation and fulfilment of our personality. Instead of the 
 course of experience ultimately merging the individual in 
 the Absolute, as is currently held by a certain type of philo- 
 sophical theory, there seems good ground for maintaining 
 precisely the opposite — that the process, under the conditions of 
 space and time, consists in the emergence of the individual out 
 of the Absolute or Nature into the definiteness of a substantive 
 personality.! The world provides the opportunity for the 
 discovery of the Divine and the Human Spirit. And we must 
 be prepared to find that the process of discovery is partly one of 
 disillusionment. In that enterprise philosophy will always play 
 its part ; but only for a few. Not because more might not adopt 
 it, but because they have other and for them better ways of 
 arriving at Reality. There can be no obligation on any one to 
 take the critical highway of philosophy : it is a matter of choice 
 or inclination. Doubtless, as Plato remarks, a life without self- 
 examination is not a life for man. But philosophy is not the 
 only form of self-examination. It is one way to mental freedom, 
 a way which those will take who think it worth while. They 
 need not expect that their solutions will be accepted, or even their 
 problems fully appreciated, by other minds. But the spirit of 
 intellectual freedom must be kept alive from generation to 
 generation, and for this no labour is too great and, let us hope, 
 none is ultimately thrown away. 
 
 ' In the explanation of human life, philosophers are apt to lay far too much 
 stress on the end. In dealing with life what we come from is just as important as 
 where we are going to ; and the former has the advantage, for purposes of explanation, 
 in being more ascertainable. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 
 
 Ainhs (S @(6s) ivfivBpdmriaiV Iva vneTs BfOirotnB&iiev. 
 
 Athanasius : De Incarnatione. 
 
 " 1st nicht der Kern der Natur 
 Menschen im Herzen?" 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 I 
 
 There is a pathetic irony in the constant recurrence throughout 
 the history of the human intellect of the elementary question 
 " What is truth ? " After the brilliant and comparatively 
 successful achievements of science during the last hundred years, 
 this question is still raised with all the freshness of a new problem. 
 And it is perhaps all the more curious that the scientists who 
 claim to possess truth hardly seem to trouble themselves about 
 its nature ; while those who seek to know its meaning are not in 
 general scientists, but " philosophers." Underlying the question 
 there seems to lurk a sense of disappointment with the results 
 derived from the arduous activity of the human intellect, a feeling 
 which suggests not so much " Was it worth while to spend human 
 energy in this way ? " but rather " Is this all that the intellect 
 can contribute to enrich the human spirit ? " A skilfully 
 linked chain of reasoning, a system of ideas or concepts, be they 
 never so "objective," an orderly arrangement of categories — in 
 what way do these or can these satisfy the mind .? There is also 
 implied the suggestion that, even on the most favourable view 
 of truth, it is but one direction in which the mind seeks fulfil- 
 ment ; and that its direction must be distinguished from, or 
 co-ordinated with, other equally important human interests in what 
 is good, or, again, in what is beautiful. There would clearly be 
 
 13 
 
14 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 no meaning in raising the question if scientific truth were 
 literally all that the human mind sought ; or, at any rate, the 
 question regarding truth could not be raised in this simple form. 
 If the answer is to be forthcoming it can only be given in terms 
 different from and, in general, wider than truth itself: otherwise 
 we should raise the question again in our answer, or know the 
 answer before we raised the question ; and either way our 
 procedure would be frivolous.i 
 
 It is because of this inherent limitation in the significance 
 which truth has for the human mind, a limitation which becomes 
 as obvious by our increasing success in reaching truth as by our 
 failure to attain it, that the mind in its concern for its completer 
 life seeks to fix the place of truth in the economy of its experience. 
 In our own time we find those who, laying stress on the inde- 
 pendence of truth, treat the human mind as but a medium in 
 which truth is intermittently realised or focussed ; the mind is 
 subordinate to the truth, and shapes its conscious processes in 
 terms of an " objective " order or system. In inevitable reaction 
 from this position there are those who consider that truth is not 
 independent of the mind, that truth is at best subordinate to and 
 dominated by the prior practical interests of the mind, is a mere 
 instrument for its purposes. The one, it may be said, holds that 
 the individual mind is made what it is by the truth, the other 
 that the truth is what the mind practically makes it to be ; the 
 one insists that ideas " work " because they are true, the other 
 that they are true because they work ; the one maintains that 
 the course of our ideas is determined in the interest of the truth 
 the other that the truth is determined in the interest of our 
 practical ideas. Between these two, clearly no reconciliation is 
 possible ; nor can one give way to the other, for no argument 
 from either side reaches the underlying assumptions of the other. 
 Both, indeed, may agree that a truth can be true only for an 
 individual mind, since there is no mind which is not an individual 
 mind in some sense or degree of individuality ; but there is no 
 
 1 Similarly the complete answer to the question cannot be found by postulatine 
 a " criterion " of truth. A criterion of truth must itself be a true criterion, and we are 
 thus at once in an indefinite regress in the search for such an instrument, or we already 
 have it in our hands all the while. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 15 
 
 possible agreement between them when one says that a truth is 
 never true if it is only " my truth," while the other says that a truth 
 which is not " my truth " is no truth at all. These are contrary 
 propositions : they may both be false, but cannot be true together 
 or be reconciled as they stand. The assumption in the one case 
 is that the individual mind is always qualified by a particular 
 element which either is, or should be, in process of dissolution 
 into the universality characteristic of truth ; the assumption in 
 the other case is that the particular element is in itself precious 
 to the individual, and neither can nor should be surrendered 
 to the claims of a universal which, however important, is always 
 " abstract " and incapable of doing full justice to what is particular. 
 Whatever language may be used to express these views, and 
 whatever special aspect of individuality may be emphasised in one 
 case or denied in the other, the generalisation of the principles 
 defended in the two cases leads us inevitably to this sheer 
 divergence between their fundamental presuppositions. 
 
 Both views ignore two fundamental conditions of human 
 experience, and neglect of these is the chief source of the difficulty 
 of finding any reconciliation between their opposing positions. 
 They both deal with the individual mind as a fully developed' 
 and fully equipped finite reality face to face with a statically' 
 complete and finished realm of objects or groups of objects 
 existing alongside the individual mind. The activity of thej 
 mind is thus made to consist in co-ordinating its processes to this 
 objective realm, one view laying chief stress on the reference to' 
 the objective sphere with which the mind has to be co-ordinated,] 
 the other on the mental process of co-ordination. It is forgotten! 
 by both alike that the individual mind is never fully developed 
 at all, but is ever growing from the earliest date of its existence 
 to the last. Its growth towards ever-increasing fulfilment of 
 its being and of unison with its world is the very essence of its 
 experience. 
 
 Again, both overlook the fact that behind the processes of 
 both practical action and intellectual procedure lies the more 
 ultimate reality of the single indivisible individuality itself. It 
 is this which determines the laws and conditions of practice, and 
 the laws and conditions of intellectual activity. Thus, for 
 
i6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 instance, the essence of all thinking consists in grouping 
 differences within a single principle, in finding an identity which 
 animates distinctions. But this character of thought is derived 
 from the nature of the individual mind, which is a living unity of 
 all its varied manifestations. To attempt, therefore, to express the 
 whole nature of human individuality in terms of the intellect, to 
 describe its living procedure as a logical procedure, and its chief 
 end as the attainment of some scheme of conceptual truth, is a 
 complete inversion of the actual connection between thought and 
 mental individuality. Individuality prescribes the course which 
 thought has to take, not thought the character which individuality 
 should possess. It is because the mind is an organic unity in 
 variety that thought is a function of mind operating in the way it 
 does, viz., by seeking identity in difference. Individuality is not 
 wholly or simply logical in its procedure, because it can function 
 logically ; and, therefore, logical procedure is neither the sole aim 
 nor the sole clue to the nature of individuality.^ That logical 
 procedure is not the sole clue to the meaning of mental individu- 
 ality is plain when we note that the same fundamental nature of 
 mind, as an indivisible concrete unity of all its processes, 
 determines the laws and conditions not merely of practical 
 procedure in the strict sense, but the emotional life of mind, its 
 aesthetic procedure, the process of striving, the processes of 
 memory, imagination and perception. All these operate in their 
 own sphere as special expressions of the fundamental nature of 
 
 » This fallacy, or, shall I say, misconception, seems to me to underlie the work of 
 Mr. Bosanquet, who may be taken as one representative of the view that human 
 individuality finds itself in becoming conscious of an independent scheme or system of 
 intellectual truth. We have but to recall his constant use of such expressions as the 
 logic of will, the logic of feeling, the logic of individuality, and the like, not to speak 
 of his insistence on the logical principle of non-contradiction as a clue to ultimate 
 truth, in order to see the justification for this remark. Doubtless he is forced by the 
 facts to use other and quite different expressions, as I shall point out ; but there can 
 be no question, I think, of the main tendency of his view. The facility with which 
 the processes of will, for example, can be rendered into logical formula is largely 
 illusory. Given that the mind is the source of the laws and conditions of both will 
 and intellect, and that the same ultimate principle of mind (unity in variety) governs 
 and determines both, and the possibility of translating the processes of one function 
 into the terms of the other follows almost as a matter of course. In the same 
 way we might, and do, translate intellectual processes into the language and 
 procedure of will. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 17 
 
 mental life, of which each is but a particular form. They require 
 no assistance from intellectual procedure as such, and are not 
 affected or governed by its peculiar laws. This is seen in actual 
 experience, e.g. in the success with which the life of the ordinary 
 moral agent, or again of the artist, can be prosecuted in spite of 
 the fact that these individuals neither can nor care to understand 
 the attempt to interpret their procedure in the language and 
 in the terms of conception, which is the peculiar business of those 
 who are mainly interested in intellectual activity. Nor are they 
 perturbed by the contention, put forward by those who pursue 
 the aims of the intellect, that thought occupies a privileged 
 position in the life of mind, seeing that thought interprets and 
 understands. For the reply is obvious that thought only has a 
 primary significance for those whose business it is to pursue 
 the aims of thought, and that it is natural to regard as more 
 important what one finds to be one's main interest. The 
 philosopher (or the man of science) can convince no one but a 
 philosopher that thinking holds a place of privilege in the life of 
 the mind. Men of action or artists will neither concede nor deny 
 the contention of the philosopher ; they will regard it with 
 indifference or toleration, and will feel instinctively that it is an 
 argument in defence of a foregone conclusion based on prejudice 
 or predilection. The artist will probably say — 
 
 " The rest may reason, and welcome, 
 'Tis we musicians know.'' 
 
 II 
 
 If then we are to determine the place which truth holds in 
 experience, or its value for human life, we must start from a 
 position which does justice to the nature of human individuality ; 
 for this is fundamental for the whole problem. I feel on solid 
 ground when I regard the individual mind as a supreme conscious 
 realisation of the energy of life, rooted in the inorganic elements ' 
 of nature, inseparable from lower organic processes and 
 conditions, and utilising all these to sustain and fulfil the higher 
 level of vital energy in which mind consists. Being a form of life, 
 the characteristic quality of its activity is that of development 
 
 c 
 
i8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in response to and co-respondence with the world in which 
 it has become consciously alive. Being more than mere physical 
 organisation, its development is more than mere physical growth, 
 and is not arrested at the stage of physiological maturity. Its 
 development consists primarily in development of internal 
 arrangement, not of external embodiment ; a qualitative rather 
 than a quantitative process. As a developing individuality, it 
 faces its world with its whole energies, in their global entirety, 
 if I may call it so, a development which proceeds not in a linear 
 direction, but as a compact whole, carrying all its specific functions 
 along with it in indissoluble co-ordination. Differentiation of its 
 functions arises through its action and reaction on its world, but 
 the integrity of the whole remains a reality, the primary reality, 
 from first to last. In much the same way (though profoundly 
 different in kind) a plant does not cease to be a whole after it 
 has become differentiated into trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. 
 What we have later in the fulfilment of mind is the same unity 
 of life as we have earlier, and the same interpenetration of the 
 processes constituting its life. In actual fact we never lose sight 
 of or ignore this solid integrity of the mind's life. What I wish 
 to urge is that we have no ground for losing sight of it in the 
 interests of theory, but every ground for insisting on it and 
 recurring to it, if we are to assign each operation of mind its 
 appropriate place in the context of experience. The singleness 
 of mind is present and omnipresent in all its operations ; the 
 slightest variation of conscious life, be it even a sensation, 
 reverberates throughout its whole being, modifying and sustain- 
 ing its course of development and relation to its world. Its unity 
 is manifested most prominently, though not exclusively, in the 
 concentration of its energy, now in one specific direction, now in 
 another, a concentration which takes, amongst other ways, the 
 form of what we call attention. With its singleness of being it 
 faces the real world around it, and forces itself into living 
 association with other beings, and by so doing grows to the 
 fullness of its mental stature. The surrounding world of beings 
 evokes its energy of self-maintenance and self-fulfilment. It 
 does not exist for them nor they for it ; they all co-exist, so far 
 as they, too, have individuality, as single realities in a world of 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 19 
 
 reals. It measures their individuality by its own, and, as certain 
 philosophers maintain, arranges the reality of individuals as 
 a scaje of beings occupying different degrees of reality. Doubt- 
 less other real beings, especially if conscious, do the same, and 
 also measure and scale up the real beings different from them- 
 selves. The course of the mind's development may fairly be 
 described, relatively to its initial starting-point in time and place, 
 as a process of discovery, a discovery of what its own nature 
 contains, and, as the correlate of this, a discovery of the signi- 
 ficance of the other beings in relation to which it lives and moves . 
 and has its own being. This process of discovery is what • we 
 call experience in its most general sense. Experiencesis thus 
 always double-sided ; we grow into our world, our worl^^ecomes 
 articulate in its detailed reality as we proceed. We dg not make 
 the reality of other things any more than we make our own ; we 
 find and become conscious of both in fulfilling the energy of our 
 own mind. We do not break down the distinction between our 
 reality and that of other beings as we proceed ; we establish both 
 by the process of becoming aware of both. Neither gives way 
 to the other, neither strictly depends on the other ; they are 
 inter-dependent. We never face other beings with one of the 
 functions of our mind. We face other reality with our whole 
 mind, and we estimate it in terms of our whole nature, from the 
 first stage to the last in the career of our experience. And one 
 being differs from another according to the call it makes on our 
 whole being, and the response our whole being makes to it. 
 
 In the course of our development, and as the result of an 
 indefinite variety of activities conscious and sub-conscious, 
 specific functions of the mind arise and assume a definite 
 place in the economy of our mental life : perception, memory, 
 imagination, emotion, conscious striving. We come to be dis- 
 tinctly aware of them, and to rely on them and operate with 
 them. Some emerge into clearness early, some later in our 
 mental history. Instead of the first stage of quasi-un- 
 differentiated mental unity, we have later a complex and 
 articulate arrangement of mental functions in and through 
 which the mind operates. These arise through the successive 
 and successful efforts of the mind to retain its hold on its 
 
20 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 world, and its place in it ; and so to fulfil its being. Each and 
 all have reference to reality in some form or other, and no one 
 exclusively. 
 
 On this interpretation, the pursuit and the attainment of 
 articulately conceived systematic truth by the intellect is a 
 single, a distinctive, but not the exclusive, and not necessarily 
 the highest, channel through which the individual mind fulfils 
 its proper nature. This deliberate search for intellectual truth, 
 moreover, is controlled by the same fundamental conditions as 
 guide and determine the mind's activity in every other essential 
 direction. In each and all the concrete individual is endeavour- 
 ing at once to fulfil its being to the uttermost, and to become 
 consciously alive to the world of beings which co-exist with 
 itself; and these two processes are but aspects of its self- 
 maintenance.^ No one direction of the mind's life can" be a 
 substitute for, or supersede even in importance, another, any 
 more than in a higher organism one organ can really take the 
 place of another organ. Perception does not make sensation 
 any the less necessary ; both are qualitatively distinct from 
 memory and from judgment, as these are from each other ; 
 while, again, scientific, or systematic, knowledge is as different 
 a level of mental energy from all of those mentioned as it is 
 from the activity of the moral life, of art, or of religion. By each 
 of these, and by the different degrees of each kind of activity, 
 the individual mind attains a different level of being, acts and 
 reacts upon its world in a new way, fulfils a distinct mode of its 
 life, and thereby establishes its own existence, in the face of a 
 ceaselessly varying realm of objects. 
 
 No one of the directions assumed by the energy of the 
 human mind is less or more of a purely human activity than 
 another : and none carries the human mind beyond the ambit 
 of its own sphere of existence, since all subserve the fulfilment 
 of its being as a living individuality. If religion and art, if 
 
 ' In that sense scientific knowledge is certainly "instrumental," as it has been 
 held : a means, that is to say, to self-fulfilment. It is obviously not merely instru- 
 mental in the interests of " practice " ; for practice itself is in the same way instru- 
 mental to the self-fulfilment of the individual mind. Both, in short, are directly 
 instrumental to complete individuality, and only indirectly to each other. So of art, 
 morality, and religion. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 21 
 
 morality and technical adaptation to nature, are essentially 
 modes of human life, forms of its expression, science and the 
 pursuit of intellectual truth are equally so, and no more than 
 particular manifestations of the mental energy of human beings 
 or rather of a restricted number of individuals. And, if memory, 
 perception, and imagination are but ways by which we apprehend 
 the real so as to conserve the stability and unity of our individual 
 minds, conceptual activity, judgment and inference perform a 
 similar function in precisely the same interest. 
 
 This view of human experience in general and of knowledge | 
 in particular is what seems best described as Anthropomorphism. 
 The term is sometimes applied in a narrow sense, to refer to 
 certain ways of ascribing literally to non-human kinds of reality 
 qualities which are exclusively human.^ 
 
 Properly understood, however, this is only a subordinate 
 meaning of the term. In essence it means simply the point of 
 view of humanity at its best, the way in which a human life, 
 within the peculiar limitations and specific conditions of its 
 existence, consciously arranges its world in terms of its own 
 perspective, and in so doing at once fulfils its own nature and 
 adjusts itself to the indefinitely complex realm of beings with 
 which it finds its existence associated. Every type of being in 
 the real world is constituted by its own peculiar laws, and 
 maintains itself in terms of these laws. Man has a type of his 
 own, and secures his place by fulfilling the laws of his special 
 form of being, whether those laws are physical, moral, aesthetic, 
 
 ' This is often described as a peculiar tendency of the primitive mind : but it is 
 by no means confined to the primitive intelligence. The difference between the 
 uncultivated and the cultivated mind does not consist in the former being anthro- 
 pomorphic in the narrow sense, while the latter eschews anthropomorphism. Both 
 may be anthropomorphic in the same sense ; the difference between the two consisting 
 in the sort of human qualities ascribed to non-human objects. Thus, the primitive 
 mind will ascribe human emotions — anger, pleasure, etc. — to external beings, 
 ■whether natural or non-natural ; the maturer mind will ascribe human ideas — 
 conceptions, volitions — to non-human beings. Scientists and philosophers alike 
 show this tendency. Why the primitive attitude should be rejected with contempt, 
 and the attitude of the more developed mind treated with profound respect, is not 
 evident, except to those who prefer to ascribe to non-human realities human thoughts 
 rather than human emotions, and who imagine that a later generation must necessarily 
 be wiser than the earlier. 
 
22 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 or intellectual matters not ; the issue of his activity is the 
 maintenance of his individual being by the fulfilment of his type 
 of existence. 
 
 We are not concerned here to show how this conception 
 enables us to interpret the significance of all the modes of this 
 life. We are more especially interested in indicating its bearing 
 on the problem of knowledge. 
 
 We shall not deal with all the forms of knowledge, but only 
 with those which present the greatest difficulty — scientific 
 procedure through conception, judgment and inference, by which 
 intellectual truth in the usual sense is obtained. In the case, 
 e.g., of sensation and perception, which are also channels of 
 knowledge, it is fairly easy to show that these functions of the 
 individual mind are rooted in the peculiar psycho-physical 
 conditions of human individuality, and are constituted by the 
 peculiar laws of man's specific organisation. The essentially 
 human character of knowledge at these levels of man's life may 
 be considered beyond dispute. The same is true of memory or, 
 again, the imaginative grasp of ideals of knowledge. Let us 
 therefore confine attention to the harder case of conceptual 
 activity, and the higher intellectual " truth," with which indeed 
 most theories of knowledge exclusively deal, and in reference to 
 which the claim that truth is " transcendent," " objective," 
 " independent," is currently made. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There is nothing magical in the form or the procedure of 
 intellectual activity that we should be disposed to credit it with 
 the power to carry us beyond the conditions or limitations of the 
 human mind. The conceptions with which mature intellectual 
 activity, e.g. science, deals, are the outcome of and display the 
 abstract character possessed by mere intellect as a specialised 
 function of mind. They are literally the expression of this 
 abstract function. The intellect does not find them ready made 
 and waiting to be apprehended or picked up by the intellect 
 Nor are they by chance the convenient material suitable to be 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 23 
 
 handled by the abstract activity of the intellect. We often treat 
 them in this way, it is true. But that is because reflection upon 
 the whole procedure of the intellect is an after-thought ; and, 
 when undertaken, we seem to have a great variety of conceptions 
 with fixed characters on the one hand, and a uniform power 
 which deals with them on the other. What more natural than 
 that in such circumstances we should fancy the conceptions to be 
 the ready-made material offered to or fortunately adapted to the 
 operation of an abstract intellect .'' But, in fact, the intellect is 
 in nature and origin prior to the conceptions with which it deals. 
 These are one and all created by it in the course of its effort to 
 grasp the world in the interests of the unity of the mind. The 
 deliberate aim of the intellectual process is to bring to bear on 
 the variety of objects confronting the mind the all-pervading 
 unity of the mind's life, or, as we sometimes put it, to bring the 
 variety of objects under the general unity of the mind. This is 
 one of the ways in which, as we find, the mind maintains its 
 integrity in the face of the world of beings in relation to which 
 it stands. The unity of the mind is the single constant and 
 uniform principle throughout all its experience. The mind may 
 only be aware of it in a vague way at first, or it may later assume 
 a distinctive being of its own and be looked upon as an ideal 
 centre of reference. But in all cases intellectual activity con- 
 sists in bringing this unity as such into conscious connection 
 with the varied world of objects in the midst of which the mind 
 lives. 
 
 The plurality of conceptions devised for this end are the out- 
 come of its efforts in this direction. They have the generality 
 of the single unity which they seek to carry out, but also some- 
 thing of the concreteness of the actual objects with which the 
 mind as a concrete individuality is concerned. They are thus, 
 in a manner, intermediate between the mere unity of the mind, 
 and the complex diversity of things. But they never leave the 
 region of abstraction, since the intellect has only to do with 
 satisfying the mind's general principle of unity. The intellect 
 thus always stops short at the abstract conception, not because it 
 might go further if it chose, but because its function is limited 
 by this purpose from the first. Hence, we find, on the one hand, 
 
24 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 that the conception never professes to give us the full particularity 
 of the concrete object. On the other hand, the intellect en- 
 deavours to connect the conceptions as conceptions with one 
 another ; for the same demand for unity, which starts the mind's 
 search for conceptions, instigates the mind to unite the con- 
 ceptions themselves when they are found. It does this through 
 the intellectual processes of inference, of systematisation, or 
 again of establishing a hierarchy of conceptions, and perhaps in 
 other ways. 
 
 The abstractness of the conceptions devised by the intellect, 
 and the connection of these with one another, do not furnish any 
 ground for holding that we go beyond the mere purposes of the 
 finite human mind in intellectual activity. The intellect does not 
 de-anthropomorphise the human mind. Indeed there seems a 
 transparent paradox in maintaining that a function which is less 
 than the whole mind can carry us beyond the mind altogether. 
 This is so evident from the forms assumed by the language of 
 men, and from the variation in the range of conceptual span , as I 
 may call it, from individual to individual, that it would hardly 
 require to be emphasised were it not for the mysterious, almost 
 magical, significance attached by some minds, scientific and 
 philosophical alike, to the mere quality of abstraction cha- 
 racteristic of the conceptions of the intellect. 
 
 What is true of their abstractness is equally true of their 
 quality of universality and objectivity. Their universality is 
 ultimately derivable from and is determined by the extent 
 to which they reflect the single unity of the individual mind 
 exercising the function of intellect on its own behalf This unity 
 remains the same throughout all the life of mind, and if a con- 
 ception can be devised in which the conciousness of this unity is 
 maintained throughout all change in the content of the object 
 grasped by the conception, that conception assumes the character 
 of being universal. The assumption is that the conception will 
 remain what it is as long as the unity of the mind subsists, and 
 that means always. Social intercourse helps to confirm this 
 quality by bringing out that the conception in question reflects 
 the unity of life not merely of one individual mind but of a 
 number, large or small, of other minds equally individual in their 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 25 
 
 life.i The exact number of individuals holding such intercourse 
 is irrelevant to the universality : two may be sufficient for certain 
 kinds of conceptions ; a hundred will strengthen the claim to 
 universality in other cases. But social intercourse does no more 
 in any case than confirm or emphasise the universality : it cannot 
 create the universality in default of the operation of the individual 
 minds who affirm it.^ The universality may be so indubitably a 
 quality of the conceptions in certain cases that we find it said, for 
 example, that certain conceptions hold "for all mankind," are 
 confirmed by the " universal experience of humanity," are valid 
 " for consciousness in general." Such expressions are obviously 
 mere hyperbole ; no one imagines that all mankind are really 
 aware of these conceptions ; no one has ever tested all the 
 individuals in humanity to see if each and every one holds the 
 conceptions in question. All that is really meant is that the 
 conceptions so described are such that they seem bound up with 
 the very unity of the individual mind if it is to maintain itself at all. 
 When conceptions have this quality, it is easy to see how they 
 may come to be considered outside the mind altogether or in- 
 dependent of the individual mind, and hence to give rise to the 
 illusion that intellectual activity working with these conceptions 
 carries us outside the limits of human mentality. A conception 
 which is held to be true at all times and for all seems to have a 
 being of its own whether any individual holds it explicitly or not : 
 just as we are apt to suppose that a social institution which 
 remains a permanent part of the life of a society has a being of 
 its own independently of the individuals who successively or 
 periodically embody its purpose and then pass away. Such a 
 view is a useful method of conveying vividly the significance of 
 the quality of universality : as a statement of actual fact it is a 
 transparent absurdity. For it takes the quality of universality 
 which is derived from the more ultimate fact of the unity of an 
 
 ' Hence the reciprocal relations of social intercourse'and universality of thoughts : 
 social intercourse secures, to some extent, the ratio cognoscendi of universality of 
 thoughts, the latter being, to a like extent, the ratio essendi oi sooiaX life. 
 
 2 In point of fact, the highest forms of intellectual universality are not held to be 
 dependent for their worth on social intercourse. Indeed, socialisation of ideas is in 
 inverse ratio to their intellectual universality and abstraction. 
 
26 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 individual mind to be a reason for separating the conception 
 from the individual mind altogether. Both the conception and 
 its quality as universal have the same source in the individual 
 mind, and have neither being nor life apart from it. As well 
 might a child disown all parentage and all continuity with its 
 past when it has come to maturity, after the manner of the high 
 priests of Israel who claimed to have neither father nor mother 
 when once they had devoted themselves to the service of Jehovah 
 in the Temple. 
 
 In the same way the quality of " objectivity " possessed by 
 conceptions can be shown to have its source in the operations of 
 the individual human mind. Conceptions are objective in the 
 sense, and only in the sense, that they express the mind's sense 
 of unity in dealing with the objects confronting it. It is the 
 function of thought, as we have said, to keep the mind's sense 
 of unity secure in the face of the variety of the world of objects. 
 When this purpose is successfully fulfilled, the conceptions do 
 not change, any more than the unity of the mind changes. The 
 realm of objects is from the first as real and enduring as the being 
 of the individual mind. Our intellectual knowledge does not 
 alter the nature of things, and things are themselves quite 
 indifferent to our intellectual operations. But, once concep- 
 tions are obtained, it is a convenient and perhaps a natural 
 form of metonymy to ascribe to conceptions the quality of the 
 objective world with which they deal, or again to ascribe to 
 objects themselves the conceptions which the intellect has devised 
 to enable the mind to handle the world of objects. This is 
 convenient to emphasise the significance of the result obtained 
 by intellectual activity, viz., that the mind has secured its unity in 
 the midst of the real world ; it is only objectionable if taken as 
 literal fact. We then disturb the whole situation ; we regard 
 the conceptions as themselves objects, and thus independent of 
 the mind as objects in fact are. This is the naive attitude of the 
 recent revival of mediaeval realism. It is not putting the position 
 too strongly to say that if conceptions were really objects they 
 would not be objective at all ; for they would not be mental 
 functions, which they are ; they would no longer refer to objects, 
 they would be the objects themselves. But it is in their reference 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 27 
 
 to the objects that their objectivity consists. It is the reaction 
 upon our thought of the language in which conceptions are 
 clothed, coupled with inadequate analysis of the situation, which 
 has led many minds, and most of us at one time or another, 
 to treat the objectivity characteristic of conceptions as equivalent 
 to the summary identification of conceptions with the objects. 
 
 It is sometimes held that the successful corroboration by the 
 objective world of certain conceptual processes and results is an 
 unanswerable argument in favour of the trans-human quality 
 ascribed to thought. If we can predict the course of nature with 
 invariable accuracy, surely, it is said, our thoughts cannot be 
 merely our own as human beings ; they must be an expression 
 for the nature of independent things themselves. This is a 
 familiar proposition, and the illustrations usually given are drawn 
 from stellar and planetary mechanics and applied physics or, 
 again, chemistry, sometimes also from pure mathematics. 
 
 Setting aside the fact that the proposition does not hold of 
 conceptions in all sciences, and setting aside also the fact that 
 the success means no more in some cases than that scientists 
 have agreed mainly as the result of social intercourse, there is 
 even in the most approved cases of such success nothing to 
 justify the assertion that thought liberates us from the limits of 
 the human individual mind. What it really implies is that our 
 whole mind is so constituted as to be an integral component of 
 the world of things with which its being is associated. Our 
 mind, as a whole, is interwoven with the very texture of the real 
 world, is fitted, so to say, to the environment of the rest of reality ; 
 and if it but fulfils, in its own order and according to its own 
 conditions, the laws of its own being, the issue will confirm and 
 establish this congruence with the world. It is not that the 
 intellect and the intellect alone gives us the true nature of 
 the independent world of things ; but that the individual mind 
 is from the start and all through its history a substantive con- 
 stituent of the real. Its one purpose is to fulfil itself, and its 
 detailed operations contribute to this one end. The so-called 
 success of the intellectual process in particular corroborates this 
 primordial character of the life of mind. It is not, therefore, 
 that the intellect alone finds the whole truth about the world. 
 
28 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 but that our mind as a whole enables the intellect to bring out 
 the essential congruence between the mind and the real. It is 
 the mind working with its whole energy through the channel 
 of intellectual activity which makes possible the successful 
 operations of the intellect in dealing with the world. The 
 intellect merely brings out explicitly in its own way what was 
 implicit all the while — the congruence of the whole mind with the 
 real in the midst of which it lives and moves and has its being.^ 
 
 ' To begin with, this congruence is in a sense a postulate, as we so often say. 
 But it is not a postulate for the mind, it is only a postulate for the specific operation 
 of the intellect. The mind, as a whole, no more doubts or questions or even 
 "assumes" that it has a place amongst real beings, than trees or birds ; and it no 
 more "postulates" its congruence with other real beings than it postulates their 
 congruence with itself. A postulate is only made by a partial function in an interest 
 going beyond itself; it always implies an end beyond itself which is presupposed 
 before it sets out to confirm the reality of the end. The mind has no end beyond 
 itself that it can seek ; it seeks simply to fulfil itself. But a specialised function like 
 the intellect, an abstraction from the whole life of mind, must make the assumption 
 that, in spite of being an abstraction, it will yet be able to attain in its own way and 
 to express the fundamental nature of the life of mind which it partially embodies. 
 The success of its procedure confirms openly the assumption it has made at the out- 
 set, and explicitly reinstates in a special way the fundamental character of the mind's 
 life. Such a. confirmation is often regarded as a kind of wonder, or surprise, as if 
 the mind should be, as it were, grateful to the intellect for having done so much on 
 the mind's behalf. But the whole process is such an obvious circle that there is no 
 more place for wonder or surprise than in the resolution of a child's puzzle. The 
 intellect is in the control of the mind all the while, and is brought back to its starting 
 point, as it must be, when its operation is completed, for the starting point is its 
 guiding assumption throughout all its procedure, directing and limiting its course of 
 operation. This is seen without difficulty, if we merely note that the intellect is 
 always selective in its operation, a selection which is guided by an end in relation to 
 which the selection is made. When we say, therefore, that the intellect grasps the 
 nature of the real, we should observe that this is at best only a partial statement 
 even of the operation of the intellect. The successful result of the operation of the 
 intellect has always a double-sided significance ; it conveys what the real is in 
 relation to the mind, as interpreted by intellect, it also conveys what the mind is in 
 relation to the real world. It must do both at once, because it is a manifestation of 
 the life of mind as one real being amongst other real beings. It is because we so 
 often ignore the one side of this result, and lay exclusive emphasis on the grasp of 
 the independent real object achieved by the intellect, that we treat the intellect as a 
 revelation of the independent object, and the truth obtained as consequently in- 
 dependent of our own minds. Such a one-sided view is sure to distort the actual 
 situation, for it leads us to ignore the vital connection of the intellect with the whole 
 life of mind. If we could imagine a flower thinking about the botanist as the 
 botanist thinks about the flower, we might have similarly one-sided misinterpreta- 
 tions of the significance of the results arrived at by the plant intelligence. The 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 29 
 
 IV 
 
 So far we have considered the claims of the intellect to 
 transcend human limitations by an analysis of the conceptual 
 as such and at its best. The same result is even more evident 
 when we bear in mind that the creation or discovery of the 
 conceptions and their connections, by which the intellect appre- 
 hends the world, always involves an effort of mind, experiment, 
 trial, and error. The conceptions and conceptual connections 
 are not given to the intellect ready made ; they are deliberately 
 designed, and are only found after a severe intellectual struggle, 
 in the course of which they are formed and reformed, proposed 
 and rejected. The history of science and of philosophy is strewn 
 with the wrecks of expeditions in the seas of thought. All 
 conceptions are at the start nothing more than tentative efforts 
 of the mind to establish a unity amongst things. The progress 
 of science finds its growing point in suggested hypotheses. No 
 one would dream of regarding the embryonic stages of true 
 knowledge as other than phases in the life of the human mind. 
 How then can any one maintain, when these stages have 
 arrived at a point in their development which satisfies the mind, 
 produces general acceptance, and enables it to maintain itself in 
 the relation to its world, that suddenly the thoughts thus 
 secured cease altogether to be our own and become non-human 
 or impersonal in character? If tentative hypotheses do not 
 give us the very "nature of things," why should a successful 
 hypothesis do so ? 
 
 plant's thoughts would surely be a mere manifestation of its life, however accurately 
 in its process it succeeded in diagnosing the being of the botanist ; and its thoughts 
 would emphatically not be those of the botanist, no matter how accurate they were 
 to the plant itself. And so generally ; if other orders of beings, some of which 
 palpably have intelligence, were to think about their world, — the things with which 
 they are confronted, — their thoughts would, in every case, be the expression of their 
 own specific intelligence, and would remain constant for them because accurately 
 embodying the laws of their own being. It is hardly imaginable that the thoughts of 
 all the different orders of beings would be the same, or that the "nature of things" 
 would be completely revealed by each type of thought. In a word, Xenophanes' 
 criticism of the popular religious views of his time has but to be generalised to see 
 the inadmissibility of attributing to the specific thoughts of human intelligence a 
 capacity to convey the nature of things in a manner which, however successful, 
 impUes that because thought is true it is therefore impersonal. 
 
30 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 We can often go a long way with an inaccurate hypothesis. 
 We can prophesy by it, to a certain extent, and it bears this test 
 of success. Nevertheless we are led to give it up, and to describe 
 it as merely a human conjecture. Since it is by a continuation 
 of the same activity of the mind that an inaccurate becomes an 
 accurate hypothesis, it is surely impossible to dehumanise the 
 hypothesis once it becomes finally established. Is the only 
 quality of thought which remains human to be the capacity to 
 make mistakes ? And shall we deny ourselves the right to call 
 true thought human just because it is true ? This seems neither 
 justified nor intelligible. 
 
 But when we look at the process of thought as it actually 
 takes place, we find that intellectual activity is never in fact 
 purely intellectual activity at all. We never think in an 
 abstract medium of pure intellect, not even in the most abstract 
 of all sciences. We start from and constantly draw upon the 
 resources and deliverances of our perceptual experience. We 
 repeatedly substantiate our thinking by linking its conclusions 
 with perceptual facts, and sometimes we call this procedure 
 (paradoxical as it sounds) the verification of our thoughts. And 
 we invariably make use of the medium of perceptual experience 
 to give body, shape, and form to the whole process of thinking ; 
 for there is no continuous thinking possible without written 
 or spoken language, which belongs wholly to the region of 
 perceptual experience. Now perception is not merely inseparable 
 from our specifically human mind ; it is not even separable from 
 our peculiarly constituted nervous system. When we proceed to 
 think about things, the operation of thinking is instigated in 
 the first instance by the mode in which things are perceived. 
 Perception sets the task, and furnishes the character which the 
 things possess about which we think. No thinking can dispense 
 with its own facts or leave the facts behind. And since these 
 are constituted by the special nature of human perception, our 
 thinking is held captive by, and is beyond all hope of escape 
 from, the limits of the human mind. This point has been so 
 often emphasised, that it requires no more than a passing remark. 
 What is so curious is that the use of language in which 
 to convey thoughts should ever have created the illusion 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 31 
 
 that our thought can transcend the human mind. It seems to 
 be supposed because language is " outside," or a symbol, and the 
 form of the symbol is irrelevant, that therefore thought is 
 independent of all human conditions. But it is precisely the 
 symbol which compels thought to keep in touch with the actual 
 human mind, which always lives as a concrete whole ; or con- 
 versely, it is precisely because thought cannot lose touch with 
 the concrete mind that it must use a symbol. The symbol, be 
 it ever so slight, e.g. a mere sign, holds thought in chains to the 
 conditions and laws of perception, without which the mind would 
 lose its living contact with its actual world. The insignificance, 
 the very perceptual abstractness of the symbol, just corresponds 
 to the abstractness of the conceptual activity. Indeed, only such 
 a symbol would be adequate to the quality of the conception. 
 Hence it is that the more abstract the conceptual activity, the 
 more the language used becomes a mere character or sign : 
 numbers, e.g., are conveyed by mere lines in space, straight or 
 curved or otherwise arranged. And the less abstract the concep- 
 tion, the more does the symbol conveying it have a greater per- 
 ceptual significance, sometimes even appealing to different senses. 
 
 Again, it is important to note that contradiction, which is 
 so characteristic of thought, is the direct consequence of the 
 abstract nature of its procedure as a specialised operation of 
 mind, and confirms the essentially human quality of its process 
 and its results. 
 
 Contradiction has always been the main source of uneasiness 
 in the intellectual conscience, goading its waking life with 
 the remorse of doubt, and troubling the dreams of the most 
 accomplished builder of systems. Some have treated it as a 
 kind of thorn in the flesh, others have used it to make a crown 
 of thorns for the brow of intellectual freedom. And indeed 
 the fact of contradiction is at once the puzzle and the paradox 
 of intellectual activity : a puzzle because it is difficult to see 
 why the intellect should ever contradict itself: a paradox 
 because the creation of a contradiction is the work of thought 
 as much as the resolution of it. No other phase of mental 
 life is subject to this condition. Perception, emotion, volition, 
 imagination, memory, have no share in it. Their deliverances 
 
32 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 are final for the mind. If these deliverances are found to 
 contain contradictions it is not for the functions themselves that 
 the contradiction exists, but for the intellect which reviews or 
 criticises their results. So close is contradiction bound up with 
 intellectual activity that a certain familiar form of speculation 
 regards contradiction as the life-principle of thought itself and 
 the clue to its development of the nature of truth. Contra- 
 diction, it is said, e.g. by Mr. Bradley, arises when a conception 
 is pushed to the end of its meaning. And every conception, it 
 is held, will prove contradictory if it is pushed to its extreme 
 point. Hence thought activity essentially tends to contradiction. 
 Such a contention at once creates suspicion and distrust, for 
 surely the initial mistake may lie just in pushing the conception 
 too far. Why go to extremes in thinking any more than in any 
 other form of experience ? By hypothesis we are not bound to 
 do so, for, if thought be not pressed to the breaking point, it will 
 not contradict, and will still be thought. Thus, in making 
 contradiction the essence of thought, we have no right to console 
 ourselves with the reflection that we are making a virtue of a 
 necessity, for we are really making a virtue of a blunder. And 
 the things about which we reflect are transparently indiff"erent to 
 the contradictions into which we fall when we think about them ; 
 they remain in solid and stolid security, maintaining their full 
 reality, regardless of the conceptual tangle into which our minds 
 may have fallen. Indeed it is partly because they maintain 
 their concrete integrity that our minds are checked in the course 
 of their intellectual procedure. 
 
 The source of contradiction is to be traced to the general 
 character of intellectual activity. It arises from the demand for 
 complete mental unity on the one hand, and, on the other, from 
 the tentative selective efforts of the intellect to meet this demand 
 through a variety of conceptions. The unity of the mind is, as 
 we have seen, the presupposition and the consummation of 
 intellectual activity ; and without its presence in the process of 
 the intellect no contradiction would arise. Variety of conception 
 there must be, since a plurality of real things has to be unified. 
 When the unity of the mind is not satisfied by a particular con- 
 ception or a connection of conceptions, contradiction appears. It 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 33 
 
 is thus always a transitional characteristic of intellectual procedure, 
 and, as we find, it varies in kind from individual to individual, 
 and in degree according to the nature of the conception involved . 
 Thus, what seems contradictory to one mind is not always con- 
 tradictory to another, as we see constantly verified in the course 
 of debate, especially on fundamental questions. And some con- 
 ceptions are found to be partially contradictory, others wholly 
 so, by the same mind. The mental grasp of one individual 
 differs from another, and one individual thus neither feels nor sees 
 a contradiction, i.e. his mind's unity is satisfied, in a relation 
 of conceptions which seems to another riddled with contradiction, 
 i.e. giving no mental security. When we use such expressions 
 as a " self-contradictory conception," or connection of conceptions, 
 and, again, such terms as " absolutely contradictory," " inherently 
 contradictory," and the like, what we mean is that, with the best 
 intellectual effort which we and others, who agree with us, can 
 make, no sense of mental unity can be arrived at by the con- 
 ceptions in question. In a word, contradiction is nothing more 
 than the condition in which the intellect fails to satisfy the 
 mind's demand for complete unity in the special case of the con- 
 ceptions or connection of conceptions created by the activity of 
 the intellect. Contradictions are thus, in this sense, always 
 created by the intellect itself, as Kant pointed out in the case 
 of one form of intellectual activity in particular ; and it is just 
 because they are so created that the intellect can always remove 
 them, either by retracing its steps or by advancing further. 
 Hence it is useless to describe conceptions, or thoughts in general, 
 as inherently contradictory. Conceptions have no being except as 
 expressions of intellectual activity, and thought removes contra- 
 dictions, as well as gives rise to them. But for the tentative, 
 selective, piecemeal procedure of thinking, i.e. its human character, 
 contradiction would not arise at all. It is neither a virtue of 
 thought nor a disease ; it is in the long run due to the self- 
 criticism by the mind of its own thought, and reveals the negative 
 control exercised by the mind over the fundamentally abstract 
 nature of the intellectual activity which seeks to work in isolation 
 from the rest of the life of mind.i 
 
 1 It only differs in form and not as a mental operation from the check exerted by 
 
34 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 V 
 One of the most familiar admissions made regarding intellectual 
 activity is that it is " unable to explain everything," that " it has 
 its limits." And by this is meant not that the individual mind 
 making the admission is incapable of advancing further, but that 
 the intellect itself will not allow the mind to go beyond a 
 certain point in dealing with the real world. This is not dis- 
 covered and stated simply as a practical experience ; we find it 
 time after time erected into a general or philosophical tenet. 
 We have but to recall the long-standing contrast and quarrel 
 between faith and intellect in Western thought, the sceptical 
 criticism of the intellect by Hume, the theory of Kant, and, more 
 recently, the vigorous re-assertion of the same doctrine by Mr. 
 Bradley, to find ample proof of the existence of this conviction. 
 It is a remarkable confirmation of the same contention that 
 those who either do not admit it or who seem to maintain the 
 self-sufficiency of thought, do so only by blending thought with 
 other and consciously different functions of the life of the mind. 
 Thus Spinoza, in spite of his intentional and initial pure in- 
 tellectualism, reaches true reality not by the intellect alone but by 
 intellectual love. Hegel at once openly confesses the impotency 
 of conceptual procedure to deal with the teeming detail of nature 
 and history, and yet seeks by a kind of tour de force to establish 
 a quasi-logical connection between thought at its highest and 
 nature in general, an attempt which acquires whatever value it 
 has from a covert combination of intellectual activity with the 
 practical or creative activity of the human mind. In a work of 
 a more recent date we find a thinker of like tendencies (Mr. 
 Bosanquet) making the significant remark, apparently without 
 any consciousness of its far-reaching importance for his whole 
 view of thought, that " it is the strict and fundamental truth that 
 
 the solid integrity of the mind over all the specialised functions of its life. The 
 analogue of contradiction in the sphere of feeling is the sense of pain arising from a 
 misdirected course pursued by the mind in its uniform career towards satisfaction or 
 fulfilment ; while again in the case of striving or volition we similarly find the sense 
 of failure or defeat arising from the pursuit of an end futile in itself or hostile to the 
 supreme purpose of mental life — a sense of failure which appears in such different 
 forms as mistaken effort or remorse of conscience, 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 35 
 
 love is the mainspring of logic." These examples are quoted 
 merely to give an indirect proof of the contention put forward 
 explicitly by the other thinkers above referred to. 
 
 Such a position was for long a source of grave trouble to 
 myself; for I could neither admit the contention that the 
 intellect cannot explain everything nor accept the philosophical 
 theories put forward on its behalf, nor find complete satisfaction 
 in the way of thought adopted by those who maintained or sought 
 to maintain the opposite view. It seemed impossible to under- 
 stand how the intellect could at once be taken as the only avenue 
 to the intelligible, i.e. mentally satisfying, apprehension of the 
 real, and yet to hold that it was compelled to leave over a 
 residuum of the real as beyond its grasp. The difficulty was 
 only increased by recognising that it seemed to be by the 
 intellect itself that this limitation of its function was discovered 
 and formulated. How could the intellect maintain or admit its 
 own insolvency and yet try to carry on its proper business t 
 When, however, one observes that the intellect is from the first 
 and in principle a mental operation consciously distinguished 
 from, and even set apart by the mind itself in contrast to, the 
 other functions of the mind's life (more particularly the functions 
 of feeling and striving), the difficulty in question disappears. For 
 then it follows at once that it cannot be expected to get the 
 whole of the real world into its net, since it starts by being only 
 a partial expression of the full reality of the mind's life.^ It 
 does not reveal the whole nature of mind, and therefore the 
 mind cannot be wholly satisfied with its deliverances, however 
 rich and complete in their own order these deliverances of the 
 intellect may be. The mind has other functions and other ways 
 of approaching the real world, and no intellectual activity can 
 be a substitute for these.^ It is thus not because the intellect is 
 incompetent to do its own work that it fails ; it is because the 
 
 1 The limitation of thought in its relation to the real rests on, and is due to, the 
 initial separation of thought from other functions of the mind. 
 
 ^ The real makes an appeal to the emotions of the mind as well as to thought, to 
 the will as well as to the emotions. It is this sphere of the real, which thought can 
 neither touch nor think away, which bars the process of thought and limits its range 
 of operation. It is, indeed, a residuum for thought, but it is an integral part of fts 
 nature of the real for mind in its concrete fullness. (See chap, v, pp. 133-171.^ 
 
36 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 mind in its entirety cannot be satisfied in its relation to reality 
 by the exercise of only one of its own functions. The mind is 
 aware that the real contains more than the intellect can supply 
 because the mind is related to the real through all its functions, 
 and finds the real responding and co-responding to the other 
 demands made upon it by the mind. The limitation of the 
 range of the intellect does not arise because the intellect falls 
 into contradiction when it tries too much, as Kant maintained, 
 nor because thought is relational, as Bradley puts it. It seems 
 absurd to condemn thought for trying to do too much, since it 
 can never exercise its activity too far. The more it does in fact 
 the better the result intellectually. And the intellect can never 
 trespass beyond the sphere of intellect. It seems equally 
 mistaken to condemn thought because it is relational, if it 
 cannot but be relational. The restricted range of the activity 
 of thought is determined not by thought itself, but by the more 
 concrete reality of the mind's whole life. The fulfilment of 
 this can alone bring satisfaction ; and while the intellect can 
 make its own contribution to this satisfaction, the whole mind 
 can never find that contribution sufficient for all its needs. 
 Whatever truth the intellect attains, therefore, it must always 
 be less than what meets the mind's requirements. If we 
 take the full satisfaction of the mind to be the only adequate 
 expression for the " whole truth " regarding the mind's conscious 
 relation to its world, then the special truth achieved by the 
 intellect can never be the " whole truth " required. And if the 
 " intelligibility " of the world is only reached when the mind is 
 fully satisfied, then intelligibility involves something more than 
 the results, however great, of intellectual activity. The limita- 
 tion of thought is thus not a defect of the intellect, but merely 
 a specialisation of the life of the mind. Because it is so limited 
 by and for human ends, its process and its results have all the 
 more a human value. They can never be less than mentally 
 satisfying, and they can never be more than this ; and thus they 
 can never overthrow nor imperil the major ends that make for 
 and secure human satisfaction.^ 
 
 ' It is a mistake in principle to describe this result as the failure of thought to 
 grasp the real ; and misleading to employ such an expression as that of Lotze, 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 37 
 
 VI 
 
 The mind is always instinctively alive to the limited possi- 
 bilities of satisfaction to be achieved through thinking, and seeks 
 through other and distinctive channels to supplement the in- 
 adequacy of thought to supply entire satisfaction. It approaches \ 
 the real by the avenue of emotion as well as by that of volition, | 
 and endeavours to secure in its relation to the real the highest 
 satisfaction that these functions alone can supply. The con- 
 centration of the integrity of its life into these channels constitutes 
 the search of beauty on the one hand and goodness on the other. 
 Just as the highest fulfilment of its life through the function of 
 thought brings what we call (intellectual) truth, so the consumma- 
 tion of the mind's possibilities of emotion issues in the realisation 
 of beauty, and the achievement of the work of volition is the 
 attainment of goodness. The conventional difference of the 
 terms employed to describe the main avenues of the self-fulfil- 
 ment of the mind tends to obscure their essential connection 
 with one another. They are connected in their source and 
 connected in their final purpose. They emanate from the one 
 integral life of mind seeking at all costs and by all its operations 
 to maintain itself by developing its powers to meet the call of 
 the real world. On the other hand, each of them finds its 
 ultimate goal in the contribution it makes to the full satisfaction of 
 
 that "reality is richer than thought." Thought does not fail of its own purpose, nor 
 does it fail to contribute its own meed of satisfaction to the mind. In the face of 
 the extraordinary achievements of scientific procedure, and, we may say, also of 
 practical reflection, it seems a travesty of the facts to speak of the failure of 
 thought. Moreover, Ithe failure of thought would, in the long run, mean the failure 
 of the mind to be itself or to attain its end ; and it is difficult to attach any meaning 
 to that expression, since the mind cannot bring about its own failure, and no other 
 reality is in a position to perform that office on its behalf. It is again misleading to 
 say that "reality is richer" than thought: for thought always enriches reality by 
 lighting up for mind the meaning of things. The real would be infinitely poorer for 
 the absence of thought. And, indeed (if it be possible at all to compare thoughts 
 and things in this way), thought, even as thought, is much more important and more 
 valuable for mind than many forms of the real. Just as the greatest criminal is a 
 higher being than a beast of prey, so the poorest thought of a mind is a finer product 
 of creation than the immeasurable desert spaces of the earth. What such a 
 questionable expression means is not strictly that reality is richer than thought but 
 that the mind is richer in its life than the processes of thought alone. 
 
38 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the whole mind's life ; and to this they are subordinate, and by 
 this the limit, the range of operation of each, is determined. 
 Hence if we emphasise their community of interest and purpose, 
 we may quite correctly regard them as identical ; and this is often 
 done even by those who have a specialised concern for the 
 pursuit of only one of them. The poet says, " Beauty is truth, 
 truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth and all ye need 
 to know." The philosopher (Mr. Bradley), similarly says that 
 in his maturer years he finds himself "taking more and more 
 as literal fact what I used in my youth to admire and love as 
 poetry." When, however, we do not emphasise this community 
 of aim, and only then, we can regard these avenues towards 
 mental satisfaction as different, each pursuing its own course in 
 terms of its own laws and conditions.^ Each is pursued in 
 abstraction from the others, because only by so doing can the 
 finite mind concentrate its energies. It concentrates in order to 
 achieve ; and to get the utmost in one direction it must, at least 
 temporarily, isolate one channel from the others. We find this 
 in the case of thought ; it holds equally in the case of emotion 
 and of volition. Each is abstract by itself, but one abstraction 
 is as much justified and as inevitable as the other. Were it not 
 for the abstraction of thought, we may say, the other abstractions 
 would not be made or required. If the one abstract activity 
 can accomplish its end, so can the others. The attainment of 
 the utmost that emotion and volition can supply is necessary to 
 balance the utmost which thought can achieve. And when the 
 mind is in possession of the resources and accomplishments of 
 all of them, it reaches the highest level of its life. This consists 
 in the restoration or reinstatement, at a higher level, of the 
 primordial integrity of mind from which its being as an individual 
 whole starts, and for the maintenance of which the enterprise 
 and adventure of its experience are undertaken. This highest 
 level is a restoration, because the primal integrity was broken 
 
 1 But if we lose sight altogether of their inherent connection, the inevitable result 
 will be the creation of conflicts between their aims. And this we find constantly 
 happens in actual experience : truth at war with goodness, goodness at war with 
 beauty. In such conflicts we will find at once some of the greatest tragedies of 
 experience, and the greatest comedies. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 39 
 
 when the abstraction of functions from one another took place ; 
 it is a reinstatement, because the maintenance of its integrity 
 from first to last is the final purpose of all its operations. The 
 equipoise of its being in the midst of a changing and varied 
 world is the essence of its satisfaction and fulfilment. 
 
 The demand, therefore, for the maximum of enjoyment, or 
 again of good, in the mind's relation to the real, is the necessary 
 counterstroke to the effort to reach truth through the channel of 
 the intellect. And it is important to observe that the mind 
 insists on regarding both beauty and goodness as universal and 
 objective, though under the same limitations as conceptions are 
 held to be so. The ascription of beauty to the real world, and 
 again the insistence that the world is on the side of goodness, 
 are no more metaphors than the assertion that conceptions or 
 truths are valid of the real. The universality of a judgment of 
 beauty is as certain as that of a scientific judgment, and as certain 
 because it possesses the same characteristics of universality ; it 
 is permanent for the mind that holds it, and it holds for a 
 plurality of minds. In fact, if beauty and goodness had not 
 these features, so commonly ascribed to truth alone,i it would 
 be impossible to give meaning to the life of the artist, or to 
 justify the most elementary act of moral goodness. The real 
 supports the ends of the artist and the moral agent, as completely 
 as it corroborates the assertions of the scientist. That beauty 
 and goodness are so often held to be merely subjective or mental 
 states, while truth is considered to be characteristically objective, 
 seems partly due to the fact that in the case of the former the 
 tendency is to think more of the origin and process of achieve- 
 ment, in the case of the latter to pay attention to the result and 
 overlook the process ; and partly to the fact that in the former 
 the sensuous elements of human life are more in evidence than 
 in the case of thinking.2 What holds of truth, however, certainly 
 
 ' The explanation of this is the mere accident that the problems of knowledge 
 have centred round the nature of science. 
 
 - On the other hand, when the essential universality of beauty and goodness is 
 emphasised, the tendency is to treat them as containing conceptions of a type similar 
 to intellectual conceptions. This is equally mistaken ; but, at any rate, it brings into 
 prominence the affinity between the effort after beauty and goodness and the effort 
 after truth. 
 
40 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 holds in the same way of the pursuit of beauty and of goodness ; 
 and, conversely, if the latter are human creations established in 
 the interest of the self-fulfilment of the mind, the like must be 
 maintained of the basis as well as the superstructure of thought. 
 
 It is because of the abstract character which each of these 
 channels possesses in relation to the other and to the whole of 
 mind, that we find in experience that one of them is exclusively 
 chosen by certain types of mind as the main channel of satis- 
 faction. The choice is a matter of individuality, capacity, and 
 instinctive interest, and no principle can be laid down which 
 shall declare that the choice of one is more essential to the mind 
 than another. For in each case the choice is justified by the 
 fact that the world does bring satisfaction in its own kind to 
 the mind. The suggested emphasis on one at the expense of 
 the other is an unfortunate, but a natural psychical consequence 
 of the selection. Hence we find the attempt sometimes made 
 to subordinate one to the other, or even to establish the value 
 of one in terms of the other. Hence the forms of sestheticism, 
 intellectualism, and pragmatism in the history of the human 
 mind. These are at best but misdirections or exaggerations of 
 a healthy tendency to select the line of approach to completeness 
 that best suits an individual mind. Each individual suffers 
 from the prejudice created by his choice ; but that is merely of 
 biographical importance and interest. 
 
 VII 
 
 The last point I wish to refer to is that intellectual processes 
 are never merely intellectual. Distinct as thought, emotion, and 
 striving are, as channels towards mental fulfilment, both in their 
 course and in their issues, it is remarkable how in actual experi- 
 ence they betray the community of their source in spite of their 
 distinctness. It is as if the integrity of the mind refused to be 
 disintegrated by these abstractions, however firmly the abstraction 
 tries to keep to its own groove. The whole life of the mind as a 
 unity of intellect, emotion, and striving asserts its sway over 
 them, and indeed permeates the separate avenues which it takes 
 to attain completeness. Thus in the case of intellectual activity, 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 41 
 
 strenuousness of effort or striving is a fundamental condition of | 
 reaching an intellectual result, though such strenuousness is not in 
 itself an intellectual quality, but a quality of volition in the strict ^ 
 sense. Intellectually such strenuousness is indispensable to the 1 
 process, and yet is irrelevant to the logical value of the result \ 
 attained. And with this volitional element are bound up many 
 derivative conditions of intellectual success, conditions which 
 we sometimes speak of as virtues of the intellectual attitude, 
 €.£-., those of honesty, truthfulness, sincerity, seriousness, per- 
 severance, courage, and the like. None of these strictly con- 
 stitute an intellectual conception or arrangement of conceptions ; 
 but they most certainly affect the course of our intellectual 
 activity. In some cases they may effectually determine the 1 
 issue of our thinking, e.^:, by narrowing the outlook or by I 
 arresting thought in the interests of preconceived ideas, relevant \ 
 or irrelevant. At any rate the neglect of these virtues does 
 most certainly alter the value of the result which we reach. 
 Similarly, the emotional element plays a vital part in the opera- 
 tions of the intellect. The bent of our intellect towards a 
 certain type of inquiry or course of thought is settled, more than 
 we often willingly admit, by the emotional attitude we take up 
 to the object considered. How otherwise can we explain the > 
 indifference, and even revulsion, some minds feel towards history, 
 mathematics or metaphysics .' ^ Surely, if the intellectual activity i 
 were in no way affected by emotions, individuals should be able ji 
 to take a continuous intellectual interest in every object alike, 
 though doubtless the degree of attainment would vary with 
 intellectual capability. But this is not what in fact we find. 
 To some minds the intellectual attitude is rendered impossible 
 from the start by an emotional recoil from the object to be 
 thought about. Those matters in which we take a keen in- 
 tellectual interest make, either at the beginning or very quickly, 
 an emotional appeal to the mind amounting in some cases to an 
 intensity of passion which will carry even an inferior intellect 
 over the most serious obstacles to understanding. We may 
 generalise Shakespeare's maxim regarding education and say, 
 
 ' It is noteworthy that the initial emotional attitude is, in most cases, an index 
 and anticipation of the intellectual capacity to understand . 
 
42 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 " No profit is where is no pleasure ta'en ; in brief, sir, study 
 1 what you most affect." For, indeed, no mind can long sustain 
 continuity of intellectual activity without the impulsion derived 
 I from a strong emotion of curiosity, or without the emotional 
 ! elevation which is the better and larger part of the reward of 
 unimpeded intellectual effort. The most impersonal scientific 
 mind is far from being emotionally colourless ; or if it does 
 become indifferent even to the emotional effect of successful 
 achievement, it is curious to note how soon either ennui or 
 depression seizes the mind. It has often been remarked that, 
 in philosophical speculation, the most severely abstract and 
 rigorously formal thinkers seem dominated by a kind of fanatical 
 enthusiasm for logical order and dialectical display. Now this 
 emotional accompaniment of intellectual activity has emphatically 
 nothing to do with the constitution of the truth which the intellect 
 seeks to secure. The truth is determined simply and solely by 
 the canons and conditions of intellectual procedure. The 
 emotion pervades the activity but it does not directly regulate 
 the conduct of the understanding. 
 
 So profoundly does it affect the character of intellectual 
 activity that it sometimes seems as if, at least for certain minds, 
 the intellectual process were undertaken to secure a result which 
 should be not merely an intellectual satisfaction but an aesthetic 
 or emotional satisfaction at the same time. Every one with very 
 strong intellectual interest in some field of thought must have 
 felt the peculiar thrill which invariably follows the apprehension 
 of an illuminating principle. Such a thrill is purely aesthetic in 
 its quality, and yet may seem as important, sometimes even more 
 important, for the mind than the abstract truth of the principle 
 itself. Similarly, the sense of form is a most important factor in 
 determining the intellectual result. The mere beauty of the 
 arrangement of the conceptions involved in a specific sequence of 
 thought gives a satisfaction all its own, and seems worth securing 
 for its own sake. The intellectual labour seems to find its 
 perfect consummation in the symmetry of the product of its 
 activity. This holds of scientific thinking in the narrow sense, 
 as any one acquainted with mathematical investigation is aware. 
 But it holds as much, and even more, in philosophy, where 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 43 
 
 the idea of symmetrically arranged thought plays the part, 
 for certain minds, of a kind of additional canon of intellectual 
 truth. Systems of philosophy, as systems, are the outcome of an 
 aesthetic interest in intellectual procedure. They are the products 
 of the artistic imagination operating on the material provided by 
 the conceptions of the intellect. They are designed to satisfy 
 the 2esthetic sense rather than the purely intellectual attitude, 
 and illustrate by an extreme case the inseparable connection 
 between emotional and intellectual processes of the mind. 
 
 We need not consider how, in the same way, intellect is 
 involved in the fulfilment of the emotional attitude of the mind, 
 or in that of volition : or, again, how the sesthetic element plays 
 a part in the achievement of goodness. Analysis would reveal 
 that, in the attainment of the end pursued by each of the 
 abstract operations, the other factors of the mind are present as 
 co-operating influences. But indeed no deep analysis is required 
 to demonstrate a fact which experience is constantly bringing to 
 light. On the one hand the condemnation of beauty in the name 
 of goodness or of goodness in the name of beauty, on the other 
 hand the term " beauty of holiness " or, again, the utterance of 
 truth with the perfect grace of literary expression, are familiar 
 illustrations of the indissoluble blending in actual experience of 
 the distinctive attitudes assumed by the human mind in its 
 process of self-fulfilment, however much the attitudes may claim 
 specific independence of one another. The solid integrity of the 
 whole life of mind will not allow itself to be set aside by any 
 exclusive interest in one of its abstract functions. However much 
 this insistence on its concrete entirety may spell inconsistency or 
 hamper with irrelevance the abstract procedure of each distinctive 
 attitude, apparently the mind as a whole prefers the inconsistency 
 and the irrelevance to the impoverishment of its life by an over- 
 emphasis on one ®f its functions. And some of the more open- 
 minded of those who have sought supreme satisfaction along the 
 intellectual channel of the mind's activity, frankly admit in the 
 end that their special avenue does not give the whole truth they 
 desire, does not even give the whole truth sought along that one 
 channel. I recall in this connection the admissions made by the 
 strenuously intellectualistic mind of Mr. Bradley that, in the long 
 
44 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 run, as he paradoxically puts it, truth cannot be consistently 
 and ultimately true, that truth is more than consistency and 
 contains more than the criterion of non-contradiction can supply ; 
 that our minds and our feelings must, at least in part, determine 
 the composition of the final satisfaction we find in truth, and 
 indeed that a man's philosophy is in a real sense a matter of 
 personal choice. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It is partly because these three attitudes of the mental life 
 emanate from the essential integrity of the mind, and partly 
 because in actually fulfilling the demands of any one the others 
 indirectly reveal their presence, that the mind is reduced at any 
 rate to hope that in the long run the achievements of their 
 several aims will converge or co-operate in the production of a 
 supreme state of mental satisfaction. This would restore at the 
 consummation of thought, of emotion, and of striving, the sense 
 of unity from which their divergent operations start, and in the 
 interest of which they prosecute their course towards completion. 
 Such a hope is certainly warranted, and the realisation of it is 
 the larger part of the best religious experience. The convergence 
 of these aims, however, can never be more than an aspiration for 
 any one of them. Each by itself is burdened with its imperfec- 
 tion, and even at times haunted by defeat, simply because by 
 itself it is abstract and consciously abstract. The imperfection is 
 expressly admitted in a curious way. It is held that for the 
 fulfilment of the purposes of the intellect, as well as those of 
 goodness, " faith " is required. This faith is brought in to give 
 the assurance of final completeness, which each by itself never 
 seems to reach. This supplementary faith at once removes 
 or corrects the imperfection due to the abstract procedure of 
 thinking and striving. It is the way in which the mind as a 
 single unity asserts or reaffirms its hold over the abstract aims 
 of thought (and striving), and keeps them in immediate and 
 continuous contact with the integrity of its life. The faith is 
 not an attitude of the intellect itself (or of volition), but an act of 
 the whole mind. Properly speaking, it does not mean that in 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND TRUTH 45 
 
 time the intellect will create final satisfaction for the mind, for it 
 will never do so, no matter how long it operates. Nor does it 
 mean that the intellect might ultimately fail unless it were held 
 up or kept going by faith ; for the intellect is always attain- 
 ing success wherever and whenever it fulfils the conditions of 
 intellectual procedure, and the mind has never any honest doubt 
 about the value of intellectual activity. This so-called faith is 
 simply the attitude by which the whole mind lays claim to all the 
 achievements of the intellect in the pursuit of its abstract career, 
 gives them their place in the constitution of that supreme 
 satisfaction wherein the mind is fulfilled and on the attainment 
 of which its hopes are set. The faith so exercised is thus the 
 correlative of that hope for final fulfilment to which reference 
 was above made. That it should be found necessary is a 
 complete confirmation of the position maintained throughout 
 this argument, viz., that intellectual activity is an abstract 
 operation of the human mind, and finds its entire significance in 
 contributing to the fulfilment of a human individuality. The 
 faith called in to supplement intellectual procedure is meaning- 
 less outside the interests and conditions of human life. It is 
 irrelevant to the world of things whether organic or inorganic. 
 So long as faith is thus necessary to give significance to the aims 
 of the intellect, there is no escape from the essentially anthropo- 
 morphic character of intellectual procedure, even apart from the 
 considerations already adduced to establish the same conclusion. 
 While the various ends pursued by the human mind in its 
 process towards self-discovery or self-fulfilment are thus one and 
 all — truth as well as goodness, and beauty as well as truth — 
 anthropomorphic in origin and realisation, this conclusion must 
 not be misunderstood. They are on this account neither purely 
 subjective nor mere passing shadows on the surface of reality. 
 In achieving these ends of its being, the mind is using its utmost 
 powers to secure and maintain its place amidst the world 01 
 beings with which it is confronted, and in which its lot is cast — 
 the endless variety of objects which make up what we embrace 
 under nature, human nature and supernature. And this supreme 
 aim dominates the mind's career from first to last. At its earliest 
 stage of development it faces its world as a plastic but largely 
 
46 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 undifferentiated unity, adapting itself as well as it can to the 
 incessant challenge made upon it by other beings. At its latest 
 stages it brings out all its resources separately and successively 
 to meet the call of its world, and establish its unity in relation to 
 its world. In fulfilling these demands it at once develops its own 
 nature, and establishes its place in the realm of reality. By so 
 doing, it achieves the highest of which its special order of being — 
 that of an individual human mind — is capable, and therefore it 
 expresses all that reality in the form of a human mind contain?. 
 If we call this supreme result, as we may, the " full truth " of 
 mind, then the mind's entire fulfilment is in very literalness a 
 revelation of the real. If we say, as some do, that in the 
 human mind the real world becomes articulately conscious, then 
 we may put the same position in the form that the human mind 
 is a conscious exponent of the nature of reality. But such a 
 manner of expression adds nothing to the main contention, 
 and is apt to be misleading, since it suggests that the processes 
 of our mental life have a kind of inarticulate embodiment in the 
 non-human domain of the real, whereas my contention is that the 
 processes and their outcome have neither existence nor significance 
 beyond the domain of the finite human mind whose peculiar 
 nature they unfold or express. It is enough for us that our 
 place in the world of the real is as well established and as much 
 an embodiment of the nature of reality as any other being claim- 
 ing to be real. Our place becomes established when our ends 
 are completely fulfilled, and by realising our place our ends 
 themselves are shown to be of the essence of reality. By 
 assuming human shape, ultimate Reality thereby literally becomes 
 human. We need not say, with Athanasius, that this was 
 done in order that we might become like the ultimately real. 
 For, in fact, we have neither the capacity nor the desire to be 
 other than that part of ultimate Reality which we embody. To be 
 this fully is to be both human and ultimately real at once. Only 
 with our whole mind can this be accomplished ; but with this it 
 is, not as an act of faith but as literal fact, attained. 
 
II 
 
 THE REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 "To us the Universe is a living whole which, apart from violence and partial 
 death, refuses to divide itself into well-defined objects and clean-cut distinctions." — 
 Bradley. 
 
 "Yes, sir, but a man is to guard himself against taking a thing in general." — 
 Johnson. 
 
 "Thought's the slave of life."— Henry IV, Part i. 
 
 I 
 
 In ordinary intercourse, as also in psychological and logical 
 analysis, it is taken for granted that the mind in knowing an 
 object proceeds in a linear series of stages from a point which 
 marks the beginning to a point which marks the termination of 
 the process. It is also taken for granted that in knowledge we 
 somehow deal with the surface of the object, whether the surface 
 be regarded as an outside " form," an external " quality," or an 
 " aspect " of the object in question. Even when we are supposed 
 to penetrate into the interior of the object, and to know its 
 essence, the process of doing so is viewed as a linear process, that 
 of piercing into its inner nature, and the essence obtained is 
 considered to be an " aspect " or " inner surface." 
 
 At first sight these ways of looking at the process of know- 
 ledge would seem very different or even inconsistent. A linear 
 direction and a superficies are not the same, and a surface is 
 not simply a combination of lines. The connexion, however, 
 between these familiar assumptions is not difficult to trace. A 
 succession of linear directions will cover the surface, though it 
 will not give a surface ; and the surface, whatever more it may 
 be and however it may be derived, is at least partially a synthesis 
 of lines, The two assumptions therefore work conveniently 
 
 47 
 
48 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 together and co-operate sufficiently to keep up the specious 
 accuracy of the assumptions themselves. 
 
 If they were merely metaphors, perhaps little harm could 
 arise from accepting them, though metaphors tend all too readily 
 to be accepted as facts when they are constantly employed without 
 criticism. We find, however, they are more than metaphors. 
 
 Knowledge is supposed literally to consist in a succession of 
 stages, in the last of which we have the " truth," the preceding 
 stages being then set aside or superseded. This is seen when a 
 judgment is regarded as an act of knowledge detachable from 
 the mental complex of memory and imagination which preceded 
 it, and without which it could not take place, but w hich none the 
 less are supposed in no way to enter into the truth of the judg- 
 ment. Judgment is the climax of the process, and, being the 
 last stage in the attainment of the end in view, is separated off 
 from what preceded it and alone contains the truth of knowledge 
 merely because it is the last stage in the process. Similarly an 
 inference or a system of judgments is only realised after a process 
 of thought, and, when attained, is held to be a self-contained 
 body of truth as it stands, apart from the process by which it was 
 reached : the preceding process is a mere succession of " events " 
 in the individual's mind. In a word, when the process of know- 
 ledge is regarded as a linear series, the truth comes to be 
 identified with the final stage in the series. The end of knowledge 
 is identified with the termination of the process. The form of 
 sequence in which knowledge appears determines the very con- 
 ception of truth itself Temporal succession is represented as a 
 line, and the linear flow of time shapes our view of the nature of 
 knowledge, and of the relation of knowledge to reality. 
 
 Against this conception it seems important to urge that the 
 influence of the temporal form of the process of knowledge is 
 misleading, and when over-emphasised it is altogether mistaken. 
 It would be easy to show in detail that it does not do justice to 
 the facts of knowledge, and is inconsistent with its issue. What- 
 ever meaning there may be in the statement that the truth must 
 be the whole, at least it lays stress on what is vital in the operation 
 of knowledge from first to last — the indivisible integrity of the 
 individual mind. This must be our starting point in the inter- 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 49 
 
 pretation of the nature of human knowledge. Within the confines 
 of this form of individuaHty all processes of mental experience 
 whatever, and the knowing process in particular, take place. 
 From this concrete reality they emanate ; its unity holds together, 
 and is manifested in the various functions which constitute the 
 several processes of experience. All temporal sequence takes 
 place within some wider reality, is relative to that reality, and 
 is not by itself ultimate. The flow of time is but the form 
 of succession of events. The ultimate fact is not a mere 
 succession, but a principle expressed in and through succession. 
 The sequence is, in short, the appearance of the reality. It is 
 the real, undivided and individual, which is both the point of 
 departure and the final result expressed by the process. To take 
 the process by itself is to misstate the situation. All this holds 
 true of mental events as of all other events, whether they take 
 place as a succession of changes in an organism or in a planetary 
 system. 
 
 We must then start with the integral reality of the indi- 
 vidual mind if we would understand knowledge — the special 
 process by which the mind becomes aware of the meaning of the 
 world of objects and in so doing establishes unity with its 
 world. 
 
 Knowledge is, in the first instance, a specific expression of the 
 vital energy of the individual. It subsumes within itself all the 
 energies, organic, chemical and physical, which together com- 
 pose the constitution of a human being. The individual is ar 
 organism sustaining its organic life with other organisms 
 interrelated with them through functions and processes which 
 never enter into clear consciousness at all, which are as yet onlj 
 obscurely known, but which none the less effectively determines 
 its existence. It is under the control of chemical agencies and 
 physical forces in ways even more obscure but quite unmistakable 
 As a physical body the individual is as much under the sway 0I 
 gravitation as any particle of inanimate matter. It is on the 
 basis of these non-conscious conditions that the operations o\ 
 knowledge take place. Knowledge is a specific conscious 
 concentration of the whole complex of energies — physical 
 chemical, organic — making up the concrete human individual 
 
 E 
 
50 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 When knowing, the mind does not merely utilise these energies 
 to carry out its purpose, it contains them in its operation, gathers 
 them into itself, and gives them a specific direction in the conscious 
 interests of individuality. It is because mind involves in its 
 energy the other modes of energy constituting the real, that 
 mind can be regarded as at once the outcome and the fulfilment 
 of the real. It is the apex of the pyramid, the nucleus of the 
 entire complex system. Mind is continuous with and inseparable 
 from nature, if we understand by nature the totality of organic 
 and inorganic processes. For this reason it is alone in a position 
 to give the " truth " about the world, for it sums up and brings to 
 a conscious focus the various orders of facts which constitute the 
 non-mental world. 
 
 Mind being so constituted, the operation of knowledge is in 
 essence one way by which it seeks at once to articulate its con- 
 tinuity with its world, to realise in conscious form the energies it 
 concentrates'within itself, to establish its place as the final energy 
 of the world, and to secure the independent integrity of the 
 individual mind. These are but several phases of one and the 
 same operation, and all involve one another. In carrying out 
 this process, its life and activity are one and single throughout ; it 
 operates as a solid global whole. It brings all its resources to 
 bear on the attainment of its end, for its end is in the long run the 
 realisation of itself as a single individual. Some factors in the 
 process are more relevant to the issue than others : and we may 
 for purposes of abstract analysis treat the less relevant as 
 irrelevant. But, in fact and in principle, the relevance is a 
 matter of degree. Memory, sensation, imagination, and emotion 
 are all implicated in the operations of judgment and inference, 
 and are inseparable from their successful exercise. They are less 
 relevant than conception, and more relevant than habits of will, or 
 again than the circulation of the blood in the brain. But the 
 difference is one of degree of remoteness from the final outcome 
 of the process of knowledge : that is all. The whole complex of 
 the energies of the individual is concentrated into the operation 
 of knowledge, for that operation consists simply in the fulfilment 
 of the life of mind in one of its various forms of expression. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 51 
 
 II 
 
 The effort of knowing is, then, a centrally initiated and 
 centrally controlled vital activity. The actual starting point 
 of the process of knowledge is a state of " desire," ^ a condition 
 of mental tension with an implicit end shaping its direction. 
 How this is instigated it seems impossible to say definitely. 
 We may imagine the psychic energy of our mind in continuity 
 with a kind of larger whole of psychic energy, and we may 
 suppose that it is the want of equilibrium between the mental 
 energy of an individual and this greater realm which creates 
 the state of emotional tension.^ Or we might imagine that 
 the state is due to an effort of mentality to bring to a 
 single conscious focus and give specific direction to the 
 lower unco-ordinated energies of psychic life, just as the 
 energy of life may consist in concentrating into a single 
 channel of activity the unco-ordinated energies of inorganic 
 nature — chemical and physical.^ Or, again, we can suppose that 
 the activity of knowledge is due to the overplus of the energy of 
 the mind in contrast to that of the objects about it — organic, 
 physical, chemical — thus creating a sense of disjunction and separa- 
 tion within the real, which the mind seeks to remove by utilising its 
 superior energy to establish harmony between the mind and the 
 world of objects.* Or, finally, it may be that the singleness 
 of the mind has to be maintained by active effort in the face of 
 the varied world of objects, so as to recover or retain its place as 
 one reality amongst other real beings ; and one of its ways of 
 doing so is to realise itself by articulating the meaning of other 
 things.^ All of these guesses are but hints at what must perhaps 
 always remain one of the great mysteries of experience. 
 
 Whatever suggestion we make to account for the original 
 
 ' Aristotle, Metaphysics I. 
 
 " It is this view that leads to the suggestion that through knowledge man com- 
 municates with the Divine Spirit. 
 
 ^ This would account for the conception that knowledge is a creative synthesis. 
 
 ' Hence the familiar view which regards knowledge as a kind of necessary 
 epiphenomenon, an over-consciousness of the "real" world, reproducing or 
 "copying" the actual realm of things, — an elaborate work of supererogation. 
 
 ' This is the source of the so-called pragmatist interpretation of knowledge. 
 
S2 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 constitution of this fundamental desire towards the self-fulfilment 
 of individuality in which knowledge begins and in which it 
 essentially consists, the main point is that it is with the indivisible 
 integrity of the mind that the effort is made and carried on. 
 The individual mind is stimulated into the activity of knowledge 
 as a plant or an animal is stimulated into exercising the energies 
 of life which lead to growth and development, and which are the 
 essential conditions of the maintenance of life. The realm of 
 independent individual objects urges the mind, in ways un- 
 conscious as well as subconscious, to realise its own vitality to 
 the utmost, and exert all its resources to secure itself as an in- 
 dependent self-directing individuality. Its obscure and inchoate 
 unity is drawn out into ever completer manifestation by the 
 appeal of the manifold and relatively complete independent in- 
 dividuals 1 whose ensemble constitutes its environing world. 
 And in being so drawn out of its implicit unity the mind is 
 assured all the while that it is proceeding towards its own fuller 
 self-realisation. It is not, however, simply to imitate or re- 
 produce in its own case the independence of other real beings 
 that it undertakes the process. No doubt practical activity is 
 satisfied by securing a relation of working independence, which 
 puts the individual at least on a level with other beings. But 
 this process has in many cases a much more restricted interest for 
 the individual mind than that of knowledge : it is limited by the 
 kind of beings with which the individual enters into practical 
 relation. Some of these are so much lower in the scale of in- 
 dividuality than the mind that the maintenance of individuality 
 at their level alone would, and in fact does, degrade the human 
 mind.^ Knowledge, however, aims at securing for the individual 
 mind an independence adequate to its own level of individuality. 
 The individuality of objects may be perfect in their order of 
 being, without being equal to that of the individual mind. To 
 
 ^ " Relatively complete " because knowledge finds or takes for granted that the 
 real object is completely individual before the process of knowledge is undertaken. 
 It is significant that we never undertake the knowledge of anything which is either 
 chaotic, formless, or in the flux of mere change. We either assume the object is 
 completely real before we begin, or we wait till its reality is completed before we 
 try to know it. 
 
 ^ Cp. the lowering mental effect of many forms of occupation. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 53 
 
 obtain for itself complete individuality of its own order of being 
 is the aim of the activity of mind in knowing. Hence it is that 
 the mind, while stimulated into activity by objects, never takes 
 their standard of reality as its own standard of truth. It always 
 acts as if it were above them, superior to them, reduces them 
 even to mere instances of more general and comprehensive forms 
 of individuality. The limit of its process is not set by other 
 objects but by itself alone. In knowing, the mind, to use a 
 familiar though doubtful expression, " transcends " its object ; 
 it has an individuality to maintain which is higher in order of 
 being than that of the object. In a sense its cognitive relation to 
 the object is but a stepping stone to the attainment of its high 
 level of realisation ; and partly because of this, the object is 
 invariably treated as inferior in quality of being to the mind 
 which knows it.^ In knowledge the object is a means not the 
 end of the process ; and, so far from being an end in itself, it is, to 
 use the current phrase, but material for knowledge to deal with. 
 The subject-object relation as it subsists in knowledge is not one 
 of equality of nature, order of being, or value between the factors 
 constituting the situation. Hence it is that when the being with 
 which the individual stands in relation is of equal or higher order 
 with that of the individual mind, the attitude of knowledge 
 is either not adopted at all or is only partially adequate to the 
 situation in which the individualities stand to one another. 
 
 This is seen in a peculiarly interesting way in the attitude of 
 human individuals to one another in a society, and in the attitude 
 of the human individual to a Divine Being. In both cases it is 
 felt that to speak of another human being or of the Divine Being 
 as a mere " object," is either a figure of speech or a degradation. 
 And the issue of knowledge which attempts to treat them as 
 mere objects seems to justify this feeling. On the one hand, we 
 have the statistical view of human life, which by reducing human 
 individuals to instances of general laws— ?>. larger individual 
 wholes — lowers the sense of the value of the single individual ; on 
 
 ' This is one of the most interesting peculiarities of the attitude of knowledge, 
 and distinguishes knowledge in a characteristic way from practice. It gives know - 
 ledge the quality of detachment and freedom found to some extent in the mood of 
 play. In action the individual wrestles with his object as with an equal. 
 
54 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the other, we have the naturalistic interpretation of human beings, 
 which leaves nothing but a difference of complexity to distinguish 
 human life from that of sub-human animals and even inanimate 
 things. The opposition felt to both of these is in the long run not 
 strictly logical, but due to a revolt of the concrete individual 
 mind against the attitude towards human beings implied in the 
 attempt to exhaust human nature by purely cognitive processes, 
 i.e. to regard human individuals as mere objects to be known. 
 An appeal is made to the " heart " or to practical life to defend 
 the individual against such seeming degradation ; or it is insisted 
 that knowledge is " unequal " to the task of knowing the human 
 individual at all, because this would require that the agent 
 knowing should in some way know himself and know his own 
 knowledge as well. Indirectly the same objection is confirmed 
 when, for the comprehension of the human individual, it is urged 
 that we must adopt the attitude of " love " as well as " know- 
 ledge," and regard him as an end in himself, not as a mere 
 object but as a subject. The subject being itself a cognitive 
 agent, cannot be treated as a mere object, even when the subject 
 is another person. In social life it is found that we do not 
 merely "know" other human beings, we feel with them, are 
 interested in them, in a word unite ourselves with them in ways 
 different from and more than that of mere knowledge.^ 
 
 Similarly the attempt to treat the Divine Being as a mere object 
 of knowledge has always been felt to be shadowed by defeat from 
 the very first. This is not simply because the object is so vast 
 relatively to the puny individual agent who undertakes the task. 
 Size is irrelevant ; and the human mind can grasp by knowledge 
 objects immensely greater in extent than the finite individual, 
 more durable in time and more comprehensive as individualities. 
 It is rather that the individuality of the Divine Being is in 
 quality and order of existence admittedly higher than the 
 human individual, and the fulfilment of human individuality 
 
 ^ Hence it is that in historical theories of knowledge the discussion, as a rule, 
 centres round the cognitive relation of the mind to objects of "nature" ; the dis- 
 cussion of man's relation to man is relegated to another inquiry. No analysis is given 
 of how man "knows" man, except in so far as man has a physical or organic 
 embodiment. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 55 
 
 through the process of knowledge does not require to be 
 established in the face of such a Being. The attempt is un- 
 necessary, and is futile from the start, for knowledge is but one 
 channel through which the concrete individuality of man is 
 realised and fulfilled. An absolute individuality, which in some 
 way contains, and is in every sense superior to, that of man, must 
 in order to enter into any relation with man at all, call forth all 
 the sources of man's being simultaneously, and in undivided 
 unity. Man's relation to God must be established in terms of 
 feeling, will, and knowledge, in terms of beauty, love, and truth 
 together, through all the channels of his mental life in short, and 
 not by any one of them alone. Hence it is that men approach 
 God through feeling, through practical action, and through 
 cognitive processes alternately, or by arbitrarily selecting one as 
 their primary channel ; they never suppose that one by itself 
 is enough for the fulfilment they seek through conscious com- 
 munion with such a Being. Hence, too, the current use of 
 " faith," either in addition to, or in distinction from, knowledge, 
 as the principle of union with the Divine Being. And hence 
 indirectly the failure of all attempts to interpret God's Being in 
 terms of mere knowledge. When the attempt is made, and God 
 is treated as a mere object of knowledge, it is commonly held 
 that the object is an unknown, an unknowable, an unfathomable, 
 an abstract "entity of reason," i.e. a God away from man 
 altogether and without the complex richness characteristic of 
 a concrete object of knowledge. God is made into an object at 
 the price of losing the essential significance appropriate to a 
 superior order of Being ; and the issue of such knowledge is thus 
 in plain discordance with the initial character of the Being which 
 the thinker sets out to know. To be treated as an object is to be 
 lowered beneath the level of the cognitive subject ; and when the 
 object in question admittedly transcends all other objects of 
 knowledge it becomes a bare substratum of objects in general, 
 less in actual content than a finite individual object. Hence 
 the paradoxical result ; the transformation of the Supreme Being 
 into a mere object of knowledge turns this object into a lower 
 order of being than that of any finite object whatever. It 
 becomes a bare object, indistinguishable from nothing, a mere 
 
56 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 abstract limit to knowledge itself, because it has the lowest limit 
 of meaning of any object — mere Being. The attribute " supreme " 
 remains, but only as an empty compliment passed by the knowing 
 subject on the object in deference to the inquiry undertaken ; the 
 attribute is not justified by the results obtained. In point of fact 
 such a Reality at the end of the process of knowledge tends to 
 be supreme only in its significance beyond knowledge. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The undertaking of knowledge, then, engages the energies of 
 the individual mind in the interests of self-fulfilment in the face 
 of the equally independent objects with which it is environed. 
 It is limited from first to last by this consideration. The mind has 
 to realise its own special order of individuality, which is felt to be 
 higher than that of the objects with which it deals. It always 
 feels itself equal to its task precisely in consequence of this 
 initial superiority which it possesses ; and the result justifies its 
 claim. The objects it knows are interpreted in terms which 
 partially express its own constitution. The individual mind is 
 in part a complex of physical, chemical, and organic factors, and 
 these it shares with other beings. It is with objects of such a 
 character that its knowledge is in the first instance concerned, 
 and with these its efforts are in the main successful. As a mind, 
 conscious of itself as mind, it is above their order of being ; as an 
 individual mind it consciously concentrates all their energies into 
 a single individuality. 
 
 In realising its individuality through this process, it proceeds 
 in a succession of stages, in each of which its individual life is 
 expressed, and none of which can be dispensed with in its effort 
 after complete satisfaction. The emotional attitude, which is the 
 starting point of every process of knowledge, is the intermediary 
 between the organic embodiment of the individual mind and the 
 higher conscious life. The organism gathers into itself the in- 
 animate energies of the individual, and carries with it all their 
 reality. In an emotion the organic is transformed and con- 
 centrated into a conscious direction of the mind towards a fulfil- 
 ment of individuality. Hence it is that in taking up the attitude 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 57 
 
 of knowledge the mind always feels itself rooted in reality from 
 the first, and is never away from the real, never carries on a 
 process which is over and above the real world or independent 
 of it. Knowing is an actual function of the real, which is carried 
 through by that form of individuality in which all the other 
 energies of the actual world are summed up and unified. It is 
 thus that in knowledge the mind is in communion with and com- 
 municates reality ; it communes with the real because it is through 
 and through continuous with the substance of the world ; it com- 
 municates the real also because it expresses in one form the 
 active energy of the individual mind, which is an epitome of all 
 reality. It is not because the mind and the world are opposed 
 that knowledge takes place or is demanded ; ^ it is because they 
 are in continuity that knowledge is even possible. We may, 
 indeed, draw a distinction between the mind and the rest of the 
 real, or even between the mind and the body. And it is certainly 
 true to say that knowledge is a mental process alone. But it is 
 not in virtue of this distinction that knowledge takes place, but 
 in spite of the distinction. The indivisible continuity of mind 
 with the world about it is the very inspiration of knowledge and 
 the guarantee of the success of the effort. 
 
 Hence it is meaningless to speak of the mind " copying " the 
 nature of things through the process of knowledge, or " reprodu- 
 cing '' the order of the world in intelligible terms. This precisely 
 inverts the actual situation ; for it implies that the mind brings 
 nothing new into the real, that the real is complete by itself with- 
 out mind, and that mind can at best but duplicate in shadowy 
 form a finished substantial reality. The real is not even known 
 to be complete until mind gathers up all its substance into itself 
 It is impossible to " copy " until we know the original, and this 
 means that the knowledge of the original cannot itself be a copy. 
 It is equally impossible to copy until the original is fully present 
 before us ; but if the mind is required to complete the real, the 
 original is not in existence till the mind is there — or otherwise 
 the so-called copy is itself a constituent factor in the original. 
 Nor can we copy unless the transcriber is outside both the 
 real and the material to which he transfers the original form ; the 
 
 * This view is entirely based on the perceptual aspect of the situation. 
 
58 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 artist, cannot himself be the copy and the transcriber in one. 
 Nor again does the mind give us a " reproduction," in any other 
 sense, of the real ; for the real must be ripe before it can be 
 reproduced, and it is not ripe till mind has supervened upon and 
 consciously focussed the non-mental levels of reality. And any 
 reproduction must give us the real over again in a like inde- 
 pendent substantial form. But transparently knowledge neither 
 creates nor procreates a real independent of its own being. 
 What knowledge reproduces is a mental product pure and 
 simple, which may be incorporated in physical symbol, such as 
 words or letters, but these are merely artificial aids to knowledge, 
 not real beings by themselves. This mental result can certainly 
 be reproduced time after time, by the same mind or in different 
 minds ; but every time it is a mode of mental life, not an in- 
 dividual existence independent of mind. In general it seems 
 absurd that reality should ever require to be " copied " or " repro- 
 duced " in any sense. The original is enough to constitute a 
 part of the world ; nothing less will suffice to constitute a part, 
 and the original is good enough for all purposes, we may be 
 certain. A copy is a poor substitute for an original, and a need- 
 less addition to it. Of all individuality it may be said that once 
 is enough. What the mind strives for in knowledge, what reality""" 
 achieves by the process of knowledge, is fulfilment of being in ' 
 conscious articulate form, a fulfilment which is an expression of 
 the life of mind, a realisation of this highest order of individuality. . 
 Mind has laws and conditions peculiar to itself, and by these it 
 carries on and carries out its own peculiar life. In realising itself 
 through the process of knowledge it operates according to these 
 laws and conditions and no other, and does so for its own sake 
 and for nothing else. Physical beings as such, and organic 
 beings as such, fulfil their order of individuality by laws and 
 conditions pecuhar to themselves. The activity of mind subsumes 
 these other orders of reality ; they make possible the activity of 
 the concrete individual as a conscious concentration of their 
 energies. In fulfilling itself, the individual mind fulfils all that 
 they contain and are ; and over and above fulfils its own level of 
 energy as well. In that sense mental activity in general, and 
 the activity of knowing in particular, is the fulfilment of the world 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 59 
 
 in which we are placed, is in a sense its final outcome, and thus 
 its supreme end. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the execution of this undertaking, the concrete individual 
 proceeds gradually. It meets other beings at their own plane as 
 a first I stage. Its effort is directed first towards establishing 
 itself in relation to them in terms of their specialised embodiment. 
 It becomes conscious of them on the outside and by way of 
 spatially constituted physiological functions — the sense organs of 
 the organised embodiment of the individual mind. They do not 
 act of themselves ; the mind operates through and in them as a 
 concrete individual in the interest of its self-fulfilment. All its 
 potencies — memory, feeling, imagination and emotion — are to 
 some extent involved in the operation. Moreover, because the 
 operation is a reaction of the individual on an independent in- 
 dividual object, the mind is conscious of the solid reality of the 
 object from the first, though to begin this is only felt as a re- 
 straining limit to its own expansion and an incitement to its 
 fulfilment, at once drawing the mind beyond its immediate state 
 and compelling it to sustain itself in relation to the object in- 
 dependent of itself. 
 
 This mental operation through sense functions — sense-percep- 
 tion — is found, simply by the process of the experience of know- 
 ledge, to meet only the first demands of the mind and the outside 
 or superficial character of the object ; and these two go together. 
 The mind certainly satisfies itself to a certain extent in the 
 process ; it arranges sense-qualities in an order of place and 
 succession. It thus realises the meaning of the object, and in so 
 doing realises its mental life at the same time. It maintains and 
 secures more firmly its individuality as a real among reals. But 
 the outcome of the process at this stage is merely to throw into 
 still stronger relief the independence of the objects. Knowledge 
 does not merely substantiate the individual mind, it substantiates 
 the objects at the same time. They become more real for the 
 mind the more the mind knows about them. The constituent 
 factors of the objects become distinguished, and so related, in a 
 
6o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 way that is not found at the earliest stage of emotional interest 
 in the object. Their parts are differentiated from one another ; 
 the reality of the object becomes a whole of such parts : the 
 objects themselves as separate beings are found to have points 
 of contact and connexion with each other, to share similar 
 elements. This discovery of fuller knowledge, obtained on the 
 completion of the first stage — the use of sense-organs — draws the 
 mind on to a further reaction, to a further establishment of its 
 being in relation to other beings, to a further fulfilment of itself 
 as an individual. Just as practical action commits the individual 
 to a more prolonged activity as soon as the first active step is 
 taken, and in a manner creates the necessity to take further 
 action simply because he has made the first venture ; so in the 
 case of knowledge. Knowledge both allays activity and awakens 
 new activity, finds solutions and sets problems, gives answers and 
 raises questions. In the long run this is due to the incessant and 
 inevitable interrelation between the individual beings constituting 
 ! the real world : action and reaction, continuous interdependence, 
 is the condition by which all independence is sustained. 
 
 The exhaustion, then, of the potencies of perception compels 
 the mind to undertake a further stage in the process of knowledge. 
 It can do so, seeing that the mind is a richer order of being than 
 the object. And it must do so, because it has other ways of 
 exercising its unity than through the organs of sense, and must 
 function in these ways. Further, the very process of co-ordinating 
 the meaning of the object in terms of sense-experience has put 
 the object in a new setting altogether and thus necessitated a 
 further effort of synthesis. The mind has no specific physiological 
 organ for the function it now brings into play. It calls upon the 
 deeper resources of its individuality, those which more directly 
 express and manifest the central unity of its life, and in that 
 sense seem to the conscious mind to be more nearly its very self. 
 This distinctive function is the activity of thought, which, whether 
 in the lower form of ideas or the higher form of conceptions, is 
 the energy of unifying diverse elements in a manner which 
 realises in specific form the pervasive single unity of the mind's 
 individuality. It has the character of identity or constancy of 
 function peculiar to this all-encompassing unity; and hence the 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 6i 
 
 functional exercise of this unity is the source of the generality 
 and universality of thought. 
 
 The unity of individuality is certainly involved in perception, 
 but it is implicit ; it is the unity of an organic function structurally 
 determined and uniform in its operation. In conceptual activity, 
 the highest form of thinking, the unity is explicitly and, indeed, 
 deliberately brought to bear on the situation. Hence it is that I 
 thinking in the highest sense has all the character of purposive ' 
 activity, an end set before the mind which it seeks to reach by an 
 effort all its own. And since the thoughts evolved are the mind's 
 self-devised functions for realising its own single unity, the mind 
 invariably finds itself and feels itself freer in the exercise of the 
 function of thinking than in the activity of perception ; so much 
 so indeed that the mind even takes upon itself to choose not 
 merely how and when but what it shall think. In perception 
 there is always a certain measure of constraint and even compulsion 
 imposed on the mind.^ 
 
 The eye it cannot choose but see ; I 
 
 We cannot bid the ear be still ; 
 Our bodies feel, where'er they be, i 
 
 Against or with our will. 
 
 In thought, however, the mind is liberated from this external 
 thraldom and moves in a direction determined by its own inner, 
 z.e. essential, nature.^ Not that there is no joy in mere percep- 
 tion, no sense of fulfilment : but it is akin to the joy of healthy 
 organic functioning, and is partial because localised in a certain 
 region of the body. In thinking, the whole mind is suffused with 
 a sense of being present as a single unity in the transaction, and 
 hence successful thinking brings a fuller joy, a completer sense of 
 fulfilment, and so of greater freedom. 
 
 ^ It is partly for this reason that most people have felt a certain reasonableness, in 
 the suggestion that our senses might well have been differently constituted, both in 
 kind and power. No one is much impressed by a like suggestion in the case of the 
 activity of thought. 
 
 ' It would be interesting, though not perhaps very profitable, to ask why thinking 
 should be a later stage of the knowing process than perception. One can imagine a 
 mind which begins to know by conceptual activity, or even carries on the process of 
 knowledge by conception alone. Probably we begin by perceiving because we are 
 alive as organic beings before we become more alive through conscious effort of 
 
62 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 It must not be supposed that by this new reaction of the 
 mind, this new advance of mental Hfe, which takes place in 
 thinking activity, that the mind in any way withdraws into 
 itself. This is the familiar misinterpretation of the process of 
 " reflective " knowledge. Such a view confuses the mental act 
 of drawing upon the mind's fuller resources with an act of with- 
 drawing from the realm of perception altogether. If the mind 
 did so withdraw, the operation of reflective thinking would 
 inevitably be in the end as incomplete and unsatisfying as that 
 of perception, whose incompleteness demands the new effort of 
 the mind.i In point of fact, however, the mind finds greater 
 fulfilment, as a concrete individual, from the course knowledge 
 takes after reflective activity than before it. This means that 
 what perception supplied is not dispensed with but resumed and 
 recast through the operation of thinking. The mind may for the 
 moment when calling upon its greater resources detach itself 
 from perception, but its action is that of reculer pour mieux sauter. 
 Even those who take this abstract view of the nature of re- 
 flective activity have to admit that it is inaccurate ; for they, at 
 least generally, speak of the need of "testing" reflective thought by 
 an " appeal " to perceived facts, i.e. they confess that the detach- 
 ment does not really take place at all.^ But the significance of 
 the new step is not to be found in such an external relationship 
 as that implied in the use of one to test the findings of the 
 other. The reflective activity is a further and fuller expression 
 of the same principle which operates in the perceptual phase of 
 knowledge. This principle is the realisation of the individual 
 mind through the process of apprehending the nature of the 
 
 ^ This can be abundantly illustrated from the history of logical theories, both 
 those which treat perception as primary for knowledge and conception as secondary, 
 and those which treat conception as primary and perception as secondary. The 
 whole movement from Locke to Kant is permeated by this misinterpretation, and it 
 still prevails in current logical theory, e.g. Bradley and Bosanquet, largely owing to 
 Lotze's influence. 
 
 ^ The relation between conception and perception has to be expressed in this 
 external way by those who look upon them as detached from the start. The 
 absurdity of the view is further indicated by the very attempt to bring them together 
 again in this external way; for the "test" is obviously reciprocal, perception 
 " tests " conception, conception "tests " perception. But what tests the test, if they 
 are, in fact, external to one other? 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 63 
 
 object as an independent being. It is the unity of the individual 
 mind which is manifested in each stage, and operates in both 
 alike. Reflective activity gives a richer cognitive experience 
 because it carries with it the acquired achievements of the earlier 
 stage, because the mind brings to the focus of its single unity the 
 specialised functions of perception, grasps by the conscious 
 exercise of its unity the diverse results of the spatially constituted 
 organs of perception in which the unity of the individual mind is 
 least implicit. Reflective activity can only be a greater fulfilment 
 of the cognitive process if the greater exercise of the mind's 
 unity includes the less. To exclude the less is either to im- 
 poverish the mind when making the new advance, or to put the 
 two on an equality of value. Both are impossible if it be the fact, 
 as it is accepted to be the fact, that in reflection the mind does 
 increase the mind's cognitive union with the object. The increase 
 is an increment to the experience of knowledge, not a mere 
 numerical addition to the previous stage of knowing. The 
 object, as the result of reflective activity, assumes for the mind a 
 more solid substantiality, a greater permanence and a more co- 
 herent individuality. The individual mind, on its side, establishes 
 itself more firmly as a consciously independent real being, is more 
 completely aware of its own existence, and has a more abiding 
 sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. Subject and object, in short, 
 become more reciprocally independent because of the increased 
 conscious interdependence brought about by the later stages of 
 knowledge. The fuller individuality of the mind deepens the 
 sense of that of the objective real. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the advance in knowledge made 
 by reflection transforms or even changes the qualitative distinct- 
 ness of perceptual knowledge. However intimately they are 
 connected on the basis of their common principle, the later does 
 not alter the peculiar character of the earlier stage. Perception, 
 in a word, does not grow into reflection, and in so doing lose its 
 specific quality as a mode of knowledge ; as a bud, for example, 
 ceases to be a bud when it becomes a blossom. This is another 
 familiar misinterpretation.! Perception makes its own unique 
 
 ' It is found most usually in so-called idealistic views of knowledge : just as 
 the supposition of an external relation between perception and reflection is the 
 
64 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 and intransmutable contribution to the life of the process. There 
 is no substitute for it, and no way of supplanting it or superseding 
 it in its own kind. So much is this the case that it is possible 
 in principle, and seems a fact of cognitive experience, that a mind 
 can be confined to the level of perception, and never pass beyond 
 it. This seems mainly the level of the purely animal mind. In 
 human knowledge, reflection, we find, can also operate by itself, 
 e.g. in abstract mathematical reasoning. But reflection can 
 never give us precisely what we have in perception. The con- 
 ceptual construction of a theory of light or sound, be it ever so 
 accurate, cannot render to us the organic reahty of a glowing 
 colour or a thrilling note. The theory of art is not by itself a 
 substitute for, or an improvement upon, the perception of the 
 landscape on the canvas, or the ordered sequence of notes 
 constituting the musical symphony. The latter is not to be 
 had by analysis of the theory, either by way of derivation or 
 illustration. We cannot hear a sonata better by knowing the 
 theory of sound or even the theory of musical composition. No 
 conceptual activity whatsoever can conjure a single perceived 
 fact or perceptual act into existence as a form of knowledge. 
 The two are qualitatively distinct as stages of knowledge, and 
 each unique in kind in spite of, indeed because of, being in the 
 long run specific expressions of the single activity of the one 
 individual mind directed towards the end of realising itself 
 through the apprehension of the meaning of the real objective 
 world. They are neither superimposed on one another, the later 
 on the earlier, the higher on the lower, nor abstracted from one 
 another, nor does the greater grow out of the less. The deeper 
 apprehension, the greater knowledge, is a new creation of the 
 energy of the mind, as distinctive in its order as that of per- 
 ception, and as distinct in kind as one organ of perception is 
 from another. 
 
 Just as the individual mind operates in its undivided integrity 
 
 characteristic error of the mechanical theory of knowledge. The former looks on them 
 as moments of growth — the latter as superimposed layers. Both are mistakes for the 
 same reason : they treat the stages apart from the unity ; they both ignore the fact 
 that it is the concrete individuality present in earlier stages which manifests itself in 
 each, but with greater fullness. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 65 
 
 in an act of perception, bringing to bear on the present its con- 
 sciousness of the past — memory — its synthesising function of 
 imagination, its conative force, and its feeling states, so in the 
 operation of reflection the mind concentrates its undivided energy 
 into the prosecution of this further stage of knowledge. Reflective 
 activity is not carried on in abstraction from the other constituent 
 functions of the mind. Its essence lies in a completer utilisation 
 of these functions for the purpose of achieving an increased 
 apprehension of the nature of the object. It calls upon the 
 resources, and assumes in its process the concurrent exercise, of 
 memory and imagination, conation, feeling, and always to some 
 extent perception. The necessity of the last for reflection is seen 
 in an interesting way in the operations of so-called pure con- 
 ceptual activity such as we have in mathematical science and 
 philosophy. For while the manipulation of pure concepts seems 
 to take place independently of perception, so organic is per- 
 ception to the process of conception that where direct reference 
 to a given perceived object fails, the mind creates for its purpose 
 such a reference and makes use of symbols which appeal to the 
 eye or the ear. Conception cannot accomplish its task without 
 the aid of written or spoken symbols, which hold entirely of the 
 region peculiar to perception. It is a singularly interesting proof 
 of the organic connexion of the operations of perception and con- 
 ception ; and an equally interesting confirmation of the view just 
 indicated — that in reflection the mind takes up a higher and 
 yet unique attitude of knowledge — to find the mind in " pure " 
 conceptual activity creating for its own purposes perceptual 
 symbols to effectuate the realisation of its larger sphere of know- 
 ledge. That the mind does so in the case of reflection is 
 precisely due to its being a greater expression of the mind's 
 energy. The mind in reflection, so to say, overtops the limits of 
 perception, finds perception inadequate to its demands for com- 
 pleter fulfilment: and, because perception is none the less 
 organically necessary to its larger activity, the mind signalises 
 its transcendence of the limits of perceived natural fact by con- 
 triving mere perceptual symbols to correspond with and to assist 
 the abstracter aims of reflection. 
 
66 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 V 
 
 The mind never thinks with mere detached conceptions alone ; 
 the individual mind is engaged as an integral unity in the opera- 
 tion of conceiving the object. Its aim is to establish itself as 
 individual in conscious interdependence with individual objects ; 
 and for this purpose it carries its concrete individuality into the 
 process. The different conceptions it devises in the execution of 
 this aim, and the different steps by which the operation of 
 reflection is articulated — ^judgment and inference — are but several 
 manifestations of the undivided unity of the mind's life in the 
 process. They are never detached from one another, neither 
 from the unity of the mind, nor from the unity of the aim it has 
 in view, nor, again, from the singleness of the object it seeks to 
 know ; and these are but distinct ways of looking at the same 
 concrete experience. The various conceptions originated by the 
 mind are called for by the variety of independent objects in 
 relation to which the mind's unity has to be sustained. They 
 cannot be known in advance of experience, but only in the 
 experience of knowing the objects. In that sense they are always 
 derived from experience. They are not, however, " discovered " 
 by experience as if they were there waiting to be found out by 
 the mind : that is once more a mechanical misinterpretation of 
 the facts. They are operations of the mind's energy exercised in 
 realising its unity in the face of individual objects ; and we can 
 no more speak of them being " there '' before these operations 
 are performed than we can speak of leaves and branches being 
 " there " before or until the living energy of the tree has elicited 
 them into being. What the term discovery really means to 
 convey is that the conceptions when devised are necessary, or are 
 '' objective," and not accidental. This is true ; but it is a truism. 
 For it merely emphasises the fact that the conceptions are the 
 vital and essential functions of the mind's unity, and that they do 
 articulate for the mind the meaning of the object ; and this is 
 but saying that they are conceptions or cognitive operations. 
 The mind does not create conceptions for amusement or in play, 
 but to sustain its consciousness of unity as the vital necessity of 
 its life. The conceptions share this necessity which urges the mind 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE e^ 
 
 to maintain itself. But they are relative to the mind and its 
 needs. In that sense they are constituent conditions of the pro- 
 cess of self-fulfilment, not separate self-existing entities either 
 primordially " innate " in the mind or externally and eternally 
 immanent in the independent object. In a word, the object 
 alone is independent of the individual mind, not the conceptions 
 by which and through which the mind realises for itself the 
 meaning of the object and in so doing fulfils its own peculiar 
 order of being. The only independent mental reality is the 
 individual mind itself as a concrete unity ; the conceptions are no 
 more separable from or independent of the mind's unity than the 
 beats of the heart are independent of or separable from the 
 energy of the heart's single action. What shape the conceptions 
 shall take, how many they shall be, and how comprehensively 
 they shall express the unity of the mind — all this is not merely 
 relative to the individual mind, but in a manner historically con- 
 tingent on the character of the individuality engaged in the 
 operation of knowledge. Hence it is that conceptions vary 
 within limits from individual to individual, from race to race, and 
 from society to society. 
 
 There is no historical or logical ground for the view that 
 there is a self-closed final catalogue or scheme of categories. 
 The construction of a system of categories is inspired partly 
 by the misleading influence of mere language, which is an 
 historical accompaniment of the human mind and varies with 
 its needs; partly by the application, or rather misapplication, 
 of the artistic imagination to the special material of verbally 
 embodied conceptions, in order to give the rounded arrange- 
 ment of an artistically complete whole to the miscellaneous con- 
 ceptions employed by the developed intelligence of a civilised 
 people and expressed in their language ; and partly by a false 
 interpretation of the ideal of knowledge and of the relation of the 
 unity of the mind to the knowing process. The unity of the 
 mind being undoubtedly that of a single individual, it is inferred 
 that the ideal of knowledge must also be at the other end of the 
 process an indivisible and independent unity ; and since the unity 
 of the mind in knowledge is consciously at its highest when 
 expressed in the form of conceptions connected or unified. 
 
68 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 this terminus ad quern of the process of knowledge is imagined 
 as a single compact system of such conceptions. The supposition 
 that the end of knowledge must be found in the construction of 
 such a system is little more than an elaborate illustration of the 
 fallacy of composition. Because the unity of the mind is realised 
 in definite and discrete conceptions, it is inferred that the supreme 
 expression of its unity will take the form of a single conception 
 containing all its conceptions : because each successive act of 
 knowledge involves the unity of the mind, therefore the complete 
 unity of the mind is a single act of knowledge in which its whole 
 unity is realised all at once ; or, again, because the mind is ful- 
 filled in operations realising its unity, therefore its supreme unity 
 is realised in a single operation containing all its functions 
 simultaneously. As truly might we offer the authorised 
 biography of a man as the equivalent of the man's life or as the 
 ideal and fulfilment of his activity ; a record of the beats of the 
 heart for the vital energy of its existence. But for conceptions 
 being stereotyped in language, the attempt to construct such a 
 system would hardly have suggested itself to anyone. It is not 
 the aim of the mind in framing conceptions to seek fulfilment in 
 either a supreme single conception or system of conceptions. The 
 individual mind is the one source and centre of its conceptions ; and 
 these but bring forth its unity in special cases to meet special 
 situations. It could never secure final fulfilment in any one con- 
 ception, however comprehensive, for the simple reason that the life 
 of the mind, like that of any organism, consists in actual activity 
 not in coming to an end of itself, in living not in having lived. 
 The mind in energising in knowledge is constantly finding fulfil- 
 ment and satisfaction ; it does not seek to secure a single supreme 
 state of satisfaction. The fact that the mind embodies its unity 
 in conceptions does not, in a word, either imply or even suggest, 
 still less require, that there should be a single and self-complete 
 conception or system of such conceptions ; for to attain such 
 would be to extinguish the very fire it is meant to sustain. The 
 end of knowledge is not an ideal conception, but mental satisfac- 
 tion or fulfilment, and this is not one final state but a variety of 
 states in which the single living individuality is realised, some- 
 times with more completeness, sometimes with less. For the 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 69 
 
 mind a less comprehensive conception is relatively just as 
 necessary to the mind's life as a more comprehensive, for through 
 both it sustains its individuality in the face of the world of objects. 
 In the strict sense a conception is not the mind's unity at all but 
 a function or operation of that unity. The unity of the mind is 
 nothing less than the whole individuality of its being as a 
 spatially organised embodiment of mental energy. Neither in the 
 interests of knowledge nor in the nature of conception is there 
 any ground therefore for constructing a system of conceptions. 
 Conceptions only subsist in the operations of the individual mind, 
 no matter how many there may be or what their character.^ 
 
 The difference in kind amongst conceptions presents an 
 interesting parallel to the different kinds of perception ; and the 
 difference is certainly as real in the one case as in the other. At 
 iirst sight it might seem possible to reduce (or, as it is sometimes 
 said, deduce) one conception to another, e.g. quality to quantity, 
 purpose to mechanism, or even all of them to one supreme con- 
 ception, for example, unity or order. The attempt has often 
 been made, and probably will always be made. The search for 
 the philosopher's stone has all the fascination of an elusive 
 phantom, and a phantom, which persists, gains through its very 
 elusiveness some of the characteristics of an ideal. An obsession 
 may assume the quality of a baffled instinct and be as diiificult to 
 eradicate. But in spite of all the efforts the mind has steadily 
 refused to admit that one conception which it devises and requires 
 to secure its sense of unity can be replaced or displaced by 
 another. The long struggle for cognitive primacy between 
 mechanism and end sufficiently demonstrates this ; and it is 
 typical of every other case. Every conception expresses the 
 mind's function of unity ; yet each conception is not its bare unity, 
 but a different embodiment of its concrete individuality of action. 
 The reason why the effort to reduce all forms of perception to 
 
 1 The attempt to treat a system of conceptions as the objective totality of the 
 mind's unity, as the completed utterance of the mind, and therefore as equivalent to 
 the mind itself, is in the long run a purely mechanical view of knowledge. It treats 
 the mind as a machine whose product is the mechanical equivalent of the energy 
 exerted in the process of;knowledge, just as the work done by an engine is mechanically 
 equivalent to the energy exerted by the engine : so that the mind's energy just equals 
 the system of the categories. 
 
70 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 one form has not been so persistent is merely that the differences 
 — e.g. between eye and ear — are so palpable that it seems folly to 
 pursue the attempt Touch, it is seen, may be common to both ; 
 just as sensitive responsiveness is common to both ; but this 
 community only throws into greater relief the irreducible 
 difference between their operations. The modes of perception 
 are separate channels of mental communion with other objects, 
 and have their bounds and quality determined by the statutory 
 framework of the constitution of the individual organism. 
 
 The conceptions, again, are not generalisations from other 
 cognitive factors, whether percept or image. They are ways 
 of grasping the meaning of the object as an individual 
 reality ; and as expressing the unity of the mind's life they are 
 universal operations of this unity, ways in which the single mind, 
 the enduring agent in the process, invariably works to secure its 
 sense of individuality. Generality is an attribute of a universal, 
 but not its essence ; and a mere generalisation, where it is not 
 simply an exaggeration due to the play of imagination, may give 
 knowledge in " a general way," but not knowledge of anything in 
 its individuality. All knowledge is directed upon and toward 
 individual objects ; and to know a " thing in general " is not to 
 know anything at all. Even if conceptions could be regarded 
 as generalisations of percepts, this would still leave unexplained 
 how the mind comes to take the step. A perception of an object 
 is genuine knowledge, and qud perception needs nothing added 
 to it to make it knowledge in its own kind. A generalisation of 
 a percept is not demanded by perception ; but is due to some 
 other function of the mind's life, and must therefore have another 
 interest in view than that supplied by perception. A mere 
 generalisation of a percept would add nothing new to knowledge 
 at all. It would add nothing to the validity of the perception ; 
 it would not be another kind of perception ; and since it would 
 be tied to perception, it would not advance the mind's knowledge 
 to a higher degree of fulfilment. It would be an unaccountable 
 excrescence on the tree of knowledge. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 71 
 
 VI 
 
 The advance which the mind makes at the conceptual level 
 of knowledge is brought about by successive reactions of its unity 
 on the increasing complexity of the object, which comes to light 
 as each act is consciously made to grasp the object in its integrity. 
 The complexity of the object increases as the rtiind finds more 
 meaning in it, and the process can therefore only cease in either 
 of two ways : either the object presents no further complexity to 
 be grasped, or the mind has no further resources to meet the 
 complexity of the object presented. The complexity presented 
 by the object is always ahead of the effort of the mind to meet it ; 
 and generally not far ahead, otherwise the mind becomes tem- 
 porarily overwhelmed, as indeed happens in familiar states of 
 mental perplexity. To prevent perplexity from constantly re- 
 curring, the mind deliberately and artificially restricts the range 
 of content in the object to its capacity to meet the situation. It 
 abstracts objects from a larger whole, divides objects from one 
 another, isolates its factors for purposes of investigation. The re- 
 striction within manageable proportions of the complexity of the 
 objects dealt with, enables the mind to react gradually on each 
 complex situation as it arises. The reaction takes the form of 
 connecting the different portions so far unified by the functions 
 of judgment and inference. These operations are acts of in- 
 tegration made by the mind to secure unity and order among 
 conceptions, and as a result to give a completer consciousness of 
 the individuality of the object than is possible by the use of 
 separate conceptions. The form which this act of integration 
 takes in the case of the judgment is that of holding conceptions 
 together simultaneously, and in the case of inference that of a 
 consequential arrangement of conceptions. It is convenient 
 perhaps to speak of inference as a unity (or system) of judgments, 
 and of judgment as a unity of conceptions, just as we sometimes 
 speak of conceptions as a unity of " images." But this is only 
 permissible if we keep in view that it is the same central unity of 
 the individual mind which is operating in every case, and is 
 realising itself in each case more fully as it becomes thus more 
 
72 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 fully conscious of the individuality of its object. The unity of 
 the judgment is not effected by the conceptions coming of 
 themselves together, or by letting loose some secret spring in the 
 mind. Judgment is an active operation of the mind as much and 
 in the same general sense as conception. And it is a greater 
 expression of the unity of the mind because it is a unification of 
 conceptions which are themselves forms of unity. Hence it is 
 that the mind feels in judgment that it has a greater hold over 
 the object, is more fully aware of its individuality as a distinct 
 and independent being. The mind's own individuality is more 
 fully and consciously realised in the act of judgment, and the 
 conscious substantiation of its own being implies a corresponding 
 substantiation of the object. So again in inference, the mind's 
 unity is more fully expressed by a still more comprehensive opera- 
 tion of unity ; it is conscious of its individuality more completely, 
 and the individuality of the object has for the mind a greater 
 meaning ; it is a consciously systematic whole of content.^ 
 
 The judgment, then, is not a mere development of the con- 
 ception as such ; it is a new distinctive act of the mind ; nor is 
 the inference a mere development of the judgment, but a new 
 operation of the single individuality of the mind. The only 
 development that is affected is that of the concrete living in- 
 dividual mind. To speak of judgment developing into inference 
 is either a figure of speech or the substantiation of a mere 
 function. And the suggestion that with inference judgment 
 passes away altogether in the process of knowledge, and " gives 
 place" to something higher, is again inaccurate or a figure of 
 speech. The inference only has actuality as an effectual opera- 
 tion of unifying judgments, which are thus no more dissolved in 
 the process than the organisation of the organs of the body 
 implies that the organism " cancels " the organs. In inference 
 judgments subsist in the same way that conceptions subsist in 
 judgments. In a word, conception, judgment, and inference are 
 
 '■ The question whether conception precedes judgment or again whether judgment 
 precedes inference must be carefully distinguished from the significance of each of 
 these as mental operations. Which of them is prior in time depends largely on the 
 state of an individual's knowledge. In actual experience a judgment may be 
 summarised in a conception, just as an inference may be summarised in a judgment • 
 and again a conception may be articulated into a judgment. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 73 
 
 qualitatively distinct acts of the individual mind required, each 
 and all, to secure its end. 
 
 Judgment, which takes the form of the subject-predicate 
 relationship, is only possible after the stage of perception is 
 passed. The subject is in general a relatively richer complex of 
 content of the object grasped as a single unity ; the predicate is 
 a part of this same object at once consciously detached from and 
 united to the subject. The mind grasps both in inseparable 
 union, and in so doing consciously realises the meaning of the 
 individuality of the object. The supposition that in some way 
 the subject in judgment is outside the mind, and that the mind 
 " applies " predicates to this subject is a confused misstatement 
 of the actual situation, largely due to the mechanical interpreta- 
 tion of the relation of mind to object in knowledge. The subject 
 in judgment is no less a part of the single process in which 
 knowledge consists than the predicate. The object remains an 
 independent real being through the whole process.^ Knowledge 
 is a mental operation pure and simple, the way in which the 
 mind becomes conscious of the meaning of the object. The 
 object as a real being has no more to do with our way of 
 realising truth than it has to do with us making mistakes in the 
 process. Truth and error are both mental, the one the result of 
 fulfilling certain special laws of mentality, the other of failing to 
 fulfil them. That the subject is only in general a richer complex 
 than the predicate is seen in the fact that sometimes both subject 
 and predicate have the same degree of complexity, and in that 
 case it is a matter of indifference which is taken as subject and 
 which as predicate. In other words, there is nothing in the 
 nature of the judgment which compels us to take one conception 
 as always and alone subject, and another as always and alone 
 predicate. The stage of knowledge reached alone determines 
 which is subject and which is predicate. In the imaginable limit, 
 were we to know the whole universe, the relationships of predicate 
 and subject might be completely reciprocal.^ 
 
 ' The treatment of subject and predicate in a judgment as in some way separate 
 existences is probably due to a confusion of the subject-predicate relation in judgment 
 with the subject-object relation in experience. 
 
 ' That inference is only found at the level of conceptual activity seems generally 
 
74 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 VII 
 
 The complex and detailed articulation of inference is required 
 by the variety of ideas and conceptions which the mind evolves 
 on its way to self-fulfilment. Inference more completely 
 realises its sense of individuality than any of the other operations, 
 and correspondingly the object assumes a definite individuality 
 of meaning which is unattainable at an earlier stage. But the 
 final operation of the mind in knowing is not inference, but a 
 single concentration of the mind in which it grasps the in- 
 dividuality of its object as a single intelligible whole, without 
 going through the detailed process of connecting its parts, and 
 yet with all that detailed connection subsumed in the act of 
 comprehension. This stage is intuition or mental vision, in- 
 to have been admitted. That judgment should not have been confined to the same 
 sphere of the knowing process is due in large measure to a misinterpretation of the 
 relation of perception to conception. We find writers speaking of "judgments of 
 perception " in the sense not simply that judgments deal with results of perceptual 
 activity, but that perception is itself a judgment. Some even go so far as to speak of 
 the "perceptual judgment" as the ultimate judgment of knowledge. But for the 
 influence of language the phrase "judgment of perception " would be seen at once to 
 be unmeaning. Perception as such requires no words at all ; it does not operate by 
 the use of language, but through the physiological structure of the organisms, and is 
 complete in its kind as a level of knowledge. We apprehend the things of sense 
 about us by the exercise of our sense organs, and these need no other intervening 
 agency to establish mental communion between the mind and its object. This can be 
 seen on a great scale in listening to a piece of music or looking at a picture. Our 
 apprehension can be complete : and speech seems even an intrusion or an irrelevance. 
 Language is devised by the mind in the interests of conceptual activity alone, and not 
 till it arises are words used. But so does it distort the actual character of knowledge 
 that when we apply language to objects which we can also apprehend by perception, 
 we tend straightway to identify the linguistic embodiment of a conception with the 
 object as apprehended by perception. Hence the term "judgments of perception." 
 It is due to a confusion between the conceptual recasting of the individual object by 
 the mind and the perceptual apprehension of the same object ; and the confusion is 
 effected by the application of language to perceived objects in the interests solely of 
 conceptual activity. Hence it is supposed that when we say " this tree is green " we 
 are dealing with the object both from the conceptual and from the perceptual point 
 of view at once. But the statement "this tree is green" is not a deliverance of 
 perception : it is a complex of ideas alone. The perception of the tree is not utterable 
 in speech because it needs no utterance : it is direct knowledge, immediate communion 
 of the mind with the object through the exercise of sense organs. That is why 
 animals who equally perceive objects use no language and need none for their 
 knowledge. 
 
REALISTIC CHARACTER OF KNOWLEDGE 75 
 
 separable from feeling and carrying the sense of completed 
 mental activity or free self-fulfilment. In this form the mind 
 finds its highest satisfaction, certainty with coherence, unity of 
 individuality and conscious union with the individuality of its 
 object ; in a word, complete conscious independence through 
 interdependence of subject and object. 
 
 This is more readily attained in the mind's relation with a 
 small range of objects than in relation to a larger, with some 
 kinds of objects more than with others. But wherever it is 
 attained there the aim of the knowing process has been reached ; 
 in that it finds at once truth and self-realisation through the 
 channel of knowledge. The goal of knowledge is not a system 
 of thoughts outside the mind, but a state of mind. A system of 
 knowledge itself only has being in and through the process of 
 reacting or evolving it. The supposition that the aim of know- 
 ledge is to establish or find a system of thought holding 
 independent of the mind, is due, as already said, to confusing 
 the expression of knowledge in language with the realisation of 
 knowledge as a mental process. The latter alone is the reality 
 in the situation ; the former is an artificially devised means for 
 rendering permanent the results of actual knowledge. A system 
 of knowledge means, strictly considered, a systematic way of 
 knowing. To place the achievements of knowledge on record 
 is not to put knowledge in some ideal realm beyond the mind. 
 The embodiment of truth in a book is not the " objectification of 
 truth " ; we are mere victims of our own devices if we confuse 
 these two. Knowledge only subsists as a mode in which the 
 mind is realised ; and it is only realised as it actually grasps its 
 object, for in so doing it finds itself real and finds the meaning of 
 the reality of the object. An organism does not live in what it 
 has done, but in the actual exercise of its vital energy. To the 
 mind that knows, the world of objects is pervaded by new mean- 
 ing ; it becomes a new world sustaining the living individual by a 
 new vision which is also a new emotion. A poet does not 
 subsist in his written poetry, but in his poetical outlook on the 
 world. A religious individual does not live by constantly 
 recalling and reformulating his creed, but by actual communion 
 with God. A moral agent does not estimate his moral achievement 
 
76 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in terms of his past acts, most of which he has probably for- 
 gotten, but in the clearness of his actual insight into the moral 
 situations of every day and his readiness of accurate response to 
 the demands of the hour. So in the attainment of knowledge. 
 The "ideal," which alone is effective and significant, is the 
 possession of a power of reflection and insight which enables the 
 agent to realise his place in relation to other beings, and to grasp 
 their meaning by the free activity of his thought. This is to 
 make knowledge " real " ; this is to know the " truth " ; this is to 
 attain the concreteness of knowledge as a vital experience. 
 
 Hence the goal of knowledge is not a far-off ideal, but a 
 realised experience. The truth is not the whole of reality, but a 
 conscious realisation of a whole individuality. 
 
Ill 
 
 CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS IN THE PROCESS OF 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " What we really care for we have at first hand, the beginning of the feeling 
 being within us or not at all. It is indeed almost impossible to justify a particular 
 pursuit to some one else who has not got the sense of it." — Sir Edward Grey, 
 Fly-fishing. 
 
 ' ' Even in metaphysics it is difiicult to say how far conclusions rest upon personal 
 feeling." — F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality. 
 
 In theory of knowledge or logic, as usually understood, the 
 procedure of thought is examined, so to say, in cross section 
 and at different stages in its course, and each section is analysed 
 into its constituent elements. Even where the attempt has been 
 made to trace some development in the process, this has been 
 confined to showing how the different stages form a necessary 
 sequence of steps in the evolution of a single function of thought. 
 No one studying such an analysis would gather that there is any 
 end in view throughout the process except the interrelation of 
 the elements of thought — conception, judgment, inference — when 
 dealing with the different kinds of objects on which the function 
 of thinking is exercised : or that thought had any essential con- 
 nection with the living reality of the individual human mind. 
 The result is that thought comes to be looked upon as a species 
 of spiritual machinery which, if wound up and set going according 
 to certain laws, will turn out a certain product. The thought 
 machine comes to be regarded with a mixture of wonder and 
 expectation, confidence and fear, as if the mind in committing 
 itself to it did not know what would be likely to happen and 
 might have to surrender cherished convictions in accepting its 
 deliverances. 
 
 77 
 
78 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 Such a view arouses suspicion. As well might we try to 
 confine the whole interest of architecture to the laws of building 
 construction and set aside as irrelevant the aesthetic value of 
 the product. As well might we resolve a piece of music into 
 the physical principles of acoustics and ignore the beauty of the 
 composition ; or an act of kindness into the laws of physiology 
 regardless of the human good, the act accomplished. The end 
 achieved by a process of thought is at least of as much import- 
 ance, in some respects of more importance, than the stages 
 of thought through which the truth is reached. The end is 
 certainly more than the process, however much the two are 
 inseparable ; and our attitude to the end is not constituted or 
 determined solely by the nature of the laws in obedience to 
 which the end is attained. Our interest in the end is prior to 
 our interest in the process, and even controls the course of the 
 process throughout. 
 
 The interest in the end of knowledge seems the same in 
 character as our interest in any of the other ends which make up 
 what we call our ideal experience. This interest seems certainly 
 emotional in its essence. Our attitude towards the good or the 
 beautiful is from the first non-intellectual. It begins in a conscious 
 craving which engages and concentrates our whole mentality, and 
 contains a forefelt anticipation of a certain form of mental satis- 
 faction which is to be secured by reaching the end in question. 
 Sometimes the end in view is but vaguely present to the mind : 
 the outgoing of the mind in an emotional direction seems what 
 is most vividly before us. Sometimes the end is quite definite, 
 at least in its general outline, and gives intensity and precision 
 to the emotion. In either case the emotion and the consciousness 
 of the unrealised end are inseparable ; and in either case the 
 emotion sets the mind to work to find the means to secure the 
 end. The search for the means is quite a distinct attitude from 
 the initial state of emotion, so distinct that the emotional attitude 
 continues, though with diminished vividness, during the search 
 for the means, sustaining the process and surviving after interest 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 79 
 
 in the process is exhausted by the finding of the means. Hence 
 it comes about that in the result attained there is always the 
 emotional state of satisfaction as well as the consciousness of 
 the accuracy of the process by which the result is reached. 
 Indeed, in many cases the emotional state seems often more 
 precious than the accuracy of the process, and seems to relegate 
 the latter to a subordinate position, even though the vividness of 
 the satisfaction is due to the success of the intermediate stages. 
 The good achieved gives a thrill of feeling all the greater for the | 
 arduousness of the activity exercised in bringing it about ; the ! 
 beauty produced brings a glow of delight which is not mere ; 
 relief from the strain of producing the result, but a positive sense ' 
 of mental fulfilment in the end gained. 
 
 All this holds equally of the pursuit of the end and ideal of 
 knowledge. At the basis of the search for knowledge lies the 
 emotion of curiosity, which is but the elementary form of the 
 higher and more complex emotional attitude towards the end of 
 all knowledge. Curiosity may have its source in the instinct 
 of self-conservation on the one hand, and the mere reaction of 
 perceptual activity upon a novel element in the objective con- 
 tinuum of perception on the other. But the emotion is not a 
 mere reflex action ; it is an attitude in which the mind is concen- 
 trated upon the attainment of an anticipated form of satisfaction. 
 This draws the mind onwards, and arouses its activity in the | 
 direction of the satisfaction sought, awakening interest in the 
 object and stimulating the mind to find the means which will 
 secure the satisfaction. The difference between curiosity and 
 scientific interest is not in the presence of emotion in the one 
 case and its absence in the other. There is emotion in both. In 
 the latter the emotion is more continuous, stable, and permanent ; 
 in curiosity the emotion is temporary, variable, and transitory. 
 This difference is reflected in the kind of knowledge sought and 
 achieved. In the one case the knowledge is unsystematic and 
 of value to the particular mind alone ; and in the other it is 
 coherent and leads to a result of universal concern for other 
 minds as well. 
 
 The emotion present in the process of knowledge is, like 
 every emotion, a single state of mind containing all the main 
 
8o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 functions of mind — ideation, feeling, and conation — in inseparable 
 union. The integrity of the mind is engaged in this attitude 
 towards the object for one purpose only — the articulation of 
 meaning with a view to mental satisfaction. In the long run 
 doubtless the mental satisfaction may be said to be the attain- 
 ment of man's mental synthesis with his objective world. But 
 this is rather a later interpretation of what the satisfaction 
 signiiies than a description of that satisfaction itself For the 
 satisfaction is irreducible to anything further than just the fulfil- 
 ment of the mind through the articulation of the meaning of the 
 object. Such a condition seems unique, at least unique in the 
 sense of being quite distinctive and not reducible to any other 
 mental state. Hence it is a mistake in analysis, as well as in 
 principle, to attempt to find the origin of the scientific attitude 
 in an earlier " practical " interest in the world, as if man began 
 by taking a practical interest in the world first and then, with 
 leisure and opportunity, came later on to be interested in the 
 world for " theoretical " reasons, for " truth's sake alone." There 
 is no evidence in mental history or justification in principle for 
 such a view. The emotional attitude of curiosity which develops 
 into the scientific frame of mind is as fundamental and distinctive 
 as the emotional attitude which leads man to alter his world to 
 suit himself. It is mere confusion to take the absence of the 
 scientific mood in the primitive or early mind to be the same as 
 the absence of any cognitive interest in objects of the world. 
 Cognitive interest in the world may exist in the lower form 
 without the scientific frame of mind. Indeed, when the cognitive 
 interest is at a low level the practical interest is equally at a 
 low level. The practical interest is at no stage of man's life, so 
 far as we know it, all-absorbing. And even where it is primary 
 this does not exclude the presence of the other as a secondary 
 interest. Nor is there any proof that cognitive interest is 
 engaged at first solely on behalf of the practical. The truth 
 rather is that from the first the practical and the cognitive 
 interest play into each other's hands ; they act and react on each 
 other, and each maintains its own specific place in the economy 
 of the human mind. This can be demonstrated from the study 
 of early society quite as much as from the study of early child- 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 8i 
 
 life.^ Moreover, if the practical interest were more fundamental 
 than the cognitive, it seems impossible to explain how the cog- 
 nitive interest in the world ever arose at all. It is generically 
 different from the practical, not a variant of the practical ; or 
 rather, both are separate species of the more comprehensive 
 genus — the interrelation of conscious individuality with its world — 
 and appear simultaneously with the dawning of the conscious 
 distinction of the individual from his world.2 
 
 What is primary, then, in the cognitive interest is an emotional 
 attitude towards the object, the effective termination of which 
 secures a certain form of mental satisfaction, a fulfilment of 
 mental life. This governs the cognitive state from the first : it 
 controls its course ; and it is present at the end, no matter how 
 complicated the process of securing it may be. It governs its 
 beginning. One of the most characteristic and remarkable 
 features of the operation of knowledge is the spontaneity with 
 which the individual mind takes up the cognitive attitude to 
 some objects and not to others. The whole world of objects 
 seems to claim the attention of the individual. If we look at the 
 relation of the mind to its world ab extra, there seems as much 
 likelihood of one object making its appeal to the mind as another. 
 And in an abstract sense it is true that the human mind can and 
 does take up a cognitive attitude to any part of it. But what we 
 mean by this statement is that human minds may be expected 
 to be interested in all objects that make up man's world, and that 
 there is nothing that may not be known. In actual experience, 
 however, no single mind is awakened cognitively by any and 
 every object, any more than it is practically interested in every- 
 thing. The peculiar fact is that some objects, or types of objects, 
 rouse one mind to cognitive curiosity and leave another unmoved 
 and indifferent. In the presence of certain objects an individual 
 is arrested and his attention concentrated into a mood which can 
 
 1 The play mood in child-life is in a measure an unaffected exercise of curiosity 
 and imagination. 
 
 ' We find the attitude of curiosity even in the sub-human animal consciousness. 
 
 The whole theory of the primacy of the practical interest is put forward on behalf 
 of a metaphysical view of the nature of conscious life. Starting from this the early 
 history of mind is read in terms of the theory. What alone is fundamental is the 
 individual mind in relation to its world. 
 
 G 
 
82 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 only be described as a thrill of anticipated satisfaction, a mood 
 which the individual himself cannot possibly explain, and which 
 he certainly does not create or deliberately contrive, but which he 
 feels to be the direction where his fulfilment lies. The move- 
 ment of physical bodies will awaken one mind, the arrangement 
 of spatial figures another, the action of animals a third, mental 
 operations a fourth, the life and history of society another, and 
 so on. Each individual selects spontaneously, or, as we some- 
 times say, instinctively, the sphere of objects which engage his 
 cognitive interest : from other objects he turns away with uncon- 
 cern, it may be even with aversion and dislike ; they " bore " him. 
 I am not referring simply to exceptionally gifted or specially en- 
 dowed minds, though in fact they furnish the best illustration of 
 this fundamental peculiarity of the cognitive attitude. The 
 description is equally true of the lowlier types of mind, which are 
 awakened into activity mainly by the outside or surface appearance 
 of objects, and never get much further than what we should term 
 mere curiosity. Where, as in the case of a many-sided mind, 
 a great variety of objects may arouse interest and the individual 
 has an " intellectual appetite equal to whole libraries," we shall 
 find that the interest varies in degree of intensity in relation to 
 the different objects, and the mind arrives at satisfaction along 
 certain paths more completely than along others.^ 
 
 This selective emotional attitude of the individual mind 
 towards an object certainly one of the most mysterious 
 manifestations of mental life. It does not merely differentiate 
 one object from another ; it differentiates one mind from another, 
 and is one of the most direct ways through which the mind 
 acquires the sense of its own individuality. It is not articulate 
 in its ideal or intellectual content, at least to begin with : it uses 
 no language and is neither communicated, nor strictly communic- 
 able. It is merely a felt implicit mental union with a certain 
 
 * There are, of course, a number of objects in which every mind in a given society 
 is to a certain extent interested in the cognitive sense. This is the assumption of 
 practical education. This point does not affect the main argument, and we need not 
 stop to consider it. The business of education consists very largely in stimulating and 
 engaging the emotion of the pupil on the side of the objects, the apprehension of 
 which is found by experience to be important, first for the social efiSciency of the 
 individual, and secondly for his mental development. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 83 
 
 selected part of the objective world. In its normal form this re- 
 lation between the object and the mind is perhaps best expressed 
 by saying that the mind is drawn on as a lover to the object of 
 love. It is as if the world of objects played upon the energy of 
 the mind as a chord of sound awakens the response of the musical 
 ear, the subject and the object making a single indissoluble ex- 
 perience of felt unity. The mind at this stage no more questions 
 the certainty of its union with the object which arouses this 
 attitude, than it questions its own existence. All doubts and 
 questions come later, and even when they arise they are awakened 
 in the interest of the unity which at first is merely felt. Indeed, 
 one might say that but for the completeness of this emotional 
 union with the object, the further course of analysis and interpre- 
 tation, in which the process of knowledge consists, would hardly 
 go on at all. Nothing stops an emotion except another and a 
 contrary emotion ; and emotion is so much of a mere mental 
 state or conscious fact that sceptical considerations or purely 
 intellectual questions are powerless to affect its actuality or its 
 certainty. It is perhaps just in the interests of the fuller realisa- 
 tion of the operation of knowledge that the cognitive attitude 
 thus starts to an emotion. The emotional attitude may be the 
 mental cause, in the order of man's spirit, of the further mental 
 effort, which man exerts with such unvarying tenacity, to prosecute 
 the progress of knowledge ; while, on the other hand, the fulfilment 
 of the mind by this process may be the end or reason for the 
 existence of the emotion. However this may be, the emotional 
 attitude is the primal certainty of the mind's union with its 
 object : it foreshadows and anticipates the more explicit form of 
 unity which the articulate process of knowledge seeks to bring 
 about ; it remains the measure of the unity which the mind seeks 
 to establish ; and it is not abolished by the further process of 
 knowledge, but merely developed into a complete state of mind. 
 That is why we never find ourselves satisfied with any kind of 
 knowledge which fails to give at least as great a sense of harmony 
 of the mind with its object as was felt at the start of the process ; 
 and we regard with distrust an issue of the process of knowledge 
 which has no emotional value for us at all, or which fails entirely 
 to give a sense of buoyancy and freedom to the spirit in its 
 
84 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 relation to its world.^ It is for this reason that the intellectual 
 articulation of the relation of the mind to its object breaks off 
 when the emotional attitude is no longer sustained, a result 
 which may be brought about either by the incapacity of the 
 mind to continue the process of articulation beyond a certain 
 point, or by the articulative process failing to keep the emotional 
 attitude alive. There is always a certain apparent arbitrariness 
 or even caprice in the mind's relation to its object : the relation- 
 ship is always vital and spontaneous, not mechanical and despotic. 
 As the emotional attitude begins spontaneously and, in that sense, 
 arbitrarily, so it may be arrested in the same way and at any 
 point. And the reason is obvious. The mind's relation to its 
 object is from the first for the sake of fulfilment ; if this is not or 
 does not seem likely to be secured beyond a certain point, the 
 individual readily breaks off the connection. This is accepted in 
 our experience as a familiar condition of knowledge. The 
 prosecution of knowledge is not a matter of the momentum of 
 the will : nor is it a matter of mere resolution. It is a matter of 
 choice, as its very beginning involves the element of selection. 
 An individual who holds on his course when all emotional value 
 in the pursuit of his knowledge has ceased, we regard not as 
 healthy- minded but as obsessed ; his mind has become mechan- 
 ised. Where and when the point of arrestment takes place, will 
 depend on each individuality, and will vary from one individual 
 to another. Sometimes it is due to reasons, sometimes to 
 causes. An individual breaks off because he is no longer 
 interested ; another because he is exhausted ; another for want of 
 energy of character or of nature.^ 
 
 We have already anticipated the second point. The emotion 
 does not merely start the process of knowledge but controls it 
 throughout its course. The realisation of the cognitive attitude 
 to an object is in many respects like the realisation of the 
 practical attitude to an object ; and in particular closely resembles 
 
 1 Mr. Bradley remarks : " I would not rest tranquilly in a truth if I were com- 
 pelled to regard it as hateful." 
 
 ^ Towards the close of his life Huxley is said to have had in his grasp after long 
 study the clue to the classification of fishes, but a species of intellectual ennui seemed 
 to restrain or prevent him from working it out systematically. A similar experience 
 is not uncommon amongst strenuous intellectual workers. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 85 
 
 the process of artistic production which is perhaps the pre- 
 eminent form of practical activity.^ In the latter case the 
 carrying out of the purpose in detail reacts at once on the 
 emotional attitude towards the purpose itself, commits the mind 
 more and more to the purpose, concentrates the mind further in 
 that direction and intensifies interest in it far more deeply than 
 is experienced at the outset. The emotion glows more vividly 
 as the purpose grows towards realisation under the hands of the 
 artist. So in the case of knowledge. No sooner is the articula- 
 tion of the meaning of the object begun than the emotion 
 becomes more accentuated ; the mind thereby becomes more 
 concentrated ; anticipation of satisfaction is heightened, while this 
 increased emotional union with the object carries the mind further 
 forward along the process of articulation. The mind by becoming 
 more fully aware of its unity with the object is committed more 
 deeply to keeping up and realising what is involved in that 
 relation with the object, which constitutes the experience of 
 knowing. The more the individual mind is engaged the more 
 does it bring all the powers in its possession to bear on the 
 development of the relationship ; and, on the other hand, the 
 more does it selectively isolate the object under consideration. 
 These two go together, and give rise to the rejection of what is 
 irrelevant, the picking out of what is relevant, the discovery of 
 resemblances and differences. The maintenance of the unity of 
 the individual mind in the midst of the increased consciousness 
 of the distinct elements in the object which concentration brings 
 to light, leads to the gradual integration, by concept or law, of the 
 distinct elements into a single unified object which is the counter- 
 part of the individuality of the mind. 
 
 The questions how long the process goes on, how far the in- 
 dividual can proceed, and how fully the process can be realised — 
 these vary from individual mind to individual mind. As we say, | 
 the mind will find in the world what the mind has the power to | 
 discover there. The resources and equipment of the mind ' 
 determine in large measure the extent of its grasp of the object. 
 
 ' Meaning by practical activity the moulding of the object by the individual in 
 terms of an end drawn from the individual mind and not constitutive of the nature of 
 the object itself. 
 
S6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 In knowledge at any rate it is true, or rather it is a truism, that 
 the world is what thought can make it or make of it. The 
 emotional union of some minds with an object is slight and 
 superficial. That it is so is, however, only found out by experience. 
 As the individual proceeds to articulate his union with the object, 
 he often finds he has little power to keep up the relationship ; 
 the effort to do so is unsupported by innate mental equipment ; 
 failure to advance lowers the intensity of the initial emotion, and 
 the cognitive attitude is arrested long before the full meaning of 
 the object is obtained. The individual, moreover, admits the 
 failure and gives up the search. The process of knowing is 
 always in that sense a process of self-discovery, as indeed is also 
 practical activity. We can see, too, from the foregoing that the 
 labour of understanding requires for its success something more 
 than enthusiasm for knowledge, and philosophy something more 
 than the love of wisdom. 
 
 This influence of the emotional attitude on the course of 
 articulate knowledge is seen in the most abstract as well as in 
 the most concrete sciences. It does not merely show itself in the 
 determination not to be defeated in the mental struggle with the 
 object, which leads to resourcefulness in method of procedure 
 and adaptability of mind to the varying character of the object 
 considered. These are indeed important evidences of the opera- 
 tion of the non-rational element of emotion ; and they are 
 sometimes of greater significance in the development of the truth 
 than merely logical rules.^ Nor does it appear merely in the 
 emotional energy of the moral nature of the individual agent 
 seeking the truth. This is certainly an important factor, and 
 inseparable from the pursuit of knowledge. In some cases, at any 
 rate, the moral end may even '' dictate to us the pursuit (of truth) 
 and set limits to that pursuit . . . how far and how long it is 
 right to follow truth, ... to some extent the kind of truth . . . 
 which I should ignore or should follow." ^ The emotional 
 element is also seen in a peculiarly interesting manner in the 
 mere love of form and symmetry, which plays such a large part 
 
 ' " The straight line of pure logic has but meagre resources, and resourcefulness 
 is the soul of all progress." Merz, History of European Thought, vol. ii. p. 732. 
 ' Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 88. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 87 
 
 in mathematical investigation, in the enthusiasm for consistency in 
 thinking, the joy in clear, transparent thought, and the sober de- 
 light in sound work. These are not logical conditions of accuracy of 
 articulate intellectual procedure ; they are emotional conditions of 
 logical accuracy, and inseparable from its realisation. The mental 
 activity of pursuing abstract knowledge is suffused with emotion, 
 and becomes more efficient when the emotion is unimpeded in 
 its flow, and less efficient if the emotion is impeded or arrested.^ 
 
 Without this emotional element the pursuit of articulate 1 
 intellectual unity of the mind with its object would lose its 
 mental value altogether. It is not that the desire for truth ! 
 makes truth what we want it to be, but that without the desire 
 for truth, without the emotional relation of the mind to its object, 
 we should never want truth at all. The emotion does not dictate 
 the rules for the intellectual articulation of the object ; it energises 
 the process of carrying out and fulfilling these rules. The emotion 
 may be " disinterested " as regards the ultimate issue, but is none 
 the less emotion on that account. When it is said that scientific 
 minds seek to " observe coolly," " to analyse without emotion," 
 and do not " view the world through the distorting medium of 
 their own desires," ^ it is evident that emotion is here confused' 
 with private passion. For the very term "coolly" obviously 
 involves emotion in the strict sense : it is impossible to speak of 
 the intellect as " cool " unless by giving the intellect an emotional 
 non-rational mental quality. The same writer comes more 
 closely in touch with actual experience, though at the cost of 
 consistency with his own statement above quoted, when, speaking 
 of metaphysical truth, he says that those will be more likely to 
 discover it who " combine the hopefulness, patience, and open- 
 mindedness of science with something of the Greek feeling for 
 beauty in the abstract world of logic and for the ultimate 
 intrinsic value in the contemplation of truth." ^ Such a frame of 
 mind is saturated with emotion : even " the intrinsic value in the 
 contemplation of truth " means nothing but the realisation of a 
 mental state in which the emotional attitude towards the object 
 of knowledge is fulfilled.* 
 
 ^ Cp. Aristotle, Ethics, x. 5. 2 Russell, Scientific Method, p. 20. = Ibid., p. 29. 
 * It has often been noted that the enthusiasm for logical analysis and logical 
 
STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 II 
 
 Important as the influence of emotion is on the direction and 
 course of knowledge, there are other non-logical factors at work 
 which as certainly control its operation. Of these, imag inati on 
 and memory are the most prominent and familiarly recognised. 
 The activity of the logical intellect is impossible without their 
 co-operation in the process of knowledge, and yet they are in no 
 way governed by the rules of logical procedure. Imagination in 
 one or other of its forms seems to play a rdle in the knowledge of 
 non-mental objects independent of us, similar to that which sym- 
 pathy plays in our conscious communion with other minds. With- 
 out the capacity to " put ourselves at the point of view " of objects 
 without us, no effective intellectual grasp of the object seems 
 possible.! And the difference between one mind and another 
 lies largely in the extent to which this power can be exercised. 
 The imaginative synthesis of an object, the consciousness pf it as 
 an imagined whole, seems, indeed, mainly what we work with in 
 carrying on the process of understanding it. The success with 
 which we can make such a synthesis will govern the course of 
 our knowledge. The degree of success varies greatly with 
 different individuals, and even in the same individual at different 
 stages in his mental development. Sometimes it is hardly 
 distinguishable from a " fancy " ; at other times it approximates 
 to a vivid and accurate "intuition," when the object in its 
 totality is as transparent to the mind as an illuminated object to 
 the eye. Some men have this power of effective, constructive 
 imagination to an extraordinary degree, others hardly have it at 
 all. The difference between a mind "gifted" for understanding 
 any type of objects, such as space and number, and a mind not so 
 
 construction has its roots in the highly emotional attitude of mysticism. One of the 
 most prominent writers ;on philosophy at the present time once remarked that he 
 had a " passion for logic." Curiously enough it did not seem to occur to him 
 that such a personal factor as "passion" must qualify in important ways the value 
 of his philosophical conclusions. It is also interesting to note that he is held to 
 be a representative of " intellectualism." 
 
 ^ The remarkable success of Fabre's genius in interpreting insect life seems 
 mainly due to this capacity. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 89 
 
 gifted, lies just in the possession of this highly specialised 
 function. Most men of average intelligence can with effort follow 
 a connected train of reasoning with tolerable success. But the 
 leaders and pioneers in a field of investigation are those who 
 seem to grasp imaginatively what the whole situation is before 
 the process of logical connectedness is begun. The logical pro- 
 cedure seems little more than a form of translation into the 
 language of symbol or of words, for the purpose of fixing in order 
 and communicating to others, the context of what is fully grasped 
 by the comprehensive sweep of the imagination. It seems as if 
 there were, so to say, a mental affinity between the minds of 
 some men and the objects in which they are cognitively interested, 
 an affinity which enables them to commune with the object from 
 the inside, to anticipate its procedure, and to reveal its inner 
 secret. They are unable by any logical process to explain how 
 they arrive at the centre of the object with which they are con- 
 cerned ; and by no merely logical procedure can any one not so 
 endowed accomplish what they achieve by this intimate quasi- 
 instinctive communion. They " see " the whole vividly and 
 apparently with unerring assurance, and their process of reasoning 
 seems mainly undertaken to elucidate and confirm this initial 
 vision.! 
 
 The imaginative grasp of the object anticipates, in one way, 
 the slower and more detailed comprehension of the object 
 which the logically connected system supplies ; in another way, 
 it operates as a guide to the gradual articulation of the object 
 by purely intellectual procedure. In either case it controls the 
 process of thought proper. This holds of all knowledge to 
 some extent. But the more concrete the objects investigated, 
 the more in short the object approximates to the complex 
 solidity of spiritual life, the more is knowledge dependent on 
 
 ' We have a closely analogous experience in the case of the natural or trained 
 expert in practical life. He can "picture beforehand" exactly what will happen; 
 or visualise precisely the whole situation with which he has to deal : and no 
 reasoning for or against his view of the whole seems to affect the certainty or accuracy 
 of his insight. All teachers must be familiar with the fact that the real difficulty in 
 teaehing is not to get a process of reasoning understood, but to engage the imagina- 
 tion of the pupil in the subject, and that the limit of effective instruction is reached 
 when the imagination fails or is lacking altogether. 
 
90 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the effective use of the imagination. No mind can expect to 
 cope with the richer realities of experience if it 
 
 " wants that glorious faculty assigned 
 To elevate the more than reasoning mind. 
 
 Imagination is that sacred power." ^ 
 
 Men differ far more in imaginative grasp than in capacity 
 for reasoning ; for reasoning is in essence a social creation or 
 a socialising function. Both etymologically and in fact "logical " 
 procedure is inseparably bound up with the intersubjunctive 
 intercourse by which society is sustained, and which is carried 
 on to such a large extent by the use of articulate speech — a 
 purely social invention. The reasoning powers of individuals 
 are developed by communicating ideas ; and defects in one 
 individual can by the same process be corrected or supple- 
 mented by another.^ 
 
 Imagination is not thus socially constituted. It owes its 
 quality to the natural endowment of the individual and its 
 activity to its vital relationship with real beings. 
 
 In the process of knowledge imagination seems to perform a 
 function within the realm of ideas similar to that performed by 
 an organ of perception in the region of sense. In the perceptual 
 grasp of the object, the apprehended object is kept steadily before 
 the mind while reflective interest is concentrated upon it. This 
 closely resembles the imaginative grasp of an object during 
 the process of understanding. Indeed, a function of this kind 
 seems certainly required, unless all reflective knowledge be 
 limited to an analysis and interpretation of objects derived from 
 mere sense perception ; and the higher levels of the human mind 
 cannot be said to be so limited. The higher realities of ex- 
 perience are in no way confined to the region of perception, and 
 hardly seem in certain cases to hold of perception at all. The 
 inter-relation of this function of imagining an object with that of 
 reflective understanding of the same object is doubtless very 
 close : but the distinction, nevertheless, between the two seems 
 
 ^ Wordsworth. 
 
 ' Hence it is that "rational intelligibility " implies in practice a reference to an 
 average or typical level of intelligence — a level established by social intercourse, and 
 in fact, varying with social development. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 91 
 
 clearly recognisable/ and appears in the course of the process 
 of knowledge. This inter-relation is apparently the mental 
 source of hypothesis, suggestion, and tentative connection in 
 which the earlier stages of orderly connected knowledge consist. 
 These seem, so to say, the intermediate stages in reducing the 
 totality presented to imagination to the detailed articulate 
 coherence of logical reflection. 
 
 Besides imagination, intellectual procedure has to reckon 
 with memory, which is also non-logical in its operation. In a 
 sense we may say that the intellect is at the mercy of memory, 
 not merely in the general way that, without memory, knowledge 
 could neither be accumulated nor carried on, but in the special 
 way that accuracy and precision of retentiveness is the basis of 
 sound judgment at any stage in the process of knowledge. In 
 making the simplest scientific statement, the mind has to draw 
 on the reservoir of memory for its terms, its images, and its 
 " facts." When we bear in mind the extraordinary complexity 
 of most scientific knowledge, we can see the importance of the role 
 played by memory in carrying on its process. It is merely the 
 ease and the familiarity with which the process as a whole takes 
 place, which makes us normally unconscious of the operation of 
 memory throughout. The process of our attention is engaged 
 on the logical connection of thought to the exclusion of what is 
 for this purpose irrelevant or subsidiary ; and we are apt to 
 suppose that what is not clearly before our minds is not affecting 
 
 ^ Thus, if we examine our actual experience we find that, in thinking about an 
 object, whether the object be quite well understood or be given for the first time as 
 an object for consideration, we must have an imaginative presentation of the object 
 as a whole at least in relatively dim outline, before we can effectively begin to deal 
 with it by way of reflective analysis. And the object so presented must be kept 
 relatively steady before the mind while reflection goes on. The process is like 
 that of a speaker who is addressing an audience on some topic. He sees before his 
 mind what he wants to expound, and his words are arranged to convey in sequence 
 what he pictures in its totality all the while he is speaking. We have an analogous 
 experience in artistic production. The whole is grasped imaginatively before it is 
 translated into sense form. Wagner remarked in a letter, " I see only internal images 
 which try to realise themselves in sound. . . . My poetical conceptions have always been 
 produced at such a distance from experience that I must consider the whole moral 
 formation of my mind as caused by these conceptions. The Flying Dutchman, 
 Tannhduser, Lohengrin, the Niebdungen, Wodan, all existed in my head before I saw 
 them in experience." See Corabarieu : Music, its Laws and F.volution. 
 
92 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the process. Only when a check occurs in the course of our 
 thinking, when we cannot " find the right word," when we do not 
 express what we " mean," or when we find we have overlooked 
 an essential element in the case, are we reminded of the conjoint 
 activity of such a function as memory in securing the success of 
 our effort to understand. If we may employ metaphors, the 
 operation of memory is to the logical procedure of the intellect 
 what an instrument is to the operator, or an organised business 
 concern to the head of the firm, or a general staff to the 
 commander in the field. The formation of the memory — 
 continuum, the power and accuracy of retention, the alertness 
 and suggestibility of memory, owe nothing to the rules of 
 logic, but are regulated by other mental laws and conditions. 
 
 The close connection of memory with intellectual procedure 
 is seen very markedly in the different degrees of intellectual 
 efficiency between different individuals. It is not want of logical 
 capacity which prevents some minds advancing in knowledge, 
 but defective capacity to retain what has come clearly before 
 consciousness. While the range of one individual's memory 
 will increase his power for effective reflection, another individual, 
 through sheer defect in retentiveness, will proceed to give an 
 intellectual construction which he would never have undertaken 
 had he been endowed with a better memory ; while others, 
 again, will tiy to fill up by imagination the gaps " felt '' to exist 
 in the memory train.^ 
 
 Ill 
 
 Besides the non-logical functions already mentioned, it is 
 worth noting that each logical intellect itself has a peculiar 
 quality which greatly influences its procedure. An intellect has 
 what I may call a certain calibre, which definitely affects its 
 range and its penetration into what it deals with. We describe 
 this peculiarity when we speak of the " subtlety," the " precision," 
 
 ' Other aspects of memory as they affect knowledge need not perhaps be men- 
 tioned here, e.g. how the " effort to remember " will diminish the effort to reflect. I 
 wish in the above merely to call attention to the main point — the essential 
 necessity of this non-logical function in the process of knowledge. I have dealt 
 elsewhere with other problems in connection with memory. See Chap. IV. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 93 
 
 the "reach," or again the "complexity" of a man's intellect. 
 Some intellects seem incapable of making clear distinctions ; 
 some are incapable of holding distinctions together when made. 
 This vitally affects their whole procedure. They will accept, as 
 self-evident, statements which to another type of intellect seem 
 obscure or unintelligible ; and, again, statements will appear 
 contradictory which are not so, or not contradictory which are 
 so. Problems will thus arise which are not properly formulated ; 
 and problems will be created which to another intellect are not 
 problems at all but are mere misunderstandings of the actual 
 situation. This is particularly frequent in the case of philosophy, 
 where, especially in the more complex realities of experience, 
 the greatest difficulty just consists in correctly making and 
 formulating a valid distinction. A wrong step at the outset will 
 start a thinker in the pursuit of a problem which would not exist 
 but for the initial mistake.^ The history of science is similarly 
 strewn with the wrecks of futile solutions of unnecessary 
 problems due to the restricted powers of the intellect of in- 
 dividuals. From one point of view it may be said that scientific 
 progress has largely been due to an intellect of later date 
 drawing and holding firmly a distinction which to an intellect 
 of an earlier date had no existence. Doubtless the advance was 
 made possible by acquaintance with the errors into which the 
 less capable intellect fell ; but the advance was partly brought 
 about by the increased concentration of the intellect on the 
 subject which the inheritance of scientific knowledge fosters. 
 Some of the greatest steps in the progress of science have been 
 made by a later mind thus drawing a vital distinction which was 
 unknown or unrecognised by an early investigator in the same 
 domain.2 But we need not appeal to the history of philosophy 
 
 '■ One need but recall the fundamental distinctions from which the speculations of 
 Descartes, or again of Berkeley, started to illustrate this point. 
 
 ' A good illustration of this is provided by the early history of mathematics. 
 Pythagoras maintained that spatial position, a point, had a certain size. Later 
 mathematicians evolved the conception of pure spatial position, and sharply dis- 
 tinguished position and magnitude. This step was formulated by Euclid in his 
 definition of a point. The advance in itself and in its consequences was enormous. 
 The logical puzzle over Achilles and the tortoise could have had no meaning for 
 Pythagoras, 
 
94 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 or of science to substantiate the contention that intellects differ 
 qualitatively. The difference between the intellect of a child 
 and an adult, of a pupil and a master, of a layman and an 
 expert, of a savage and the highly civilised, does not consist 
 simply in the amount which each respectively knows nor in their 
 opportunity to know, but in their very power to know and 
 understand. Nor can it be maintained that if all the different 
 kinds of intellect were sufficiently mature, or sufficiently trained 
 and educated, they would all think with the same degree of 
 penetration and connectedness. For it is impossible to say what 
 a " mature " intellect is, unless we arbitrarily define it as an 
 intellect fully capable of grasping the subject considered, and in 
 that case very few of even the best intellects would deserve the 
 appellation, while some intellects are mature at a very early stage 
 in life. As for education, one of the most familiar facts of 
 education is that it is a process of differentiating intellects from 
 one another, and that for the great majority of intellects a stage 
 is reached beyond which the individual is incapable of making 
 any further advance. Nor do we find that intellects of relatively 
 equal training and knowledge either think in the same way or 
 agree in their intellectual procedure. The disputes of con- 
 temporary philosophers and scientists have been and still are the 
 jibe of the uninitiated. Men seem as if they possessed a 
 different sense of contradiction. Propositions which seem palpably 
 absurd to one intellect will seem luminously intelligible to 
 another. All the rules of logical reasoning will fail to establish 
 agreement where men differ in their use of the principle of 
 contradiction ; and will prove as useless as an appeal to the 
 organ of vision to settle the difference between two individuals 
 who see colours differently. 
 
 Not merely do intellects differ in penetration and precision, 
 but in the scope of their comprehension and in their sense of 
 logical continuity or connectedness. The compass of most men's 
 understanding is pathetically limited, and even of the best in- 
 tellects painfully restricted. If it were true, as is erroneously 
 held, that the intellect has but to follow its rules and steer a 
 straight course and the secrets of the world will be disclosed to 
 human gaze, science and philosophy would have found their 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 95 
 
 America long ere now. What the individual finds, however, is that 
 in his scientific activity there is a perpetual conflict between his aims 
 and his intellectual limitations ; and in the issue the limitations 
 triumph and his aims are but aspirations. We sometimes speak 
 as if the main or only restrictions imposed on intellectual achieve- 
 ment were the brevity of years. We are not so fortunately en- 
 dowed : if we were, a man could carry on where another left off, 
 and in the long run the human intellect would arrive. In fact, 
 we are circumscribed on every hand, and bounds seem set to the 
 operation of each man's intellect beyond which he seems utterly 
 unable to pass. The radius of each man's intellectual horizon 
 differs from one to another ; but an horizon it remains in each 
 case.^ And within this scope his intellectual processes take 
 place. He finds by experiment and experience that his intellect 
 is incapable of grasping a certain kind of reality, a certain degree 
 of complexity, a certain range of detail, either completely or 
 at all.2 
 
 A similar diversity between individuals is found in their sense 
 of logical cogency, or conceptual continuity. Even in the most 
 abstract sciences men differ in their capacity to appreciate and 
 formulate rigorously exact reasoning ; and in the more concrete 
 
 ^ This has led some philosophers to maintain that the human intellect as such 
 is limited or conditioned ; and they proceed to discuss the conditions within which 
 knowledge is possible, and beyond which it must make use of other powers 
 to supplement these natural limitations. But if we discuss the absolute limitatio n 
 of human intellect we are thereby claiming to be outside those very limitations. 
 These philosophers are but generalising the experience which each man as a fact has 
 of his own limitations. 
 
 ' When we consider the great importance which men attach to the activity of the 
 intellect, and the ceaselessly renewed efforts and failures to understand which recur 
 generation after generation, it is most remarkable to find that the one function of the 
 human soul which seems for ever destined to remain imperfectly adapted to the world 
 is human thought. His organs of perception seem perfectly adjusted to the real. 
 His emotional responses seem adequate to their purpose. In his moral life he can 
 secure practical stability of will. In his religious experience, he can obtain an en- 
 during peace of spirit. Even in art he can achieve consummate joy. But his intellect 
 seems for ever haunted by the sense of defeat, harried by doubts and questions, rest- 
 less in its pursuit of a truth which escapes his grasp. In terms of evolution it would 
 appear as if the intellect were just sufficiently evolved to start problems, but not 
 sufficiently evolved as yet to find solutions. Is it that the world is a riddle to the 
 intellect, or that the intellect makes a riddle of the world ? 
 
96 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 sciences the form of conceptual connection seems to vary from 
 individual to individual. This diversity is not due solely to the 
 limitations of language to express thought. The sense of 
 evidence, the degree of credulity, the accessibility to rationally 
 constituted conviction, differs from mind to mind. The power to 
 give conceptions the unified order of an inevitable sequence of 
 thought can only be described as a special gift, which few possess 
 in any sphere of knowledge and none possess beyond a limited 
 degree. One man can be satisfied by a chain of reasoning which 
 to another seems utterly disconnected. As in optical illusions 
 where a continuous circular line can apparently be formed by the 
 rapid revolution of discrete sections ; so in thinking one man sees 
 a continuity which to a finer insight is transparently discontinuous. 
 The rules of logic are useless either to train the sense of evidence, 
 or to establish agreement between different minds which differ 
 in their power to connect ideas. Each seems to follow logical 
 evidence in his own way and in the result to find satisfaction. 
 Except on the assumption that in the very process of thought 
 there lies this peculiar difference of quality in the intellect of 
 individuals, it seems impossible to account for the apparently 
 irreducible disagreement between intelligent minds regarding 
 what is logically coherent, or for the assured satisfaction with 
 which one man will accept as valid a train of reasoning which to 
 another seems indefensible. 
 
 IV 
 
 This completer view of what is involved in the process of 
 knowledge does justice to the factors to which current logic 
 directs exclusive attention, and also to those equally important 
 facts in the experience of knowing which current logic neglects 
 or ignores. One of the most familiar characteristics of experience 
 is the peculiar sense of mental elation which invariably accom- 
 panies the successful prosecution of knowledge in any form. 
 Knowledge liberates the individual mind, and in this freedom 
 the mind at once finds itself — its own constitution and com- 
 position — and its self-contained independence of the individual 
 objects making up its world. It becomes conscious not merely 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 97 
 
 of how to act with reference to them, but conscious of what those 
 objects mean in themselves. It thereby both detaches itself 
 from its world and attaches itself to its world, finds its place in 
 the totality of the real. It is perhaps not too much to say that 
 the acquisition of this sense of freedom is a dominating interest 
 in the whole process of knowledge. Certainly without the 
 attainment of this mental condition, knowledge would hardly be 
 worth the effort it entails. We do not undertake knowledge at 
 the command of some external fate, nor out of consideration for 
 the object. Fate is too impartial in its authority ; but the 
 pursuit of knowledge to its utmost is a matter of choice. The 
 justification for knowing is that the attainment of it liberates our 
 spirits along the ways of order and coherence, and in our liberty 
 we find the joy of life. We need not be surprised, therefore, that 
 the pursuit of knowledge becomes tedious, uninteresting, and 
 valueless when it no longer creates the sense of fulfilment which 
 we call satisfaction : nor that many, realising this, take the 
 feeling co-efficient of the activity of knowing as a final test of 
 truth itself. And when we contrast the early stages of the 
 cognitive relation of the mind to its world with the last, the con- 
 tention just put forward is amply confirmed. The earliest 
 interest of man in the world about him is largely suffused with 
 fear and misgiving and mere wonderment. Without the equip- 
 ment or the capacity to advance further, his imagination tends to 
 minister to his dread. Only when the articulating activity of the 
 intellect is brought into operation, giving him a fuller realisation 
 of the meaning of the object and a greater sense of mental 
 freedom accordingly, does the primitive emotion of fear give way 
 to a quickened enjoyment in the comprehension of the nature of 
 things.^ Thereafter knowledge can be willingly sought " for its 
 own sake," i.e. as an avenue to the attainment of mental satisfac- 
 tion and nothing further. 
 
 In the larger and more ambitious efforts of knowledge, 
 the significance of emotion and imagination, and of the special 
 mental composition of the individual, is not less but even more 
 evident than it is in those cases where the mind is engaged with 
 comparatively narrow spheres of fact. The greater the range of 
 
 ^ Cp. Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. i. p. 15 ff. 
 
 H 
 
98 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 objects with which we seek to establish mental union, the more 
 profoundly are our emotions concerned in the issue. " Our 
 hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the 
 search and expectation of greatest and exactest things." i The 
 questions set determine the kind of answers given, and 
 the questions bear the imprint and quality of the personality 
 which frames them. This is inevitable. The satisfaction sought 
 concerns the whole cognitive attitude of the personality towards 
 the world in which he is placed. In philosophy and science " it 
 is for the heart to suggest our problems, it is for the intellect to 
 solve them." ^ And the final solution is generally found to bear 
 the stamp of the personality of the thinker. As Lotze remarks,^ 
 " Except in rare cases, a prolonged philosophical labour is nothing 
 else but the attempt to justify scientifically a fundamental view 
 of things which has been adopted in early life." * Elaborate and 
 complicated arguments are brought into play whose selection and 
 development are controlled by assumptions which are mainly 
 emotional in origin and character. Reason in such cases is little 
 more than the mailed champion of the passions. Failure to win 
 satisfaction means nothing less than misery.^ Doubtless in 
 general it is true that " logic rests on postulates which must be 
 connected with the action of a will which affirms existence." ® 
 But in philosophy in particular logical procedure is largely an 
 affirmative of the will of a specific personality which resolves to 
 secure its own individual existence. And this largely deter- 
 mines its final conclusions. " A distinction is sometimes made 
 between those who are pessimists by temperament and those 
 who are pessimists on purely theoretic grounds as the result 
 of dispassionate inquiry and conviction : but in truth I doubt 
 if there has ever been a pronounced pessimist who could 
 be placed in the latter class alone." J Most philosophers of the 
 
 • MiltoD, Areopagitica. 
 
 2 Comte, Politique positive. 
 
 ' Cp. Merz, History of European Thought, vol. ii. p. 515. 
 
 * This recalls with a new significance the aphorism of Goethe, " Was man in der 
 Jugend wiinscht hat man im Alter die Fiille." 
 
 ' Cp. Cournot : Enchatnement des Idles fondamentalts, Liv. iv. i. 
 " Boutroux : " Certitude et Verite," B.A. Transactions. 
 ' Ward, Realm of Ends, p. 320. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 99 
 
 metaphysical type have been actuated either by the passion for 
 intellectual symmetry on a great scale, which in its essence is 
 closely akin to the artistic temperament, or by a craving for a 
 completer realisation of the Divine Nature, which has the most 
 intimate affinity with the mood and temperament of religion. 
 Neither of these frames of mind is intellectual in its original 
 composition, still less the product of rational reflection. They 
 are emotional ; and the later development of an articulate scheme 
 of reasoning is devised to satisfy the primary and constitutionally 
 spontaneous emotional attitude to the world. This is frankly 
 acknowledged in so many words by those philosophers who 
 consider the influences which move them in the quest for the 
 whole truth. " With certain persons the intellectual eff"ort to 
 understand the universe is a principal way of experiencing the 
 Deity. No one, probably, who has not felt this, however 
 differently he may describe it, has ever cared much for meta- 
 physics. And wherever it has been felt strongly, it has been its 
 own justification. The man whose nature is such that by one 
 path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to 
 find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world 
 thinks of it ; and if he does not, he is contemptible." ^ The 
 spectator of all time and all existence desires to have such a 
 Pisgah vision because in the first instance he is an intoxicated 
 lover of the world.^ The imposing structure of an elaborately 
 planned system of carefully chiselled categories is inspired by an 
 emotional interest in symmetrical arrangement similar in kind to 
 that which gives rise to the noblest monuments of architecture : 
 instead of a cathedral in stone, hewn from the rocks of nature, 
 there is constructed a temple of thoughts cut from the substance 
 of the human mind, a building animated by the very spirit of the 
 builder and all the more adapted on that account to be the 
 habitation of the worshipper. 
 
 It need not be supposed that the pre-established harmony 
 between the philosopher's initial attitude and the final deliverance 
 destroys the value of the truth he seeks and finds. The course 
 he follows in a sense takes the form of a circle ; but a circular 
 
 * Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Introduction. 
 ' Cp. Pater, Plato and Platonism, c. 6. 
 
loo STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 argument is the best because the strongest, if the circle is really 
 complete. All knowledge, even that of the special sciences, aims 
 at being circular, at finding a conclusion which is not merely in 
 agreement with, but confirmatory of, the premises. The scientist 
 who starts from facts of perception and proceeds towards an 
 interpretation, becomes satisfied with his course of thought, if his 
 conclusion, when " tested " by the " facts," is supported by what 
 they reveal, if, in a word, he can link up the end of his thought 
 with its beginning. The philosopher follows the same career on 
 a larger scale. His initial emotional attitude to the world corre- 
 sponds to the datum of the special scientist, and embodies the 
 primary demands which his individual mind makes upon a world 
 become intelligible. These demands have their roots in the 
 very life of his mind, and expect to be sustained likewise in the 
 atmosphere of a clarified intelligence. In a sense an emotional 
 attitude to the world as a whole may be but a latent intuition of 
 the complete truth in which the mind is always fulfilled and 
 satisfied ; and perhaps it may be that the higher intuition into 
 the fullness of truth is but the mental prius, which itself awakens 
 the initial emotional attitude and draws the mind on towards its 
 fulfilment. 
 
 But the individual agent in knowing is not altogether left to 
 himself in framing either his initial attitude in knowledge or the 
 course of his knowledge. The emotional frame of his mind is 
 checked, guided, and sustained by the social milieu in which he 
 finds himself and by the social composition of his mind. The 
 individual cannot help thinking as a representation of a collective 
 social consciousness. The process of externalising his thought 
 in language is under the control of the social spirit from the 
 first. Indeed, the externalisation of mental processes in social 
 institutions and in language is the main concern of social life, 
 and perhaps the achievement of most interest in man's life on 
 earth.^ This interpenetration of mind by mind in society exerts 
 the profoundest influence on the whole attitude of the individual, 
 cognitive as well as practical. It is in large measure the source 
 of the pre-judgments which affect every individual in the course 
 of his knowledge. It decides largely what he shall be interested 
 
 ^ Cp. Merz, History of European Thought, ii. 525. 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS loi 
 
 in and the way the object affects him. Certain objects of ex- 
 perience have an emotional quality assigned to them by the 
 traditional or accepted modes of social beings towards them ; 
 and this emotional attitude the individual shares. Certain ways 
 of viewing or thinking about objects have the sanction of a social 
 group, and bias the individual mind accordingly. There are • 
 some objects which individuals, reflecting the temperament of i 
 their society, are unwilling even to submit to intellectual investi- 
 gation at all. Their minds recoil from the attitude of knowledge, ' 
 not because of the difficulty of carrying it out, but because of the 
 reluctance to get closer to the real meaning and nature of the 
 objects. Their attitude is expressed in the words : " Craignez 
 bien plutot de soumettre toutes ces grandes et belles choses au 
 creuset de la raison, si vous ne voulez les voir d'abord se fletrir 
 et se dess^cher." ^ Articulate reasoning plays such a compara- 
 tively small role in average social experience, that individuals 
 come to trust their emotional reactions and their sentiments 
 rather than their powers of thought, and to find in the former 
 the main channel of communion with the environing world and 
 the source of all that gives value and dignity to individual life. 
 Such a frame of mind impedes the development of free know- 
 ledge, and checks it in its course when once it is started. In- 
 tolerance of liberating thought is not, as is so often supposed, the 
 peculiar prerogative of religious institutions. Social institutions 
 of every sort claim a privileged authority over the individual's 
 mind, and having moulded his mind in a form which secures 
 a specific mental attitude favourable to corporate life, they treat 
 with suspicion and even hostility the effort of individual initiative 
 to obtain a completer knowledge than the institution requires for 
 its stability. The particular mental attitude acquired by member- 
 ship in the institution becomes the enemy of the comprehending 
 universality sought by the scientific spirit of free knowledge, and 
 spontaneously carried through by the individual mind. In short, , 
 socially constituted beliefs, which draw their vitality largely from ' 
 the life of emotion, supply in most cases the presuppositions and 
 the prejudices, furnish the starting-points and main routes, of the 
 individual's process of knowledge ; and his cognitive effort is ' 
 
 ' Cournot, Enchatnement des idles fondamentales , p. 373. 
 
I02 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 conducted in accordance with them or in resistance to them. 
 Hence the difficulty constantly experienced in introducing a new 
 intellectual synthesis. Truth arrived at by articulate processes 
 of thought is not all that the mind aims at in knowledge : the 
 truth must satisfy, must give the sense of mental fulfilment, 
 must create a new emotional state in which conceptual connection 
 passes into the conviction of mental vision. The truth must 
 be believed before the mind becomes satisfied with the process 
 of knowledge, and it is often easier to establish the connected 
 sequence of thought, without which many truths cannot be 
 obtained, than to create the frame of mind in which conviction 
 consists.^ This last stage in the process of knowledge is always 
 the most difficult to obtain, just because it is the most important 
 for the individual's mind. The history of science, and of human 
 knowledge generally, abounds in illustrations of the conflict 
 between the newer findings of articulate reflection and emotion- 
 ally constituted anterior beliefs. We may take one example of 
 the many which make up so large a part of the half-tragic, half- 
 comic spectacle of man's struggle for enlightenment. The 
 objections urged against the theory of evolution in the middle 
 of last century were not in the first instance drawn from an 
 impartial examination of the facts or from considerations of 
 logical consistency. They had their source in the emotional 
 attitude towards human nature on the one hand and non-human 
 organic and inorganic nature on the other. " Spirit and matter 
 have ever been presented to us in rudest contrast, the one as 
 all-noble, the other as all-vile." ^ The suggestion of continuity 
 between the spirit of man and physical nature was a challenge 
 to the security of a whole frame of mind, and not merely to a 
 particular opinion or an abstract intellectual conception. To 
 prepare the mind of the generality of people even to consider 
 the suggested new interpretation of facts, it was necessary to use 
 the arts of the mental physician rather than the resources of 
 pure logic. An appeal was made to the wider emotions which 
 actuate all pursuit of knowledge, to the desire for truth in 
 
 '■ " It is not difficult to tell the truth ; the difficulty is to get the truth believed " 
 (Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, 1912). 
 - Tyndall, Fragments of Science, p. 159 (1872). 
 
CERTAIN NON-LOGICAL FACTORS 103 
 
 general, to the assurance that all truth will ultimately lead to 
 mental satisfaction, to the mood of toleration in which all truth 
 must be received. The language employed sometimes by the 
 most distinguished scientists to create the appropriate receptive 
 attitude seems nowadays ridiculously apologetic, and would, 
 indeed, be unintelligible if the pursuit of knowledge concerned 
 the logical procedure of the intellect alone. It betrays a sensitive 
 insight into the actual workings of the human mind, but is none 
 the less a pathetic commentary on man's interest in the truth 
 when a scientist of repute felt constrained to say to his audience, 
 " Surely these notions (contained in the evolution hypothesis) 
 represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any 
 sane mind. Let us, however, give them fair play. Let us steady 
 ourselves in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing all terror 
 and excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it with 
 the hard sharp eye of intellect alone. ... I do not think this 
 evolution hypothesis is to be ilouted away contemptuously. I 
 do not think it is to be denounced as wicked. . . . Fear not the 
 evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon 
 the faith in the ultimate triumph of truth." ^ In the light of the 
 foregoing analysis of the process and conditions of human know- 
 ledge such an appeal to a group of presumably trained minds 
 finds its explanation and justification. But if justified and 
 necessary, it indirectly condemns as inadequate the interpreta- 
 tion of the nature of knowledge offered by those who restrict 
 knowledge to purely conceptual activity, and ignore its completer 
 significance as an avenue to the attainment of that mental satis- 
 faction of which the formal procedure of logical articulate thought 
 is but an essential condition.^ 
 
 The issue of a process of knowledge must qualify the entire 
 
 ' Tyndall, Fragments of Science, p. 159 (1872). 
 
 ^ In some cases the processes of reasoning are so conflicting that the issue of the 
 inquiry has to be left, or at any rate is often settled by an appeal, to feeling. A 
 good illustration of this is the problem of the immortality of the individual soul. The 
 reasons for and against immortality are so evenly balanced that few will be prepared 
 to decide the case on grounds of reason. The failure of reason to establish a result 
 becomes the opportunity of feeling to insist on its claims to determine the issue. 
 And for most people their emotional interest in the result does settle the question ; 
 and with this procedure reason, at any rate, can find no fault. 
 
I04 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 composition of the individual's mind, if its purpose as a realisation 
 of vital mental energy is to be fulfilled. In this contention lies 
 the truth of the sensationalist view of knowledge. Knowledge 
 in one of its aspects may be said to be a process from sensation 
 to sensation ; its aim is to secure a more vivid and intense sen- 
 sation of the world. There is a " sane state of feeling that arises 
 out of thought," just as certainly as articulate thought arises out 
 of an emotional (or sensational) attitude towards an object. For 
 the scientist no less than for the poet the emotional coefficient 
 of his activity is an indispensable factor in the evolution of the 
 mind's cognitive relation to its object. Truth does not consist 
 simply in the agreement of conceptual thought with reality : for 
 the mind and the reality are not in disagreement to start with. 
 Truth lies in the attainment of a conscious state in which the 
 energy of the mind is raised to a level of individual conscious 
 freedom, realised at once as mental vision, enjoyment, and self- 
 completeness of individuality. 
 
IV 
 
 THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " Our knowledge is founded on inexperience : it is converted into experience by 
 memory." — S. BnTLER. 
 
 yiyy^Tai S' 4k ttjs ;i*y^|Uijs i/iirftpla Tots avdpiiirots. 
 
 ■ ' Aristotle. 
 
 The problem I wish to consider is the character of the con- 
 tribution which memory makes to the series of judgments 
 constituting human knowledge. For the purpose of the analysis 
 we must presuppose the psychic development of the so-called 
 memory-continuum, which is obviously a gradual and a complex 
 product of psychic activity. We shall also regard as subordinate 
 to our primary interest the various forms of our memory experi- 
 ence, recollection, reminiscence, remembrance, and reverie, to 
 name only the most familiar. Of still less importance from our 
 point of view is the discussion of the question, in itself rather 
 futile, whether the exercise of memory implies an innate or an 
 acquired function of mental life. And we shall not deal with 
 the psychic conditions of the memory process, retention, repro- 
 duction, persistence of images or ideas, and the like. Our 
 problem is logical, not psychological, and starts from the 
 assumption that the judgment " I remember this or that " has 
 a definite meaning and conveys a specific amount of knowledge, 
 whatever be the psychic processes and conditions involved in the 
 statement. 
 
 This judgment is specifically different from any other kind ot 
 knowledge, however closely allied to it certain other forms of 
 knowledge, e.g. recognition, or again re-knowing, may be. The 
 
 105 
 
io6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 main point of difference is that in a memory-judgment the object 
 to which direct reference is made is always and solely the past. 
 Every other judgment deals directly either with the present, the 
 future, or, as in the case of abstract reasoning, has no time 
 reference at all.^ 
 
 The problem seems important on general grounds. It has 
 been long held that the analysis of knowledge is concerned in the 
 first instance, or even exclusively, with the judgments which refer 
 to the world as it is about us in the living present and as it may 
 be expected to be in the near or just remote future. So much has 
 this view prevailed that some have taken judgments of perception 
 to be prior both in time and logical importance to all other kinds 
 and stages of knowledge. Emphasis on the present leads half-un- 
 consciously to over-emphasis on the knowledge which is peculiarly 
 present knowledge, — viz. perception, and more particularly 
 perception of the external world. This to some extent accounts 
 for the place which discussion of the nature of external perception 
 has occupied and still occupies in British philosophy. But it 
 seems clear that unless this primary or exclusive emphasis on the 
 judgments which concern the living present is the result of a 
 reasoned theory, the assumption of their prior importance for 
 knowledge can only be regarded as a prejudice or personal 
 conviction. When we observe that we are constantly re- 
 ferring to the larger and, as life proceeds, the ever-increasing 
 domain of the past with as much relative assurance as we refer 
 to our present situation, the acceptance of the judgments con- 
 cerning the present as our only starting point for the study of 
 knowledge seems more than 'questionable. If, again, we admit 
 that judgments concerning the past have at least primd facie 
 equal validity with those concerning the present, and are certainly 
 distinct in form or kind from the latter — more especially if the 
 judgments referring to the present are identified with external 
 perception, — then we are compelled to broaden the basis of our 
 
 ' I take it for granted that the difference between a past object and a present 
 object will be accepted as fundamental, and that knowledge in the present and 
 knowledge about the present are also clearly distinguishable. Assuming these 
 distinctions no one will confuse the analysis of an actual experience, e.g. a tooth- 
 ache, with the analysis of an experience known by memory, e.g. the toothache as 
 located in the past. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 107 
 
 investigation into the nature of knowledge, and cannot accept 
 any theory which regards judgments of external perception as 
 the model, still less as the standard, of all true knowledge. It is, 
 doubtless, obvious that a judgment regarding the past takes place 
 in the present, as indeed do our judgments regarding the future. 
 But a judgment in the present is not necessarily a judgment of 
 or referring to the present. If there is no distinction between 
 these two statements then knowledge must always be an affair 
 of the passing moment ; and if this were true, there can be no 
 escape from either solipsism or intellectual scepticism. That it 
 cannot be true seems evident from the fact that we cannot even 
 speak of a judgment in the present, much less of the present, 
 without thereby distinguishing sharply between present and past, 
 and thus giving some independent existence to the past and 
 independent validity to judgments referring to the past. If this 
 be granted, it is at least an assumption requiring special proof 
 that judgments referring to the present have a more secure 
 validity than those referring to the past. Such an assumption is 
 certainly not made by common sense, which takes judgments 
 regarding the past to be as much a basis of reasoning as 
 judgments regarding the present ; and the fallibility, which 
 undoubtedly affects judgments regarding the past, can be 
 equally found in the case of judgments regarding the present. 
 
 We start, then, from this position which common sense seems 
 in point of fact to accept. Our questions regarding memory- 
 judgments may be reduced to three. What is the specific nature 
 of the object to which these judgments refer ? What is the 
 character of these judgments .■' And lastly we shall ask. What 
 kind of value and certainty have these judgments .■" 
 
 We shall keep in view throughout the parallelism which seems 
 to exist at many points, though certainly not at all points, 
 between the judgments of memory and those of external per- 
 ception. This amounts to no more than a common-sense 
 admission that in some way we may take the past to be as real 
 as the present, and that a reference to our way or ways of 
 knowing the present may by analogy assist us in an inquiry into 
 our knowledge of the past. 
 
io8 STUDIES ik HUMAN NATURE 
 
 II 
 
 The object of memory-judgments is summarily described as 
 the past. But this is indefinite and requires analysis. We do 
 not in memory know the mere flow of past time, but a specific 
 point or part of the past. Past time as a whole, or the past as a 
 whole, may, by contrast to memory-knowledge, be called an ideal 
 construction, of which memory may supply some of the pieces 
 but does not give the whole composition. It is the past of 
 physics and cosmology. Nor do we pretend to know by memory 
 the past which every one understands and accepts in the same 
 sense and with the same complex of events — the past of the 
 historian or the evolutionist. This is built up without any 
 reference to any specific individual's direct experience ; rather 
 the aim of the historian is to get rid of the individual point of 
 view as such, or only to make use of it so far as it corroborates or 
 is corroborated by the experience and points of view of others. 
 History, in fact, is to memory what a scientific statement is to 
 a private opinion. The past to which memory refers is the 
 individual's own past and nothing further : the past of history 
 does not directly deal with that of any particular individual at 
 all. But even the individual's own past is not in every sense 
 the object of memory. Some of his past operates upon his life 
 effectively but is unknown to memory. The residual influences 
 of previous experience, the acquired habits of thought and action, 
 the colour of previous feeling, and the complex texture of the 
 previous events of his life, not to speak of the heritage or 
 ancestry which links his individuality to a previous generation 
 or generations — all these are in a strict sense his past as an 
 individual, but they are not the past he remembers. For they 
 all have the characteristics of being at once indefinite in their 
 operation, unconscious to his thought, and incapable of being 
 identified by him as facts which he ascribes to himself or 
 consciously places in some part of his previous experience. 
 Only when he affirms what has been as his own, as being what 
 it was because he made it so, does he form the judgment " I 
 remember this or that." It is the past in this sense that we 
 are concerned with when speaking of the object of memory. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 109 
 
 It may be noted, in passing, that the reality or existence 
 which we ascribe to the past of memory raises no difficulties 
 which are not equally found when we speak of the reality of the 
 past in any of the other senses. Whatever meaning the reality 
 of the past of history or physics or cosmology may have, we 
 must be equally justified in describing the past of memory as 
 real : for the latter is only a particular kind of past. We do 
 regard the events of history as real and not fictitious creations of 
 the human mind. It is true that the lower strata of a geological 
 formation were in existence before the upper strata : it is true 
 that the Romans occupied Britain before the Normans appeared. 
 And what is true implies a reference to reality. When we say 
 the past is no longer real, all we mean is that the past is no 
 longer present : and that is tautology. If we say the past was 
 never real, because it no longer exists as it once was, we are 
 either begging a serious question or perhaps talking nonsense. 
 The reason why common sense regards the past as a reality 
 is that reality is held to be continuous in its process, and all 
 parts of that process are necessary to make reality what it . 
 fully is. If this be denied, there is no choice between illusion 
 and solipsism, — if that be a choice at all. If change is not a 
 character of the real, the word " past " has literally no itaeaning. 
 If change is real, then all the stages of change are states of 
 reality whether they appear at one time or another, be past or 
 present. What science and history do, is to build up gradually by 
 an effort of interpretation the connection between the discrete parts 
 or stages by which the reality considered has gone through its pro- 
 cess. That this interpretation refers to reality is never questioned, 
 and cannot be doubted without denying the fact of change. The 
 same must apply to the past of memory. The changes through 
 which the individual mind passes are as real as the individuality 
 which passes through and holds together these changes. And it 
 is the course or series of these changes which is referred to by 
 the successive memory-judgments. 
 
 The general character of the object of memory is, then, 
 individual experience as a process of changes which have 
 occurred, to which we can consciously refer, and which we claim 
 as peculiarly our own. The reality to which we ultimately refer 
 
no STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in such judgments, the ultimate "subject," to use the familiar 
 logical term, is our one individual experience, which is identical 
 throughout the changes and which unites them all. Reality is 
 everywhere individual, identity through diversity, whether the 
 diversities appear simultaneously or successively. In our 
 judgment of a present reality, its constituent elements are in 
 general simultaneous ; in memory-judgments the elements are 
 always successive. The actual way in which these two factors 
 (identity and change) of our individual experience are blended, 
 is that of continuity. This continuity of individual experience I 
 take to be the essential nature of the specific object dealt with 
 and referred to in memory-judgments. Every time I judge that 
 this or that happened in my experience, I am affirming the 
 continuity of my individual experience, and point to certain parts 
 of it which have made up its content. Behind continuity no 
 doubt there lies the more ultimate fact of the activity of the 
 individual life which has reacted on its environment and, in so 
 doing, has built up its concrete reality. But with this point, 
 which is rather metaphysical than logical, we are not here 
 directly concerned. It is only after this activity has operated 
 through a considerable variety of changes and has fused these 
 changes together, that the continuity to which memory speci- 
 fically refers is effectively secured and established. 
 
 The continuity in question is never abstract, but is filled in 
 with perfectly definite elements, each with a character of its own. 
 Hence it is inaccurate to say that memory-judgments prove the 
 fact of the continuity of the individual life, as if continuity were 
 an abstract principle deducible from the acts of remembering. 
 Memory-judgments are operations of the mind by which we 
 express in the present our awareness of the continuity of our 
 past with our present. In the same way it is equally inaccurate 
 to say that memory assumes the fact of continuity of our 
 experience. Memory-judgments no more assume the existence 
 of their object than external perception assumes the existence of 
 the world about us. The world about us, so far as perception 
 goes, is just the object perceived : perception is one way in which 
 the externally real becomes an object, i.e. enters into the sphere 
 of what we call our knowledge. Similarly continuity of our 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE in 
 
 experience is primarily the object known in memory, and there- 
 fore is not postulated as being before it is known. What that 
 continuity may be apart from memory, it is not for memory to 
 consider, any more than it is the business of the acts of per- 
 ception to decide what the world about us may be independent 
 of our specific perception. In memory-judgments we become 
 aware of the continuity of our individual experience ; and this is 
 almost a tautology ; for being aware of our continuity is just 
 what memory-judgments consist in. 
 
 We need not, however, maintain that only in memory- 
 judgments do we become aware of our continuity. It seems 
 certainly true that we do have to some degree — a degree varying 
 from individual to individual and from time to time in the same 
 individual — a kind of sense or feeling of our continuity, an 
 indefinite and inarticulate mental state in which different factors 
 co-operate and coalesce, and to which therefore we may assign 
 the term "feeling" of continuity. The more stable our in- 
 dividual mind, the more uniform its operations and responses 
 to its environment, especially its emotional responses, the more 
 Hkely are we to have a clear consciousness of this feeling of 
 continuity. But while some might attach very great importance 
 to this feeling in their consciousness of continuity, it does not 
 conflict with but, on the contrary, may often support the memory- 
 judgments. And in any case it does not take the place of 
 memory, for its peculiar character lies just in being a general 
 feeling,^ and not a judgment at all, which is articulate and 
 definite in its reference to some part of our experience.^ 
 
 While the object of memory, then, is the continuity of our 
 experience, memory-judgments always have a specific object as 
 their content. This is selected by attention from the variety of 
 content making up the continuity of our experience. This 
 operation is closely analogous to what takes place in our per- 
 ception of the external world. We do not perceive, e.g. by 
 sight, the whole region that is visible, but select a specific object 
 in the totum visible and concentrate our attention on that. We 
 perceive, in short, a visible object : the rest of the visible region 
 
 I Comparable to mere sensation in relation to judgments of perception, 
 ^ We shall refer to this again in the second stage of the analysis. 
 
112 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 lies round that with varying degrees of clearness and distinct- 
 ness. We are aware that there is no gap between what we do 
 perceive and the remainder : but the reality of the visible world 
 is focussed for the time being at a particular point, the object 
 perceived. So in memory-judgments. We do not know by 
 memory the whole continuity of our previous experience at once, 
 but a particular part of it, which we, owing to our special interest 
 in it for the time being, know as belonging to our experience. 
 The fact that though thus selected, and therefore partially 
 isolated, the object is still affirmed as part of our continuity often 
 without our linking it to other adjacent objects in the series, 
 shows how closely our continuity enters into the very life of our 
 individuality. It might seem at first sight that, to remember any 
 bit of the past, we should have to go through a succession of 
 stages connecting the object remembered with what preceded 
 and what followed. Sometimes we find we do this, but not 
 always ; and in principle it is not necessary, any more than it is 
 necessary, in order to perceive an object in the external world, 
 that we should perceive this object as being alongside many 
 others. The conscious reference to other objects may be very 
 indirect indeed, and hardly present to the mind. And, in fact, it 
 would be paradoxical if it were always necessary to relate an 
 object to other objects before the object perceived could actually 
 be perceived ; for then we should either have to do the same in 
 the case of those other objects, and thus proceed ad infinitum, 
 or else we should never perceive an object at all. We may be 
 and often are so vividly aware of a particular object as not to 
 perceive any other objects. They may be felt or sensed as being 
 there ; but that is not perception. So in the case of memory. 
 The object remembered can be judged as having fallen within 
 my experience without necessarily connecting it with a pre- 
 decessor or successor. Indeed, this is requisite in many operations 
 of memory, when the quick recall of a specific object is for the 
 time our sole interest in our past.^ And even when our interest 
 in the past is not confined to a single selected object, but to a 
 series of objects, as in the case of reverie where we dwell on the 
 
 1 I admit that the implication of other objects in the continuity is a matter of 
 degree : but the degree may vary from vague indefiniteness upvifards. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 113 
 
 past for its own sake, our memory of these objects consists in a 
 succession of discrete judgments, acts of remembering par- 
 ticular objects. Memory, in short, is not a blurred appre- 
 hension of the past, but an articulate judgment regarding its 
 contents. 
 
 Such contents may be any aspect of psychic experience which 
 has definitely engaged our activity for a time and so modified 
 our individuality as a whole. Thus it is that we remember not 
 only acts of will in the strict sense, but phases of feeling and 
 emotion, and forms of knowledge. We remember that we paid 
 our debts or failed to ipay them ; we can with the poetess 
 " indulge in memory's rapturous pain ; " we can remember past 
 apprehension or perception or judgments ; we can even remember 
 that we remembered, or again that we did not remember. 
 Individuals differ from one another in the way and in the degree 
 to which they can remember these different contents ; some can 
 remember past acts better than thoughts or feelings. But such 
 variation is characteristic of all operations of consciousness, as we 
 familiarly recognise in the " specialist's memory," or in describing 
 one person as having a good verbal memory, another a memory 
 for ideas, a third as having an auditory memory, a fourth a 
 visual memory, and so on. 
 
 While all these contents must belong to the past as con- 
 tinuous with our present, it is not necessary that in all cases there 
 should be a precise reference to a specific time. The past, of 
 course, involves the element of time : but continuity with the 
 present is the fundamental fact, not the continuity of a definite 
 time series. This last is a highly abstract element with a 
 uniform and invariable direction of its own. We partly build up 
 the idea of this uninterrupted flow of time from our memory- 
 judgments. The latter do not depend for their operation on the 
 accurate reproduction of the abstractly uniform time series. All 
 that we require for memory -judgments is that they should refer 
 to the past as a continuity which runs into our present and is 
 different from it.^ Hence it is that we remember many things 
 
 ' It is interesting to note in confirmation of this point that each individual tends 
 to have a memory series peculiar to himself : much indeed as each tends to estimate 
 time in a way of his own. 
 
 I 
 
114 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 which we cannot place anjnvhere specifically in the time series, 
 but which, we are sure, fell within our experience somewhere. 
 Hence, too, we remember some facts accurately but not in their 
 exact order, the order which they must have taken in the single 
 time series. The time order is something over and above the 
 content we remember. The remembrance in a certain order no 
 doubt may help to give cogency and certainty to our judgment 
 of each object remembered. But so far from this being regarded 
 as a necessity for accurate memory of particular objects, we 
 rather consider it a sign of a defective, or at least primitive, mind 
 if an individual cannot be sure of a particular occurrence without 
 going over the whole record of events which preceded, or if, when 
 interrupted in the recital, he has to begin all over again. When 
 we remember a verse of poetry, or a passage in a book, or a 
 place we have seen, we do not generally, and certainly need not 
 for accuracy, locate the object remembered at some specific time 
 in our past life. Indeed for many objects remembered this may 
 be altogether impossible, as e.g. when we have met the object 
 remembered very often, and it has thus become completely dis- 
 sociated or detached from any specific time position. But we do 
 locate the object in our past as an object which has entered into 
 our experience, and which we affirm to have some place in the con- 
 tinuity of our individual life. The time series of the past, then, 
 is one thing, the content of the past is another. The latter is 
 the primary and ultimate object of memory, and is not in the 
 first instance directly bound up with the former, so far at least as 
 the precision of the object of memory-judgment is concerned. 
 
 There remains a last point of some importance. What dis- 
 tinguishes past from present, and where does the past, to which 
 memory refers, begin 1 The operations of sense-perception form 
 the primary region of the present, and with these are inseparably 
 associated actual bodily movements of all kinds, whether of the 
 body as a whole or of its various organs, and certain feelings 
 characterised by novelty or freshness. The typical or standard 
 judgment of the present, the judgment of external perception, 
 combines these features. The sphere of free ideas or images is 
 distinct from perception mainly through the absence in the 
 former and the presence in the latter of organic movements. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 115 
 
 These free ideas and images may be of two kinds : those which 
 are allied with incipient, unfamiliar, and arrested activity — 
 mainly bodily activity, — and those which are allied with con- 
 sciously realised, or fulfilled, activity which suggests no further 
 movement of any kind. The former belong to what we call our 
 future, the latter to what we call our past. Hence it is that all 
 that belongs to our past invariably has the aspect of familiarity 
 and of attainment, and is accepted without any attempt at 
 alteration. Alteration pertains to the future, not the past. So 
 much is this the case that memory seems to reflect as in a still 
 mirror an unchangeable realm of images or ideas. Whenever 
 we seek to change what is presented to us, or see what is 
 presented change before us, we know we are no longer in the 
 region of memory pure and simple. Distinct from both percep- 
 tion and the free ideas associated with movement is, e.g., the realm 
 of concepts, with which are allied no bodily movements of any 
 kind : and hence we rightly regard these as not belonging in a real 
 sense to the present, past, or future of concrete experience, and 
 as having no time qualification at all. Further than these dis- 
 tinctions which common sense uses to mark off the past from the 
 present and both from the future, we do not require to go in our 
 analysis here. We can, however, easily see how, even apart 
 from abnormalities of experience, the border line between what 
 we reproduce and what we imaginatively construct may in some 
 cases be very fine, and how it is often very difficult in practice to 
 determine whether we are actually remembering or merely 
 imagining a part of our experience. These are often mixed up 
 even in the case of people with good memories. But however 
 this may take place, the general principle holds good and is 
 admitted : for we never seek to alter what memory supplies, and 
 we can always try to alter when imagination constructs. As a 
 rule the sense of familiarity, the consciousness that our activity has 
 once been fulfilled in a certain direction, increases or decreases 
 as attention is concentrated on the object before us ; and this is 
 generally sufficient to make us aware whether we are remembering 
 or imagining. 
 
ii6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 III 
 
 We come now to the next stage of the analysis — What sort 
 of judgment is a memory-judgment? Round this point there 
 has been much controversy. We shall not discuss the different 
 theories. All the different views which have been put forward in 
 connection with our knowledge of objects of the external world, 
 have played their part in the discussion of the object of memory, 
 mainly because perception has been taken as the type of all know- 
 ledge and memory interpreted on the same lines as perception. 
 
 The difficulty in deciding the character of the judgment of 
 memory seems to be largely due to the apparent absence, in the 
 case of the object of memory, of many or most of those features of 
 the environing world which supply much of the material of thought 
 and the usual model of what we call an object. We are accustomed 
 constantly to supplement our own apprehension of the world of 
 objects about us by intercourse with our fellows, and this both 
 acts as a check on our own particular apprehension and helps to 
 give the object the quality of detachment from the individual 
 In other words, social intercourse creates what we call universal 
 or common experience ; and this carries with it the consequence 
 that the object of such experience is independent of any given 
 individual, and is thus in a sense universal likewise. Hence 
 universality of experience and objectivity have been by some 
 thinkers literally identified. But when we are dealing with 
 memory-knowledge, our object is altogether dependent on, or at 
 least directly bound up with, our individual mind. No one can 
 remember for us, or in the long run deny the validity of another's 
 memory. We may correct our own memory by the help of 
 others ; but in the last resort the truth of our memory-judgments 
 is final for ourselves. To surrender it absolutely is to give up 
 the fact of the conscious continuity of our own individual life ; 
 and this we never do nor can do without loss of conscious in- 
 dividuality altogether. It would be like giving up our own 
 emotions or private opinions or feelings, which constitute so large 
 a part of our distinctive individual existence. The object of 
 memory does not transcend individual experience, and yet it is 
 none the less an object on that account. For it transcends our 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 117 
 
 conscious present, and that of itself is perhaps enough to con- 
 stitute an object. But when to this is added the characteristic 
 that the object of memory remains the same, and is found to be 
 the same, after repeated changes in our individual experience 
 and successive variations in our history, then it seems indeed 
 absurd to deny to the object of memory the quality of objective 
 reality, which all matters of fact possess. 
 
 The neglect of this wider significance of the term object 
 is a serious defect in certain well-known theories of knowledge. 
 It is overlooked that the repetition by an individual of his 
 own experience is even in principle not really different from 
 the process of constituting an object by intercourse between 
 several minds, on which the sole stress is laid by these theories. 
 In certain forms of knowledge of the higher order, e.g. some 
 of the higher developments of science, the objects dealt with 
 are not arrived at or experienced through intercourse with 
 other minds of equal ability, still less with other minds of 
 average capacity, but are known only to the investigator himself. 
 His assurance of the truth of his knowledge is obtained simply by 
 repeating his own experiences, retracing his course of reasoning, 
 and in other ways. There is therefore nothing unique in the 
 character of the object of memory, when we say that its object 
 never transcends individual experience, for the same is true of 
 many other objects that fall within experience — feelings, ideas, 
 and even certain objects of science. 
 
 Admitting this, we have to ask in what way the object in the 
 memory-judgment is apprehended .' The judgment seems to 
 consist in the ascription to oneself in the present of a part of the 
 content falling within the continuity which connects past and 
 present in the individual life. The judgment takes effect in the 
 present ; it refers to the past ; and the identity or unity which 
 holds these different elements (present and past state) together 
 is the continuity of the individual. We may put it otherwise by 
 saying that the reality underlying the judgment is the individual 
 mind as a single unity. The memory-judgment makes this unity 
 explicit in a special way, viz., by an act which unites a part of 
 its continuity which belongs to the past with another part which 
 is in the present. In this sense it is perhaps correct to describe 
 
ii8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the memory-judgment (as Mr. Bradley does) " as an enlargement 
 by ideal content of reality beyond the present." ^ But when 
 this is given apparently as an alternative to the statement that 
 " memory is an ideal construction of the past by which present 
 realityis qualified," there are both difficulties and even obscurities in 
 such a proposition. These, however, we need not pause to consider. 
 
 We may also say that the part of my continuity which is 
 past is predicated or affirmed of the self which is in the present. 
 My present, for purposes of this judgment, is not a particular 
 feeling or idea or act, but simply the concrete state of the self 
 for the time being, which is both feeling, idea and act, and is more 
 especially centred in the perceptual world which, as we saw, 
 peculiarly constitutes our present state. The two factors in the 
 judgment, subject and predicate, are not external to one another 
 here any more than they are in other forms of judgment. They 
 are aspects or elements in the one ultimate reality involved, 
 namely, our continuity as a single individual mind. In language, 
 therefore, we might even say that our present belongs to our 
 past quite as much as our past belongs to our present, since both 
 fall within the same continuity of the individual life. 
 
 In this act of judgment we do not derive the past state from 
 the present by analysis ; for the past is an element of our reality 
 just as much as the present, and, for the reasons already given, 
 is essentially different from it in quality. If, in knowledge, we 
 can properly distinguish what is given from what is known, we 
 should be bound to say that the object of memory is given to us 
 in the same general sense that any other object can be said to be 
 given. The psychical processes which in time precede and always 
 condition the protrusion before our present consciousness of an 
 object which we identify with ourselves in the act of memory- 
 judgment, lie outside of our immediate attention, are governed 
 by special laws of their own, are beyond our choice or power to 
 alter, and to them and their product we submit. These are all 
 characteristics of what we describe as " given to knowledge," and 
 not created by its purpose. We have the same situation in the 
 case of an object which we know by way of the perceptive 
 judgment : for here certain psychical or psycho-physical processes 
 
 ' Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 354. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 119 
 
 pursue their course beyond the pale of our knowledge, and only 
 after these are completed do we by an act of selective attention 
 operate in the form of a judgment of perception. I presume it 
 is because of these processes antecedent to our conscious act of 
 judgment that we speak both in practice and in theory of objects, 
 or again of elements, being " given " to us before knowledge can 
 perform its work. With the psychical processes and conditions 
 underlying the object of memory — persistence, retentiveness, 
 association and the like — we are not concerned in the memory- 
 judgment ; for this presupposes their operation, and supervenes 
 as an act of knowledge after that operation is carried through. 
 In memory-judgment we say simply, " I remember that fact," 
 i.e. I predicate as true of me now a state or an event which has 
 fallen within the continuity constituting my individual life. The 
 fact, as a fact, cannot — so we insist in practice — be altered by me 
 now, and is not altered by my judgment of it as belonging to my 
 whole experience ; any more than we can alter an object of 
 perception. We simply accept it once it is there before us, and 
 build or rebuild it into the structure of our lives by affirming it 
 to be part of ourselves. 
 
 Hence the distinction between some free ideas or images as 
 remembered and as new. We have to make our account with 
 all as they enter the field of consciousness, and if we cannot 
 regard any as having belonged to us before, we proceed to put 
 them into a setting of another kind. 
 
 What brings into existence a given fact remembered, depends 
 in the first instance on what we are doing in the present, on the 
 content of our present state of mind. Our interest in this may 
 awaken and, because of the continuity of our past with our pre- 
 sent, does awaken into life other parts of our individual life by 
 means of the process which wc call association. But this interest 
 is not all powerful in the situation where memory-judgments are 
 formed. In many cases it does no more than exercise a very 
 slight control over the course memory takes. In other cases the 
 object of memory shoots into prominence without any apparent 
 control by our present interest at all. In other cases, again, our 
 interest in the present may be so all-absorbing as to shut off the 
 direct reference to the past altogether ; while in still other cases, 
 
I20 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 e.g. those of reverie, we may surrender ourselves to the past so 
 completely as to lose all interest in, or even any vivid sense of, 
 what is present, and wake up later " with a start," as we often say, 
 to discover we are in the present and not living in the past after 
 all. It is a mistake in fact and in principle, therefore, to ascribe to 
 the interest in the present the whole of what we may know by 
 memory-judgments. And the richer and the longer our past 
 experience, the less does this interest in the present dominate 
 memory-judgment. Our past is as real for us and as much 
 our own as our present, and can be in itself quite as interesting, 
 sometimes, indeed, even more interesting. 
 
 The judgment of memory has, again, a peculiarity not found 
 in many other forms of knowledge. While it is true to say that 
 in every judgment whatsoever the self of the individual is 
 implied, or, as it has been put, the " I think " underlies all know- 
 ledge, this reference to the self is not put forward in every case 
 of judgment. We do not say usually " I know " — or " I think " — 
 " the grass is green '' ; we say simply " The grass is green." The 
 subject is looked upon as articulating its own content, as if 
 we, as minds, need not be present at all. Hence in such a judg- 
 ment, which is typical of an immense range of knowledge, we 
 come to treat the self as something that can be left out of 
 account. And for many purposes we can rightly leave it out of 
 account, since a factor that is present in all cases makes no 
 difference between the various cases. The constant is not so 
 interesting as the variable, and it is the variable which concerns 
 us in the progress of knowledge.! 
 
 But in the case of memory this reference to the self is never 
 implicit, but always consciously explicit. The predicate is 
 asserted solely of the self and by the self which owns the past 
 state. Our judgment is not " that took place," but " I remember 
 it taking place." When we refer to the past without this explicit 
 
 ' This elimination of the self, which is thus a matter of mere practical convenience, 
 has been absurdly construed by certain philosophers as if it implied that the self is 
 not in fact operative in knowledge at all, that knowledge goes on of itself like a 
 wound-up mechanism of thought, its owner, the artificer, merely looking on as it 
 turns out its products — an absurdity which amounts to maintaining that because 
 a principle is present everywhere, it is for that very reason not present anywhere 
 at all. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 121 
 
 reference to ourself, our statement is not a memory-judgment, 
 but a judgment of history in the strict sense. For this reason 
 memory-judgments presuppose, and indeed in a manner express, 
 consciousness of self. They are perhaps amongst our earliest 
 realisations of self-consciousness. Psychologists are accustomed 
 to ascribe self-consciousness to social experience almost ex- 
 clusively: and doubtless this has much to do with its full 
 development. But there has always seemed to me a petitio 
 principii in the argument which explains self-consciousness solely 
 by social intercourse, since social intercourse is only possible if 
 there is first a self in some form which can enter into social 
 relations with others. Memory-judgments make possible such a 
 consciousness of self as precedes full social recognition, and seems 
 an earlier stage in the development of full self-consciousness. 
 
 It is because of this character that memory-judgments seem 
 peculiarly confined to the higher human level of mind. Mr. 
 Bradley has remarked that " the animal mind has neither past 
 nor future," and regards memory as the dividing line between 
 the animal and the human mind.i His statement is dogmatic, 
 but seems on the whole true if we recognise that the supreme 
 distinction between human and other mentality is to be found in 
 consciousness of self, that all the peculiar characteristics of 
 human experience — the pursuit of ideals and the construction 
 of a social order responding to individual initiative — are trace- 
 able in the long run to this principle, and that memory is a 
 specific way in which self-consciousness is realised and expressed. 
 
 We need not, of course, suppose that it is through memory- 
 judgments that we create our self-identity — except in the wide 
 sense that repeated operations of memory make more and more 
 clear to us what our identity consists in or contains. Our self- 
 identity is the basis of memory-judgments ; these but make it 
 explicit and express it in a specific way — by the act of judgment. 
 But it is always a self that is remembered, and by which, from 
 another point of view, the memory-judgment is made, and for 
 which alone it has significance. In this way memory has all the 
 value for an individual mind which we ascribe to feeling or emotion, 
 in which some have sought to find the essence of the consciousness 
 
 ^ Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 356. 
 
122 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 of individual selfhood. We do not as a matter of fact depend 
 solely on feeling for the consciousness of our distinctive individual 
 existence. To have through memory a consciousness that certain 
 states have been peculiarly our own, gives quite as vivid a sense 
 of individual existence as any feeling. 
 
 IV 
 
 While it is true that memory-judgments cannot in the nature of 
 the case arise till a highly complex process of mental development 
 has taken place, it would be erroneous to suppose that the 
 complexity of the process preceding their development implies a 
 corresponding complexity in the acts of memory-judgment. The 
 judgment is complex in the sense that it consists of distinct 
 elements, one of which is the predicate which is attributed to the self 
 of the present, and the other the subject, the self, which consciously 
 assigns to itself the state or event in the continuity of its past. 
 But the image or idea which constitutes the predicate does not 
 intervene between the subject and a kind of static past which is 
 outside it. This does not hold true even of the idea which we 
 predicate of external reality beyond the individual subject. For 
 if so, this reality would for ever remain unknown ; it would be a 
 thing in itself outside all knowledge. Still less can such a view 
 hold of the reality dealt with in memory-judgments, for here 
 reality is just the mind of the individual in its aspect of continuity. 
 The idea or image predicated in the memory-judgment is pre- 
 cisely this aspect of continuity at a particular part of its entirety ; 
 for the idea has or is mental content, and carries within it all that 
 has entered into the activity of the self at the stage to which it 
 refers. This idea does not arouse the feeling of pleasure or pain 
 which was mine when the state first appeared, as if this pleasure 
 or pain were something extra to its nature : it contains that 
 feeling as part of its meaning. It does not, again, suggest the 
 time at which the state appeared (when the element of time is 
 involved in a memory-judgment), as if that time element were 
 something added to the idea ; the time element, when involved, 
 is itself part of the meaning or content of the idea. And so 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 123 
 
 of the other elements involved in the predicate of a memory- 
 judgment. 
 
 The act which affirms " I remember this or that " is ultimate 
 for knowledge. Its truth, if derived, could only be derived from 
 a similar act involving exactly the same presuppositions. This, 
 of course, does not necessarily imply the validity of every 
 particular memory-judgment as it is made.i but merely that 
 there is no way of knowing our individual past at all except 
 by way of a memory-judgment, which, even if proved false, can 
 only be proved so by another memory-judgment. There is 
 nothing more remarkable in considering memory-judgments as 
 ultimate in this sense, than in treating our judgments of the 
 present as ultimate, e.g. those of perception. These are often 
 erroneous, just as memory-judgments are at times in error. But 
 in the long run we have no way of refuting the validity of a 
 judgment of perception except by another judgment of percep- 
 tion. We cannot deduce the truth of a judgment of immediate 
 perception from any other form of knowledge whatsoever, any 
 more than we can derive the act of perceiving from any non- 
 perceptual source of mentality. This seems beyond all dispute ; 
 it would be impossible to be aware of our present at all if this 
 were untenable. But the past is qualitatively distinct from our 
 present, though continuous with it as belonging to our one indi- 
 vidual experience. If, then, we can take up the position that 
 our knowledge of the present is direct and in the long run 
 ultimate, there is nothing unique in affirming that our know- 
 ledge of the past is equally direct and ultimate. The view which 
 maintains that our knowledge of the past must always be 
 indirect, seems due either to confusing our knowledge in 
 the present with knowledge of the present, the latter being 
 treated as primary ; or to regarding our knowledge of a par- 
 ticular area of the past as derivable from our knowledge of 
 the whole past, which is taken to be, and rightly taken to be, 
 a construction of a very complex kind.^ The former position 
 
 1 Otherwise a memory-judgment would be, like a mere psychic event, incapable 
 of being described as true or false. When there is judgment in any form there is 
 always liability to error. 
 
 ' It may also be due to confusing an actual experience as we werei consciously 
 
124 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 need not be discussed after what has been said. The latter 
 makes any construction of the whole past impossible ; for we 
 can only construct out of simpler elements, and these must be 
 obtained directly. There is no source from which they can be 
 secured except that of particular memory-judgments regarding 
 particular areas or parts of our past.^ When it is said, there- 
 fore, that an " immediate knowledge of the past is a miracle," ^ 
 or that ."we can only know the past mediately through the 
 present," ^ we must reply that the only miracle lies in the long 
 run in being able to remember at all, and that it would be a 
 greater miracle to derive the past from a knowledge of the 
 present than to know it directly. 
 
 It is no doubt true that beneath the discrete knowledge of 
 past events, which memory-judgments give, there lies a vague 
 and diffused feeling of our continuity,* which may even be 
 psychically prior to the development of memory-judgment, 
 and which certainly remains a factor in our mental life even 
 after memory-judgments have arisen. But this does not make 
 memory-judgments less direct or final as judgments. The rela- 
 tion, indeed, between this diffused feeling of continuity and the 
 definiteness characteristic of the memory-judgment is closely 
 analogous to that between the level of mere sensation and the 
 act of perception. Perception is not different in degree of clear- 
 ness or complication from sensation ; it is different in kind, and 
 involves a new and unique operation of the mind, that, namely, 
 of selective synthesis. And only by this act can perception be 
 
 aware of it when it happened, e.g. a toothache, with our present consciousness of it 
 as a past event. Clearly a toothache as it is, is not a past event : and as a past event 
 it is not an actual toothache. If to know the past event means to have the actual 
 toothache, there is no past at all, and therefore no knowledge of it as past is possible. 
 The knowledge of it as past means inter alia that there is no actual toothache. The 
 identification of these two objects makes the problem of memory-knowledge meaning- 
 less. The doctrine that the present is immediately known and the past mediately, 
 is in principle the same as the theory of representative perception. 
 
 1 That memory-judgments are not final in the sense of systematically complete 
 may be admitted. Only the truth is final in this sense. They are, however, final 
 in the sense that they are an irreducible type of knowledge, which has its own 
 peculiar conditions and makes its own peculiar contribution to the whole of 
 knowledge. 
 
 '' Bradley. ^ Hamilton. * F. p. Ill, sup. 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 125 
 
 regarded as a judgment conveying knowledge. Relatively to 
 perception, mere sensation is barely knowledge ; it is psychic 
 existence. Similarly, in the case of memory : only through the 
 specific judgment " I remember this or that " does the past 
 become definitely known in the sense in which all knowledge 
 implies articulate selection. 
 
 The various forms of memory-knowledge— expressed by the 
 terms recollection, reverie, reminiscence, remembering — indicate 
 that while our judgment of the past must in the long run be 
 direct and final, memory-judgments can become interrelated. 
 They can support and correct one another, form a body of 
 knowledge about the past which may vary in range and con- 
 nectedness in many ways and degrees of completeness ; while 
 again they can approach the past from different directions. In 
 recollection, our judgment of the past refers to a specific event 
 in its time order ; and this implication of time sequence acts as a 
 correctve and guide to the course taken by the judgments. In 
 reverie, the mind is carried along in a sequence of memory- 
 judgments in which one leads to another not in any logical 
 order or even necessarily in their original temporal order, but 
 merely as the mind might drift over the field of immediate 
 perception at a given time and find each part interesting as it 
 occurs. While the sequence in perception is determined by the 
 juxtaposition of objects, it is determined in reverie by suggestion 
 from point to point in the series of memories. In reminiscence, 
 again, we have a connected temporal sequence of groups of 
 events, each of which contains events temporally associated, but 
 as groups there is no continuous temporal connection, and there 
 is no rigorous control over the sequence of judgments by tem- 
 poral continuity. In remembering there is not any necessary 
 reference to time sequence at all. Facts and events are referred 
 to the past, but the tempo of the events is not required or em- 
 phasised. Typical cases of this form of memory are found in 
 the remembrance of a verse of poetry or an isolated fact of 
 knowledge. Our hold over such parts of our experience is only 
 to be secured by memory-judgments. In the more complicated 
 cases, as, for example, in remembering a long poem, the memory- 
 judgments, in which each element is known, are built into one 
 
126 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 another largely by the help of association on the one hand and 
 a memory of the general structure of the whole piece remem- 
 bered on the other. In this process undoubtedly judgment, of 
 another kind than that of memory, and inference as well, have an 
 important role to play. 
 
 V 
 
 We come to the last point — the value and certainty of 
 memory-knowledge. That memory plays an important part in 
 the composition and the progress of knowledge is evident. Even 
 the simplest processes of scientific knowledge — those of observa- 
 tion — involve the operation of memory. The mere transference 
 to paper of what is seen through a microscope is only possible 
 if we remember during the second stage what we have seen in 
 the first. The highly complicated processes of constructing an 
 elaborate theory are only carried through by a constant appeal 
 to memory. But memory never gives organised knowledge, and 
 never has the security of inference. The only kind of connection 
 of which it admits is the external connection of mere collocation, 
 or mere sequence, of independent judgments. We can never 
 give a reason why certain separately remembered facts are put 
 side by side. We can at best only assign a cause — that the 
 facts referred to in the memory-judgments must have been 
 created by the activity of the individual, and thus form part of 
 its continuity. Whenever we seek to show that the content of 
 a judgment is such that it is essentially connected with another 
 either by implication or extension of its identical substance, we 
 have inference in the strict sense, and the beginning of a system 
 of knowledge. Thus, if I say that I must have had a ticket for 
 the railway journey because the ticket collector entered the 
 carriage as usual and allowed me to proceed on my journey 
 without remark, this is inference pure and simple, based on the 
 inherent connection between the stages of the system consti- 
 tuting a railway journey. But if I say I remember buying the 
 ticket and remember giving it up, we have a mere arrangement 
 of memory-judgments. None of these in particular guarantees 
 its own necessary truth, for necessity implies inherent relation to 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 127 
 
 a system. The more numerous the memory-judgments which 
 relate to a single arrangement of events, the more likely each 
 is to be accepted as true ; for this tends to give the series of 
 judgments that close connection characteristic of a rational 
 system. Hence it is that, when the memory-judgments are 
 numerous, we almost involuntarily commingle or even confuse 
 memory-sequence with inference, so much so that we will invent 
 a link in the chain which memory cannot restore, and come to 
 imagine as having happened what is not really remembered. 
 Commonly the greater the breaks between the memory-judg- 
 ments, or the fewer the memory-judgments, the less likely are 
 we to fall into this confusion. And we are the more sure that 
 we are remembering simply when we are aware that the several 
 judgments stand isolated from one another. 
 
 Thus the truth of a memory-judgment is always a particular 
 truth, and has all the limitations in value which such truth 
 possesses. It is unsupported, and unverified, sometimes even 
 unverifiable ; if we care to say so, it is altogether contingent. 
 And no increase in the number of adjacent parts of the con- 
 tinuity of the past remembered will alter this character or turn 
 it into a truth of a higher order — the truth characteristic of a 
 systematically connected whole. We increase the probability of 
 its truth, we lessen the weakness of its contingency, by the 
 number of adjacent parts of the continuity we can remember ; 
 but that is all. This is inherent in the situation. Our memory- 
 judgments are formed for and by individual minds as such, and 
 have no source or support, qu& memory, except from the indi- 
 vidual mind. Hence it is that we are always ready, or at least 
 the highly socialised mind is ready, to admit the frailty of 
 memory-judgments ; and experience too painfully justifies the 
 modesty of the confession. In many cases the best support for 
 a particular memory-judgment is only to be found in the negative 
 and weak assistance to be derived from not remembering any- 
 thing that contradicts the judgment made. When such contra- 
 diction does occur, as when we " think we remember " that we took 
 the three o'clock train, and also think we remember being at our 
 destination at two o'clock, we refuse to accept either deliverance 
 and refuse to rely in this case on our memory at all. But this 
 
128 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 does not disturb our mental security, any more than when we 
 make a mistake regarding the realm of perception and call a 
 camellia a rose. 
 
 The judgment of memory is none the less true because 
 disconnected from other judgments. Its truth is in this respect 
 similar to that of judgments of perception, each of which, as far 
 as it is mere perception, stands by itself as a judgment of a 
 particular matter of fact. From the point of view of perception, 
 there is no reply possible to Hume's statement that we can find 
 no inherent connection between two perceived facts or events ; 
 " the impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the 
 second ; this is the whole that appears to the outward senses." 
 But we do not question our judgment of each fact by itself. 
 There is thus nothing peculiar in the truth of a memory- 
 judgment which might raise doubts about admitting that 
 disconnected judgments can convey a truth. Only in the interests 
 of a theory, e.g. that the whole, or completely systematic truth, 
 can alone be called truth at all, is it possible to raise objections 
 to the view that a memory-judgment conveys a truth. But such 
 a theory either ignores the plain deliverances of knowledge, or 
 else it must be consistent with the admission that isolated 
 judgments convey truth. If the latter, then memory will be 
 admitted to have at least a certain degree of truth. This is all, 
 in fact, that memory-judgments claim to have. But such truth 
 as they individually possess cannot in the long run be set aside 
 except in the interest of other memory-judgments. Their truth 
 cannot be cancelled or revised by any mind or collection of 
 minds except that of the individual who exercises the act of 
 memory-judgment. For they only hold for him and are, qud 
 memory, of no final value to any one else, though for him they 
 are supremely important. It is useless, therefore, to try to 
 degrade the truth of memory-judgment by pointing out that it is 
 so much lower than inference, and that in fact it requires to 
 be revised in order to enter the realm of truth at all. Memory- 
 judgments do not claim to rival the coherence of inferential 
 truth, and it is a mere irrelevance to criticise memory-judgments 
 from that point of view. The mind is not convinced that its 
 memory-judgments are not true because it cannot give a reason 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 129 
 
 for their inherent relation to other judgments, like in kind or 
 different in kind : any more than the mind is convinced that it 
 does not see a s'^-ine because it cannot give a reason for seeing 
 the stone to be where it is. It is equally useless to say that 
 memory-judgments cannot as such convey truth of their own 
 because they are often in error, and therefore must have a 
 criterion for their truth beyond their own deliverance. It is true 
 that memory-judgments are often in error, but the correction of 
 the error quA memory, can only be made by another appeal to 
 memory : and this is generally what is done and is found 
 satisfactory. Indeed, how otherwise could we admit that 
 memory had been mistaken except by convincing the mind by 
 an appeal, a further appeal, to memory "i If this is meaningless, 
 how are we to account for the fact that perception is often 
 mistaken, and yet we correct an erroneous perception by another 
 perception, thus admitting that perception as such is the final 
 criterion in its own sphere .■' By no amount of conceptual 
 deduction or inference can we create, or destroy, or even verify a 
 truth derived from perceptual judgment. Perception is a level of 
 knowledge for which no other process of knowledge can be, or 
 provide, a substitute. The formulae for gravitation will never 
 give us the sense of weight ; the laws of light will never supply 
 us with the perception of colour. Each type or level of know- 
 ledge is a unique function of the mind operating under its own 
 conditions and carrying within its own order its own warranty for 
 its truth. And this holds for memory as for every other type of 
 knowledge. The intermittent fallibility of memory, therefore, is 
 no proof of the general incapacity of memory to supply truth, 
 and is not to be overcome by appealing to truth of another order 
 of knowledge. 
 
 The truth of a memory-judgment is thus in the first instance 
 an isolated truth, capable no doubt of entering into a larger body 
 of truth, but certain and valid as it stands. Because of its 
 isolated character it provides in general the material for com- 
 pleter knowledge of reality ; for this larger knowledge comes by 
 way of inference, and thus passes out of the range of memory 
 and equally out of the domain of merely individual experience. 
 But it is only in certain cases that this advance in the knowledge 
 
I30 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 of the past can be made. It appears, for instance, when the facts 
 to which our memory refers have a wider significance than our 
 own individual experience requires or possesses ; for the facts 
 referred to are often facts which have entered into other people's 
 experience as well, and thus our knowledge of these facts may- 
 become common knowledge. Our judgments, therefore, may be 
 a contribution to a common stock, and are on that account liable 
 to, and capable of, correction by others. This process of criticism 
 and correction prepares the way for the wider knowledge of them 
 which appears as universal judgment or inference. But many 
 facts of the past can never be so supplemented and corrected by 
 the knowledge which others possess. They remain peculiarly 
 and always within a single individual's cognisance. Here the 
 truth of a memory-judgment must be accepted as final till it is 
 contradicted. 
 
 The individual may, indeed, not merely feel convinced of its 
 truth but support his conviction by additional memory-judgments. 
 But he can never by memory have the security of inference or 
 systematic truth, for this at once carries him beyond memory to 
 the region of universal experience. 
 
 VI 
 
 This investigation leads to certain important conclusions. If 
 the field of memory-judgments is that described, no theory of 
 knowledge can be adequate which takes its start primarily or 
 solely from our knowledge of the external world. It is equally 
 inadmissible to regard, as Mr. Bradley and others do, the know- 
 ledge of the present as providing the final criterion for the truth 
 which knowledge supplies. This view, which seems to lead 
 directly to scepticism, rests partly on a confusion between 
 knowledge in the present, where certainly all knowledge takes, 
 place, and knowledge of the present, which as certainly all 
 knowledge is not ; and partly it rests on the prejudice, which at 
 least requires justification and has received none, that the present 
 has greater importance for knowledge because it seems more 
 important for life and practice. 
 
 Again, if we thus broaden the basis of knowledge to include 
 
THE NATURE OF MEMORY-KNOWLEDGE 131 
 
 the past as well as the present, it is impossible to accept a theory 
 of thought, or knowledge in general, which asserts, almost as a 
 self-evident axiom, that knowledge is an ideal extension through 
 judgment and inference of an immediate which is focussed in the 
 present, or more narrowly still, in present sensation.^ Apart from 
 other objections to this logical theory, it ignores altogether the 
 peculiar character of our knowledge of ourselves which we have 
 through direct acquaintance with our past. 
 
 The admission of the independent validity of memory- 
 judgments will react on our theory of knowledge in another 
 direction. It will tend to emphasise the essentially anthro- 
 pocentric character of all our knowledge. For memory-knowledge 
 as such finds its primary value in the individual life which it 
 subserves. There is no " external world " to which such know- 
 ledge refers. If this be true of parts of knowledge, may not all 
 knowledge find its significance simply within the purposive pro- 
 cesses of the human mind, which at the best is but one kind of 
 individual reality in the totality of the real world with which it 
 stands in relation ? Instead, therefore, of saying, in the language 
 of a familiar school of logicians, that the world is sustained by a 
 continuous effort of the intellect, may it not rather be that our 
 intellect is sustained in its activity by the world of real beings 
 which the individual mind encounters, and, in its active relation 
 therewith, carries through the processes of the intellect as one 
 special way of realising its own supreme purpose of self- 
 maintenance when face to face with other beings ? 
 
 It also follows that objectivity cannot be interpreted solely in 
 terms of universal, i.e. common, experience. There is an object 
 which is only found in individual experience, and is not the less 
 real though confined to the region of individual experience. We 
 may, indeed, say that even here its essential character is 
 universality, since the repetition by the individual of an ex- 
 perience the same in kind is equivalent to universality within the 
 sphere of his experience. But this is certainly not universality 
 in the sense accepted by current theories of logic. The latter is 
 
 1 Bosanquet, Logic, i. p. 90. "Judgment is primarily the intellectual act which 
 extends a given perception by attaching the content of an idea to the fact presented 
 in the perception." 
 
132 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 always socially constituted. A truth is held to be true, an object 
 is regarded as an object, because it holds for a plurality of minds 
 concurrently and not for an individual mind exclusively. 
 
 But if objectivity is accepted in this wider sense, then the 
 current view that the final guarantee of truth is systematic 
 connection must also be modified or abandoned. Such a test 
 is inseparably bound up with the doctrine of the inter-relation of 
 finite minds in a social system, ultimately perhaps the system 
 of human minds as a whole, or humanity as an organised whole 
 of mentality. If we extend the meaning of objectivity in the 
 way described, we must give a distinctive and independent place 
 in the economy of knowledge to uniqueness of individual 
 judgment as a mode in which truth is apprehended. Generalised, 
 this implies the acceptance of intuition, in some sense, as an 
 avenue to truth equally with, and yet independent of, reflective 
 systematic connectedness or inference. 
 
 Finally, if we assign an independent place to intuition in the 
 sphere of human experience, we cannot literally dissolve the 
 individuality of the mind into a larger comprehensive universal 
 mind, and regard the latter as " taking up " or even fulfilling the 
 whole purpose and nature of the former. The individual with 
 his intuitions, as likewise with his emotions and even opinions, is 
 an irreducible centre of mentality, with a reality and claims 
 uniquely his own, whatever contribution he may make to the 
 stock of common mental life which he shares with others. 
 Whether the individual mind is to be assigned a larger or a 
 subordinate or an equal reality with the universal mind is a 
 problem which only a metaphysical inquiry can attempt to 
 answer. 
 
V 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF 
 
 THE REAL 
 
 "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas." — Pascal. , 
 
 " Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 But we must still be seeking ? " 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Most philosophers would lead us to suppose that man's only 
 channel of approach to reality is through reflective knowledge. 
 This carries with it the assumption that reality must in the long 
 run mean the same for every one ; for truth, it is held, is one, 
 and truth is the goal of knowledge, which seeks to interpret 
 reality. Plain experience does not seem to support such 
 positions. There is no single reality for all human beings. 
 Reality has a different meaning for different individuals ; and 
 both the sense of reality and the capacity for reality vary 
 enormously between human beings even of the same society and 
 race. The range of reality for most people is extraordinarily 
 limited. Their consciousness of reality differs immensely in 
 degree and even in kind. The child's sense of reality is certainly 
 not the same and never can be the same as that of the adult, and 
 hardly seems to have much affinity with that of our reflective 
 philosophers. Indeed, it cannot be said that philosophers have 
 established amongst themselves a common consciousness of 
 reality. Nor can it be maintained that in fact there is only one 
 way of becoming conscious of reality. We can certainly get in 
 touch with reality by way of reflective processes, by the pathway 
 
 133 
 
134 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 of ideas. But equally will we find reality through action, or 
 again by perception. We can approach reality by processes 
 primarily mental, and by processes primarily organic. Through 
 perception we are mortised to the real about us in a way which 
 makes us almost one with the external world. Through the 
 physical constitution of our bodies we are in very literalness 
 continuous with physical nature. Are these not ways in which 
 reality comes home to us with all its insistence ? Some individuals 
 select one channel of approach to the real, others another. The 
 primitive man, the schoolboy, the scientist, the poet and the man 
 of affairs have each their own way of finding reality. The 
 philosopher is entitled to take his own way : he is not entitled to 
 maintain it is the only way, or even that his is the best way for 
 every one. 
 
 Nor, again, is the human individual so poor that he must rely 
 on the one way of reflection to attain the full consciousness of 
 reality. All his activities carry him beyond himself, and it 
 requires all his resources to do justice to his own reality and the 
 reality of the world in which he lives and moves and has his 
 being. One of his resources lies in that state of his individuality 
 in which is concentrated in inseparable union his mental and 
 organic (or physical) energies, which is at once body and mind. 
 That state is emotion. In view of the range and the importance 
 of emotion in human life, we are justified in asking what contri- 
 bution emotion makes to our consciousness of reality. 
 
 I 
 
 There are those who regard emotion as a frame of mind 
 which should be distrusted, or controlled, or even suppressed 
 altogether. Emotion, it is held, gives a misleading direction to 
 the individual's life, turning him away from the " truth about " 
 the real or the " true nature " of the real. These views rest on a 
 prejudice on the one hand, and on an incorrect conception of the 
 operation of emotion on the other. The prejudice is that of 
 intellectualism. It is maintained that man's nature is at its best, 
 is fully human, when he brings into play his reasoning powers. 
 Emotion being non-rational is held to be irrational, or to lead to 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 135 
 
 paths which are irrational. The explicitly intelligent or intelli- 
 gible is considered the highest, and emotion but a hindrance to 
 the attainment of the intelligible. Even when emotion is 
 admitted to a place in the economy of human nature, it is looked 
 on as a lower level of human nature, only permissible in default 
 of the guidance of thought, to be transcended or transmuted if 
 and when the level of thought is attained. This intellectualistic 
 prejudice is fostered and encouraged by the whole trend of 
 academic culture, and is probably traceable in the long run to the 
 influence of Greek ideals of human life on Western scholastic 
 institutions. Schools and universities are exclusively concerned 
 with the development of intellectual interest in and control over 
 the real world. For them knowledge and only knowledge is 
 power, meaning by knowledge the intellectual articulation of 
 the real. 
 
 Such a prejudice runs directly counter to the history and the 
 essential conditions of man's life. It ignores the patent fact that 
 both the pursuit of knowledge and the accomplishment of the 
 end of knowledge are themselves inseparable from states of 
 emotion.^ Apart from this, there are domains of experience 
 where not merely does emotion exclusively dominate the 
 situation, but where intellectual activity as such is not accepted 
 as a guide at all and where its intrusion is admitted to be 
 irrelevant and unreliable. The joy in beauty, the horror of 
 tumultuous ruin, are not the outcome and do not require the 
 assistance or intervention of a calculated intellectual analysis. 
 The man who would resolve into a process of reasoning the 
 insistent calls of his being to charity and affection would hardly 
 be considered the best type of friend or a model representative 
 of the domestic virtues. The power of reverence in the soul 
 overmasters the claims of reason to a voice in the experience. 
 In these spheres of experience Hume's remark holds true that 
 " reason is the slave of the passions." The most that processes 
 of reasoning can accomplish in such cases is to contrive the 
 means to the better fulfilment of the emotional life. The intellect 
 can neither supplant these kinds of emotion, nor reproduce by 
 ways of its own the peculiar quality of experience realised in the 
 
 ' V. Chap. III. 
 
136 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 emotion. We may completely understand the physical nature of 
 sounds constituting a sonata or even the theory of its composition 
 as a piece of music, without thereby experiencing or being able 
 to experience the peculiar emotional satisfaction which its 
 harmonies can create. Except in rare cases it is certain that 
 the artist's joy in creation is in no essential respect connected 
 with the intellectual comprehension of the nature and conditions 
 of what he produces. In short, just as in the case of perception 
 we have an attitude generically distinct from that of the intellect, 
 so in the case of emotion. Emotion like perception gives us a 
 qualitatively unique form of experience, neither derivable from, 
 nor replaceable by, nor subordinate to any other. 
 
 But apart from this intellectualistic prejudice, those who would 
 regard emotion as a state to be repressed or suppressed, mistake 
 ^ the nature of emotion. There can be no doubt that in some 
 cases emotion misleads the individual, and in other cases emotion 
 has to be controlled. But it seems an elementary fallacy to 
 suppose that because emotion sometimes misleads it is essentially 
 unreliable ; or, because it has at times to be controlled, that 
 therefore it is essentially inferior or subordinate to the end or the 
 process by reference to which it is controlled. It is transparent 
 that both perception and the intellect often mislead, and the 
 aberrations of reason are as frequent as its successes. But we do 
 not on that account consider that perception is fundamentally 
 untrustworthy, or that intellectual activity is the pathway of error, 
 or that reason should be abandoned.^ Emotion like intellect or 
 perception has its own peculiar conditions or laws of efficiency. 
 There are emotions which are reliable, there are others which are 
 unreliable ; some which take us to the heart of reality, others 
 which are the source of illusion. Only the discipline of actual 
 experience can guide us to find and to follow those emotions 
 which are to be trusted with complete confidence, and to reject 
 those which are unreliable. But this discipline of experience is 
 equally necessary in the case of intellect and of perception. 
 
 How, then, does emotion contribute to our consciousness of 
 the real .■" Emotion seems to be the most direct, as it is in some 
 
 ' It is surely begging the question to say that perception is only perception when 
 it does not err, or that reasoning which is fallacious is not reasoning at all. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 137 
 
 respects the most complete, way in which the individual discovers 
 his organic unity with the world. Whether it be fear or joy, hate 
 or love, the individual becomes vividly alive to his inseparable 
 connection with a reality which furthers and sustains, or hinders, 
 his whole being. The emotional response is not deliberately 
 created. It comes upon him without premeditation ; it is inevitable 
 or, what is the same thing from another point of view, is entirely 
 spontaneous. Its basis lies partly in his inheritance, partly in 
 his constitutional endowment, and from these there is no escape. 
 The past from which he has come has already built him into 
 the substance of the real world. The maintenance of his in- 
 dividuality in the face of other individuals is but an effort to 
 conserve what of reality is peculiarly his own. His emotions are 
 the response of the real in himself to the real independent 
 of himself and yet continuous with his own being. In his 
 emotional life he raises no questions concerning whether his 
 nature is higher or lower, of the same kind or of another 
 kind, than that of other beings. He finds other beings 
 in the same world as himself and he thrills at their presence, 
 responding to each in a distinctive way ; and that is all. In 
 emotion the individual lives in a condition of certainty both of 
 himself and of the real, a certainty which is at once rooted in the 
 very consciousness of individuality, and helps to establish more 
 definitely the sense of individual existence over against other 
 beings. Doubts and questions have relevance only in the realm 
 of knowledge, and can only be allayed by a process of knowledge. 
 Through emotion, then, the individual discovers that his whole 
 being is sustained or imperilled. He discovers this through his 
 fundamental continuity with the real world in which he lives and ; 
 has a place. Emotion is not the effect of other beings, but the, 
 response he makes to their presence. It is not the consequence 
 of any prior interpretation of their nature : it springs spontaneously 
 into consciousness through the uncontrolled operation of a complex 
 of congenital or acquired dispositions inherent in his constitution. 
 He only becomes aware of the response after it has occurred : he 
 can neither direct its origin nor determine its quality. It is in 
 every sense a literal discovery of himself in his inseparable unity 
 with the real. 
 
138 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 At the same time it is not a mere attribute of his individuality 
 which does not concern and is not concerned with the nature of 
 other beings. If so, it would be indistinguishable from an 
 illusion. It would be a mere occurrence within his own life history 
 and of no permanent interest even to himself It is, on the 
 contrary, a state of his experience, and therefore one in which the 
 nature of the real is involved. By the emotion he discovers that 
 other beings give rise in himself to vital responses intimately 
 affecting his whole nature, and modifying the level of his life. 
 They are found to have what we may describe as varying degrees 
 of kinship with his own being, of union with his reality, of 
 identity of action with his activity, in short, of continuity of 
 being with his being.^ This consciousness of the nature of other 
 beings which is given in and inseparable from an emotion, must 
 not be confused with any kind of intellectual insight into, or 
 interpretation of, or a judgment upon the real beings which are 
 involved in the experience of an emotion. In the sense that 
 knowledge is an understanding of the real world, the emotion 
 implies no understanding whatsoever. So much is this the case 
 that understanding in some instances comes after emotion, and 
 in other cases may alter or destroy the emotion altogether.^ 
 
 The only significance which things have or acquire through 
 emotion is their particular kinship with the individual's life, with 
 which they are indissolubly interdependent as parts of the same 
 real world. That kinship is given in and with the emotion. The 
 emotion thus intensifies and heightens the sense of interdepen- 
 dence with other beings, which is the fundamental structure of 
 , the real world. Hence the fateful character of all emotions. 
 They reveal how completely and inevitably the individual is bound 
 up with other beings. Human emotion more than almost any 
 other experience is the sphere of the dramatic necessity which 
 
 ^ I prefer not to use the term "value," for this implies that one thing is a means to 
 another which is its end. The relation of things to one another as found in emotion 
 is not exhaustively or accurately expressed by that of means and ends, otherwise all 
 emotion would be purely self-centred, which it is not. Further, value is an afterthought, 
 while emotion is a direct experience. 
 
 ^ Perception is doubtless involved in many emotions, though not in all. But in any 
 case it does not create the emotion ; it is at best an occasion or basis for it in certain 
 instances, not the source of it. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 139 
 
 is inseparable from human life. Where there is emotion, there 
 this conscious kinship stands revealed : and because this intimate 
 relationship with the real is fundamental to his nature, emotional 
 experience is inevitable. Thus we discover in this experience 
 not merely a state of the individual's life but a characteristic of 
 the real world. And there seems no other way than that of 
 emotion through which this quality becomes manifested. If it 
 be said that such a characteristic is very vague and indefinite, it 
 must be noted, first, that clearness of definition can only be 
 secured through the function of knowledge, and, emotion not 
 being a form of knowledge, the tests of knowledge are irrelevant 
 to emotion. (2) The peculiar power of emotion on the individual 
 lies in its immediate certainty, not in its detailed articulation of 
 the object to which he responds. (3) Emotions are in general 
 precise and definite as each occurs, and they correspond in 
 general to actual and definite objects. This in fact is the only 
 definiteness that is required. The individual never mistakes his 
 own emotions. To mistake an emotion is only possible by passing 
 a judgment upon it ; and passing a judgment is a form of know- 
 ledge, not an emotion. Even in the case of " mixed emotions " 
 we have no confusion of emotions ; what we have is rapidly 
 alternating emotions. (4) From the point of view of know- 
 ledge an object may be extremely vague in outline, or extremely 
 general in character, e.g. God, and yet awaken a deep emotion 
 of an enduring and definite kind. To say that the experience 
 embodied in an emotion must be vague because not reducible 
 to the precision required for knowledge, is merely another illus- 
 tration of the prejudice of intellectualism. 
 
 II 
 
 From what has been said it will be evident that human 
 emotion is essentially anthropomorphic in character. But this 
 cannot be regarded as a defect. It is merely a qualification. 
 Knowledge is likewise anthropomorphic in a very important 
 sense, as is urged elsewhere.^ Doubtless emotion is not peculiar 
 
 » See Chap. I. 
 
14° STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 to man ; and every animal capable of emotion will respond 
 emotionally for l^e same reason, though in a manner different 
 from that found in the case of man. Even all races of mankind 
 do not display emotion in the same manner.^ But the emotional 
 life of each individual is none the less valid and significant for 
 him, though it differs in intensity and sometimes in form from 
 that of another. The response is in all cases similarly constituted. 
 And if the emotion depends for its constitution on the peculiar 
 physiological and mental structure of the human individual, the 
 emotion is none the less real and none the less important on that 
 account. If it cannot be otherwise than relative to his peculiar 
 type of individuality, it becomes in itself as necessary as any 
 other manifestation of his activity. If he cannot display emotion 
 otherwise than under these conditions, it cannot be a defect of 
 emotion that it is determined by these conditions. Moreover, 
 emotions do arise similarly in similar situations in the same 
 individual and in different individuals. In this sense there is a 
 certain universality and a necessity in the life of emotion as 
 much as in the case of knowledge, whether it be perceptual or 
 intellectual. As a fact men do have like emotions in like cir- 
 cumstances. They rejoice over the same things ; they grieve 
 in the same situation ; they are angry and are glad together ; 
 they even share the same fears. Further, men are expected to 
 be emotionally affected in the same way in given cases, and this 
 calculation is justified by events. Works of art and literature 
 are constructed on this assumption. Many conventions and 
 institutions of social life are maintained, and successfully 
 maintained, by presupposing this similarity of emotional response 
 in given situations. So much is this true that in certain cases it 
 is held that men ought to feel certain emotions towards certain 
 objects, and surprise, or even condemnation, is expressed if they 
 do not feel such emotions. The man whose anger is not stirred 
 when the honour of his country is attacked, and whose pity is 
 not aroused at the sight of human suffering, is judged as an alien 
 to his country or his kind. All this proves that emotional life is 
 
 ' It is mentioned by Sir J. G. Frazer, Folk Lore in the Old Testament, that a 
 certain tribe displays its emotion on welcoming friends by tears and not by smiles, as 
 is more common amongst other orders of mankind. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 141 
 
 generic and not particular, is characterised by a kind of univer- 
 sality and is not a peculiarity incidental to an individual. 
 Anthropomorphic though it must be, because bound up with the 
 structure and constitution of human individuality, emotion is not 
 more so than any other form in which human life, whether 
 knowledge or action, is expressed. 
 
 For this reason it is impossible to maintain that the emotional 
 response to the real affords no clue to the nature of reality, and 
 that knowledge alone is in a position to convey to man what 
 reality is. Articulate rationality certainly supplies an avenue of 
 approach to the real, but it is not the only channel through 
 which man communes with the reality. Aristotle, it will be 
 remembered, maintained, with that singular belief in the potency 
 of thought which was characteristic of Greek thinking, that 
 human emotion should be excluded from all consideration of the 
 Divine nature, and that only through the function of man's 
 thought does man approach or apprehend the Divine being. It 
 seems evident that even this selective prepossession in favour of 
 thought is itself but an expression of the very anthropomorphism 
 he is apparently at pains to eliminate from the Divine. To pick 
 out thought from the whole composition of man's individuality, 
 and ascribe that alone to the Divine, is in its very essence 
 an anthropomorphic procedure adopted in the interests of a 
 philosopher's predilection for the life and work of reason. Even 
 so, he cannot entirely eliminate the life of emotion from the 
 Divine, for it is held that God " enjoys " the contemplation of his 
 own thought. The truth seems to be that emotion is one form 
 in which, in a unique manner, the nature of the real is revealed 
 in man's life. And when we bear in mind that only through all 
 the powers of man's individuality is it possible to discover what 
 the whole of reality is for man, we can readily see that to 
 dispense with any of his fundamental functions in the effort to 
 establish complete communication with reality, is to decrease his 
 chances of finding reality, is to limit his interest in reality and 
 cut him off from his full heritage in the real world. Even with 
 all his powers working in perfect condition it is difficult enough 
 for any individual to cope with the immeasurable riches of the 
 world. It is certainly not justifiable that, for the sake of abstract 
 
142 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 simplicity or because of selective interest, he should artificially re- 
 strict his powers of communion to one special function of the mind. 
 No doubt an individual must, because of the limitations of 
 his powers of attention, concentrate effort now in one direction 
 and now in another, and may find it easier to work along one 
 line of approach than another. But these are incidents and 
 conditions of individuality ; they are not reasons for either ex- 
 cluding entirely from consideration any form of approach to the 
 real, or for taking one form as more reliable than another. It 
 seems nearer the truth to maintain that we lay hold on reality 
 by employing all our powers and functions, and each supplies us 
 with a specifically distinct consciousness of the real world which 
 cannot be attained by any other functions. This seems the 
 reason that defeat or disappointment with the efforts of one 
 function to satisfy our complete consciousness of the real not 
 only does not leave us in absolute despair in our search for 
 reality, but compels us to seek a further consciousness of the real 
 in another direction. When we are persuaded the intellect 
 cannot meet all our wants we appeal to our will or to our 
 emotions. We do not require to call upon our intellect to 
 supply or to justify the satisfaction which emotional experience 
 can provide. We are compelled in certain cases to admit that 
 our intellect has its limitations and is not adequate to the task of 
 grasping all reality. In short, each attitude of the individual 
 towards reality gives a different contribution to our total sense of 
 the real. Hence our individuality by using all its resources 
 never feels utterly lost in the complexity of the world, but feels 
 its life rooted immovably in reality. For the reality which 
 sustains our specific type of individuality must sustain it as a 
 whole, and in its entirety ; and only by the exercise of all its 
 activity can it be at once fully real and thus adequately maintain 
 its place as one real in a complex of reality. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It seems possible, in the light of what has been said, to 
 account for the great importance which seems almost universally 
 attached to emotional experience as a clue to the nature of 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 143 
 
 reality. In all emotion the individual is aware at once of his 
 distinction from, and of his inseparable union with, real objects. 
 Emotion does not give a mere consciousness of their existence. 
 Knowledge can give as much as that.^ Emotion conveys the 
 extent to which other beings promote or retard our own in- 
 dividuality ; in other words, the extent of their kinship with our 
 type of individuality. And this we can discover by experiment 
 and experience, by trial and error, in which emotion follows its 
 own laws and applies its own tests independently of other forms 
 of experience. The diversity of emotions is the outcome of this 
 experience. The range of emotional experience varies from 
 individual to individual, from race to race, and also varies as 
 between one stage of civilisation and another. Emotions differ in 
 degree, e.g. joy seems but a higher degree of which contentment 
 is a lower level ; they differ in kind, e.g. surprise and reverence ; 
 they differ in intensity, e.g. anger and fury, the more intense 
 being so-called passions. Some lead to action, e.g. fear ; others 
 are, by contrast, passive, e.g. admiration. Some refer to the past, 
 e.g. regret ; others to the future, e.g. hope ; others are con- 
 centrated on the present, e.g. love. With such a complexity of 
 
 ' It is important to remarlc in passing that the existence of the objects, to which 
 an emotion is a response, is always implied in the emotional attitude, but is an 
 entirely subordinate element. In an emotion we never doubt or raise any question 
 regarding the existence of an object ; existence is implicated from the first. In an 
 emotion we are simply assured of the existence of what stirs the emotion. Hence the 
 problem, if it be a problem, of the existence of the objects independent of us, is one 
 that has no meaning whatever in the life of emotion. The problem is raised, or has 
 been raised, in the interests of knowledge, because there we are interested in the 
 " relation of thought to reality," or in the relation of " perception to external things." 
 The very problem shows how one-sided and abstract a function knowledge by itself 
 is, and proves, indirectly, how impossible it is to regard conscious life as purely 
 cognitive. Fear and love, anger and hate, are moods in which the existence of an 
 object is all too acutely experienced to make a question regarding existence relevant 
 or possible. Yet, indirectly, they proclaim in the most vivid manner the existence of 
 their objects ; and through emotion the existence of real objects is revealed with un- 
 mistakable certainty in a form which defies all knowledge to prove or disprove. A 
 man does not require to prove the existence of his friend before showing him affection ; 
 and any question of his existence is so irrelevant as to be quite meaningless. In his 
 affection the reality of his friend is given, with as much substantiality as his own ; and 
 in that reality so subordinate an element as existence is implied. 
 
 The significance of emotion in relation to this problem of existence has been 
 invariably ignored by those who have considered the question. 
 
144 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 emotions, and such an endless variety of objects to awaken 
 emotion, it is inevitable that the emotional experience of most 
 individuals is anything but balanced or consistent. The 
 discipline of experience in the sphere of emotion consists in 
 learning how to secure permanence and uniformity of emotions 
 towards the same object under similar circumstances. An un- 
 disciplined emotional life is primarily one in which the individual 
 does not have the same emotional responses towards the same 
 objects, but, instead, has incongruous emotions, in which the 
 individual cannot rely on his emotional experience from time to 
 time. 
 
 It is beyond the scope of this essay to consider in detail the 
 various emotions, or to determine, if that be possible, which are 
 fundamental and which derivative, or to trace the evolution of 
 emotional life. Our interest in emotion is confined to one point, 
 the kind of contribution emotion makes to our consciousness of 
 reality, the clue it gives to the nature of the real world in which 
 man has his place. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the attitude of emotion the inmost life of individuahty is 
 concentrated into a single psycho-physical state which permeates 
 its entire substance. Through emotion the individual discovers 
 his interdependence with other beings equally real and equally 
 individual. He discovers his own independence, for every 
 emotion which he experiences throws into ever greater relief the 
 inalienable distinctiveness of his own life, and emphasises still 
 further its central unity. The independent reality of his own 
 being is given in the emotion ; and, while emotion lasts, it is 
 never surrendered but is ever deepened and intensified. He 
 communicates with other real beings by his emotion ; but his 
 emotion remains his own, is himself; it is not transferable, is 
 incommunicable. The more he can respond to other beings 
 emotionally, the more he realises his distinction from them as a 
 real among other reals. They do not display his emotion, even if 
 in certain cases they display emotions like his own. They cannot 
 occupy his centre of existence ; for the maintenance of that centre 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 145 
 
 with its special psycho-physical contour and its specific position in 
 the world of real beings, is partly what calls emotion into exercise.^ 
 Even where other beings are so far of the same order as himself 
 that he can convey his emotions to them in speech, it is always 
 found that he does not hand over to another the emotions he 
 possesses, as he might share a thought or a course of action : he 
 communicates certain aspects of his state through language for 
 the purpose of awakening in the other individual emotions like his 
 own. Emotions do not permit of being experienced in any other 
 way than as states. They have their own form of expression in 
 physical terms ; they need no other, and no other is adequate to 
 them.^ Emotion thus establishes and confirms the consciousness 
 of the individual's distinctive independence as a real among reals. 
 It does not do so by demonstration, for emotion involves no train 
 of reasoning. It does so simply by being a manifestation of the 
 living energy of the individual, indistinguishable from, and 
 possessed of, the direct conscious assurance of being a living 
 individual. 
 
 In the emotional attitude there is also involved the conscious- 
 ness of other equally real individuals consistent with, yet separable 
 from, his own individuality. It is in relation to other beings that 
 the individual realises himself in the form of emotion. An 
 emotion carries the individual beyond the circle of his individu- , 
 ality. It is a state of his life, and life is adjustment to an 
 environment as real as the living agent. In certain cases, doubt- 
 less, it is found that an individual's emotion is directed upon the 
 individual agent himself This is possible because one condition 
 of an individuality may, as the result of self-consciousness, be 
 distinguished from another. But it is to be noted that such 
 
 ' This characteristic sharply distinguishes the life of ideas from that of emotion. 
 Ideas, especially true or " valid " ideas, may, as we say, belong to every one alike ; 
 they are not the property of any one, and may proceed from any individual and have 
 the same sense in a variety of individual minds. Emotions, on the other hand, are 
 inseparable from the individual centre which experiences them, because in them the 
 individual emphasises and maintains his own individual life. 
 
 ' Hence it is that language (the physical expression of thought) is always found 
 to be so utterly indequate to convey an emotion as to make the attempt futile. It is a 
 KaTa.pd(ris fifj aWoyems. Any one who reads the explanatory letterpress of a piece 
 of music finds it as irrelevant to the music as would be the reduction of the 
 composition to a mathematical formula. 
 
 L 
 
146 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 cases are not representative of emotional life. They are either 
 transitory, or are deliberately repressed in a healthy nature ; if 
 such emotions continue, they are considered symptomatic of 
 disturbed equilibrium or even of an unhealthy individuality.^ 
 ' Paradoxical as it may seem, the individual life is not maintained 
 if it lives to itself; it lives by action and re-action with other 
 beings. Life is always protrusive when it is healthy, and literally 
 grows by what it feeds on in every sense of the word. And 
 emotion is one state of the life of individuality. The equal 
 reality of other beings is therefore implied in the exercise of 
 emotion, and is inseparable from its operation. This is never 
 omitted in the emotional consciousness, and no amount of 
 questioning or doubt raised by the intellect would ever disturb 
 its assurance of the independent reality of other beings, for the 
 simple reason that life is essentially assertive and expressive. 
 It is not that an individual infers from an emotion that there are 
 other real beings, or concludes by a process of reasoning that 
 other beings are the cause of his emotion. Reasons and 
 causes are beyond the scope of emotion : they belong to the 
 sphere of the intellect and are irrelevant to emotional life. Real 
 beings are simply given in the experience of the emotion. 
 
 In some respects more of reality is, as a fact, given to us by 
 emotional experience than by any other channel, probably for 
 the reason that in emotion so much more of individuality is 
 engaged, namely, both the physical and the psychic, than is 
 brought into play through other attitudes which the individual 
 
 ' In this connection it is worth while calling attention to the remarkable and 
 significant fact that emotional self-alienation is more dangerous to the stability of the 
 individual life than intellectual confusion, and that radical incongruity of emotions is 
 symptomatic of more serious alteration of individuality than intellectual inconsistency. 
 When a man's emotions are turned against himself or turned upon himself, he is 
 distraught, for he is making of himself a reality independent of himself — an impossible 
 and an untenable condition. Emotional self-alienation means alienation from reality. 
 Similarly when his emotional attitude towards another real being (human or otherwise) 
 is unstable, when he bates what he formerly loved, his individuality may be far more 
 perturbed than when he merely changes his opinions. A man may be a fool 
 intellectually, or intellectually unbalanced, without any serious disturbance to his 
 individuality or to his neighbours, provided his emotional responses are healthy, i.e. 
 directed outwards and are uniform ; but no man can be emotionally unbalanced with 
 safety to himself or others. Hence it is that in social life, where emotion plays such a 
 large part, it is far more important to be virtuous than to be intelligent. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 147 
 
 may take up towards the real world. Nature with all its forces 
 plays upon, and is intertwined with, our physical substance long 
 before we begin to think connectedly about nature, and even 
 before we begin to act upon it. Our active disposal of nature is 
 indeed very limited in its scope, largely because of the small 
 amount of physical energy we possess relatively to the vast 
 complex of the forces of the natural world. As for our intel- 
 lectual grasp of nature, that is in many ways more restricted 
 than our active control, not merely in the sense that very few 
 human beings are really capable of any profitable intellectual 
 activity at all, but in the sense that the energy of our intellect 
 has to be . narrowly selective to be effectively engaged even for 
 the short interval of time that we can use it. But in emotion 
 the individual responds to the concrete world as fully and as 
 continuously as the life of the individual makes possible. It is 
 not restricted by the conditions of nature or of thought. The 
 individual can revere and admire where he cannot comprehend ; 
 he can hope and long for what he cannot achieve ; he can fear 
 where he cannot control ; he can love where intellect and action 
 are alike impotent to achieve their ends.^ Emotion in short, 
 because it is a fuller realisation of the living individual than 
 either action or thinking, can meet the real at more points, can 
 adjust the individual to his world in a greater variety of ways 
 than is possible for these other functions. It is not merely 
 fuller in the sense that it embraces in its state both the psychic 
 and physical, mind and body, but also in the equally important 
 
 • It does not seem fanciful and it may be worth while to suggest a comparison 
 between the variety of emotions of which the individual is capable and the variety of 
 conceptions or categories by which the intellect of man has sought to interpret or to 
 grasp reality in the sphere of knowledge. These categories of the intellect are 
 ultimately different expressions of the one principle or function of mental unity by 
 which and in relation to which the intellect seeks to render the world intelligible. 
 The various emotions similarly may be said to be the endlessly varied ways in which 
 the living individual seeks to maintain its single life in face of and in co-existence 
 with the endlessly complex realm of real beings making up the world of which he is a 
 part. They are so many kinds of adjustments of the psycho-physical constituted 
 individual to his total environment. They each express a distinct attitude towards 
 the real, because the real in each case, being distinctive in nature, calls for a dis- 
 tinctive emotional attitude. And all of them maintain the individual in his 
 independent reality and give him a new or distinct sense of his own independence. 
 
148 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 sense that it carries within its operation, in a way which know- 
 ledge and action cannot do, the dormant but none the less 
 potent heritage of the past from which the individual physically 
 and psychically has come, and which so very largely makes 
 him what he is. By inheritance the individual is rooted in a 
 real world which he has personally never known, in which 
 personally he has had no direct share, and of the existence of 
 which he only becomes aware in the spontaneous and irresistible 
 welling up of an emotion out of the instinctive operations and 
 subconscious or unconscious depths of his individuality. The 
 conditions which give rise to an emotion are largely prepared 
 before the emotion is displayed. They were formed by circum- 
 stances and situations of which he has no memory ; and they 
 link his life to that of his family, his race, and the powers of 
 organic and inorganic nature operating in the dateless darkness 
 of the past history of the world. In fresh emotions the individual 
 is invariably surprised into the consciousness of the resources of 
 his own individuality ; a new emotion is literally a discovery of 
 himself. This is what gives the emotional life its interest, its 
 influence, and sometimes its terror. The individual does not 
 know beforehand how he will emotionally respond, and he moves 
 about in a world which is emotionally unrealised, and which may 
 at any time startle him by its presence and startle him into 
 a new sense of himself.^ This incalculable character of the 
 emotions, and their complete independence of his will or his 
 thought or his choice, is precisely what gives him at once the 
 consciousness of his own independent reality, and the conscious- 
 ness of the independent reality of the other beings to which his 
 emotions are a response. For inevitableness, incalculability 
 and independence are of the very essence of reality wherever 
 found, even by the intellect. 
 
 There is no such connection between the past and the present 
 in the operations of the intellect or deliberate action. These, 
 we say, are in our power, under our control. They deal with 
 
 ^ This seems one reason why many individuals are reluctant to place themselves 
 in novel or unfamiliar situations. They dislike to discover a new emotional response 
 in themselves. They are in doubt whether the response created may not be unpleasant 
 or call for powers of " self-control," i.e. control in terms of their normal self, to 
 which they may not be equal. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 149 
 
 the " truth as it is " or with the situation as it is found, and seek 
 to interpret or to control it by ends or ideas which owe no 
 allegiance to or derive no authority from the past. It is for 
 that reason that thinking and action give us a sense of liberty, 
 which we do not experience in the life of emotion. And it is 
 for the same reason that the sense of reality which they can 
 give seems more restricted both in range and vividness than that 
 supplied by emotion. 
 
 But emotion does more than give a sense of our own distinc- 
 tive individuality and of ithe independent reality of other beings. 
 Important as this is for our experience of the world, it is the 
 lessimportant part of the contribution of emotion to our conscious- 
 ness of reality. Through the response of emotion the individual 
 discovers his organic connection with other beings in a form which 
 promotes or represses his sense of distinctive individuality. This 
 organic union varies in extent and in degree conformably to the 
 kind of beings with which he is confronted, and the emotion 
 varies accordingly. Some beings challenge the existence of his 
 individuality, and these he meets with the emotion of resentment, 
 dislike, fear, anger, hate, etc. Others increase or sustain his 
 individual life, and towards these he experiences the emotions of 
 sympathy, affection, love, etc. In general those which do not 
 imperil his individuality are held to accept it, and in that sense to 
 support it, and to these correspond such emotions as curiosity, 
 admiration, wonder, hope, etc. It cannot justly be said that in all 
 cases he first judges other beings to have an import for his 
 individuality, and then responds emotionally according to such 
 import. The emotional state is autonomous and self-complete. 
 In the eniotion the individual is conscious of the character of the 
 object. The emotion conveys the quality of the real, and is not 
 merely inseparable from that quality but indistinguishable from it. 
 For the emotion is an experience of the organic relationship 
 which the individual occupies to the real world, and is irreducible 
 to further elements. It is only by analysis, and not in fact, that 
 the distinction we have above drawn can be formulated. To 
 have a certain emotion is to be conscious of the real as being 
 of a certain quality which concerns the maintenance of the 
 individual life. 
 
ISO STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 It is only through the growth and development of experi- 
 ence that the varying extent of organic kinship with other 
 beings is discovered by the individual. But this development is 
 largely aided by other non-emotional functions, such as reflection, 
 action, social intercourse, and also by the personal discipline 
 supplied by experiment, trial, and error. To begin with, it 
 appears, for example, that there is no distinction drawn in terms of 
 the emotions between living and non-living beings. The emotions 
 towards both are in all essentials the same at first, and only in 
 later experience do they call forth specifically distinct emotions. 
 Even in later life we find, at least in undisciplined natures, that 
 the emotions towards living and non-living beings are often the 
 same : relatively civilised adults will be found, for example, to be 
 angry with or to curse a badly working machine as much as the 
 maker. Similarly, little distinction in emotion is experienced at 
 first towards the various forms of living beings, which in later 
 experience give rise to different emotions. An individual will be 
 as frightened of a plant as of an animal. And here, too, we find 
 survivals in what is normally considered developed experience : 
 for we find adults who spend on cats and dogs the emotions which 
 are, as we say, more appropriate towards human beings. All 
 this serves to show the more vividly the essential character of 
 emotion as a conscious state in which the individual becomes 
 aware of his organic union or kinship with the real. For 
 emotion as a state of the psycho-physical individual is a function 
 of his whole life, and operates with the intensity of life much 
 earlier and more persistently than reflective knowledge. At 
 the uncritical stage of experience, the organic relationship 
 with the real, found in emotion, is felt, so to say, as a relation 
 of organisms equally real and equally organic to each other.^ 
 So much does emotion give the sense of organic union with 
 the real, that in later experience individuals will be found who 
 
 1 This in part, perhaps, may account for.primitive animism. But it can hardly be 
 true to say either that primitive animism is the result of the conscious projection of 
 soul life into other non-living beings or that it is the attempt at an interpretation of 
 the world in terms of man's soul life. Both of these views imply powers of imagina- 
 tion and intellect which cannot be ascribed to a primitive or undeveloped mind. A 
 mind that could do so much as that is either not primitive or would be able to do 
 very much more than primitive minds actually accomplish. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 151 
 
 imaginatively represent even material things as alive in order 
 all the more closely to realise their organic relationship with the 
 object of emotion. 
 
 But as the result of disciplined emotional experience other 
 beings are found to vary in their degree of nearness or intimate 
 union with the individual, and the emotions come to vary 
 accordingly. Physical objects are found to have a different 
 emotional interest from living beings ; and to impede or assist 
 our sense of individuality less than living creatures. Where the 
 individual at first felt fear at the sight of a curiously shaped stone 
 or a falling star, he comes to experience curiosity or wonder or 
 delight, while living beings still retain their mysterious " influence " 
 over his own life. The former are found by experience to have 
 a lower degree of affinity with his own reality than the latter. 
 The affinity of physical beings is, in fact, as he discovers, limited 
 to community of physical reality — spatial and material or 
 energetic mainly — which he shares with physical objects, but 
 which, he finds, do not exhaust his own individuality. His 
 emotions towards physical objects vary accordingly.^ Similarly 
 living beings come to be differentiated from one another 
 according to the varying degree of intimacy of organic relation- 
 ship with his being which he discovers each to have. With 
 living beings of his own kind his emotional union is greatest, for 
 these possess the highest degree of organic kinship with himself. 
 They affect him more deeply, and in more varied ways, and to a 
 greater extent than other living beings. Amongst human 
 beings again there is emotional differentiation both in degree and 
 in extent according to the character of the organic kinship. 
 Towards human beings of his own family and tribe he has one 
 kind of emotional relationship, another to human beings be- 
 longing to other tribes, another towards human beings belonging 
 simply to the human race. 
 
 * The discovery of this differentiation between physical and living beings must 
 have been one of the most momentous in the history of the human race. It marks 
 the dividing line between science and religion, the economic order and the moral 
 order. 
 
1S2 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 V 
 
 The emotional education of human beings, of which this 
 differentiation of real objects is the counterpart, is a long process, 
 and a difficult process. The earlier emotional attitudes do not 
 disappear easily, and survivals of them are constantly re-appearing 
 even in the latest stages of individual development. The 
 obstinate persistence of superstition is a familiar illustration of 
 the continuance of earlier emotional states. Such superstitions 
 sometimes affect whole peoples, sometimes tribes, sometimes 
 individuals. They indicate how deeply emotion enters into the 
 varied structure and constitution of the individual's being, body 
 and soul, and how it can concentrate into its operation even the 
 instinctive racial inheritance from a forgotten past. In like 
 manner we find peculiar instances of emotional survival in what 
 may be called emotional obsessions affecting particular in- 
 dividuals. Individuals are found, for example, who have an 
 emotional disturbance amounting even to horror of certain purely 
 physical objects, others in the presence of certain living non- 
 human objects.! And in all individuals it may be said the 
 development of emotional adjustment is only partially completed. 
 A large part of the education of individuals in a civilised com- 
 munity consists in the articulation and co-ordination of their 
 emotions, so as to secure the most satisfying and satisfactory 
 organic union with real objects ; and this education is rarely 
 finished even under the most favourable circumstances. 
 
 It must be noted that the differentiation of the real in the 
 interests of the organic relationship to the real experienced in 
 emotion, does not eliminate emotion ; it merely changes its 
 character. Real beings of whatever kind, however slight their 
 affinity with the individual life, always give rise to an emotion of 
 some sort, for the simple reason that they form part of reality 
 with ourselves, and so concern our consciousness of individuality. 
 If it be only in the emotion of boredom, we make an emotional 
 adjustment to them. Hence it is that even in the scientific 
 
 ^ One distinguished British general, now dead, had a horror of the sea.; another, 
 equally distinguished, was disturbed beyond self-control at the presence of a cat in the 
 room, and felt the disturbance before he saw the cat. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 153 
 
 attitude towards an object there is an emotional aura. It may at 
 first sight appear that the scientific mood is hostile to the 
 emotional attitude towards the real object. This view is often 
 advanced as an essential characteristic of science. The elimination 
 of the emotional attitude towards an object is even said to be one 
 of the aims of science. But this view arises from a confusion, or 
 a misunderstanding, of the facts. The detachment of the mind 
 from a certain emotional attitude towards an object is un- 
 doubtedly necessary for the purposes of a scientific understanding 
 of it. But this means no more than that science is incompatible 
 with the simultaneous presence of certain emotions. This indeed 
 is obvious : we cannot strive to understand an object of which we 
 are at the same time afraid. But to conclude from the necessity 
 of eliminating certain emotions towards an object in the interest 
 of science, that science requires the elimination of all emotions 
 towards the object, is a transparent logical fallacy. What 
 actually happens is, on the one hand, that scientific interest in the 
 object implies the operation of an emotional attitude towards the 
 object peculiar to and compatible with science — the emotions, e.g., 
 of wonder, curiosity, power ; and on the other, that the scientific 
 comprehension of the real gives rise in its course and at its 
 termination to new emotions towards the object. Why should 
 science be supposed to be external to the whole life of the 
 individual ? If action requires and implies emotion, why should 
 science dispense with emotion .'' To alter or to correct an 
 emotional attitude towards an object is not to do away with the 
 emotional attitude, and involves no derogation from the im- 
 portance of emotion for the individual life, any more than 
 altering or correcting our ideas of an object implies that we need 
 have no ideas of an object or that ideas have no value. 
 
 VI 
 
 The emotional differentiation of real objects is necessitated 
 by the finite individual life so as to establish a co-ordinated, 
 regular, and calculable organic relationship with the plurality of 
 real beings with which the individual is confronted and with 
 which he co-exists. It is not undertaken for theoretical or 
 
154 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 cognitive purposes. Knowledge has its own way of differentiating 
 the real world, for its ends are different from those of emotion. 
 A variety of emotions is required in the long run because of the 
 variety of real beings on the one hand, and the need for continuous 
 organic union with every form of reality, if the individual is 
 to preserve his sense of individuality amongst and in contra- 
 distinction from other individual beings. To have one emotion 
 towards all finite beings is the same as to have no emotion, or 
 sense of individuality, at all. Doubtless social intercourse, 
 tradition, common inheritance and other influences play their 
 part in facilitating and developing the various emotional attitudes 
 to different real beings. And doubtless intelligence as such 
 plays an active co-operating part in the process of development, 
 just, as conversely, the emotional development reacts upon and 
 facilitates the work of intelligence in generalising and co-ordinating 
 knowledge of the real. Again, some real beings are found to 
 make greater, more complex, more constant and deeper demands 
 on the emotional responsiveness of the individual life than other 
 beings, and with such realities the individual's organic relation- 
 ship is more permanent, more intimate and more complete than 
 with others. Relatively to the former, the latter are further 
 removed from his inmost life, and may be treated as subordinate 
 and even incidental or external. Hence with the former he 
 may, for purposes of keeping up and regulating the relationship, 
 establish conditions of interdependence which are impossible in 
 the latter case. Thus with human beings the individual's organic 
 relationship is far more intimate, complex, and complete than 
 with sub-human living beings or with the non-living things of 
 nature. Out of and because of this deeper emotional conscious- 
 ness between the individual and other human beings there arises 
 that peculiar organisation of the emotional life of man which we 
 have in human society. Human society is a condition of existence 
 created to keep up and cultivate this complete organic relationship 
 between individual human beings, a relationship which is discovered 
 to be a fact of experience in the course of emotional development. 
 The intimacy, the intensity, or again the " preciousness " of human 
 society, has its roots in the emotional experience of individuals 
 or in the organic relationship to the real which emotion expresses 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 155 
 
 It is no accident in individual life ; it is not the creation of 
 deliberate reflection, and is certainly not the outcome of cognitive i 
 experience. Beings capable of exercising reflection or knowledge 
 sufficient to create so complex and intimate a fact as society, 
 could go much further along the path of knowledge than as a 
 fact primitive peoples are found to do. Society is closer to the 
 existence of the individual life than knowledge ; it arises out 
 of emotional responses which concentrate the whole life of 
 individuality, body and soul. The greater part of the operations 
 by which society is maintained, consist accordingly in the 
 management and cultivation of emotional responses between the 
 component individuals of a society. Hence it is that the laws of 
 a society are for the most part rules for controlling and directing 
 emotional responses between individuals. Virtues are habits of 
 adjusting the emotions in specific circumstances of social life. 
 Character is a permanent disposition of the emotional life of the 
 individual established in the interests of his organic relationship 
 to his fellows. The highest expression for the creed of human 
 society has generally been formulated in terms of the emotions 
 — love, benevolence, kindness. Because society has thus arisen 
 out of the deep organic relationship between the individual life 
 and other real beings so close in nature to his own individuality, 
 society has always been maintained with so much passionate 
 enthusiasm and intensity. The individual, as we say, cannot 
 even imagine himself apart from society with his fellows ; it is as 
 enduring as his very life. 
 
 But however important the part which social existence plays 
 in the individual's life, we are not justified in adopting a view 
 which has become so very prevalent as to be accepted as a 
 fundamental truth. It is inaccurate to say that society is " prior 
 to the individual," as if society were a reality of its owi;i which 
 created individuals. The only real life in a society is the in- 
 dividual life. Society is a construction elaborated by individuals 
 in the interest of that more fundamental organic relationship to 
 the real which emotional experience establishes. The emotional 
 experience out of which society springs is a specific case of the 
 individual's emotional communion with the real beings com- 
 prising his environing world. And the essential character of his 
 
iS6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 emotional life remains when society has been constructed, and no 
 matter how elaborate the society. That character, as we have 
 seen, lies in the consciousness of distinctive individuality as a real 
 among reals. Emotion expresses this and sustains it. Be the 
 organic relationship with other real beings as deep and complete 
 as even society can supply, that distinctiveness of individual being 
 is never lost or lost sight of It may, by the regulations of 
 society, be repressed or even suppressed, but it is never ex- 
 tinguished. It constantly asserts and reasserts itself, not merely 
 in the behaviour of the selfish will, but in the demands of the 
 reformer, in the aspirations and claims of the higher life, and, it 
 may be, in an ideal of " individual freedom " which looks on 
 society as mere condition of realising this distinctive individuality. 
 By no manipulation of the resources of human society is it 
 possible to merge individuals into one another completely. For 
 the emotional origin of society requires that the distinctive 
 life of individuality, of which emotion is the conscious expression, 
 must be maintained in and through the operations of a society, 
 which is devised to intensify, enrich, and sustain the consciousness 
 of individuality and not to destroy it. If society were to obliterate 
 this distinctiveness of being which emotion emphasises, it would 
 thereby defeat its own purposes, for it would destroy the founda- 
 tion of its own structure. But apart from this, such a result can 
 never be accomplished for one simple and obvious reason. The 
 whole of an individual's emotional life is not exhausted in the 
 emotions which express his organic relationship to human in- 
 ( dividuals. He is organically related to other beings in the real 
 j world besides human beings, and towards these he exhibits 
 ' other and different but equally potent emotions. These emotions 
 also maintain and sustain his consciousness of distinctive individual 
 life in his interdependence with other beings. In relation to 
 these other beings, e.g. the realities of environing nature, he does 
 not lose but constantly asserts, and is conscious of successfully 
 asserting, his distinctive reality. The sense of distinctive being 
 which he thus possesses is not lost when he stands in intimate 
 relation with his fellows, and is not obliterated by any degree of 
 social communion. It is not in the least affected by his emotional 
 union with human beings in a society. And just on that account 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 157 
 
 it renders absolutely impossible the complete or even partial 
 merging of his individuality in a society of human individuals. 
 The sense of individuality which he has in certain of his 
 emotional attitudes towards non-human beings, will always resist 
 and will of itself defeat any of the devices of society to diminish 
 or cancel his sense of individuality within society. In a word, the 
 organic relationship with other human beings expressed in the 
 emotions from which society springs, constitutes but one part of 
 his single indivisible individual life, which is emotionally directed 
 towards many other beings besides human individuals, and is 
 conscious through emotion of its distinctiveness from each and 
 all alike.^ The sense of individuality which he possesses in his 
 organic relationship to other non-human beings is neither lost 
 nor diminished by social experience ; on the contrary, it may be 
 said to be strengthened and intensified, for in social processes 
 the organic relationship is or tends to be as nearly as possible 
 reciprocal. Each individual in the organisation of society sustains 
 his own emotional distinctiveness from every other and indirectly 
 assists others in maintaining theirs. The reciprocal organic 
 relationship between individuals constituting a society involves 
 action and reaction, attraction and repulsion of individuals. 
 
 Beings other than man do not arouse the emotional responses 
 of the individual to the same extent or degree of complexity and 
 intimacy. The organic communion with non-human beings is 
 sustained by other emotions than those constituting a society of 
 human individuals. We may speak of men having fellowship 
 with sub-human animals and plants. But language of this 
 character is an exaggeration of the power of the emotional life. 
 
 * If the view against which I am contending — that society is prior, or that 
 the individual merges his individuality in some social unity — were true, then the 
 individual would literally have no life or existence or interests outside his actual 
 society, for there would be no "individuality" left to face and deal with beings other 
 than social beings. Such a consequence is transparent nonsense. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the successful work done by Sociology and social psychology 
 should have led writers into exaggeration and error. There is no ground, e.g., for _ 
 maintaining that the consciousness of self is solely and altogether a social product. 
 Given an individual's relation to nature (even physical nature), and given memory, a 
 human individual would surely arrive at a consciousness of self. 
 
 A social self can, of course, only be arrived at through society ; but a social self 
 is only one kind of consciousness of self 
 
IS8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 ' However close and real our organic relationship with other non- 
 human individuals may be, it always falls short of being what 
 human association is, viz. mutual, correlative, and reciprocal. 
 Individuals other than human give rise to emotions which even 
 at the best always imply a certain degree of remoteness or 
 estrangement from us, and a certain limit to the range of possible 
 emotional intimacy with us.*^ This does not mean that they are 
 more than we : it seems rather to imply that they are less. Our 
 organic relationship with our world is realised through varying 
 degrees of kinship and communion ; and only through the most 
 varied emotional responses can we reach our full sense of 
 individuality in a world of real beings. Thus love and hate are 
 reserved for that organic relationship with other individuals 
 where possible communion is greatest and most complete.^ 
 Desire and dislike can be felt both towards beings who are at 
 our own level of individuality and towards beings lower than 
 and relatively remote from our plane of individuality ; while the 
 emotion of curiosity is experienced where the reality we confront 
 is far removed from and almost external to our own being.^ 
 Beings at the circumference of our organic relationship to the 
 world are beyond our hate or our sympathy. It seems to 
 developed experience merely incongruous and absurd, for 
 example, to hate or love purely physical things. Our emotional 
 attitude towards these takes on a different complexion. In short, 
 while the whole range and complex of our emotional life may be 
 displayed towards beings whose organic relationship to ourselves 
 is greatest, — we may be intellectually curious even regarding our 
 
 1 It is an interesting speculation to picture imaginatively what the emotional life 
 of human beings would be if all individual beings other than human disappeared and 
 only human individualities constituted the world. 
 
 ^ See Wordsworth's verses on Loving and Liking. 
 
 ' This throws an interesting light on the character and purpose of mere knowledge 
 in human experience. It is remarkable that knowledge seems to be at its best and to 
 be most readily undertaken when the real seems quite external to or indifferent 
 towards human individuals, e.g. spatial realities and spatially constituted material 
 beings. Bergson has made much of this point. It is worth noting also that the 
 difference between the Western and the Eastern mind seems to turn on the natural 
 capacity of the former and the innate incapacity of the latter for emotional detachment 
 from material beings. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 159 
 
 neighbours — the extent and variety of our emotions diminish 
 the further real beings are from our own level of individuality. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the further removed other real 
 objects are from our plane of being, the more the awakening of 
 the emotional response is initiated by the operation of sub- 
 conscious instincts and the adjustments of mere sense ex- 
 perience.^ This is inevitable, for our senses and organic 
 instincts are the only organs of our union with real beings which 
 are remotest from our level of individuality. Our emotional 
 responses to human beings, on the other hand, are not, at least 
 in developed experience, called forth solely or mainly by sense 
 perception. Human beings affect us emotionally, as we say, by 
 their very presence, by their whole " personality," and this goes 
 deeper into our life and into theirs than sense can penetrate.* 
 
 VII 
 
 The emotional differentiation of individual things falling 
 within the individual's environing world is only carried as far as 
 the demands of self-maintenance require. It varies from race to 
 race, from society to society, and from individual to individual. 
 It is a differentiation of individual beings within a relative 
 totality whose extent surpasses and embraces the plurality of 
 reals falling within it. With this larger realm of the real the 
 individual has likewise to lay his account, for with this larger 
 realm he is, and seeks to maintain his individuality, in organic 
 relationship. It contains human and other beings, and therefore 
 
 * As is remarked by a well-known writer, " It is the way of some places with 
 some men. The senses perceive a hostility for which the mind has no proof, and in 
 my experience the senses are right," 
 
 ' This is illustrated in an interesting way by the subtle "sensitiveness" in the 
 emotional response of certain persons in the presence of others. To some individuals 
 they will feel an " instinctive dislike," to others an "instinctive sympathy" ; in the 
 presence of certain individuals a "sense of elevation," in other cases a "sense of 
 depression." These emotional states do not originate from perception, or from ideas 
 communicated or from any action ; and no reason can be assigned for the form the 
 emotions take. They are emotional reactions expressing the concord or discordance 
 of the underlying psycho-physical composition of one person in the presence of the 
 other. The reactions may so seriously affect the individual's mental and nervous 
 structure as to disturb his self-control. 
 
i6o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the emotions from which society springs are not the emotions 
 called forth by this larger Reality. It encounters him always, 
 and encompasses him everywhere. It engages his senses to 
 their fullest extent, but is more than any particular sense can 
 reach or all the particular senses together can exhaust ; and even 
 the unconscious and sub-conscious instincts of his being are not 
 adequate to it. It appeals to his sensuous and non-sensuous 
 energies alike and simultaneously. It is a presence and a power 
 at once, disturbing him " with the joy of elevated thoughts," or 
 with the " fear that kills, the hope that is unwilling to be fed." 
 It has in a peculiar degree the characteristics of reality: 
 permanence, independence of any thought or action of our own, 
 irresistibility. From particular real beings, even from our 
 fellows, we can escape ; but from this all encompassing Reality 
 there is no escape. Towards individual real beings our emotions 
 vary indefinitely, and some emotions can be altered profoundly. 
 But towards this persistent Reality our emotions are restricted in 
 range and only modifiable within narrow limits, if at all. Our 
 emotional attitude towards this domain of reality takes on special 
 forms which reflect the nature of the reality with which we are 
 here concerned. 
 
 On the one hand, our organic union with this Reality is the 
 completes! possible. The Reality both contains ourselves and 
 transcends us : it is within us and beyond us. It is thus utterly 
 outside our control for any finite purpose of our own, and yet so 
 intimately one with us that there is no escape from it at any 
 time. On the other hand, in virtue of our emotional attitude 
 towards this Reality, we are aware of our distinctiveness of being 
 within it. But the emotions awakened are stirred within us by 
 this Reality which contains us ; they are felt to be as much its 
 expressions through us as our emotions towards it ; its realisation 
 within us as much as our sense of its Reality ; its incorporation of 
 us in its nature as our organic union with its being. Hence, 
 whereas emotional experience towards particular beings tends to 
 emphasise or even overemphasise our distinction from them so 
 that with many of them our difficulty is to feel our union to be 
 sufficiently complete, our emotional experience towards the 
 larger encompassing Reality tends to emphasise our union with 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION i6i 
 
 this Reality so much that our difficulty often is to feel our sense 
 of real distinctiveness from it.^ 
 
 These characteristics are clearly apparent in the emotions 
 which' this Reality calls forth. They are of two kinds. The 
 inclusive Reality is all we are and is more than ourselves. It is 
 in that sense impersonal. The emotions stirred within us by this 
 impersonal character of the Reality are the emotions of beauty, 
 and the kindred emotions of sublimity. Through these we 
 realise the very presence within us of an abiding and an eternal 
 Reality, which blends our souls with itself, and at the same time 
 fulfils our being with the sense of joy which beauty brings, or the 
 sense of elevation which sublimity supplies. These emotions 
 are a supreme expression of our complete organic union with 
 our whole world. They betray the underlying continuity of 
 structure between our individuality and the nature of Reality, a 
 continuity so complete that it penetrates our very organs of 
 perception as well as the innermost recesses of our souls. The 
 emotions of beauty stirred within us seem inseparable from, or 
 even indistinguishable from, the Reality without us ; seem as much 
 its expression as our own life. So complete is the union, that it 
 seems indifferent whether the emotions of beauty are initiated 
 within and identified with what is without, or are initiated 
 without and identified with what is within. In both cases the 
 emotions are equally spontaneous and equally compelling. So 
 sure are we of our oneness with the world in the experience of 
 beauty that when we produce it for ourselves we still regard it as 
 the outcome of the nature of the world. Indeed, so profoundly 
 can our emotional union with this Reality control us that it can 
 shut off the influences of the organic senses, and we are impelled 
 to embody this deep emotional kinship in forms which will 
 convey, interpret, or express "outwardly" the union we thus 
 experience.2 We can create beauty as well as find it, so fully 
 
 ' It is, perhaps, for this reason amongst others that the emotional experience of 
 the all inclusive Reality is required to supplement and counteract the effect of our 
 emotional attitude towards finite beings. 
 
 ' Cf. Wagner's remark : " There ought to be in us an internal sense which 
 becomes clear and active when all the other senses, directed outward, sleep or dream. 
 It is precisely when I no longer see or hear anything distinctly that this sense is the 
 most active and appears befor? me as the producer of palm, I can give it no other 
 
 M 
 
i62 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 does the emotion of beauty blend us with that ultimate Reality 
 which is also creative.^ It is in a sense indifferent what form the 
 expression takes — whether poetry, painting, or music. The choice 
 of the form of artistic expression is a matter of individuality ; one 
 form appeals more directly to one individual, another to another. 
 It is the same emotional union which is expressed whether the 
 expression be through sound or colour or any other medium. In 
 all cases the impulse to create and embody beauty in the real 
 world has its source in the fundamental emotional union with the 
 world. For, by works of beauty created by human energy to fill 
 our world, we but make this world more intimately and explicitly 
 our own and fuse it with our lives. We, so to say, proclaim that 
 we are one with the real by utilising the physical and other 
 resources of the world to embody and confirm our sense of one- 
 ness with it in a manner which awakens the emotion of beauty. 
 
 It is remarkable, too, that the emotion of beauty is not 
 dependent on time or place or size or any other specific 
 character which finite things may possess. The emotional union 
 may come through any channel and be realised at any point. 
 For the Reality we here experience is present in all and at all 
 times, and the sense of its presence may be awakened within us 
 by any element falling within it. Each element, in fact, becomes 
 in a manner a symbol of the presence of this all-containing 
 Reality, and its presence shines through each and all alike. The 
 grass of the field may be enough to stir an emotion of beauty, 
 which touches the individual to the finest issues of his being, and 
 transports him with a sense of his union with a perfected Reality. 
 To the heart which " watches and receives " the meanest flower 
 that blows may give the " thoughts that do often lie too deep for 
 tears." At any time there may be given 
 
 " To one brief moment caught from fleeting time 
 The appropriate calm of blest eternity." 
 
 So complete is the union with this inclusive Reality established 
 
 term. It acts from within to without and through it I feel myself to be at the centre 
 of the world." Letters, quoted by Combarieu, Music: its Laws and Evolution. 
 ' Cf. "So o'er that art which you say adds to nature, 
 
 Is an art which nature makes." 
 
 As you like it-. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 163 
 
 by the emotions of beauty that these emotions become channels 
 of communion between the individual and the real. The beauty 
 is both within and without and the emotions are shared by and 
 with the real. This is no metaphor ; for the experience we are 
 considering, it holds in very literality. To the individual capable 
 of this experience, the moment comes when 
 
 ' ' Love, now a universal birth. 
 
 From heart to heart is stealing. 
 From earth to man, from man to earth : 
 It is the hour of feeling ; " 
 
 and the mind drinks at every pore " the spirit of the season." 
 The union is not only felt on one side. The finite real is equally 
 and in the same sense at one with its containing world. 
 
 " The summer flower is to the summer sweet. 
 Though to itself it only bloom and die." ' 
 
 The emotion need not necessarily be awakened by some particular 
 object from without. The emotion need not be concentrated on 
 a special area of the real. It may be a comprehensive mood in 
 which the encompassing Reality is felt as a living presence 
 inseparably continuous with the individual, disturbing him with 
 the "joy of elevated thoughts : " 
 
 " that serene and blessed mood 
 In which the affections gently lead us on. 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal flame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul." 
 
 It is in these deeper and more comprehensive moods that the 
 fuller union and communion with the real is felt from which spring 
 the emotions expressed in the highest flights of Art. 
 
 The emotional life we are here concerned with is veritable 
 experience ; it fulfils and sustains the individual life, and it 
 expresses the nature of the real. It is no more possible for the 
 individual to dispute the claims of these emotions to a place in 
 his experience than to dispute the emotions in which, as we have 
 indicated, social existence rests. Criticism in the interests of 
 
 ' Cp. also " 'Tis my faith that every flower 
 
 Enjoys the air it breathes," 
 
i64 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 knowledge is irrelevant ; for such emotions have no essential 
 connection with, or dependence on, reflection. They are as self- 
 contained as knowledge in its sphere claims to be, and have laws 
 and conditions of their own for which the laws and conditions of 
 knowledge are no substitute. We have here, in short, an 
 experience as distinctive in its kind from reflective knowledge, as 
 reflective knowledge is from action or perception. Just as 
 perception conveys a consciousness of the real world which 
 reflection cannot supply or set aside ; so the emotions of 
 beauty bring us into union with the real in a manner which 
 brooks no interference from reflective knowledge. Indeed, these 
 emotions may give us a sense of union with the encompassing 
 Reality which is more complete and satisfying than the best 
 efi'orts of knowledge can achieve, This is perhaps because the 
 emotions demand no definition of the reality with which union is 
 felt, whereas definition is of the essence of reflective knowledge.^ 
 The spontaneity, the insistence, and the fullness of individuality 
 which the emotions supply, are their sole and sufficient guarantee 
 of their certainty and of the sincerity of the experience. The 
 defeat of the intellect in its search for rounded definiteness of 
 comprehension does not disturb the security of the emotional 
 life. On the contrary, the consciousness of the defeat of the 
 intellect may prove the opportunity for the emotional union. 
 
 " Peace settles where the intellect is meek." 
 
 In spite of the failure of the intellect we may be possessed 
 by the mood 
 
 " In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world 
 Is lightened." 
 
 ^ There is, in fact, no clear-cut conception of the encompassing Reality involved in 
 that experience of it which we have through the emotions of beauty. On the basis of 
 these emotions we may, of course, seek to interpret the Reality, and may, re- 
 flectively, interpret it in intellectual terms; but this is after-reflection not direct 
 experience. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 165 
 
 VIII 
 
 In addition to the emotions of beauty, the organic union of 
 the individual with the all-inclusive Reality takes on a completely 
 personal form which assumes distinctive emotional expression, 
 quite as certain and quite as spontaneous as the emotions of 
 beauty. It is not merely because the all-inclusive Reality 
 contains human beings, and thus is only more than human in 
 the sense of being superhuman ; it is also because the organic 
 union of the individual with this Reality is so complete that the 
 intimacy of personal relationship is essential in order to experience 
 as fully as possible the closeness of the union which the individual 
 has with it. For the peculiarity of personal relationship at its 
 best is thoroughgoing reciprocity of communion on both sides. ^ 
 
 It must be carefully noted that this way of experiencing the 
 union is not the result of argument or of reasoned convictions 
 of any kind. The individual who responds emotionally to this 
 Reality as personal, never begins by explaining or demonstrating 
 that this Reality is a person or is personal, and never imagines 
 that such a demonstration is necessary for the purpose of justify- 
 ing his experience. Demonstration and reasoning are purely 
 intellectual processes. The emotional attitude is non-intellectual, 
 and carries its own assurance in its own state, and its warrant in 
 the complete satisfaction which the emotion supplies. At best, 
 reasoning about the personal character of this Reality is an 
 afterthought ; it may support, it cannot supplant, and in the long 
 run cannot disturb, the security of the emotional attitude. It is 
 simply because the organic union with this Reality is absolute 
 and irresistible in its insistence, that the individual is impelled 
 to respond to the Reality in terms of reciprocal personal emotion. 
 And his experience is its own justification, for in fact he does 
 find that the Reality responds to him emotionally. 
 
 The kinds of emotion experienced in this case range from 
 
 1 The emotions of beauty are defective primarily and perhaps solely in this 
 respect. It is true that not all individuals feel this defect very acutely. Hence 
 some individuals find all the satisfaction which their union with the all-inclusive 
 Reality can supply through the channel of the emotions of beauty alone. Those who 
 find the completest satisfaction through a personal relationship tend to subordinate 
 the emotions of beauty to this personal relationship. 
 
i66 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the fear which separation from this super-personal Reality 
 invariably brings, to the love in which perfected and complete 
 reciprocal personal relationship is found. The communion is 
 so intimate and is so assured, that the individual adopts, and 
 successfully adopts, some of the fundamental processes and forms 
 of finite personal relationship to sustain, to cultivate, and to 
 establish ever more firmly the organic personal union with this 
 Reality. By such means he seeks, for example, to escape from 
 the state of fear or to reach the attitude of love. The individual 
 speaks to this superpersonal Reality, he seeks to appease this 
 Reality, makes sacrifice to this Reality, offers gifts, and so on. 
 Such means are more or less external, and are rather evidences 
 of the sincerity of the actual union than conditions of creating 
 it. The individual, in fact, never does feel the organic union give 
 way. It is rooted in his emotional life, and if not felt in one way 
 it is felt in another. If not felt in the emotion of reverence, or 
 hope or security, it is felt in the pain and agony of fear. For 
 fear is but an indirect assurance of how vital the union is ; we 
 are never afraid of what does not intimately concern the very 
 life of our individuality. 
 
 On the other side, this super-personal Reality responds with 
 the same intimacy to the individual. The desire at any time for 
 a complete union is in fact met by an access of fuller life in 
 the individual, an increase of confidence, a security of spirit, a 
 peace that defies the disturbances of finite things and "passes 
 understanding," because the understanding of finite things can 
 neither produce it nor remove it. In maintaining the communion 
 with this Reality the individual finds, simply as a fact of his 
 experience, that his sense of security is increased, that he is 
 pervaded by a sense of joy, spontaneous in its appearance and 
 beyond his power to create by his own effort or by relationship 
 to finite things. He finds that such emotions are not accidents 
 in his experience ; for he discovers that they are and can be 
 repeated and relied upon, when the appropriate emotional 
 attitude towards the super-personal Reality is adopted. In short, 
 as the result of experience the individual finds that this super- 
 personal Reality is as completely in union with himself as he is 
 or cares to be, or desires to be, with that Reality, and that he 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 167 
 
 is never betrayed or disappointed. The emotions he thus 
 experiences cannot deceive, for there is no deception about 
 satisfaction or dissatisfaction, joy or fear ; they carry in them- 
 selves their own guarantee of their significance for his in- 
 dividuality. 
 
 Between fear at the one extreme and love at the other 
 there are many intermediate emotional states in which the 
 organic relationship is sustained ; ^ for there are various degrees of 
 emotional realisation of the union owing to the fact that the 
 individual is subject to finite conditions, finite limitations, and 
 the restrictions imposed by space and time. There is, for 
 example, the emotional attitude of confident assurance of union, 
 which always implies a certain degree of detachment, due to the 
 fact that the attitude is primarily assumed in the face of finite 
 events and finite things. It is an emotional attitude which 
 opposes and overcomes the power which finite reals have to 
 separate, or interfere with, the individual's sense of complete 
 union with the all-inclusive Reality in and by which his 
 individuality is most of all secured. There is the emotional 
 attitude of reverence and, again, of quietude and acquiescence, 
 both of which are far removed from fear and yet are short of the 
 highest emotion. There is, again, the emotion of hope, with which 
 the individual faces the future course of events and feels his 
 union with the all-containing Reality to be unchanged in spite of 
 and through all coming changes. These and some others are 
 positive emotions in which the individual experiences the vital 
 union of himself with the inclusive personal Reality, but in 
 different ways according to the situations of his life. In the 
 attitude of love the union reaches its consummate and most 
 vivid expression.2 Love is at once the supreme emotional form 
 
 1 It is interesting to notice that many emotional states which are relevant in 
 dealing with finite personal beings are irrelevant and impossible towards the all- 
 inclusive Reality. Thus hatred is possible towards a definite being, generally a finite 
 person. But hatred is meaningless as applied to the relationship of the individual to 
 the super-personal Reality ; for this Reality cannot be excluded from the individual 
 life. In Spinoza's phrase " No man can hate God." 
 
 ' I do not wish to suggest that every one has, or is even capable of having, this level 
 of emotional experience. That, however, does not affect the importance of the 
 experience itself. To most people this "love of God" is at best a mere aspiration ; 
 
i68 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 of organic union between persons and the supremely personal 
 form of union. For in this attitude each is conscious of ful- 
 filment and of reality to the utmost extent of which each is 
 capable. No element of individuality is sacrificed. The very 
 details of individuality, its specific qualities, are sustained and 
 substantiated, since without them the individual would be the 
 poorer, and love would be impoverished by their absence. The 
 individual cannot give too much to achieve this love completely, 
 and feels, indeed, that all resources are barely enough for the 
 purpose. The very weaknesses of the individual become instru- 
 mental to the attainment of full interdependence with the other, 
 and are treasured on that account. Thus in this emotional state 
 he feels his individuality sustained and preserved without 
 diminution or suppression. And on the other side, love secures 
 the equal independence and substantiality of the super-personal 
 Reality. The love, to be complete, must be reciprocal, and is 
 only felt by each to be complete when and because it is mutual. 
 The desire of the individual for complete union with the all- 
 inclusive Reality is answered by the love which fulfils the desire.^ 
 Each feels in and through the other the love which is the basis 
 of communion between both. Each is loved for the sake of the 
 love which each possesses for the other. There is, therefore, no 
 separation of interests, there is merely distinction of personal 
 attitude, enough distinction to sustain each in reciprocal inter- 
 dependence. There is complete identity of nature consistently 
 with, and through, the diversity of persons holding communion 
 one with the other. The persons are thus in as complete organic 
 union as persons can be. No such love is possible between 
 finite persons ; for it is not subject to change or limitation. The 
 
 to some it is probably a real experience occasionally ; a few may have bad this 
 experience continuously. So far as my observation goes, I have known very few 
 whose attitude towards life showed unmistakably that they had reached and could 
 maintain this level. One has no doubt about those who sustain this attitude ; they 
 reveal their experience by certain signs quickly recognisable by those competent to 
 detect them. There is equally no doubt about those who have not this experience. 
 The great majority of people may be prepared to believe in the experience ; but 
 they go no further. In effect, the sense of reality of most human beings is singularly 
 limited ; and the only way most people feel the presence of complete Reality in their 
 lives is by being afraid of it. 
 
 ' Cp. Aristotle's phrase, Kive7 is ipiifiLevov, Metaphysics, A, 1072. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 169 
 
 super-personal Reality includes all change and excludes all 
 limitation. This love, therefore, endures and gives permanent 
 subsistence to those who are possessed of it. It is a love which 
 makes the individual one with the supreme Reality which shares 
 the love. That such love is experienced requires no proof or 
 justification; it is its own guarantee, and doubt and distrust 
 are alien to its composition. It is " felt " ; those possessed of 
 it need no titles to their possession ; and those not possessed of it 
 are not in a position even to dispute it. 
 
 It is also the supremely personal form of union. No beings 
 except persons can feel this attitude of emotional union. It 
 cannot subsist between a person and what is either impersonal 
 or less than personal. It requires personality at its utmost and 
 at its best to achieve it. This again is a matter of experience, 
 not a subject for disputation. Moreover, the union is felt to be 
 complete only as a union between one person and another person. 
 Supreme love is unique and undivided, and thus implies and 
 requires singleness of personality on both sides. Thus the 
 organic union with the super-personal Reality is always felt as 
 a union with one supreme personality. It is not experienced in 
 any other way.^ Love is thus the final emotional attitude of 
 the religious life. It is not to be created at will. Like every 
 other emotion it is spontaneous, and inevitable at the same time ; 
 and like every emotion it at once sustains the individual being 
 and carries him beyond himself. It contains within it the 
 assurance of the reality of its object. But unlike every other 
 religious emotion it has within it no opposition, expressed or 
 implied. The assurance of faith or the confidence of hope 
 always implies a certain element of resistance from finite 
 things ; and in the struggle with finite things they may prevail 
 or they may not. But in the case of love opposition of every 
 kind has finally disappeared. Love has no enemies in the realm 
 of finitude. It has overcome finitude with the strength of the 
 
 ^ It is interesting to note how the highest type of religious life thus finds its way, 
 as it were by instinct, to a position which in intellectual language is described as 
 monotheism. The healthy religious life requires as little assistance from theoretical 
 or intellectual processes to carry on its experience, as the healthy moral individual 
 requires a theory of ethics to enable him to be a good citizen. The discipline of 
 suffering and joy may dispense with theory altogether. 
 
I/O STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 infinite love which includes all finite beings within itself. It is 
 unperturbed even by the loss of finite existence. It is thus stronger 
 than death, and on that account is a form of immortal life. 
 
 Note (a) It is common to suppose that emotion is a kind of consequence or effect or 
 product of an act of knowledge. It is difficult to attach any meaning to such language. 
 The utmost that we can say is that sometimes an act of apprehension, perceptual or 
 ideal, precedes the full realisation of a state of emotion. But such antecedence is 
 neither the ground nor the cause of the emotion itself, any more than the whistle of 
 an engine, antecedent to the movement of a train, has any causal or logical connection 
 with the subsequent alteration in the position of the train. If the statement were true 
 it should follow that our emotion should increase with our knowledge, that the same 
 kind and degree of knowledge would always produce the same sort of emotion, and 
 that, as our knowledge increased, the same sort of emotion which we had at first 
 would be intensified. In actual experience none of these results ensue. An increase 
 in knowledge of an object may be accompanied by an entirely different emotion from 
 that experienced in the first instance ; the same amount of knowledge is sometimes 
 associated with quite different emotions ; and with an increase in knowledge there 
 may go a diminished intensity of emotion. Illustrations of these facts will at once 
 occur to any one acquainted with emotional experience. So far is it from being true 
 that knowledge always precedes an emotion, an emotion may on the contrary precede 
 knowledge, and may distort knowledge, or may make it impossible to sustain the 
 cognitive attitude at all. What is, however, universally true is that in all emotions 
 there is involved a consciousness of an object which in some way we apprehend. But 
 this apprehension is merely one constituent factor in the state of emotion, and does 
 not of itself determine the quality or character of the emotion, which is a reaction of the 
 whole individuality, body and soul, upon the real, for the sake of and in the interest of 
 the individual itself. It is not even correct to say that the emotion merely attaches or 
 gives a sense of value to the real. This would identify an emotion with a judgment — 
 a judgment of value. The judgment is a thought and an afterthought. The emotion 
 is a specific state in which the individual is realised, a state in which his reality is 
 fulfilled, which is created by his interdependence with the real, and by which not so 
 much the value as the very nature of the real is brought home to him through the form 
 of a condition of his whole being. The kind of emotion he has, arises out of the 
 living relation to the real world which constitutes his experience. That emotion 
 expresses what the real is for him . 
 
 Note (6) If it is inaccurate to ascribe the emotion to an antecedent act of knowledge, 
 still more inaccurate is it to regard the emotion as startisg from the body and passing 
 to the mind, or vice versd. Either view would be unintelligible, but for the assumption 
 of a kind of qualitative gap between body and mind. It is difficult, perhaps, to get 
 rid of this crude image of the relation of body and mind. Metaphors, drawn from 
 sense experience, and the spatial character of most thinking in philosophy, 
 account for the persistence of naive Cartesian dualism. Apart altogether from the 
 familiar objections to such a view of emotion, which may he raised from the side of 
 psychology, modern physical theories seem to render the view hardly intelligible. If 
 matter and energy are to one another as an ion to an electric charge, the conception 
 of the body as a separate spatially extended substance seems to disappear altogether. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF EMOTION 171 
 
 We have to think of it as a concentration of the impalpable, unextended and imponder- 
 able " ether," having a contour which maintains its form only to the partially reliable 
 operation of perceptual experience. Since mind is but one of the highest kinds, 
 probably the highest kind, of energy, the separation of body and mind, on which the 
 above view of emotion turns, has no substantial justification. But apart from these 
 objections, direct analysis of the actual experience of an emotion shows that we 
 cannot at any moment in the life of our emotion distinguish the bodily manifestations 
 from the processes of the soul which are involved. An emotion is only an emotion 
 when the single individual, body and soul, is suffused and permeated by this state of 
 his being. The bodily manifestation and the mental process combine to form a single 
 attitude of the individual's life. 
 
VI 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 
 
 " Though our first studies and junior endeavours may style us Peripatetics, Stoics, 
 or Academics, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove, at last, almost all Sceptics and 
 stand like Janus in the field of Knowledge. I have, therefore, one common and 
 authentic philosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the 
 reason of other men ; another more reserved and drawn from experience, whereby I 
 content mine own." — Feligio Medici. 
 
 " I am bound to suppose that for many persons metaphysics would issue . . . in 
 theoretical scepticism." — Bradley, Truth and Reality. 
 
 The late Professor Adamson once remarked in conversation 
 witli the writer that the great difficulty in philosophy is to draw 
 a valid distinction at the outset. A detached student of the 
 history of philosophy would not find it easy to say how many 
 philosophers have surmounted the difficulty. The haunting 
 doubt which hovers over the beginning as well as the end, the 
 promises as well as the issues of philosophical reflection, is partly 
 the source of the sceptical attitude and of theoretical scepticism. 
 The constant recurrence of scepticism in the main channels of 
 philosophical speculation is a clear indication of the inherent 
 vitality of the sceptical mood in the human mind, and seems to 
 show that it is no mere incidental phase of intellectual activity, 
 but is probably due to the operation of elements inseparable 
 from the very spirit of philosophy. 
 
 In many cases it is doubtless true to say that scepticism has 
 historically originated as a recoil from some form of intellectual 
 dogmatism. But this is by no means universally true. Nor can 
 it be held that in principle scepticism draws its life from hostility 
 to positive statements professing to embody human knowledge. 
 
 172 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 173 
 
 It may arise out of a desire for positive truth of a deeper kind 
 than has yet been attained ; and where such hostility does exist, 
 the scepticism may be very restricted in its scope, and be 
 employed as a fighting force on the ramparts of another kind of 
 dogmatism.^ It is again inaccurate to maintain that final 
 scepticism, even regarding ultimate things, necessarily creates a 
 sense of despair or mental depression. When this does happen 
 the result is temperamental : it implicitly assumes that positive 
 knowledge is the normal, or "natural," mould in which human 
 thought should be cast. This assumption, however, may itself 
 be questioned ; for it is not difficult to imagine a type of mind 
 which would find a sense of relief or satisfaction in the rejection 
 of such an assumption and in the utter and complete freedom 
 from intellectual restraint which is thereby gained. We can 
 imagine a mind which would gladly be sceptical of scepticism 
 and dogmatism alike and rejoice in its unchartered intellectual 
 liberty. If this be so, we cannot regard as either proved or self- 
 evident the position so often put forward that " the negations of 
 scepticism rest ultimately on some positive basis." 
 
 It is impossible to analyse the sceptical attitude profitably 
 until we observe that, while scepticism is in general an intellectual 
 rejection of finality of thought in some form or other, it differs 
 from both doubt and denial. It may be directed upon many 
 aspects of the experience we call knowledge, and it may be 
 carried out with very different degrees of thoroughness. 
 
 Scepticism is not simply doubt regarding a given proposition, 
 whether the doubt be permanent or momentary. Doubt implies 
 hesitation to accept, and therefore willingness to do so, if the 
 proposition can be shown to be true. It is an attitude of the 
 believing type of mind, or again of the scientific investigator, 
 neither of whom can be rightly accused of scepticism. Scepticism 
 takes up an attitude of assurance regarding a proposition ; it 
 holds that the statement in its actual form cannot be really 
 defended, and that any similarly positive statement regarding 
 the object in question will find itself in the same position. 
 
 Scepticism, again, is not mere denial. Negation is a specific 
 
 » This was the case, for instance, with the early Italian sceptics of the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries. 
 
174 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 exclusion from a given region of truth and implies a whole of 
 some sort in reference to which, and indeed in the interests 
 of which, a negation is put forward. It is a normal condition of 
 securing definiteness in the pursuit and formulation of a true 
 judgment or arrangement of judgments. If the course of our 
 ideas has to be regulated and restricted in order to convey 
 accurately the meaning of things, this involves the rejection of 
 ideas which turn us from our purpose. Scepticism goes much 
 further. It does not necessarily imply any acceptance of a sphere 
 of truth, however small ; its business rather is to challenge 
 finality in every shape. For scepticism, any acceptance of 
 positive truth can at best be no more than provisional. It is in 
 principle quite prepared to accept intellectual chaos, if its pro- 
 cedure should issue in such a result. 
 
 Similarly it is inaccurate to identify scepticism with mental 
 hesitation, misgiving, or incapacity to make up our minds. If this 
 were the case every intelligence would be essentially sceptical, 
 for no truth of any kind can be definitely arrived at without our 
 passing through one or other of these states. If any mind 
 remains permanently in any of these states, this is of purely 
 biographical interest, and may be due to intellectual or even 
 moral defects. To confuse such a frame of mind with a 
 sceptical attitude, is much the same as to refute a scientific 
 doctrine by asserting our incompetence to understand it. 
 Scepticism is a special attitude which men are prepared to defend 
 by conscious use of ideas and argument. 
 
 II 
 
 Scepticism may be directed upon any aspect of our knowledge. 
 In one of its forms it is concerned more especially with the 
 knowledge we have through perception. In another it deals with 
 ideas in general. It may consider the connections between ideas, 
 or again, the value of the reference to reality which ideas in 
 certain cases claim to make. It may also turn its attention to 
 scientific truth, or to philosophical truth, to knowledge of finite 
 objects, or to knowledge of ultimate reality. In all these cases 
 we have the same essential features, and these are that scepticism 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 175 
 
 is directed solely against knowledge, and that it is concerned to 
 show that the human intellect cannot claim to go beyond 
 psychic states of consciousness, or cannot express through them 
 the actual nature of objects in relation to which the mind stands. 
 
 It is a significant fact that scepticism does not concern itself 
 with emotional forms of experience, no matter how elaborate, nor 
 even with instincts however complex. Only in so far as emotional 
 life professes to use or to be based on knowledge has it been 
 challenged by sceptical criticism. Thus the finely developed 
 sceptical mind of Hume maintained that any one who proceeded 
 sceptically against moral distinctions was a " disingenuous dis- 
 putant." In religious experience, similarly, scepticism was, in his 
 view, irrelevant except in so far as religion used demonstration to 
 find or defend its beliefs, i.e. fell back on knowledge instead of 
 keeping within its proper realm of religious emotion or religious 
 faith. It is only when we deal with intellectual processes that 
 scepticism can appear ; action or emotion are beyond its reach 
 or interest. 
 
 It is not at first sight very obvious why this should be the case. 
 On the contrary, the transparent uncertainty and irregularity, the 
 varieties and the mutability of the facts in morality and religion, 
 would seem to render them a peculiarly congenial topic for 
 sceptical analysis. The explanation, however, is found when we 
 note that only when the claim is made by the human mind 
 to reveal in its own processes the nature of objects outside the 
 ambit of its own being, or of its states at the moment they are 
 experienced, does any call for question arise. Within the mind, 
 consciousness is its own first and last evidence ; its states simply 
 are ; and their value lies in themselves. The claim to transcend 
 mental states by conveying within their process the objective 
 content of what lies outside them is openly made by knowledge. 
 This claim scepticism challenges, in whatever form the claim 
 may be made. 
 
 In all forms of scepticism the actuality of the mental state is 
 never called in question. Without the existence of such a state, 
 even scepticism could not arise. But, in knowledge, the peculiarity 
 of the mental process is that it is at once an operation of mental 
 life and a vehicle of communication regarding the nature of 
 
176 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 an extra-mental reality. The mind claims not merely to give 
 such information, but to be certain of what it communicates. 
 That is to say, the truth is not only about an object, but affects 
 the very character of the mental state in and through which 
 consciousness exists ; for to be certain is to be in a specific state 
 of mind. It is because of this assumed dualism in the attitude of 
 knowledge that scepticism joins issue with its claims. Scepticism 
 always postulates a radical discontinuity between the mind and its 
 world, and generally in the form of a crude dualism of mind- 
 substance and a thing-substance. The ultimate purpose of 
 scepticism is to dispute the capacity of mind at once to maintain 
 the incongruity or discontinuity between its own nature and that 
 of its object, and also to convey with certainty to itself what the 
 object is. The procedure of scepticism consists essentially in 
 pitting these two factors in the cognitive situation against one 
 another, and proving, so to say, out of the mouth of knowledge 
 itself, the impossibility of its own claims. On the face of it the 
 challenge seems justified, and scepticism seems on this view 
 to lie in the very heart of the problem of knowledge. For if 
 there were a radical discontinuity between the mind and its 
 world of objects, and if, in spite of this, the mind claimed by 
 knowledge to find the very nature of the object in and through 
 mental processes, then, certainly, one or other of these positions 
 would have to be abandoned in the interests of consistency ; 
 for the retention of both would be exposed to the charge of 
 mental incoherence which it is the pleasure of scepticism to 
 establish. 
 
 The simplest and easiest form of scepticism is that which seeks 
 to show that in the region of perception the mind has no 
 assurance of being conscious of the actual objective nature of the 
 real which is perceived. Since our knowing is assumed not to 
 affect the object known, the object should always reveal the same 
 nature if known properly. It should, therefore, always mean the 
 same to the same mind, and mean the same to different minds 
 similarly constituted. In other words, the knowledge possessed 
 in perception, whatever else it may be, must have the character of 
 universality, if it is to express the nature of the objects outside 
 the mind. The aim of scepticism is to show that such universality 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 177 
 
 IS not and cannot be found by perception. The way to the nature 
 of the object as independent is barred from the start by the simple 
 fact that we do use special instruments (i.e. different special 
 senses) to get en rapport with the object. These cannot bring 
 out the peculiar nature of the object if they are special to our 
 minds. Unless they are really instruments of our own minds, the 
 mind could not go out to meet an object outside itself; and it 
 could not have knowledge of its own if the instruments were not 
 its own functions. Any way and every way we care to proceed 
 in such a case, we remain cut off from the independent object. 
 This is not so much proved as confirmed by the experience, which 
 we constantly have, of being misled in our perceptions, of the 
 real divergence between our own perceptions and those of other 
 human beings, and still more those of other animals. The 
 dissipation of the claim put forward by perception to convey 
 truth (i.e. a universal meaning) regarding the object perceived, 
 thus either reduces perception to silence, or else strips its know- 
 ledge of all the qualitative content in which it professedly consists 
 (colours, etc.).^ Perception is forced to limit itself merely to hinting 
 that some object is present to the mind, a hint conveyed, say, by 
 the mute act of pointing out with the finger ; and this merely 
 amounts to reaffirming the abstract assumption underlying all 
 knowledge — that the mind is face to face with an external object. 
 When we turn from perception to the process of ideas, a 
 similar result is reached by scepticism. OurTdeas are in fact 
 states of our own mind, whatever their qualitative differences and 
 operations may be. The object to which they claim to refer 
 exists apart from and independent of them, and has a nature of 
 its own. Our ideas certainly have the characteristic feature of 
 generality ; they have a kind of permanence and they can and do 
 recur in our minds. The object, too, remains the same in itself. 
 So far it would seem that ideas might be able to convey the 
 nature of the objects. But this similarity is of no avail. For if 
 our ideas of the object are such as to express with complete 
 accuracy the nature of the object, then we abandon the primary 
 assumption of knowledge, viz. that the object is really different 
 in its existence, in its nature, from the mind which also has a 
 * Both these alternatives were adopted by the later Greek sceptics. 
 
 N 
 
178 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 peculiar existence and nature of its own. If, on the other hand, 
 we keep to this essential difference in nature between mind and 
 object, and their consequent existential independence, the process 
 of ideas cannot give us the nature of the object with literal exact- 
 ness. The mind can only tell us in its own terms how it reacts 
 upon and in relation to our object, which remains from first to 
 last discontinuous with it. This is, in fact, almost more evident in 
 the case of ideas than it is in the case of perception. For ideas 
 grow in the mind, they imply memory and a certain amount of 
 imagination. From these conditions they are inseparable ; yet no 
 one would ever dream of regarding such factors as constitutive of 
 an external object, or indeed of any object really discontinuous 
 with the nature of mind. We cannot detach ideas from the 
 mental life of which they are mere functions ; and even if we 
 could, we cannot suppose that a detached element of mental life 
 can possibly express the whole nature of the object which is 
 independent of mind. If the whole mind cannot convey the 
 peculiar character of the object, it is less than likely that a frag- 
 ment of it can. 
 
 The difficulties into which the process of ideas leads us when 
 we attempt to regard them as adequate to the nature of the 
 object, illustrate and confirm the fundamental incongruity referred 
 to. Thus ideas, scepticism notes, have the quality of generality. 
 But no generality can exactly express or convey to our minds the 
 actual individual object, which we assume from the first we are 
 dealing with. The individual object has a punctual singleness of 
 being that cuts it off not merely from the individual mind, but 
 from all other objects, no matter how like it they may be, and no 
 matter how much it shows with them an identity of structure. 
 Indeed, the more the generality holds good, the more necessary it 
 is to insist on some quite special difference in the object, in order 
 to retain its individual independence of being from which know- 
 ledge starts. It is not simply (as is so often held) that this 
 factor, which gives the individual object atomic singleness, defies 
 all generalisation. The point rather is that the mind instinctively 
 declines to generalise it, refuses to sacrifice its claim to be as 
 much an integral element in the constitution of the real nature of 
 the object as the element of generality on which ideas profess to 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 179 
 
 lay hold. And it is fairly evident why this instinct should be so 
 strong and persistent. The mind itself is an individual reality ; 
 and if it gave up its own element of distinction from other real 
 beings, its own reality would disappear and with that the whole 
 problem of knowledge. If there were no discernible difference 
 between itself and its object, knowledge would never arise ; the 
 " identity of indiscernibles " in this as in other cases would make 
 the process of knowledge unnecessary. The mind therefore 
 clings to this ineradicable factor in individual things that keeps 
 them apart despite all the powers of generalisation, and clings to 
 it not merely in the interest of the individuality of objects but in 
 its own interest. Rather than give it up the mind will surrender 
 the claim of ideas to be fully adequate to the real nature of 
 objects. Even though the factor in question be whittled away 
 till it is little more than the unknowable, a surd, a " form- 
 less matter " or the like ; and even though all the knowledge we 
 have of objects may be admitted to come to us by way of ideas, 
 still, the total abandonment of that unintelligible remainder is felt 
 to be impossible as long as mind and objects are to maintain 
 their independent reality. Rather than admit that ideas do 
 wholly express the individual being of objects, the mind is pre- 
 pared even to allow that the real is not completely intelligible at 
 all. So impossible is it for the mind to abandon its initial 
 assumption of the discontinuity between its own reality and that 
 of objects independent of itself. 
 
 That this is not a mere prejudice of unsophisticated minds or 
 of naive thinkers, is evident' from the makeshifts instinctively 
 adopted by philosophers to meet the difficulty involved in using 
 ideas as the adequate expression of the real nature of objects. 
 Two such methods may be noted in passing. Admitting that 
 ideas may give general aspects of the individual object, and that 
 its particular separate existence is not thus accounted for, one 
 solution of the difficulty is found by calling in the help of another 
 function of mind to deal with the element that escapes the grasp 
 of ideas. This function is sometimes perception, sometimes 
 sensation, sometimes feeling, or even intuition. In this way 
 the mind is supposed to establish a happy union with the whole 
 of the individual object ; for what will not prove amenable to the 
 
i8o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 persuasion of general ideas must yield to the force majeure of 
 immediate and complete possession. The chief point of interest 
 here is the indirect admission that ideas are not of themselves 
 adequate to give us the real nature of the object : otherwise why 
 supplement their process by that of perception or sensation ? 
 
 Even with this addition, however, the sceptical criticism is 
 not turned aside. For if the sceptical objections to the process 
 of perception and of ideas hold good when each is considered 
 separately, they do not disappear because both are taken together 
 in one and the same operation of knowing the object. On the 
 contrary, we have added to the difficulties, which each has to face, 
 the further difficulty of showing that the relation between per- 
 ceiving and the process of ideas, which are mental functions, is 
 one which exactly reveals the whole nature of the object as an 
 independent reality. Whether we say with some philosophers 
 that perception and ideas are stages in the growth of mental life, 
 or, with others, that perception gives the fact which ideas work 
 up into a form which is general, in either case we cannot suppose 
 that the object is both independent and self-contained throughout 
 the process of knowledge, and yet goes through stages dictated 
 only by the exigencies of our mind in its endeavour to know the 
 independent object. We may maintain that this complicated 
 process of knowledge is essential if our mind is to be an in- 
 dependent reality when dealing with its object ; and we may 
 . maintain that the object must remain independent and the same 
 in its separate reality, if we are to know it at all. But we cannot 
 at once make the nature and process of the one in any sense 
 dependent or contingent upon those of the other, and also insist 
 on their discontinuous existence. 
 
 A second method of meeting the situation created by the 
 inadequacy of general ideas to convey the whole nature of the 
 individual object, is adopted by those who are prepared to take 
 seriously the view that ideas, and ideas alone, give us the entree 
 into the nature of the object. To apprehend the singleness of 
 the object, it is insisted, we do not require to make use of per- 
 ception or any of the additional operations of the mind, for the 
 object is but the " meeting place " of universals, the system of 
 ideas focussed in a special way at a particular centre of reality. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM i8i 
 
 The individual is such a system or arrangement, and in this 
 closed system lies its singleness. Even perceived facts can 
 be no more than a concentration of ideas related in a special 
 way, if they are to be known. 
 
 This insistence on the connection of ideas in order to do 
 justice to the' individual nature of the object, seems at first to 
 satisfy the need for grasping the singleness of the object without 
 sacrificing the principle that only through ideas is the object 
 revealed. But here, too, scepticism arrests conviction. For either 
 this system, or unified arrangement, in which the singleness 
 consists, is another idea or it is not. If it is another idea, 
 different doubtless from the variety of ideas into which the 
 object is resolved, then it too has the quality of generality which 
 scepticism maintains cannot give the precise singleness of the 
 object as an independent reality. If it is not an idea, then ideas 
 once again are admitted to be an inaccurate expression of the 
 nature of the real. 
 
 This failure of ideas to give us the object as it is in its 
 independent existence, which scepticism holds to be inevitable, 
 is thus confirmed even by the procedure of these philosophers 
 who seek to approach the real by exercising this function of the 
 mind. Whether we take ideas in the narrow sense as merely 
 mental generalisations produced consciously or unconsciously in 
 the mind, or use this term to cover both such quasi-psychological 
 products and the conceptions or notions (a priori or otherwise) 
 which specialise the function of unity in which the intellect 
 consists, in either case the result, so far as scepticism is con- 
 cerned, is the same. By that way the object is not and cannot 
 be reached, if the object is, as we assume in knowledge it is, 
 discontinuous with and independent of the mind : and the know- 
 ledge which claims by that means to convey the true nature of 
 such real objects is doubtful at the best, abortive at the worst. 
 
 The success of scepticism in dealing with perception and the 
 process of ideas as separate avenues to the knowledge of the real 
 nature of the object, is not lessened when it turns its attention 
 to the comparison of the deliverances which these commonly 
 accepted forms of knowledge severally give regarding reality. 
 Perception left to itself shows us a world of objects with tangible, 
 
i82 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 visible, audible qualities ; and with these we endow objects or 
 find objects endowed. It is thus we derive all the joy in the 
 refulgent glory of colour, in the entrancing beauty of sound, the 
 charm of spatially embodied form. All these we ascribe to 
 the world " revealed " to our senses. The same realm of 
 objects when submitted to the analysis of ideas alone — 
 freely manipulated, untrammelled by the aid of the senses, 
 following their own course, obeying their own laws — becomes so 
 utterly and completely transformed as to leave not merely no 
 likeness to what perception furnishes, but frankly opposed to all 
 that it reveals. To the mind that works on the plane of ideas, 
 e.g. to the physical scientist, the final substance of the physical 
 world {i.e. its real nature) is impalpable, imponderable, invisible, 
 inaudible ; the articulated manifold forms of objects are but 
 combinations and arrangements of this primordial stuff, with no 
 difference between them but those of quantity and position. The 
 ultimate constituent of all things — of mind itself as well as 
 objects — is a uniform continuum as devoid of qualities as pure 
 space. All the transcendent glory of a summer day, when its 
 true nature stands revealed in the medium of ideas, melts away 
 into the homogeneous fluid which finally holds all reality in 
 solution. 
 
 It is transparent that the world of sense is thus unrecognisable 
 when translated into the language of ideas ; and the world as it 
 is for ideas gives no stable existence to the realm of sense. 
 Each, if taken as true, is not only not justified by the other ; 
 each is illusion to the other.^ 
 
 Not only does the scheme of thought developed in physical 
 science dissipate the world of sense into insubstantial illusion 
 and thus dissolve into nothingness the palatial glories of art, 
 which draws all its material from the region of sense, but the 
 thought schemes of the different sciences when dealing with the 
 same object lead to divergent and even contradictory results. 
 In this connection reference need only be made to the perennial 
 
 1 No one has brought out this contrast with greater felicity and impressiveness 
 than Mr. Balfour in his Foundations of Belief. The same point, it need hardly be 
 said, was made long ago by Hume in a somewhat differentjway. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 183 
 
 controversies regarding the essential nature of organic exist- 
 ence, which seem no nearer a conclusion now than ever they 
 were. 
 
 The radical disagreements between the deliverance of per- 
 ception and that of ideas, and again between different trains of 
 ideas concerning the same finite objects, support the contention 
 of sceptical criticism that, in the process of knowing, the mind 
 does not and cannot give the nature of the object as it is in its 
 independent existence. The road to finality or certainty in 
 cognitive activity is blocked by the initial discontinuity between 
 mind and its object. Yet unless such certainty be secured, 
 knowledge has failed in its purpose. 
 
 Scepticism has a still easier task in showing that the case of 
 knowledge is the very worst when the mind attempts to deal not 
 with finite objects, but with the whole realm of finitude, with 
 absolute reality, with God, or with such a transcendent form of 
 existence as that of an immortal individual. For here the dis- 
 continuity between the human mind and its object is so immense 
 that the mind seems to scepticism to lack the equipment even to 
 begin the process of knowledge ; nothing but contradiction seems 
 the reward of its efforts. A universal truth regarding the whole 
 universe of reality would not be a truth for the human mind nor 
 intelligible in terms of the human intellect. If it were intelligible 
 to us who are parts of the world, to that extent it would not hold 
 of the universe in its totality, or for a mind grasping the universe 
 en bloc, so to say. Similarly, regarding immortal existence : the 
 demand to know this object merely shows the need for another 
 mind than ours. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Such, then, is the procedure and outcome of scepticism. It 
 will be seen that throughout it is not aimless, and not in principle 
 hostile to the demands of the mind for knowledge. Were it 
 either of these, it would be frivolous. It would have its source in 
 the character of the sceptic instead of in the nature of the intellect ; 
 and its procedure would then not be, as it claims to be, logical 
 and detached from personal interests. It would be haphazard and 
 
i84 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 temperamental.' Its aim is serious, and consists in an unwaver- 
 ing attempt to find whether the claim which the mind makes to 
 convey through knowledge the permanent and universal nature 
 of the object, is strictly tenable. In the arraignment of know- 
 ledge at the bar of experience, to which knowledge must always 
 come for the title deeds of truth, scepticism states the case for 
 the object against the claims of the mind. Scepticism never 
 rises till knowledge has appeared. In that sense it is not a way 
 to knowledge. At the same time its intention and purpose 
 imply a strong consciousness of the importance of the issue at 
 stake, and often reveal a deeper appreciation of the significance 
 of knowledge than is sometimes shown by science or constructive 
 philosophy. Science is jealous of error ; scepticism is jealous, at 
 times even envious, of the truth. In order to carry out its 
 purpose it is bound to take an opposite course, and to emphasise 
 an opposite factor in the cognitive situation, from that in which 
 knowledge takes primary interest. Knowledge is absorbed in 
 the desire to achieve universality : that is the terminus ad quern 
 of its activity. Its tendency is in consequence to overlook the 
 equally essential factor of the particular, the unique singleness of 
 individual existence. Scepticism takes its stand on this element 
 and insists on its supreme importance. It assumes from the 
 start an attitude of complete distrust of universals. It never 
 questions the reality or the value of single states of mind, single 
 states of being, whether in the mind or in the object. Hence it 
 is that scepticism always takes the form of emphasising the 
 psychological process as distinct from the expansion of the mind 
 beyond its passing states ; of insisting on the finality of individual 
 atomic " elements," instead of general connections ; of favouring 
 absolute discreteness at the expense of continuity ; of delighting 
 in disintegration instead of coherence or construction. Such a 
 position is inevitable on its own terms : for the vitalising force of 
 its activity is its intense consciousness that the particular is the 
 ineradicable element in knowledge and reality. This is its 
 
 ' There is doubtless such a frame of mind, and it is often called scepticism. It 
 i , however, a mere mood, the mood of mental despair, or, again, that of the 
 intellectual gamin, whose only use for the intellect is to enable him to be impertinent. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 185 
 
 starting point, its main interest, and naturally, therefore, its final 
 achievement. 
 
 Without such a definite and unquestioned basis, it is evident 
 that scepticism would not so much fail to carry out its attack on 
 knowledge ; it would have no raison d'itre at all. It could at 
 best be no more than a non-rational and quasi-pathological 
 condition of the intellect, and would be merely of biographical 
 significance. It is, however, an intellectual attitude, persistently 
 pursued according to intellectual conditions, and capable of 
 making itself understood and intelligible to the non-sceptical. 
 It must therefore have its roots in the nature of intellectual 
 activity, and not in the caprice or character of a chance individual's 
 mind. Only so could we account for the assurance with which 
 the sceptical critic carries forward the course of his arguments, or 
 the conviction which he seems able to infuse in the minds of 
 those whom he addresses. Since it is against the universal 
 element in knowledge that sceptical criticism is directed, there 
 is only one factor left which will provide the sceptical critic with 
 the foothold he requires to carry on his intellectual activity. 
 That factor is the element of insular singleness with which the 
 intellect has somehow to deal, and which has at least the 
 advantage of being more certain to the mind, and therefore 
 the less assailable element in the cognitive situation ; for without 
 this element knowledge, which seeks to go beyond it, could not 
 begin at all. Scepticism is thus a critical examination of acquired 
 knowledge on the basis of the particularity which characterises 
 every object of knowledge. From this point of view we can see 
 that it is not merely a justifiable, but an inevitable type of 
 investigation ; and, indeed, indispensable in the interests of the 
 highest demands of knowledge. It is not surprising, therefore, 
 that it has constantly recurred in the history of philosophy, and 
 is still irrepressible. 
 
 IV 
 
 One may fairly ask, however, why should such an assault be 
 made against acquired knowledge ^ Why does not scepticism 
 break out in other spheres of experience, as well as knowledge ? 
 
i86 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 Why should the atra cura of scepticism always ride behind the 
 knights of the intellect ? 
 
 It is perhaps neither fanciful nor unfruitful to suggest that we 
 have in scepticism a special case of an attitude of mind, which 
 seems quite general throughout all the purposive activity of 
 man's life. In man's desire to achieve his purpose he finds 
 himself always opposed by an element in his nature which has to 
 be controlled and regulated, which by itself seems to resist his 
 striving towards his ends, and which at times seems able to take 
 its stand in open rebellion against all constraint. Restraint 
 indeed, seems from this side of our nature merely external. 
 Without this factor there would be no striving to an end at all. 
 But, if accepted, justice must be done to it : and the time comes 
 when it stands forth and claims to be recognised, claims even to 
 question the laws of restraint imposed upon it, and demands 
 satisfaction on its own terms. Thus, in moral experience we have 
 the self of self-will, of private feeling and interest, which has to 
 be directed towards higher ends, has to be reckoned with in the 
 moral struggle, and somehow must be satisfied. It may break 
 out on its own account and seek to use all possible strength in 
 the maintenance of its isolation, and then it becomes the evil will 
 pure and simple, which involves the destruction and negation of 
 the will towards the good. This is the worst manifestation of the 
 element of the private or atomic will. But it has always to assert 
 itself in some form, for it is an essential aspect of personality ; and 
 no universal good can be really a good which ignores or crushes 
 the interest of the particular individual. There can be no doubt 
 that the tendency of moral purposes is to suppress that interest, 
 simply because moral purposes, the higher they are, lay so much 
 stress on the universal elements in the good. As against this 
 tendency individual self-regard can make and always will make 
 a fight and a justifiable protest, even though the struggle takes 
 the form of defying, for the time being, the universal standard 
 set up. And in principle it is not without justification. For the 
 endeavour to attain the good is an effort to secure not simply " a 
 good on the whole," but a good of the whole personality with all 
 its specific interests and aims. A good achieved which is not my 
 good in particular is not in the long run a real good. An ultimate 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 187 
 
 good of personality must be one in which self-love is satisfied as 
 well as one which finds its consummation in the love of others. 
 True self-love is as sound a test of a moral life as balanced 
 altruism. 
 
 Similarly in the case of the religious life. The surrender of 
 the finite will to the Supreme, the devoted abandonment of the 
 finite soul to God, is only possible because of the initial contrast 
 of the individual spirit to the Highest, and is only worth while if 
 in the experience of its union it attains the peace of soul which 
 enables it to confront all finitude in perfect confidence that its 
 purposes as a whole are secure. That contrast, however, while 
 it is the source of the experience, is the standing peril to its 
 realisation. For the abandonment in question must be free and 
 spontaneous on) the part of the individual, if the result is to 
 satisfy his own soul in particular and bring out fully the unique 
 source of security which is his alone when " in losing himself 
 he really finds himself." But a spontaneous attitude of the 
 individual implies that he can also refuse to take the step, that 
 he can demand satisfaction on his own terms, that he may even 
 rebel against the Reality which can bring him to his peace. 
 He may decline peace on certain terms, or on any terms. When 
 the individual takes up this attitude, especially in its extreme 
 form, we have the " rebellion against God," which is the essence 
 of the "sinful nature." But the insistence on the individual 
 requirements of the finite soul and the demand that these should 
 be satisfactorily met, form an essential condition not merely of 
 all religious sincerity but of all progress in the religious life. 
 
 We have a closely analogous situation in the case of the 
 pursuit of the beautiful and the harmonious in art. For here, 
 too, unless the particular element receives its due, the result is 
 not artistically satisfying ; if the part claims to stand out on its 
 own account it becomes the ugly, the discordant, the chaotic, the 
 capricious. If, for example, in the dramatic situation there is no 
 free play for the individual wills, the necessity, which a drama 
 should unfold and reveal, becomes a brute fate undistinguishable 
 from the crude inevitableness of events in nature. That is why 
 the ruin produced by an earthquake is not a tragedy but a 
 catastrophe ; and that explains why the mere operation of human 
 
i88 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 wills regardless of any ultimate plan constitutes neither tragedy 
 nor comedy, but simply history. 
 
 Reflection on these different forms of purposive activity 
 throws an interesting light on the peculiar phenomenon of 
 scepticism in the case of knowledge. Looked at from this point 
 of view, scepticism may be said to have its source in an out- 
 spoken deliberate revolt against the enchainment of the in- 
 dividual intellect by the forms and conditions of universality, 
 which regulate its function so as to secure the order demanded 
 by knowledge, and which restrain its freedom to manipulate its 
 isolated ideas at its own pleasure. The revolt generally takes 
 the direction of a thoroughgoing criticism of the claim to 
 universality made by knowledge, and an examination of know- 
 ledge to see if it really does do justice to the particular unique- 
 ness of individual objects, which is so indispensable a factor in 
 their constitution and regarding which consciousness has never 
 any doubt at all. When scepticism assumes this form it is a 
 serious philosophical attitude of great historical significance. 
 If, however, as sometimes happens, it adopts the Mephistophelian 
 position of unqualified and wholesale denial, for the sheer delight 
 in rejecting all the professed universal conclusions of science 
 and ordinary knowledge, then it is the spirit of intellectual 
 revolt for the sake of revolt, it is the principle of intellectual 
 anarchy pure and simple. This it may very well become ; for the 
 joy in destruction is to some intellects quite as keen as the joy 
 in construction is to others ; and the joy in either case is obtained 
 if the issue is successful.^ But it cannot be anarchical and at the 
 same time claim the support of intelligence, any more than 
 anarchy in morality can be consistently adopted in the name of 
 a moral standard. Intelligence cannot dethrone itself And 
 scepticism generally makes its appeal to intelligent understand- 
 ing, because it accepts at least one condition of intellectual 
 procedure — that of the impossibility of holding positions that are 
 mutually and finally contradictory — and also because, as we have 
 seen, it starts from an assured consciousness of the particular. 
 Without the first it could not be a thinking process at all. It 
 
 ' Hence, it is inaccurate to suppose that complete scepticism necessarily creates 
 the emotion of despair. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 189 
 
 could gain no victory over knowledge, for a contest implies some 
 common ground, however slight, between the combatants ; and 
 its interest in the criticism of knowledge would be gone if its 
 result could not be accepted by the defeated opponent. With- 
 out the second, again, it would have nothing definite to start from. 
 The only factors in the cognitive situation are these twin aspects 
 of the real, its universal element and its particular uniqueness. 
 Scepticism contests the nature of the former, and has therefore 
 to start assured of the latter. 
 
 That scepticism, however, can within these limits raise a 
 revolt against knowledge, is undoubted. It has its source in a 
 kind of instinctive protest which the mind makes against the 
 restraints with which the universalising tendency of the intellect 
 imposes on the unconstrained flow of mental life. The very 
 necessity with which the intellect insists that ideas must go this 
 way and not that, that things must have this meaning and not 
 that, is felt at times, even by the trained mind, to be irritating, 
 oppressive and wearisome. The more abstract thinking is, 
 the more does it tend to treat with chilling indifference the 
 glowing life which animates the crudest particular facts, giving 
 intensity of interest to the stream of consciousness. With 
 increased abstractness the authority of the universal element 
 becomes more exigent and is felt to be more external ; in short, 
 it becomes the ruthless gaoler of spontaneous discrete mental 
 occurrences, instead of their freely adopted guide and director. 
 It is when this state of slumbering mutiny breaks out into open 
 opposition that the attitude of scepticism is created. It directly 
 and frankly challenges the claim to " universality and necessity " 
 put forward by the knowledge embodied in science and dogmatic 
 philosophical thinking. The critical examination and rejection 
 of the claim constitutes theoretical scepticism, whatever be the 
 precise historical form it assumes. The frame of mind from 
 which it arises, however, is not peculiar to sceptics, but is 
 experienced by most intelligent individuals at some time or 
 other in their intellectual life. 
 
 Thus the sources of scepticism in knowledge lie near to 
 those of the allied attitudes in the moral and religious life 
 referred to above. It is interesting in this way to find that 
 
190 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 scepticism is not an eccentric or isolated condition of mind, 
 but a specific form of a more general attitude of the human spirit 
 towards its higher ends. There can be little doubt that the 
 process of moulding the individual will to social issues, which 
 constitutes the moralisation of human nature, reacts profoundly 
 on the whole structure and composition of the mind ; and may 
 readily suggest and even encourage an attitude in his intellectual 
 life which in all essentials resembles the opposition of his 
 individual will to the social system. Historically we find a close 
 connection between the two forms of revolt. Sometimes scepticism 
 accompanies a social upheaval, sometimes the one follows upon 
 the other. Or, again, we find that the dormant instinct of 
 resistance to the restraints of universal conditions may be 
 satisfied by breaking out in the sphere of the intellect alone, 
 and may leave the social order with full control over the 
 individual will, — as if, so to say, an attack upon knowledge were 
 a sufficient outlet for the latent instinct of opposition to con- 
 straint which lies in the individual. The moral life in such a 
 case is left untouched, and may even be considered to be 
 beyond the reach of scepticism.^ Morality and practice generally 
 are accepted as a secure retreat for the mind from the 
 bewilderment and confusion which are the final outcome of the 
 criticism of knowledge. Total scepticism thus cannot lead to 
 total spiritual ruin, so long as the stronghold of the moral life 
 endures. Scepticism may be complete and may leave no 
 positive intellectual basis at all ; and yet this one domain 
 of experience can supply the mind with a sufficient area of 
 certainty in which to be at peace, despite confusion elsewhere. 
 In the same way, the overthrow of the claims of knowledge 
 often leaves the religious mind unmoved, and may even be 
 brought about in the interests of religion. The religious attitude 
 in that case supplies the individual with ample security for his 
 mental life, a security which may indeed more than compensate 
 him for the loss of all the certainty offered by knowledge.^ 
 
 ^ This was Hume's position, 
 
 ^ In this connection we may recall the position of Pascal, and in more recent 
 times that of Mr. Balfour, whose critical attack on knowledge is treated as "an 
 introduction to the study of theology." 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 191 
 
 V 
 
 An attitude which has its roots so deep in the instincts of the 
 human mind is not one that can be regarded as irrelevant or 
 transitional in the history of thought. There seems no reason to 
 suppose that scepticism will ever disappear from philosophy, or 
 indeed can ever be dispensed with. The particular form it may 
 assume will vary from time to time according to the historical 
 circumstances in which it arises, and the kind of positive knowledge 
 against which its criticism is directed. This variation is in- 
 evitable. The nature of the " uniqueness " or " singleness " of 
 the individual object or fact, in which scepticism finds the positive 
 starting point for its criticism, is not one which always has the 
 same meaning, and is not one regarding which all sceptics are 
 agreed. They are content rather to take the point as common- 
 sense and the requirements of the argument dictate ; and 
 common-sense has no uniformity of view on the matter. Further, 
 it is evident that the kind of knowledge against which the 
 sceptic concentrates his attack must vary with the history of 
 science and philosophy ; for the positive statements of science 
 and philosophy supply the material on which the sceptic directs 
 his analysis of knowledge, and these statements alter with the 
 progress of knowledge. 
 
 But however much the form assumed by scepticism may 
 change, its principle and its purpose remain the same, and 
 will inevitably give rise to the demand for sceptical criticism 
 from time to time. Nor is this deplorable. There must always 
 be some intellects which find satisfaction in giving good reasons 
 for the spirit of denial. There is no doubt, too, that science and 
 much philosophy tend to become more and more dogmatic when 
 even comparative success attends their efforts ; and positive 
 dogmatism easily becomes a fetish or a pretence of knowledge, if 
 the ambitions of the intellect are left unchallenged. Scepticism, 
 on the other hand, always introduces the freshness of free 
 individual life into the museum of desiccated "universal and 
 necessary conceptions." If scepticism is the evil genius of 
 philosophy, it at least brings the qualities and advantages of 
 genius to further the enduring purpose of philosophical reflection. 
 
192 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 The Mephistophelean spirit of scepticism is often the only means 
 of bringing the self-complacency of the intellect to a sense of 
 reality. Metaphysics will always be required as long as man 
 seeks to rise to the greatness of his intellect ; but he will not 
 escape the discipline of intellectual humility as long as scepticism 
 is ever ready to restore the balance by showing him how little his 
 intellect can accomplish. 
 
 It seems a mistake, then, in principle to suppose that the 
 first business of philosophy is to lay the spirit of scepticism. 
 Doubtless scepticism, as Kant said, " cannot be an abiding 
 dwelling-place for the human intellect." But the history of 
 philosophy seems to give sufficient evidence for asserting that the 
 human intellect has found no continuing city in any system that 
 has yet been propounded. Indeed, if philosophy is an aspect of life 
 it must retain its vitality even at the price of constant change of 
 point of view : for a " permanent resting-place " for philosophy, as 
 for all life, will prove to be a tomb. To get rid of scepticism 
 altogether various expedients are from time to time adopted. 
 Some philosophers take refuge in intuition, or instinct, or feeling, 
 which, by their very inarticulateness and the absence of conceptual 
 universality, seem to escape the assaults of scepticism and to take 
 advantage of the elements in which scepticism itself finds its 
 positive basis and the assurance of its own procedure. But this 
 is, in fact, such a complete admission of the success of sceptical 
 criticism, when directed on the universal element in knowledge, 
 that it amounts to absolute surrender to scepticism in advance : 
 a result which, indeed, is brought out clearly by the critical 
 attitude which those philosophers take up to the claims of con- 
 ceptual thinking.^ Perhaps, however, the most desperate 
 expedient of all is that adopted by Hegel, who seeks to overcome 
 the efforts of scepticism to undermine the citadel of knowledge, 
 by incorporating scepticism itself into the absolute system of 
 truth. It is possible, doubtless, in some cases to appease an 
 enemy by granting him hospitality or by giving the invader a 
 share of the territory assailed. But when the enemy's purpose is 
 to lay waste utterly and without restraint, such conciliatory 
 generosity may be no better than treacherous betrayal, and may 
 
 ' Cp. Bergson's suggestion of "other intellectual concepts than ours." 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 193 
 
 prove as disastrous as annihilation. It seems plainly impossible 
 to meet the demands of scepticism by a grant of knowledge, 
 when its aim is to show that all such grants are valueless and with- 
 out substantial security. It is a misunderstanding of scepticism 
 to try to satisfy it with knowledge of a certain kind when it 
 questions the assumption that the claims of any kind of know- 
 ledge, more especially "absolute knowledge," can be justified. 
 Scepticism does not seek to increase positive knowledge, but 
 to examine critically the knowledge offered by the intellect. 
 Scepticism is certainly a philosophical attitude, but it makes 
 no pretensions to supply a positive or dogmatic contribution 
 to philosophy. That would clearly be a self-contradiction ; 
 and scepticism is acutely alive to contradiction. To suppose 
 as Hegel does,^ that scepticism cannot be turned against 
 philosophy without being either unphilosophical or dogmatic 
 in its turn, is to assume that philosophy must be always in 
 essence dogmatic or positive— an assumption which is not true 
 historically, and which in any case scepticism is bound to call in 
 question. Hegel's interpretation of scepticism is, in fact, adapted 
 to his purpose of placing all philosophical views within the 
 perspective of his own system. Scepticism becomes merely the 
 " negative side " of absolute or rational knowledge, which is a 
 process of making specific dogmatic truths run fluid, of breaking 
 down their fixity and separation by the instrument of contradiction. 
 Since reason contains all relations and opposites within itself, and 
 has in itself no opposite (being all embracing and self-contained), 
 scepticism thus must either take its place as a special operation 
 of reason or become a mere mental peculiarity, a psychological 
 phenomenon of some individual. Such an interpretation, however, 
 obviously confuses the method of scepticism with its purpose. 
 Scepticism, like all philosophy, avails itself of the principle that 
 the intellect cannot admit contradictions ; for the intellect cannot 
 proceed in logical form without this condition, whether in 
 scepticism or in science or in philosophy. But the purpose of 
 scepticism is, as we have seen, very different from the mere 
 application of this elementary principle ; and part of its purpose 
 is precisely to call in question the claim that reason is an all- 
 
 ' Hegel, Vermischte Schriften, I. 
 
 O 
 
194 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 sufficient avenue to the nature of reality. So far is a self-closed 
 system of absolute truth from being impervious to the assaults of 
 scepticism, that such a system puts less strain on the resources 
 of sceptical strategy than almost any other philosophy. It would, 
 indeed, appear that the serried ranks of the categories moving in 
 close formation to the capture of the kingdoms of this world and 
 the next, offer the easiest of all targets to the enfilading batteries 
 of scepticism. For a system which professedly requires negation 
 as the very principle and life of its movement is not one that can 
 ever claim to be complete at all. Nor, in fact, is the system ever 
 completed either in its parts or in its totality. Its essence is 
 admittedly restless movement from a " first " to a " last," and 
 again from " last " to " first." But'a cycle which from the start is 
 confessedly "closed," makes impossible either a real beginning 
 or a real ending. In short, an absolute system which claims to 
 carry scepticism within its heart, is in reality under the control of 
 scepticism throughout its entire scope. Scepticism may even 
 with characteristic irony claim such a system for its own, and 
 Phcenix-like rise triumphant from its ashes. 
 
VII 
 
 THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 " There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth." — S. Butler. 
 
 I 
 
 If recent discussions have done nothing more than to compel 
 a reconsideration of the nature of the philosophic attitude to 
 experience, and to press for some statement of its object and 
 method, they will have been of real service. It is impossible, 
 however, to attempt answers to these questions unless we keep 
 in view what philosophy has done in the past, and unless we 
 admit its connection with the texture of human experience, in 
 much the same way that science and art take their place there, 
 because somehow they are woven out of the substance of human 
 life. If we ask for philosophy out of the clouds, we must not be 
 surprised if we are given merely vapour. 
 
 Nothing seems plainer on a survey of the facts than that 
 philosophy is a serious mental concern of a very small number of 
 human individuals. There may be many who at intervals have 
 an incidental interest in subjects to which the philosopher gives 
 his whole mind. But such transitory interest is not philosophy, 
 any more than stonebreaking is sculpture, or gossip history. 
 The vast hordes of mankind who cross the fields of space and 
 time allotted to humanity know nothing of philosophy, care 
 nothing for its problems, and have not the slightest desire for 
 its solutions. Races of men rise and pass on, whose ideas never 
 go beyond the degree of generality that is required to link one 
 day with the next, and are composed to their inmost fibre of 
 the material drawn from immediate sensuous experience. For 
 the majority, the barren hours of abundant leisure are not even 
 
 195 
 
196 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 occupied with those dreamy imaginings of the unseen which for 
 a small minority sometimes act as a substitute for the meditations 
 of the philosopher. 
 
 The very language of vast masses of mankind makes continuous 
 conceptual thinking impossible, and the communication to them 
 of philosophical ideas from another nation an insuperable task. 
 With the utmost industry and ingenuity at his disposal, it may 
 be safely said that no one could succeed in translating the reflec- 
 tions of the Critique of Pure Reason into the language of the 
 Fiji Islanders, even if benevolent enthusiasm should make any 
 one think the undertaking desirable. With the complacent 
 self-centredness characteristic of European civilisation, we divide 
 mankind into East and West, and maintain that the philosophical 
 spirit has found no dwelling-place east of the Grecian Archipelago. 
 
 We do not so readily draw the inference that philosophy is 
 thus historically shown to be a peculiar outcrop of a specific type 
 of mind inhabiting a particular geographical area of the globe, 
 and that the critical temperament which cherishes philosophical 
 discussion is incompatible with the mental attitude of mankind 
 in other regions of the Earth. We may go further, and say that 
 in a matter of this kind the facts justify the conclusion that 
 where philosophy has not been cultivated by peoples whose 
 history goes back to untold ages, it has simply not been a 
 mental necessity of their lives. It meets no need of their nature ; 
 its puzzles and solutions, its postulates and demonstrations, would 
 mean nothing for them, would raise neither curiosity nor admira- 
 tion, but would be merely as the voice of the skylark in the ear 
 of a sparrow. Even when we restrict our attention to those civilised 
 nations of the West among which philosophy has been cultivated 
 to any extent, we cannot for a moment maintain that a reasoned 
 intelligible answer to any philosophical problem would gratify 
 the curiosity, or would meet a real mental want, of more than a 
 comparatively insignificant number of individuals. 
 
 Considerations like these should suggest some sobering reflec- 
 tions to the select company of the philosophers. Preoccupation 
 with their necessary or self-allotted task is apt to distort the 
 perspective of the undertaking. They are readily affected by the 
 fallacy of over-concentration, and tend to suffer from philosopher's 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 197 
 
 blindness. Claiming to think out for themselves important 
 human problems, they come to regard themselves as representa- 
 tives of humanity ; and from this the step seems easy to the 
 assumption that the intellectual fate of humanity hangs in the 
 balance of their mental scales. They forget that what are problems 
 for themselves are either instinctive possessions of humanity at 
 large or do not exist as vital interests for humanity in general. 
 On the first alternative, humanity requires no representative who 
 at best can but reaffirm primary human convictions, can but 
 give reasons (good or bad) for what is believed on instinct : on 
 the second, the fate of humanity cannot be affected by the solution, 
 or the failure of a solution, of a question in which it is in general 
 not interested. Moreover, from the position that philosophical 
 problems are genuine human problems we cannot draw the 
 inference that they are of universal human significance. They 
 are only of import to those human individuals who are capable 
 of seeing them, and are compelled by their mental history to 
 raise and to try to solve them. They are the outgrowth of the 
 mentality of certain human units or a certain type of human 
 individual. They do not concern those whose mental constitution 
 does not contain this peculiar form of intellectual sensitiveness or 
 irritability. The problems are doubtless none the less real 
 problems arising out of the situation of human beings on the 
 globe ; for the human beings who are awake to their meaning 
 have as much right to fulfil their human life in raising these 
 questions as others in ignoring them. So long as this is all that 
 is meant by the phrase " problems of human interest," there can 
 be no objection to treating the problems of philosophy as of this 
 kind. There can be no doubt, however, that the phrase as 
 generally used means much more. We have merely to recall 
 the familiar appeal to the principle of "universality" as a test 
 of truth, the idea of " universal law " for all mankind as a test 
 of moral duty, the conception of " universal consciousness " or 
 " consciousness in general " as a ground of real experience — to 
 see at once that the intention of the philosopher is to deal with 
 problems as if they existed for all mankind, and to speak for all 
 humanity when he offers a solution. But it is plain on the facts 
 that the position of a philosopher relatively to humanity is at the 
 
198 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 best purely hypothetical. What he can maintain at most is that 
 if a human being were to raise such problems as he raises, the 
 solution should take the form he offers. The genesis of an 
 ultimate question is the origin of philosophy ; and behind that 
 question lies the peculiar mental constitution, endowment, and 
 development of a specific type of human mind. The answer is 
 co-relative to the mind that appreciates the question. Historically 
 speaking, it cannot be asserted that the question is a necessary 
 one ; all that can be said is that it happens to be raised by a 
 certain number of human minds. In that sense philosophy is 
 an incident, an event (no doubt an important event) in the 
 history of mankind. Philosophers may regard the question as 
 necessary, but not for a better reason than any other question is 
 necessary. The only reason is that the mental development and 
 type of conscious existence of the philosopher take the form and 
 direction which raise the ultimate question. The mental life of 
 millions of other human beings does not take that direction, and 
 that is the only reason these do not raise the question. In other 
 words, the sole reason for considering the philosophical question 
 inevitable for one type of mind, equally explains why it is not 
 inevitable for others, viz. the special constitution of their mental 
 life. The philosophical mood has no better justification than 
 any special instinct, or than any rare intuition ; it forces itself on 
 some minds, and these minds must follow it if they are to fulfil 
 their peculiar mental needs. When philosophers try to prove 
 the problem of philosophy to be necessary in the sense that 
 the very nature of humanity involves it, they are merely 
 accentuating the importance of philosophy to themselves by 
 saying that this is the special way a human mind works in their 
 special case. They are not justified in history or in logic in 
 maintaining that the human mind in general does not work out 
 its destiny, or cannot fulfil its purpose, unless it tries to solve 
 philosophical questions. A philosophical justification of the 
 problem of philosophy is either a repetition instead of a solution 
 of the point at issue, or else is an obvious petitio principii. If 
 philosophers undertake their task, as many have done, " in the 
 interests of humanity," " to support or justify the great postulates 
 of human life," this is no doubt an excellent motive for their 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 199 
 
 endeavours, and gives a moral impetus to their industry. But 
 except as showing the intimate connection between their own type 
 of human mind and the questions they raise, such meritorious 
 benevolence is either misplaced or philosophically inadequate. It 
 is misplaced if it implies that the postulates are unsafe without 
 such justification, and that the majority of mankind await in 
 anxiety the fate of their postulates at the hands of philosophers ; 
 it is philosophically inadequate if it implies that philosophy is 
 restricted to such an interest in its problems, and is not warranted 
 in raising, should some philosophical mind feel called upon to do 
 so, the further question whether there are such postulates at all, 
 or the question whether humanity's postulates have any ultimate 
 place in the nature of things. 
 
 II 
 
 There can be no doubt, then, that the claim of the philosopher 
 to be a representative of humanity as a whole, when he engages 
 in the task of philosophy, is due to a false perspective and the 
 exaggeration of over-concentration. If he could point to a body 
 of doctrine agreed upon by all who have pursued the business of 
 philosophy, and could, again, show that such a body of doctrine 
 has raised the mental level of mankind, there would be some 
 historical, if not logical, foundation for his claim to speak for and 
 to humanity. It is just the existence of such an accepted range 
 of common knowledge which gives a certain strength to the claims 
 of science, or at least of some sciences, to speak in the name 
 of the higher interests of humanity, and to be a great civilising 
 agency in the higher evolution of the race. We may grant that 
 the agreement amongst scientists is restricted within certain, 
 perhaps narrow, limits. Still within these limits it is relatively 
 constant and unambiguous over a long period of time. More- 
 over, even when the alteration of conceptions can be historically 
 ascertained, the change of view is in many cases continuous, and 
 in all cases leads, in spite of temporary opposition to new ideas, 
 to an ultimate stability of scientific opinion. Except in the 
 interests of a particular philosophical theory, the same cannot be 
 said to be true of philosophy. Philosophical doctrine changes, 
 
200 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 but does not change continuously in a definite uniform direction. 
 It changes mainly by way of opposition between theories, each 
 of which in turn claims to be a final answer to the same funda- 
 mental problems, and therefore to be true at the expense of and 
 by negation of the preceding. At no time can any theory be 
 held to express a common clearly reasoned conviction on the 
 part even of the best philosophical minds of a given epoch, no 
 matter how short the epoch may be. What is more remarkable 
 is that when a philosophical theory does hold sway over a fair 
 number of minds for a considerable time, the philosophical spirit 
 seems to decline : authority takes the place of understanding, 
 inquiry gives way to exegesis, and criticism to commentary. It 
 would seem, therefore, that what is a sign of life in science is a 
 symptom of decay in philosophy ; for common agreement is the 
 healthy atmosphere in which science flourishes and comes to 
 maturity, while the uniformity of opinion which creates a 
 philosophical school checks the growth of the spirit of philosophical 
 criticism. Or, from the other side, individuality in science is a 
 restriction on the value of the truths enunciated, but in philosophy 
 it is the life and energy of the whole attitude. In some respects 
 the position of the philosopher resembles that of the poet ; his 
 synoptic outlook on the world is inseparable from the focus of 
 his individual perspective. The greater and more comprehensive 
 his individuality, the more of humanity it contains within itself, 
 the more will his deliverances meet with some response from 
 certain of his fellowmen, of equal or less spiritual compass than 
 himself But in no case is the elimination of his individuality 
 possible, consistently with his claim to gather the scattered rays 
 of the world's reason into the perspective of his own mind. He 
 cannot begin by assuming that his mind is representative of all 
 humanity, or even of the humanity of his own epoch and race. 
 He can only discover that he is representative of other minds 
 after the event, if his thoughts meet their thoughts, if his deliver- 
 ances are acknowledged by others. Indeed, most philosophers 
 seek in the first instance to satisfy their own mental demands by 
 carrying their thoughts to the limit of their own capacity and 
 mind. Having done this to their own satisfaction, the result is 
 left to the "judgment of the world," which in this case is the 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 201 
 
 judgment of the like-minded. This being so, direct continuity of 
 thought on the ultimate issues of philosophy cannot be expected 
 in the same way as it is expected and aimed at by science. 
 There may be much overlapping or intersecting of the regions of 
 thought explored and delineated by the several philosophers ; 
 but complete identity of synoptic vision is in the nature of the 
 case impossible. As long as human individuality counts as an 
 essential factor in the constitution of the philosophical problem, 
 this conclusion is inevitable, whatever be the corollaries to which 
 it leads when we seek to estimate the nature and value of the 
 work of philosophy. For to each individuality the world is a 
 different world ; and the more intense and definite the in- 
 dividuality, the more clearly is this seen. The interest in " the 
 world-problem " arises from the special way in which the world 
 appeals to a given individual. The elimination of his individuality 
 in the make-up of the problem would involve the elimination of 
 his interest in it. Hence it is that we never find any philosopher 
 accepting en bloc the system of another ; the agreement where- 
 ever it exists is always partial and qualified, or covers particular 
 points ; and even the ideas agreed upon are recast in order to fit 
 into the central point of view at which each stands. It may be 
 said that the general concepts adopted are so framed as to form 
 a common meeting ground for the different minds engaged with 
 the same problem, and that the use of such general concepts is 
 intended to establish agreement, not to express difference. But 
 this is not altogether the correct statement of the situation. The 
 general concepts are due to the generality and extent of the 
 objects which the sweep of the philosopher's vision covers at a 
 single coup dxil ; and the inter-communication of these concepts 
 by different minds is an important but an indirect consequence 
 of their generality. The orbit of one mind intersects that of 
 another, because the range of the field contemplated by each is 
 sufficiently wide to cover partially that of another. They are 
 both in the same world, although it is a different world for each ; 
 and the generality of the objects considered makes overlapping 
 of interests in part possible, and is the way in which community in 
 the same world is established. The concepts are not devised for 
 purposes of human intercourse between philosophers ; intercourse 
 
202 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 is rather the result -of the character of the concepts in question. 
 In very few cases can the uhimate concepts of different 
 philosophers be completely coincident in meaning ; in most cases 
 they merely intersect with varying extent of area ; in every case 
 the coincidence, partial or complete, neither destroys nor dis- 
 penses with the individuality of the outlook which constitutes the 
 philosophical attitude of each towards the world. The very fact 
 that the philosopher A's position in the world is itself part of 
 the content of the world as viewed by the philosopher B, and 
 vice versd, ought to make it sufficiently clear that no complete 
 transmutation or superposition of synoptic visions is possible for 
 the two thinkers. This accounts for the difficulty philosophers 
 have in understanding each other, an understanding which may 
 vary from sceptical distrust to " general agreement." ^ It also 
 lets us see that the attempt to identify conceptual thought with a 
 transfinite point of view and to eliminate individual vision by a 
 traffic with abstractions, is to confuse similarity of purpose with 
 identity of interests, community of object with coincidence of 
 mental outlook, the angularity of perspective with the parallel 
 rays. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There are many reasons why the majority of mankind seem 
 to find no mental necessity in the pursuit of philosophy. 
 Philosophy, it has been said, requires leisure, and most people 
 have not the requisite detachment from pressing everyday 
 practical concerns to enable them to give themselves to con- 
 templation. There is a strange naivete or self-satisfied illusion 
 in this reflection, in which Aristotle sums up the condition 
 distinguishing practical and theoretical life. If the taper of a 
 man's intellect kindles at the touch of the fire of knowledge, 
 doubtless it will require the retreat of protected silence in which 
 to burn aright. But the plain fact is that most men do not want 
 this kind or amount of knowledge which philosophy seeks to 
 obtain. Their intellects do not respond to the call of " truth for 
 
 * " General agreement " in many cases is due to courtesy or good nature. The 
 social instinct is so much stronger than intellectual energy. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 203 
 
 truth's sake," or " truth to the uttermost," which is said to be 
 the prevailing note of philosophy. Give them ever so much 
 leisure, and they will fill it anyhow rather than with contempla- 
 tion. There are and have been thousands who have no lack of 
 leisure, but they prefer to fill it with fighting or fox-hunting 
 instead of philosophy. And, on the other hand, any one pressed 
 hard by practical affairs can, if he choose, either make room for 
 meditation or decrease his interest in practice in order to increase 
 his interest in theoretic life. Diogenes and Plato had both leisure 
 enough for philosophy ; but their relation to the practical goods 
 of life was very different — all the difference between neglect and 
 control. Leisure can be made for whatever ends a man 
 seriously cares to pursue. It requires leisure to be a useful 
 practical man, as well as to be a philosopher ; and a man must 
 be undisturbed by the misgivings and pre-occupations of the 
 thinker if he is to accomplish anything practical. What each 
 requires is not so much detachment as concentration on his 
 selected purpose, and this quality presupposes the necessary 
 mental endowment and interest for the task he has in view. In 
 our own day there is more truth, or at least more of what passes 
 for knowledge, than most men care about. If it be said that 
 philosophy is the best way to use the leisure which a man has, 
 this is by no means obvious to any one except the philosopher by 
 disposition, whose predilection does not make him an altogether 
 impartial judge. 
 
 The truth, in short, is that philosophy seeks to secure a 
 special kind of mental satisfaction, and the pursuit of this 
 satisfaction is in the long run literally a matter of selective choice 
 on the part of the individual. Philosophy at its best seeks to 
 supply a connected intellectual grasp of the world which will 
 satisfy a man's capacity for thinking out the nature of things. 
 When attained, it brings a peculiar consciousness of intellectual 
 repose in face of the changing course of events and the endless 
 array of finite phenomena, which is unlike any other state of 
 mind, which is incommunable, and which is unmistakable by 
 any one who has been even partially aware of it. No one who 
 has had the glowing consciousness of an illuminating idea ever 
 doubts that he has arrived at the satisfaction he was in search of; 
 
204 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 but because it can neither be described nor shared, he never 
 regards it as anything but the reward of his own individual choice. 
 There is, indeed, no substitute for this satisfaction, and so no 
 substitute for philosophy. But there are other ways of attaining 
 mental satisfaction, completely adequate to other types of men- 
 tality ; and these may be selected for their own sake with as 
 much justification as the pursuit of philosophy. In some cases 
 they are as enduring and as valuable as philosophy ; for there 
 are other attitudes even to the world as a whole than that of 
 philosophy. A connected conceptional scheme of the world is 
 not the only way to be mentally at peace with it. 
 
 It should not be supposed, however, that the activity of 
 conceptual thought is necessarily at its best in philosophy, or that 
 philosophy has the privilege of realising thought processes at 
 their highest level. Apart from the fact that the history of 
 philosophy would be but an ironical commentary on this pre- 
 tension, and apart from the insoluble difficulty of establishing the 
 proper method of philosophy, we find the contrast familiarly 
 made between philosophical thinking and scientific thinking, a 
 contrast accepted apparently by philosophers as a sound distinc- 
 tion. Thinking that goes beyond the wants or limits of science is 
 said to be philosophical thinking. But since science claims to 
 have a complete and rigorous regard for all verifiable truth, the 
 thinking that trespasses beyond this area is not merely un- 
 scientific in the neutral sense, but untrue in every sense. It is a 
 strange flattery that science pays to philosophy when it thus 
 hands over to philosophy its own unsolved or insoluble problems; 
 and it shows a singular naivete of mind if philosophers accept as 
 a compliment what can only be a thinly veiled satire. If we 
 consider, not the problems dealt with by science and philosophy 
 respectively, but the procedure of thought in the two cases, a 
 similar contrast is drawn between the two. For while science 
 aims at supplying all " exact " knowledge, the handling of all 
 knowledge which is incapable of exact treatment is generously 
 conceded to philosophers.^ It need hardly be said that, if these 
 contrasts are tenable, philosophy cannot claim to occupy a 
 peculiarly privileged position as an exponent of the highest form 
 
 ^ Cf. Merz, History of European thought, ii. 550. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 205 
 
 of conceptual activity. And when it is added that many of the 
 strongest intellects in science deliberately avoid all association 
 with philosophy on pain of losing caste with the scientific world, 
 there \% prima facie more occasion for humility than exaltation in 
 the attempt to find complete satisfaction for intellectual needs 
 along the line of philosophical reflection. 
 
 A further consideration suggests itself. Even intellectual 
 activity at its best is not necessarily found by way of argument 
 and inference, which are so steadily pursued by science and 
 philosophy. These are often but lengthy processes of articulating 
 a swift and consummate intellectual insight, which is as sure in its 
 grasp of the nature of the object dealt with as any long series of 
 inferences, and which at any rate is not rendered more certain of 
 its comprehension at the end of the sorites than it is at the stage 
 of initial insight. The process of inference may, in a great 
 many cases, only articulate a concentrated direct vision, which is 
 not less but often more satisfying intellectually than the lumber- 
 ing pedantry of circuitous syllogisms. Indeed, it is admitted by 
 some logicians that the longer the process of argument the 
 greater the danger of error in the conclusion. If it is sometimes 
 true that reasoning may be sound in spite of the deliverance of 
 insight, it is as often equally true that an intuition is sure despite 
 the process of reasoning. It is with intellectual activity in science 
 as with the operation of intellect in daily life which we call 
 practical wisdom. A wise man may be able to give reasons for 
 a line of conduct ; a wiser man can feel sure of himself and his 
 insight without reasons, or even in spite of them. A penetrating 
 aphorism is not the result of detailed logical articulation of thought, 
 and goes home none the less swiftly. Logic is the minister not the 
 prince of intelligence ; and wit is the master of wisdom, none the 
 less so because it can stoop to be the servant of folly. If an error 
 can be successfully assailed by a witticism, we but make ourselves 
 ridiculous if we painfully circumvent it by a syllogism : just as 
 an overwhelming coup de main renders all elaborate strategy 
 unnecessary. 
 
 It should not be forgotten, again, that the satisfaction to the 
 cravings of the intellect which philosophy aspires to give, is one 
 which can only be sought because of a peculiar forceful energy of 
 
206 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 mind. It seems inseparably associated not simply with unusual 
 curiosity, and uncommon intellectual disquiet, but with a kind of 
 indomitable resolution of will, that refuses to give way before 
 obstacles and must see things to the end. It is a mood that has 
 invariably been supported by singular powers of passion, of 
 solitary self-reliance, and resistless intellectual courage. In some 
 cases we feel that results have been achieved and systems 
 established by sheer determination to get to an end somehow, 
 rather than give in for want of inspiration. It is plain that the 
 qualities that make for such a purpose, while certainly not found 
 in many men, are especially attributes of the masculine form of 
 the human mind. Systems of philosophy are created by men for 
 men, and where they are not a matter of sheer indifference or 
 contempt to the feminine mind, they form the subject of detached 
 curiosity, critical amusement, or feminine wonderment at this 
 singular display of masculine activity. In the face of these facts, 
 evident to any student of human nature, and known to most 
 teachers of philosophical literature, there can be no claim on the 
 part of philosophy to be the only way by which even complete 
 intellectual satisfaction is to be found by humanity. 
 
 IV 
 
 If philosophy, then, on the evidence suggested by its history 
 and by the actual facts of experience, is not and cannot claim to 
 be a universally necessary process of the human mind ; if it is a 
 peculiar attitude adopted by a specific type of mind and 
 associated with geographical situation, racial character, individual 
 endowment, and even the climatic conditions of human life ; if 
 it seems by its very nature incapable of establishing uniformity 
 of result or continuity of development amongst those who do 
 prosecute its problems— what kind of contribution does it make 
 to human achievement ? 
 
 It need hardly be said that the smallness of the company of 
 philosophical minds, relatively to the whole of mankind, is not 
 of itself a consideration which determines the significance of 
 philosophy in the scheme of human life. However much the 
 fact may modify the ambitions of the enthusiastic, and qualify 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 207 
 
 the pretensions even of the most confident to speak for all man- 
 kind, still the value is not decreased by the mere admission 
 that few are concerned in its maintenance. Nor is that value 
 necessarily increased by the same admission. Doubtless, rarity 
 is an element determining the nature of value ; the best things 
 are often few in number. But a minority may consist of fools, 
 as well as of wise men. The fact of number, in short, is 
 irrelevant when we are considering the true place of a type of 
 mind in the scheme of experience. A whole nation of men 
 might find the proof of the law of gravitation meaningless, and 
 thereby proclaim the limitations of their intellect. The few 
 amongst mankind who claim to have seen ghosts have never 
 been able to convict the remainder of defective vision. 
 
 Philosophers have often traded on the connection between 
 value and numerical limitation, much to the annoyance of the 
 excluded majority, never to the ultimate triumph of their ideas, 
 and rarely without preparing the way for their own discomfiture. 
 Supremacy of character is only realised by having overcome the 
 pride that goes before the fall ; and superiority of intellect is only 
 obtained by the self-negation which knows no detachment from 
 its object, and finds its highest achievement in the modesty of 
 self-oblivion. This is particularly the case in philosophy where 
 the intellect goes out to meet so vast an object, and where both 
 the magnitude of the task as well as the extremely limited 
 success hitherto attained in fulfilling it, leaves so little time or 
 room for intellectual self-complacency. Even if the philosophers 
 were successful to any degree in carrying out their undertaking, 
 the result achieved, so far as it is true, ceases at once to be a 
 private possession, it becomes a truth for other minds, and 
 obtains its human value on that account. To turn the result of 
 thought into private gain or glory, has always in the long run 
 given it the appearance of being a mere private opinion ; and 
 what pretends to be sublime truth thus becomes at a single step 
 the object of ridicule and contempt. What gains respect for 
 philosophers is not so much the result achieved by their thinking, 
 as the supreme importance to all mankind of the object they 
 seek to understand ; and in the presence of this object there 
 is no place for vain glory. 
 
2o8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 The importance of philosophy, then, is not to be decided one 
 way or another by the restricted range of individuals who are 
 interested in the solution of its problems. This must be 
 determined by the peculiar character of the mental activity it 
 involves, and, simultaneously, by the kind of end it seeks to 
 attain. 
 
 In order to bring into clear relief what the philosopher aims 
 at, one must first of all recognise the significance of the elementary 
 fact that philosophy is a specific attitude or mood of a human 
 individual whose mental life is permeated from its earliest to its 
 latest stages by social influences. He is not merely socially 
 conditioned ; his whole being is socially constituted. Moreover, 
 the mood of philosophy, if it appears at all, does not arise till his 
 experience as a social being has matured. By that time the 
 structure and composition of his mind are saturated with the 
 substance of the social consciousness in which he has been 
 nurtured and which has made him what he is. What he means 
 by his individual mind is largely obtained through intercourse 
 with his society.^ 
 
 ' The most characteristic forms of social intercourse appear in the inter- 
 change of ideas through language, and in sharing duties, rights and institutions. 
 These media of inter-communication constitute the substance of the social order which 
 the individual finds awaiting him when he enters the historical society into which he 
 is born. They are given to him as material for his nurture and upbuilding into 
 conscious membership in the community. In the early stages he has no choice but to 
 accept and assimilate, and only later does he venture to modify or reject ; and to the 
 last his individuality is sustained through ever deeper intercourse with his social 
 heritage. Its value to him and its power over him remain overwhelming. The 
 individuality he acquires, therefore, and thinks of as his own, is the outgrowth of 
 social agencies, which have endowed him with his substance. One may say that in the 
 normal healthy individual, the sense of distinction within the social communion is 
 never carried to the breaking point of separation ; it is always maintained consistently 
 with continued social intercourse. Complete mental insulation is the last agony of the 
 human mind. The individuality in which any one consists, is, then, largely social in 
 origin, social in composition, social in its forms of self-maintenance. 
 
 This fact might be a matter of indifference to the problem of philosophy, if the 
 mind which philosophy seeks to satisfy had a kind of abstract unitary self, 
 detachable from the conditions of its origin, in much the same way as a kernel may be 
 isolated from its shell. In this case the social system would be merely the historical 
 medium of its development, and could be cast off as soon as the self was consciously 
 established. But in reality the individual mind is utterly inseparable from what it 
 contains, and its self is its whole mind, not any element within it however central in 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 209 
 
 Society has moulded the individual mind of the philosopher 
 before he adopts the philosophical mood. Before he can think 
 " for himself," he must have acquired the distinctive individuality 
 which only social influence can create ; and the mind that thinks 
 philosophically is already a mind with a specific constitution. 
 His individual activity may be directed to satisfy his own mind ; 
 but the mind that is to be satisfied is not an abstraction ; it has, 
 from the first, a definite organisation and is saturated with social 
 influences. It is commonly said that a philosopher's problems 
 are set by his historical situation ; and this is true. But it is even 
 more important to observe that the philosopher's own mind is 
 itself moulded under the pressure of specific historical agencies, 
 and takes on the shape determined by its social origin and 
 constitution. It may think abstract things in abstract ways ; 
 but it is naive confusion to suppose that a mind which thinks 
 abstractly is itself a pure abstraction, that a mind which thinks 
 about universal objects is a universal mind. 
 
 Given an individual mind of this nature, the philosopher's 
 peculiar interest may be said to be a consequence and an 
 
 importance. The mind is what and how it thinks, what and how it acts, what and 
 how it feels. And the "what" and the "how " in every case reflect and involve 
 its social origin and connection. Not to speak of the language which embodies his 
 thought and conditions his reflection, his ideas of the world, of nature, and of human 
 life, are, in the first instance, those that prevail in the social order to which the 
 individual belongs, so far as the individual has assimilated the religion, the knowledge, 
 and the moral judgments of his tribe or nation. His further modification and 
 criticism of these ideas are carried on by constant reference to standards of 
 intelligibility which will keep him in touch with his immediate social environment. 
 He thinks in order to be understood, i.e. to develop intellectual communion with 
 his fellows. His character and behaviour will be tolerated and accepted only if they 
 reveal the type of social life of which he is a member. His very feelings, instincts, 
 and emotions take their form from the racial constitution of his people. From his 
 highest aspirations to the half-unconscious suggestions which come like shadowy 
 recollections from an unremembered past, his mental processes betray his racial and 
 ancestral heritage. It is such a mind, so constituted, and no other, that seeks 
 satisfaction in the mood of philosophy. The unity which it possesses is, in the 
 first instance, largely an ethical unity, the unity of a personality with mental tendencies 
 of its own and with claims and with duties in a social group. It is in this sense 
 that the individual attaches reality to his own particular existence as distinct from 
 others. And his unity is not that of a focal point but of an organised system 
 of functions ; for this alone can justify the claim to be regarded as a distinctive member 
 of a social order. 
 
 P 
 
2IO STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 accentuation of his specific individuality. Like every one else 
 he selects his special function because he is individual, and by 
 selection consolidates individuality still further. In this selection 
 alone lies the abstract character of his task ; and in the same 
 sense every individual by specialising becomes abstract. He is 
 giving up the whole or the most of his activity to what is 
 admittedly but an element of his concrete nature. Neither 
 the philosopher's mind nor his occupation is abstract merely 
 because he is concerned with thought and thinking ; for every 
 one thinks, and thought is not necessarily abstract. His 
 peculiarity lies in seeking to satisfy his individuality to the 
 completest extent that the special function of thinking makes 
 possible ; or, what comes to the same thing, he tries to carry out 
 the mental activity of thought to its uttermost and fulfil its 
 highest demands. To get the utmost satisfaction for his 
 individual nature which thinking can give him, is by no means 
 an abstract achievement. It is regarded as such only by those 
 who identify concreteness and reality with what belongs to 
 the senses to the exclusion of thought, which by contrast is 
 abstract. But in truth the essence of the abstraction here 
 lies precisely in the process of exclusion ; and if thought when 
 excluded from sense-perception is abstract, equally so is sense- 
 perception when cast off from thought. The only concrete 
 mental reality is the continuity or diffusion of the two. And it 
 requires very little experience of life to learn that over-con- 
 centration on the satisfaction which sense can give, will prove as 
 one-sided as any other one-sided exaggeration. 
 
 V 
 
 What starts the philosopher on the pursuit of his special form 
 of satisfaction is the influence exerted on his mind by the 
 development of general ideas embodied in language. These 
 are at once the creation and the condition of complex social 
 intercourse, and symbolise continuous community of mind with 
 mind. The use of language helps to substantiate ideas till 
 they appear to the mind as real as things outside. When 
 handed about from one individual to another they assume an 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 211 
 
 independence which resembles the objects of nature. They are so 
 intimately associated with the operations of the individual mind 
 using them, that they seem to be his own, and yet they expand 
 his mental range indefinitely beyond himself. There is no 
 sphere of his mental life where he feels more at liberty, and 
 none where he feels so much at home. It is not surprising that 
 the discovery of the existence of this socially created realm of 
 ideas should thrill to intoxication a certain type of mind, and 
 suggest the possibility of finding in the life of thought alone the 
 very heart's desire. It is only after the stage of free ideas has 
 been attained by the mind that the pursuit of ideas for their own 
 sake can be undertaken ; and this is the selective interest of the 
 philosopher. 
 
 The philosophical mood, then, consists in seeking the 
 maximum of satisfaction which the function of thinking can 
 afford the individual. It is thus distinct from all restricted ways 
 of thinking, whether the limitations are determined by practical 
 considerations, by the artificial boundaries of the special sciences, 
 or, it may be, by intellectual indifference. The only restriction 
 imposed on the philosopher's form of thinking arises from the 
 special quality of his mind and his capacity to follow wherever 
 thought leads him. This will aff'ect the range of his philosophical 
 inquiry, and the degree of success with which he will be able to 
 prosecute it. 
 
 The " maximum of satisfaction " to be had from thinking, 
 might be interpreted in different senses. It might mean the 
 satisfaction obtained by thinking as much, and about as many 
 things, as possible. This is often spoken of as philosophy; 
 philosophy is then identified with unusual intellectual curiosity. 
 There is, however, in such a case, no maximum secured or 
 obtainable ; we have an indefinite series, or perhaps an unlimited 
 continuity, of pleasant states of mind, but neither internal 
 coherence nor finality in the results acquired. Interest in all 
 objects of all thought is doubtless an important characteristic 
 of the mood of one who claims to be a " spectator of all time and 
 all existence." But the philosopher in thinking seeks finality 
 rather than extent : it is in a certain quality of thought and not 
 in quantity that the maximum of satisfaction lies. This is found 
 
212 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in the end by which and in which thinking is fulfilled ; for 
 thinking, being a mental activity, is directed upon, and is realised 
 in an end of its own. When attained, we have all that thought 
 can accomplish and the mind rests satisfied in the result. Here 
 we have the kind of satisfaction which philosophy specially and 
 properly seeks to supply. 
 
 But at this point philosophers begin at once to diverge. 
 They have understood, or they have sought, this end of the 
 thinking activity in several ways. Certainly they all agree that 
 finality must at least be assumed or demanded, otherwise there 
 would be no peculiar task for philosophy to carry out ; for to 
 start any undertaking implies not only that we have something 
 definite in view, but that the object dealt with has a circumscribed 
 nature of its own. But some have taken philosophy to be the 
 search for certain ultimate irreducible forms or elements of 
 thought, each of which is final and the total number of which 
 is fixed, presumably by the nature of thought itself ■■■ Others, 
 again, have looked upon the end of thinking as a kind of goal 
 towards which it works. The end guides the direction of its 
 activity and at the same time determines the frontiers within 
 which it can operate legitimately, and beyond which, indeed, it 
 becomes a trespasser or worse — an aimless vagrant.^ Still others 
 consider the finality sought for to be that of a self-closed system 
 or world of thought, which contains explicitly and implicitly 
 all that thinking can accomplish, and in the construction of which 
 it at once exhausts itself completely and fulfils its activity.^ 
 
 Such divergent views are doubtless in part to be traced to 
 the manifest ambiguity that lies hidden in words like "final," 
 " ultimate," " complete." This explains, if it does not justify, a 
 
 ' This is one of the commonest views of the thinking philosophy has to do with. 
 It controls formal logic and much psychology. Many special sciences are said to 
 be conducted philosophically in this sense. Aristotle's Metaphysics is almost 
 exclusively dominated by this conception. 
 
 * This is the view of all those who regard philosophy as the search for the 
 limits of thought. Allied to this is the inquiry into the criterion of truth ; 
 here all thinking can be brought to its end at once by applying this touchstone. 
 Kant is one of the most conspicuous examples of this type of philosopher ; but the 
 type has many varied representatives. 
 
 ' All metaphysical systems and cosmic theories belong to this type. Spencer and 
 Hegel may be considered conspicuous representatives. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 213 
 
 one-sided interpretation, often adopted for historical reasons or 
 even quite uncritically. They all, however, seem to imply that 
 in " thinking to the end " philosophy is concerned with a kind of 
 terminus ad quem which is somehow to arrest thought and 
 prevent it from going any further. The crudest form in which 
 this appears is where the object of thought is always looked 
 upon as a barrier impeding the free exercise of thinking, and the 
 " ultimate object " is a last obstacle which thought by no effort 
 can surmount. But the same idea is involved when we seek the 
 end of thought in a " supreme unity " which is the highest 
 object to which thought can aspire. The former of these views 
 needs no serious consideration : it is due to an elementary 
 confusion between an object of thought and an external existence 
 outside the individual. The other view merits some attention, if 
 only in order to bring out more precisely the general nature of 
 the thinking process. 
 
 VI 
 
 We cannot remind ourselves too often that articulate thinking 
 is a function, and but one specialised function, of the individual 
 mind. It arises late in mental evolution, and plays its distinctive 
 part alongside various other mental functions, such as perceiving, 
 desiring, remembering. The activity of thinking consists in 
 that operation by which the individual mind concerned unites 
 elements presented as different, and thereby constitutes a single 
 whole, a mental unity in difference, a thought, which in its 
 highest form is the concept. We cannot, except for purposes of 
 abstract analysis, separate the thinking from the thought, the 
 conceiving from the concept. The only reality in the case is the 
 individual mind exercising the function of thinking so as to 
 produce or evolve thought. But for the influence of language, 
 which has the effect of externalising the thought and cutting it 
 off from the activity of thinking, we should never in theory, as 
 we do not in experience, dissociate the function from its ful- 
 filment,^ any more than we can separate the function of thinking 
 
 * When the mental process is entirely separated from the result of thinking we 
 arrive at the singular position adopted, l«.^. by Mr. Bradley, that the process is purely 
 
214 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 from the mind which realises itself by exercising such a function. 
 We do not treat the functions of an organism as if they existed 
 and operated of themselves ; it is the organism as an individual 
 body which functions in different ways. We do not look upon 
 the action of a physical mass as independent of the thing which 
 acts ; the action is the action of the thing. Even a man's acts 
 are not separated from the man, no matter how much they seem 
 outside him ; we look on them as expressions of character and 
 continuous in quality with his motives and intentions. The 
 same holds true of a man's thinking and his thought. Thinking 
 has its being only as a function of an individual mind, and 
 thoughts are but the culmination of the process of thinking, the 
 process of consciously unifying discrete differences. 
 
 It is necessary to lay stress on this point not merely on 
 general grounds, but in order to make clear the special nature of 
 philosophical thinking. When thinking in its highest form is 
 detached from the concrete individuality in whom alone thinking 
 is found, two effects generally appear. Thinking is regarded as 
 a sort of self-acting mental mechanism which works according to 
 certain laws of its own, turns out results of an impersonal 
 character, i.e. neither of peculiar value for, nor derived from, the 
 individual, and may turn out results J:hat put the individual mind 
 to sheer confusion and dismay. The other effect is seen in the 
 supposition that a supreme unity of thought subsists inde- 
 pendently of thinking, and is either its precondition or its goal 
 
 "symbolic," a mental sign, the result alone being "significant." This is curiously 
 reminiscent of Berkeley's theory of Natural Law. If the process is merely a symbol 
 the result cannot be anything more ; if it is a significant symbol we do not isolate it 
 from the result. Such a view is as abstract and inadequate as the opposite theory, 
 that the mental process is alone real and the result a mere symbol. And, indeed, if 
 we insist on isolating the process from the result, it is irrelevant which we treat as 
 symbol and which as reality. 
 
 When the reality of the process is transformed into a symbol, the result becomes a 
 floating adjective, a world of ideal meanings, and thinking loses touch with the 
 reality of mental life altogether. 
 
 It is curious to note the entanglement to which this paradoxical view leads when 
 it is accepted with all its consequences. Mr. Bosanquet, who follows Mr. Bradley, 
 provides a good illustration of this in a discussion in his Logic, vol. i.. Introduction, 
 § 7- There seems nothing gained and much lost by reading an intelligible phrase 
 backwards. " The meaning of the world " has a straightforward significance : " the 
 world of meaning " is not even a good metaphor. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 215 
 
 and consummation. These effects are in a manner inevitable : 
 for if we eliminate the individual mind from the thinking func- 
 tion, thinking must work like a self-acting machme ; ^ and if the 
 thinking be a self-complete mechanism, it may very well have a 
 corresponding independent self-complete object upon which it is 
 directed. 
 
 When thinking is thus mechanised, concepts assume an almost 
 spatial precision of outline, and arrange themselves one beside 
 another in a sort of intellectual mosaic called a scheme of thought. 
 The thinking agent is turned into a quasi-external spectator of 
 his own processes, watching the revolutions of his intellect as it 
 produces concept, hypothesis, and inference, and having neither 
 the power nor the interest to participate in its operations. At its 
 best the work of thinking seems to go on with a severe rigour of 
 logical necessity that rivals the inevitableness of fate itself, and 
 the helpless beholder feels himself in the grasp of his innermost 
 destiny, all the more irresistible because it is not without him. 
 So far from turning from such conditions of thinking, the 
 mechanised intellect sometimes' regards such necessity as an 
 ideal :^ in science it becomes an indwelling prejudice,^ and in 
 philosophy it may be even an obsession. In other minds, how- 
 ever, when this view of thinking prevails, there is an instinctive 
 recoil. Thinking which is thus fateful and irresistible seems 
 after a time fatuous, wearisome, depressing.* The very monotony 
 of the click-clack of the logical machine as it works out success- 
 fully its syllogisms and inferences dulls the mind to the vitality 
 of truth. There is felt to be an element of pathos and even 
 tragedy in a human mind possessing within itself a piece of 
 mechanism that operates regardless of the interests and the 
 choice of the individual, nay, so completely indifferent that it 
 
 * Cf. Bergson's view that the intellect can only deal successfully with spatial and 
 mechanical aspects of the world — probably on the old principle that like only 
 knows like. 
 
 ' Cf. the well-known passage in Mill's Autobiography, where he describes the 
 effect of science on the sense of beauty. 
 
 ' Cf. Huxley's strangely expressed desire to have an intellect that would turn out 
 truth with automatic and unerring precision. 
 
 ' E.g. when the mind is controlled by the bias towards scientific demonstration 
 and certainty in the form supplied by the mechanical and mathematical sciences. 
 
2i6 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 may produce results which spell ruin to his dearest hopes. To 
 be carried along by the irresistible force of a sequence of thought 
 while the individual mind watches the process as from the deck 
 of a ship, may well seem to the mind much the same as being 
 swept away on a high tide of passion ; for if in the latter case we 
 lose ourselves in chaos, in the other case we never find ourselves 
 at all. The impersonal character of the result, which is secured 
 by " eliminating the individual," must be a defect and not a 
 merit, if what is independent of the individual is no better than 
 indifferent to him. Indeed, the impersonal closely resembles the 
 non-human, and what lies outside humanity may be beneath a 
 man's regard and not an object inspiring his devotion. Thus 
 the ambition to secure impersonal thought by dispensing with 
 the individual mind overreaches itself; a result is obtained 
 which the individual mind can cheerfully dispense with altogether. 
 And against this judgment of the individual there can be no 
 appeal, for this alone can determine whether the product is 
 worthy of pursuit and possession. The worship of a mental 
 mechanism and its product is the worship of an idol of our own 
 devising ; it degrades because it terrifies, and it terrifies because 
 it is external to human individuality as a whole. Like many 
 other superstitions it disappears as soon as it is replaced in the 
 context of the individual life from which it should never have 
 been detached. Thinking is nothing more than a specific function 
 exercised by the individual mind. From this it draws its vitality. 
 The individual effort involved in all thinking is inseparable from 
 its very nature, conditioning its process, and in large measure 
 determining its results. While the procedure of thinking has its 
 own peculiar laws and aims, as the laws of seeing are different 
 from those of hearing, the function is fulfilled in connection with 
 the whole scheme of the individual life, separation from which 
 leads not to healthy development but towards disease and 
 dissolution. 
 
 VII 
 
 The assumption of an independent supreme unity, forming 
 the culminating point towards which thinking strives, seems 
 quite unnecessary for the exercise of this function in the 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 217 
 
 case of philosophy. Such an assumption is, in fact, nothing but a 
 substantiation of the function of unifying in which, as already 
 stated, thinking consists. The only concrete reality in thinking 
 is the individual mind that thinks ; this alone " unifies." The 
 unity of thought is not an objective quasi-external entity 
 subsisting independently of the mind ; it is that in which the 
 process of thinking terminates and is focussed. The completion 
 of the function, however, is inseparable from and in no sense 
 independent of the function itself 
 
 The supposition of an independent supreme unity is of no 
 assistance to the thinking process. If thinking succeeds in 
 securing unity in any given case, that is all the unity it requires 
 or is capable of, in the situation before it. A supreme unity 
 placed outside all thinking in order to guide its direction, remains 
 for ever outside, and can never be attained at all. Moreover, 
 if it could be attained it would arrest all thinking. Thus a 
 unity apparently designed in the best interests of the function 
 can only be reached at the price of the cessation of thought 
 altogether. Lurking behind such an assumption there seems a 
 half-acknowledged feeling that the process of thinking may be 
 but a kind of mental defect, a species of intellectual disquiet that 
 should be and will ultimately be allayed : much in the same way 
 as desires are considered by certain ascetics to be little better 
 than disturbances or troublesome eruptions on the surface of the 
 soul, the satisfaction of them being but the state in which the 
 disturbance is got rid of If the supreme unity of thinking 
 involves the cessation of the process, the attainment of it may 
 well seem a doubtful boon to those whose highest sense of well- 
 being is achieved in the exercise of this activity.^ The supreme 
 unity of knowledge is at best but an imaginatively presented 
 idea of unity which is used practically as a regulative principle 
 to guide the process of knowledge. 
 
 It is not difficult to see how the supreme unity comes to be 
 regarded as an objective independent entity. In science and in 
 
 • This is doubtless the root of the objection so often made against any 
 philosophical system claiming to be or to give the whole truth. 
 
 On the other hand, the preference of the "pursuit of truth " to the "possession of 
 it," is an extreme and less defensible form of the same attitude of mind. 
 
2i8 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 everyday life our thinking is circumscribed by the boundaries, 
 deliberately and often arbitrarily fixed, of a specific object or 
 field of objects. On this our activity is directed, and our function 
 of unifying the different elements presented is kept within definite 
 limits. The unity when attained is a definite and a systematically 
 connected result, the achievement of which arrests the course of 
 our thinking in that direction. If this familiar experience is 
 generalised, we have the notion that ultimately and in the end 
 all our thinking issues in a supreme form of unification which 
 completes, and in that sense terminates, the operation of thinking. 
 The circumscribed limitation which characterises the result of the 
 operation of thinking in specific selected cases, is held to apply 
 also to thinking in general, thinking which is non-selective. The 
 former issues in a specific unifying principle or specific system of 
 thought, the latter in a complete system of thoughts : in the 
 former we have a " finite " object, in the latter an " infinite " 
 object. 
 
 It is easy to show that such a generalisation of the activity of 
 thinking is logically unsound. The fallacy is threefold. It 
 assumes that, because our interpretation of a given object issues 
 in a specific constructive system of thoughts, a body of truth, the 
 mere construction of a system of thought will give us an inter- 
 pretation of an object. It also assumes that because in the 
 interpretation of a particular range of fact we proceed by con- 
 structing a connected system of its elements, for the interpretation 
 of an absolute whole we must proceed by way of systematic 
 connection. The third fallacy consists in supposing that because 
 a systematic connection of thoughts about a given object furnishes 
 the intelligible truth of that object, the systematic connection of 
 the totality of thought will furnish the intelligible meaning of a 
 whole which is never given as an object at all. It may be 
 possible to construct a system of thoughts, and call this the 
 supreme outcome of thought or philosophy. But we certainly 
 cannot conclude from the nature of thinking that there is such 
 a system, and therefore cannot dogmatically maintain that 
 philosophy consists simply and solely in the construction of a 
 system. 
 
 That our knowledge of finite reality proceeds by way of 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 219 
 
 systematic connection, is no proof that our knowledge of the 
 whole of reality must proceed in the same way. On the contrary, 
 the logical difference between part and whole would rather 
 suggest that our way of grasping the whole must follow some 
 other course. Nor is there any proof possible that the ultimate 
 issue of knowledge is a system of thought. Why should know- 
 ledge come to rest at all .-• Why should it not find itself satisfied 
 in the very activity of unifying the variety of detail presented to 
 the mind, regardless of any final consummation in which thought 
 would be completed at the price of cessation .' In other words, 
 why should the supreme unity of thought not be a guiding ideal 
 purpose instead of a realised termination of its activity ? 
 
 If we take the analogous cases of art and morality we can see 
 that this conception of a final system of thought, a completed 
 truth, is not the satisfaction thought requires. The final aim of 
 art is not the construction of a system of beautiful objects. 
 There is no such system imaginable. The ideal of beauty may 
 be said in a sense to be one, whatever be the forms in which it is 
 embodied.! But this does not imply that the aim of art is to 
 realise a single supreme object of beauty, or that the unity of art 
 is satisfied best in the attainment of one consummate expression of 
 the whole of beauty. On the contrary, the aim of art is to con- 
 centrate the beautiful into separate creations, in each of which the 
 ideal of beauty may be as fully satisfied as the medium employed 
 permits. The medium varies in quality and in amount, whether 
 it belong to the domain of sight and sound or touch. We do not 
 expect a landscape to satisfy the sense of beauty in sound. Nor 
 do we even imagine that there is but one supreme archetypal com- 
 bination of colour and form that will alone perfectly delight the 
 eye. A sonnet may be no less beautiful than a drama ; and again 
 one sonnet may be as beautiful as another, and both may be 
 " perfectly beautiful " though perfectly different. 
 
 Similarly in the case of the good. The ideal of goodness is 
 not a single scheme of personal life, even if such a scheme were 
 compatible with the transitory quality of all good action, which is 
 no sooner done than it recedes into the past of our lives, and its 
 very goodness remains a mere memory. We do not imagine that 
 * Cf. Wallace, GiflFord Lectures, p. 53. 
 
220 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 the whole of goodness is to be concentrated into one supremely 
 good act, or one supremely good person ; nor is it the realisation of 
 one system of good will into which our separate expressions of 
 will must fit if the whole of goodness is to be attained. An act, 
 a desire, a feeling may be " as good as it can be, " and that is the 
 only goodness we have to consider. A system of acts or habits 
 may be good, just as an isolated act may be good ; and sometimes 
 a system is better than an act, sometimes an act is better than a 
 system of acts. But we do not require to wait for the completion 
 of a system of goodness before we can satisfy the demands of the 
 moral ideal. Nor if such a system were the ideal could it satisfy 
 our desire to attain it ; for the whole system would not be realised 
 by any one act, and every part would be felt to be less than the 
 ideal requires and thus in a sense a wrong. But in the moral life 
 we can only proceed step by step. Our efforts and our acts are 
 discrete pulses of activity ; and at each step we seek to embody 
 the utmost that the morally best requires. Only so is our sense 
 of the ideal satisfied. In other words, the moral ideal is regarded 
 as capable of being found with us at each moment of our moral 
 life, concentrated and fully felt in every beat and rhythm of desire 
 and action.^ 
 
 Why should the satisfaction of the ideal of intellectual activity, 
 which in its highest form we call philosophy, be attained in any 
 other way than that followed in the case of the ideal of beauty or 
 the ideal of goodness .' In exercising the function of thought 
 upon any specific object it may certainly be allowed that the 
 function of unity is satisfied when the object is resolved into a 
 system of conceptions. But to suppose that this function of 
 unity which creates the system is itself a system, is not warranted 
 either by logic or by an analysis of the mental operation. 
 Moreover, to maintain that the highest unity of thought must be 
 expressed as a complete or final system of conceptions, is to 
 assume that ultimate reality — that in which thinking finally 
 secures satisfaction — is on the same footing as any finite 
 object presented to thought. But ultimate reality, the whole, is 
 strictly speaking not a single object at all ; and this for the simple 
 reason that it includes at once " all objects of all thought," and 
 
 ' This is the essential element of truth in the pleasure theory of the moral end. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 221 
 
 also thought itself which deals with objects. If the whole is really 
 the whole without qualification, then the thinker and his thought 
 fall within it as truly as any finite element whatsoever. The 
 thinker's thought about the whole is itself a part of the whole 
 from which by hypothesis it professes to be detached in order to 
 make the whole its object. Those who ignore this in the 
 interests of constructing a final system do so by the simple 
 process of identifying the essential nature of thought as a 
 function of unifying difference, with the supreme object of 
 thought ; and this carries with it the corollary that this unity is a 
 self-evolving organism which, as it develops, assumes the form of 
 a systematic whole of conceptions. 
 
 Apart, however, from these objections it is to be noted that the 
 construction of a complete system of conceptions is not carried 
 out simply in the interests of knowledge. Its underlying motive 
 is sesthetic.i It is the work of the creative artist using as his 
 material the abstract results of conceptional activity. His aim is 
 to secure the aesthetic satisfaction of producing a rounded 
 symmetrical whole. There is art as well as artifice required to 
 achieve his end. He selects and rejects, adjusts and arranges his 
 material, in much the same way as any other artist working in a 
 different medium must do. There can be no objection to 
 presenting truth in this way ; and it is obviously impossible 
 to suppress the artistic aspiration when giving free reign to the 
 constructive imagination, just as it is inevitable that the orator 
 when seeking to persuade should support his cause by using the 
 resources of rhythm and sound which language contains. At the 
 same time it would be misleading to ignore the presence of this 
 aesthetic element in the construction of philosophical system, and 
 erroneous to suppose that the only way to satisfy the mind's 
 demand for complete intellectual unity is by a finished system of 
 conception. Even if such a system were important, the fact that 
 historically many kinds of systems have been devised and offered 
 in order to satisfy the mind, should give us pause before accepting 
 the view that system is really essential for the purpose. 
 
 * Graham Wallas makes a similar remark, The Great Society, p. 107. 
 
222 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 VIII 
 
 Setting aside this view, then, we return to the primary fact 
 that while in thought the mind consciously exercises the function 
 of uniting a given manifold, drawn from any of the possible fields 
 of experience, sensation, perception, or ideas, in philosophy the 
 mind seeks to frame such a conception, or connection of concep- 
 tions, as will give the completest consciousness of the real which 
 the intellect can supply. Unifying is an operation of the mind ; 
 a conception is the outcome of the operation. These are strictly 
 inseparable and both subserve the one supreme purpose of the 
 individual's mental life, its self-maintenance as a reality amongst 
 realities. In the exercise of this function the whole mind is 
 engaged, and in the fulfilment of it the whole mind is satisfied. 
 The result, therefore, is not expressible in, so to say, one 
 dimension of the mind's reality : this would indeed be the pale 
 shade, the lifeless form, which thought is so often held to be. On 
 the contrary, the result is as solidly rounded as the mind that has 
 created it ; it is diffused with feeling, it consummates activity, 
 and also concentrates the intellectual process of the mind. When 
 the completest unity is attained by the intellect, it thrills the mind 
 with a sense of fulfilment which raises its tone of feeling, gives it 
 the consciousness of expanded activity, and deepens its appreci- 
 ation of the meaning of reality. It is impossible to separate 
 these effects in the final result ; they are transparent to any 
 analysis of the concrete mental situation created by the process 
 of knowledge. 
 
 This throws the necessary light on the nature of philosophy 
 which claims to be the supreme form of the operation of 
 knowledge. Philosophy is the way by which we gain the 
 deepest consciousness of reality to which the process of 
 conception can attain. It is not the only approach to conscious- 
 ness of the ultimately real. It is but one amongst these. It is, 
 however, supreme in its domain, the region of knowledge, and 
 follows there its own conditions and laws. It is a way of 
 communing with the supremely real which appeals to and 
 satisfies a certain type of mind, though it by no means meets 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 223 
 
 the needs of all minds who desire the highest sense of reality. 
 Some individuals find in poetry or again in music, the most vivid 
 consciousness of the real that their minds crave for. To these 
 science and philosophy are but factors which are subordinated, 
 and minister, to this consummate"' appreciation of the world's 
 meaning. To such minds " poetry is the breath and finer spirit 
 of all knowledge ; . . . it is the first and last of all knowledge."^ 
 Other individuals again discover the completest sense of the real 
 through the experience of religion, the region of mental life where 
 " the human spirit lays aside the burdens of finite existence and 
 attains the completest satisfaction and the largest sense of 
 freedom . . . For there its consciousness is absolutely free and is 
 consciousness in truth because it is consciousness of absolute truth. 
 In terms of feeling its state is one of enjoyment, the joy of 
 blessedness ; in terms of activity it spends itself in making 
 manifest the honour of God and showing forth His excellent 
 glory." 2 
 
 It is useless to set aside such ways of gaining the intensest 
 consciousness of real, which are in method and form so different 
 from philosophy.^ Nor can the philosopher successfully show 
 them to be either inadequate to their claims or inferior to his 
 own. For no one but a philosopher would be convinced by 
 reasoning on such a subject, even though his reasons were 
 apparently unanswerable. Poetry asks no question about its 
 own merits, and is therefore unconcerned about the answer. It 
 merely smiles at the critic "who lacks the glorious faculty 
 assigned to elevate the more than reasoning mind." Religion is 
 never tired of saying that the wisdom of this world is little else 
 
 ' Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. Cf. also Keats' Sleep and Poetry. 
 
 ' Hegel, Philosophic d. Religion, Einleitung. 
 
 ' There are those to whom the spiritualised fulfilment of the love of man 
 and woman gives a consciousness of the real which dissolves the mystery of things 
 seen and unseen into the clear daylight of a perfect and completely luminous 
 experience. Here vision and reality are so deeply interfused that even the most 
 impervious of all distinctions — the distinction of personalities — disappears in a unity 
 of spiritual life which claims to be the final disclosure of the meaning of the world. 
 Beside it science and philosophy seem halting and obsequious pedantry, art no 
 better than a bridal veil, and religious doctrine an imperfect symbol of this triumphant 
 reconciliation of the endeavours of nature and the purposes of the human spirit. 
 This experience finds some of its best expression in the literature of the East. 
 
224 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 than foolishness ; and in nothing more so, perhaps, than in trying 
 to prove itself divine. No argument will give a man his religious 
 peace, and none can take it away. Doubtless the philosopher is 
 entitled in the interests of philosophy to examine and determine 
 the nature of all objects of all thought, and to consider the 
 significance of all forms of experience. This is his way of dis- 
 cerning the meaning of the world and satisfying his supreme 
 mental need. Religion and art also in their highest interests 
 avail themselves of whatever experience and reflection can 
 contribute to further their ends. But just as philosophy refuses 
 to give way to them, so they refuse to surrender to philosophy 
 their claim to be supremely satisfying. And in the face of the 
 long history of the varied spiritual achievement of humanity, the 
 time is surely past for considering science or philosophy the only 
 royal road to an absolute experience. Philosophers may have 
 maintained this right to possess the " crown of the life of mind ; " 
 and those who could dispute the right have rarely done so, partly 
 because they did not profess to understand the achievement of 
 the philosophers, and partly perhaps because of an instinctive 
 disinclination to associate themselves with philosophers. 
 
 Philosophy, therefore, is but one way of meeting the demand 
 of the mind for final satisfaction, the way that is open through 
 the avenue of purely intellectual activity. The choice of this 
 way is determined by individual capacity, and is a matter of 
 selective interest and chance. " The giving of reasons for what 
 we believe an instinct " is itself, as it has been put, " also an 
 instinct." Instincts we happen to find, or do not happen to find, 
 ourselves endowed with. Doubtless " all men have by nature a 
 desire to know," but all men have not the desire to philosophise. 
 This is confined to those few whose intellectual instincts are 
 developed to the pitch of seeking final answers to final questions, 
 forced upon the intellect by the activity of the mind as a reality 
 amongst realities. 
 
 Philosophy is then a process of creating through the form of 
 thinking a completely satisfying consciousness of reality. It 
 may be said to be at once an exhaustive fulfilment of our 
 utmost capacity to think or conceive, and also the attainment of 
 a heightened consciousness of the world. These two are in- 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 225 
 
 separable ultimately, no doubt because thought and the sense of 
 reality develop pari passu in experience.^ We only think when 
 we have a content or object to deal with, and the complete 
 attainment of what thought pursues, involves at the same time 
 the final realisation of the world in terms of thought. We do 
 not require to go " outside our thought " to get at the world. 
 Our thought evolves in the presence of the world, and the world 
 becomes more real to us as it unfolds in terms of thought. The 
 individual carries the consciousness of reality with him throughout 
 the process of thought ; and if the thinking is satisfied, the real 
 ipso facto has yielded up to him all that it means for thought. 
 The final result is a single experience, which may be expressed 
 either as the highest intellectual consciousness of the world, or the 
 complete satisfaction of what the mind demands from its 
 intellectual activity. 
 
 In this way philosophy occupies a peculiar and unique place 
 in the realm of human experience. It meets a special spiritual 
 need, and the struggle of the philosopher to satisfy this need is 
 justified by the result : the human spirit does secure satisfaction 
 from this form of activity. Only so is the effort really worth 
 while. The spirit has a firm sense of its own reality, and a fuller 
 consciousness of the world in which it lives and strives. 
 
 The business of philosophy is not to " copy " or " reproduce " 
 reality. Reality is quite sufficient for itself without the super- 
 fluous addition of a copy, however accurate ; and a reproduction " 
 
 ^ No doubt the " relation of thought to reality '' may be made a special problem 
 of philosophy, just as any other experience may start a problem of philosophy. But 
 this is not a problem logically prior to others, for the simple reason that it is a 
 particular case of the very problem philosophy seeks to deal with. 
 
 ' The only reproduction which nature admits is one that involves an 
 advance to a further stage of being ; it is a reproduction which at the same time 
 brings about a new product. If the human mind, whether in science or 
 philosophy, has nothing better to do than furnish an abbreviated summary of the 
 world, a variety of shorthand "conceptual formulae" of the real, it is, indeed, no 
 better than the accidental epiphenomenon which crude materialism has taken it to be. 
 Such an unnecessary function might well be a fitting occupation for a fortuitous bye- 
 product of cosmic evolution. Whether the copy is a single conception or assumes the 
 imposing proportions of a system of conceptions, it can only appear an irrelevancy by 
 contrast with the grim struggle of the forces of the world. To spend days and nights 
 jn the production of such copies, which leave the mind and the real exactly where 
 
 Q 
 
226 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 which merely repeats in another language what is good enough 
 as it stands seems an obvious waste of time. 
 
 If we are to do justice to the facts, we must regard the human 
 mind as having a substantial being of its own, and its activities 
 as a fulfilment of its individual life. Philosophy is one way 
 through which that life is unfolded and in the result satisfied. 
 The achievement of such satisfaction is the attainment of truth so 
 far as intellectual activity is concerned. In that sense truth is 
 merely the completed outgrowth of the intellectual activity of the 
 mind. Truth so understood is certainly not all that the mind in 
 its varied life strives after ; by itself truth does not fill the cup of 
 life to the full. The mind feels and perceives, it acts and it 
 adores ; and for such activities, truth, in the sense just stated, is 
 neither relevant nor satisfying. None the less the truth which is 
 the outcome of intellectual activity does give the mind, on one 
 side of its nature, rest and satisfaction.^ 
 
 IX 
 From this point of view philosophy is a self-contained attitude 
 of the mind with a process and end of its own. And the 
 endeavour to obtain such satisfaction is actuated by the same 
 kind of force which urges the mind onward in every direction 
 which leads to the fulfilment of its individual nature. That force 
 is desire.2 Philosophy is one form of the mind's desire for 
 reality, the desire to make itself real or, what comes to the same 
 
 they were to begin with, would be the crowning irony of human experience instead of 
 its divine consummation. 
 
 The plausibility of the interpretation of knowledge as a process of copying 
 reality seems due to the powerful influence of metaphors drawn from visual per- 
 ception. We certainly use language which conveys the impression that in knowing 
 we "see" and "observe" reality; and philosophy itself is spoken of as a "con- 
 templation " of the real. The erroneous theory that in sight-perception we receive 
 impressions or copies of external objects is all that is required to complete the train 
 of reflection which leads to the above view of knowledge in general. 
 
 1 We may, if wcjchoose, regard conceptual activity as reaching only one " form " 
 of truth, and treat every state in which the mind is satisfied as a truth of mind. In 
 that case there will be truth for perception, truth for volition, and for other activities 
 as well. 
 
 Such a use of the term has its advantages, and its obvious disadvantages. 
 
 - Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, A980*., iriivTis &ydpQnrot rod eiB^fai vpeyoyrai ip^an : 
 also A. 1072 26, 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 227 
 
 thing, to produce the most vivid consciousness of reality of which 
 it is capable. The medium in which it gratifies this passion in 
 the case of philosophy is that of thought. 
 
 What form a given philosophy assumes is determined, much 
 as in the case of the artist, by the individual interest of the 
 philosopher on the one hand, and his social or historical position 
 on the other. These two act and react on one another. Particular 
 conceptions are in large measure the creation of the social order 
 characteristic of mankind ; they are general conditions of the 
 intercourse of man dealing with the seen and unseen environment 
 of their common lives. The individual thinks as a social being, 
 and always has a kind of typical mind in view with which, in his 
 reflections he imagines himself in communication. In a sense, it 
 may be said, a whole society or a whole civilisation thinks 
 through the mind of the philosopher as its representative.^ At 
 the same time the individual has his own peculiar perspective in 
 the social system, and this is not strictly transferable to or 
 interchangeable with any other. As the result of such a perspec- 
 tive each philosopher seeks to satisfy his mind in a distinctive 
 way. Hence the variety of philosophical problems and philo- 
 sophical theories.^ Some philosophers are content to arrive 
 at a single intuition, or a kind of key conception ; others 
 can rest in nothing short of a rounded system which may 
 be little more than an intellectual tour de force. One thinker 
 may concentrate all his efforts on the problem of human 
 knowledge ; another on the foundations of science ; others are 
 constantly fascinated by the somewhat eccentric question regard- 
 ing the " reality of the external world " ; while others again 
 endeavour to slake their thirst for intellectual finality by drink- 
 ing from the inexhaustible wells of mental introspection, the 
 
 ' Thus the philosophical views of J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and more recently 
 those of Mr. Bosanquet, may fairly be said to express certain tendencies of thought 
 and common ideas current in their time. Philosophical theories require a certain 
 spiritual climate. This does not prevent, rather it accounts for, each thinker 
 developing his special theory with intense conviction of its truth, and indeed of its 
 being the whole truth. 
 
 ' The subject matter of philosophical reflection may owe more to individual 
 interest in certain cases, in other cases to social life, as e.g. modem psychology, which 
 is a peculiar outgrowth of the high self-consciousness of modern societies, 
 
228 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 Tantalus cup of philosophy. Any aspect of reality can create 
 the philosophical mood, and give material to the philosopher.^ 
 Most philosophers have an unexplored hinterland of reality, 
 which remains in many cases a land of promise, of which they 
 are content to take possession by faith rather than by knowledge. 
 Moreover, the direction, as well as the limit, of a philosopher's 
 reflection is fixed as much by social considerations as by 
 individual interest. In the abstract, doubtless, a philosopher's 
 thinking is and must be "free," that is, he must follow where 
 thought leads if he is to satisfy thinking to the uttermost. But 
 in fact no philosopher can afford completely to ignore the 
 obligations and influences of his fellowship with his kind in the 
 society to which he belongs, whose working conceptions he shares, 
 and whose language and conceptions he utilises for his ends. 
 This social reference guides him, in ways partly conscious partly 
 unconscious, not merely in the choice of his subject but in the 
 extent to which he pursues it, as well as in the manner in which 
 he clothes what he takes to be the truth.^ 
 
 X 
 
 It may be said, perhaps, that these considerations seem 
 destructive of the unity of thought, on which philosophers 
 have from time to time insisted and which they have sometimes 
 endeavoured to express as their common ideal and their collective 
 aim. The unity of thought, however, as already stated, is not an 
 objective entity working itself into articulate form through the 
 mind of the philosopher ; it is a mental function inseparable 
 from the personality of the thinker and operating within him in 
 the interests of his individual fulfilment. If this seems to imperil 
 the historical continuity of philosophical thought, it has at least 
 the advantage of securing continual freshness and vitality in the 
 pursuit of philosophical truth. It is more important to man that 
 
 * Hence there can in the nature of the case be no single " method " of 
 philosophy. There are only two ways of thinking ; and these are intuition and 
 articulate reflection. 
 
 ^ It is significant to note that thinking seems to have been most free on great 
 subjects at times of social upheaval and transition. 
 
PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN NATURE 229 
 
 the product of his efforts should enrich and fulfil his personality 
 than that the individual should be a mere channel through which 
 an impersonal unity of thought may make itself articulate. It 
 is better to make mistakes in finding out the truth for ourselves 
 than to be a conscious automatic register of unerring wisdom. 
 The reality we seek would lose its fascination if there were no 
 chance of error in the search. And the very intensity of our 
 interest in the result is in large measure due to the individual 
 selection of the way we pursue and the free decision to follow it 
 at all costs. Philosophy is no man's duty ; it is something 
 better, it is any man's prerogative. The individual point of 
 view certainly involves a specific perspective, and therefore is 
 necessarily a partial outlook on the whole. But no wise man 
 would sacrifice the charm of a perspective even for the sake of a 
 minuter appreciation of the details. The " spectator of all time 
 and all existence" must accept his limitations. He cannot at 
 once see his world from the circumference of his vision and 
 from the focus of his perspective ; he cannot enjoy his horizon and 
 at the same time wander along its shores. The need for the 
 whole truth, for finality in the search for truth, would not arise 
 but for our individual interest in finding satisfaction in it. 
 
 Hence not merely because of the variety of ways in which this 
 supreme form of satisfaction may be sought, but because the very 
 purpose of the philosopher is to gain a fresh and a complete 
 consciousness of the nature of the real, it is impossible to look 
 for positive progress in philosophy.^ Each philosopher has to 
 face anew for himself the problem or problems of philosophy as 
 they appeal to him. He can take nothing for granted or as a 
 gift from others who have gone before him, even if he wished to 
 do so. The philosopher must keep his intellect as detached 
 from the achievements of the past as from the assumptions of the 
 present. The history of philosophy provides material which he 
 uses, not instruction which he follows. The problems of former 
 days have to be reconsidered, and the solutions reinterpreted. 
 The philosopher certainly learns from his predecessors, but 
 
 ' In a similar way we need not look for progress in poetry. The idea of progress 
 seems in fact irrelevant to the nature of poetry. 
 
230 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 mainly by way of suggestion and by discovering how to avoid 
 mistaken courses of thought. The absence of real progress in the 
 attainment of philosophical truth need be no condemnation of 
 philosophy. On the contrary, it may give all the more vitality to 
 the spirit of philosophy, and inexhaustible interest in its enduring 
 purpose to those to whom philosophy is a mental necessity. 
 
VIII 
 
 SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 
 
 " Volk und Knecht und Ueberwinder, 
 
 Sie gestehen zu jeder Zeit 
 I Hochstes Gliick der Erdenkinder 
 \ Sei nur die Personlichkeit." 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 I 
 
 The current controversy regarding the claims of Science and 
 those of the Humanities in a scheme of education rests in the 
 long-run on a deep-rooted prejudice or conviction, which both 
 parties to the controversy share, that in some way or other the 
 aims of science and the aims of humanity are essentially 
 opposed. Such a conviction arises from an opposition deeper 
 still, one which is as old as Western civilisation — the opposition 
 between the course of nature and the interests of human life. 
 For the sciences, in the ordinarily accepted sense of the term, are 
 devoted to the study of outer nature, and their results are held 
 to bear the character of the realm to which they refer. Nature 
 is outside man, careless of his peculiar concerns, always 
 apparently indifferent, sometimes openly hostile, to his ideals 
 and his welfare. Science in explaining or interpreting the 
 processes of nature seems merely to give good reasons for 
 regarding as irremovable the opposition which in practical life 
 is in so many ways all too evident. Man is by instinct half 
 afraid of nature. The sciences of nature amply confirm his fears. 
 Science shows man to be a puppet under the control of forces 
 alien to himself. Man can be pitiful ; nature is ruthless in 
 undeviating obedience to laws which take no account of man's 
 pity or man's purposes. Man claims to be the lord of nature, in 
 a sense its most admired and consummate achievement ; science 
 
 231 
 
232 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 recognises no pride of place among the components factors of 
 nature, and dissolves prestige into a system of complex elements 
 and interrelated aimless agencies. Man's spirit is finely touched 
 to the fine issues of beauty and of goodness. In the alembic of 
 science beauty is distilled into an arrangement of atoms whose 
 outer form, however intoxicating to the human eye, is in every 
 sense superficial and of no more significance than the interior 
 structure of the composing substance ; while goodness is found to 
 be but the last and subtlest expression of the guileful instinct of 
 self-preservation which equally, though with unequal success, 
 guides the wasp to its victim and the saint to the Holy Grail. 
 
 The question at issue between the Sciences and the Humani- 
 ties seems indeed a serious one if in the light of the former man 
 is viewed as the most prominent marionette in the mechanism 
 of nature, while the latter regard him as the chief hero in the 
 drama of the world. Science, doubtless, may claim to be the 
 crowning glory of the life of man, the most triumphant fulfilment 
 of the powers of his mind. But if humanity must give up its 
 hopes and aspirations at the bidding of science, if it draws its 
 inspiration from ideals which science either cannot justify or can 
 only explain away, the triumphs of science are no compensation 
 for the loss of so much that gives vitality to human life ; the 
 truths of science become themselves but dust and ashes. 
 
 Unless the outcome of science is the enrichment and fulfilment 
 of human life, the diadem which science would place on the brows 
 of humanity may be but a mockery, and the crown of man's life 
 but a crown of thorns. On the other hand, it seems equally 
 evident that, however important man's place may be in the 
 scheme of things, unless man pursues his ends along the paths 
 of intelligent order, rigorous coherence, and consistent rationality, 
 such as science alone can claim to secure, he may find himself 
 among the waste places of the world alongside the ape and the 
 tiger. 
 
 Is it possible to reconcile these conflicting interests and 
 opposing claims of " science " and " humanity " > I think it will 
 be found on analysis that the opposition arises from a 
 misconception of the meaning of nature and of the procedure 
 of science ; that there is no solid ground for supposing that 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 233 
 
 science is anything more than a special channel through which 
 the human mind seeks to express its activity ; and that in origin 
 character, and aim science is essentially anthropomorphic. 
 
 II 
 
 The apparent opposition between the interests of science and 
 those of humanity is due to an initial mistake in the scientist's 
 conception of nature. Nature is the general term used to 
 designate the object or objects dealt with by the physicist, the 
 mathematician, the chemist, and the ^biologist ; and, for historical 
 reasons, the meaning of the term has been mainly influenced 
 by the peculiar nuance it receives from the physicist and the 
 mathematician. Nature is that which is beyond and independent 
 of the individual mind, occupying the outer realm of space, and 
 apprehended by the senses of sight, touch, and hearing. The 
 aim of science is to investigate and interpret this independent 
 realm of existence in such a way that the laws discovered, and 
 the scientific truths obtained, will bear the same character of 
 independence of the individual mind, and hold good regardless 
 of human interests or desires. Man has to " learn from nature," 
 must bow before its laws, appear before nature as a vassal or 
 servant to hear the commands of a master. 
 
 It is evident, however, that man himself is part of this very 
 realm of nature. He occupies space as much as does a grain of 
 sand ; every breath he draws proves him to be a part of the 
 physical world ; he is an organism amongst other organisms. 
 But, if so, he is not independent of nature ; and nature cannot be 
 what is independent of him, since he is a part of nature and he 
 cannot be independent of himself. Nature cannot be outside 
 man, if man is himself one of the beings constituting nature. 
 The initial view of nature with which the scientist starts is thus 
 transparently absurd. The misconception, or confusion in the 
 conception, is so obvious that one can only wonder how it ever 
 came to be adopted by a scientist, as it unquestionably has been 
 and is still adopted. 
 
 The origin of the error is not difficult to explain. Nature 
 as something given to the individual mind is certainly external 
 
234 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 to the individual, and is rightly regarded as outside him : it is 
 outside in space. This character of externality to the individual 
 is entirely relative to the individual mind ; and nature in this 
 sense does not contain the individual mind, for by hypothesis 
 nature is outside the individual. When, however, nature in this 
 sense is generalised, this relation to the individual is omitted, 
 and the limitation in its meaning — that nature here does not 
 include the individual— is forgotten. Nature thus becomes 
 what is independent of all individuals whatsoever. The next 
 step is simple : since human individuals are also independent 
 of one another, nature is said to contain all individuals within 
 its sweep. Thus the generalisation of the term nature so as 
 to include human individuals, gives the term a meaning precisely 
 the opposite of what the term connoted in the first instance. 
 For there is no sense in speaking of nature being outside unless 
 by contrast to an inside. If nature is both inside and outside at 
 once, it is neither the one nor the other exclusively. 
 
 If this procedure is illogical and absurd, we must give up 
 the view that nature is something before which man must 
 bow in submission, and that the science of nature compels us to 
 accept truths which are independent of and indifferent to 
 ourselves as human beings. For if we are part of nature, in 
 accepting these truths we are admitting truths about ourselves ; 
 and it is meaningless to say that we bow and submit to ourselves. 
 If, on the other hand, we draw a distinction between human nature 
 and outer nature, then this again involves no fateful submission 
 on our side ; for the human mind will thus be interpreting another 
 form of nature, which is indeed distinct from human nature but 
 not necessarily either opposed to man or indifferent to his 
 interests. 
 
 Passing next to the procedure of the scientist ptir sang, the 
 usual view of how science conducts its operations and interprets 
 its results is equally indefensible. In the investigation of nature 
 scientifically, the human mind is commonly regarded as a kind 
 of still mirror in which the processes of nature are merely 
 reflected, and the function of which is just to keep itself clear 
 and steady while these processes pass before it. If it fulfils 
 this condition, nature will, as the phrase runs, reveal its own 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 235 
 
 secrets, and the individual mind will have nothing to do but note 
 them carefully and write them down. The scientist, in short, is 
 to be a peculiarly made reflector endowed with the powers of a 
 stenographer. This is no caricature of the accepted scientific 
 procedure in dealing with nature : it has been and still is seriously 
 maintained. 
 
 A moment's consideration will suffice to expose the error 
 of such a naive and uncritical view. We do not find the laws of 
 nature by simply opening our eyes. They are not given to us 
 as a gift ; and even in using our eyes we have deliberately to 
 exercise the whole mind if we are to make something intelligible 
 of outer nature. As Mach puts it in his Science of Mechanics, 
 " A competent view of the world can never be got as a gift ; we 
 must acquire it by hard work." What does this mean ? Simply 
 that, from the beginning of our investigation of outer nature 
 to the very end, the whole energies of the individual mind must 
 be engaged to secure what we call the truths of science. These 
 truths are products of mental activity and of mental activity 
 alone. There is no still mirror set to watch outer nature : the 
 mirror is alive, a concentrated focus of spiritual energy, directing 
 itself by its own ends and in its own interests. Nature does not 
 tell its own story to us : we construct the story of nature in terms 
 of our own thought. We build up the truth about nature in the 
 sweat of our brow. If necessary we win the kingdom of truth by 
 violence ; we dissect, we experiment, we twist and turn the forces 
 of nature rather than allow their meaning to escape our grasp. 
 Outer nature is certainly in a sense, as we have seen, indifferent 
 to our minds ; but it is the business of science to overcome this 
 indifference, to woo and win nature into harmony with our 
 thoughts. If we have to stoop to nature in the course of our 
 investigation, we do not stoop in order to submit and subject 
 our minds to it — we stoop to conquer. 
 
 This is seen in the very earliest stages of scientific 
 investigation. We begin by drawing distinctions amongst the 
 facts of outer nature — distinctions which mark off range of fact 
 from range of fact, and mark off also different elements within 
 the same sphere of fact, e.£: atom from molecule, lines from 
 points. In actual reality nature contains all its parts and elements 
 
236 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in inextricable interdependence with one another. The position 
 of every grain of sand helps to determine the centre of gravity 
 of the earth ; and the mists that gather on the icefields of 
 Greenland are in part determined by the vegetation of the 
 Tropics. The distinctions and separations we make in the 
 world of nature are made for purposes of scientific investigation, 
 i.e. in the interests of our own thought and in order to 
 facilitate the effective working of our own minds. In that 
 sense they are artificial relatively to nature, though they are 
 inevitable and necessary for our peculiar kind of intellect. 
 The very fact that our own thought compels us later to give up 
 these separations in order to acquire a completer view of nature, 
 shows how temporary and provisional they are. In thinking 
 out the processes of nature, or interpreting nature, it is our 
 thought and its ends which determine our procedure from first to 
 last. The mind in science works with thoughts ; and it is about 
 as true to say that nature dictates to us what our thoughts are to 
 be, as to say that the printed page of a book makes our ideas 
 what they are. ^ 
 
 Not merely do scientists begin their investigations by 
 making artificial distinctions to suit the ends of their own 
 thought, but the conceptions by which they proceed and the 
 laws at which they arrive are equally constructions of their own 
 minds. This can be illustrated by any chapter from the history 
 of science. I do not refer to the obviously animistic and 
 theological views which affected and infected early scientific 
 thought, even that of the ablest scientific minds ; nor need I 
 refer to the residual influences of such primitive thought which 
 survive in the formulation of laws of outer nature up to the 
 present time. The term " attraction " of particles of matter, 
 employed in the formulation of the law of gravitation, and the 
 term " affinity " employed in formulating chemical processes, 
 
 ' Not all scientists can accept this, as I know. I once made the above observation 
 to a distinguished chemist ; I tried to assure him that in dealing with his elements, 
 resolving and combining them, he was really seeking to satisfy the demand of his 
 thought all the while. His reply was, " But, how so ? We can photograph them." 
 The naivete of the remark affords matter for some astonishment : he apparently 
 seemed to suppose that somehow he had his elements actually inside his thought, 
 or perhaps his thought inside his elements. 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 237 
 
 sufficiently indicate the anthropomorphic or human origin of 
 
 these ideas. But in all science, even the most abstract, the 
 
 operation of the specifically human intellect is plainly evident. 
 
 The conceptions of quantity, force, mass, weight, etc. , are not 
 
 given to the mind by outer things, and they do not come out 
 
 of the skies or by special revelation. They are won by toil 
 
 and are deliberately created by the scientific intellect to grasp 
 
 the character of the facts presented to its notice. They are 
 
 manipulated so freely by the same intellect just because they 
 
 are defined for its use according to the laws and conditions 
 
 of intellectual activity. If our intellect were moulded on a 
 
 different plan we should use different concepts, just as, if we had 
 
 more or different senses, we should apprehend the outer world in 
 
 other ways than we do at present. That not even all human 
 
 intellects have the same structure is seen from the fact that 
 
 not all human intellects are capable of grasping the concepts 
 
 employed by science ; and in some sciences only a very few 
 
 intellects can develop the concepts to the highest degree of their 
 
 articulation. It is impossible for some minds to grasp a complex 
 
 differential equation, or even to understand what quaternions are 
 
 all about. Nature does not provide us with such knowledge. It is 
 
 a creation of a certain kind of human energy as much as a work of 
 
 art or a steam-engine. Such knowledge, it is said, can be tested 
 
 and proved by an appeal to the outer world. In certain cases it 
 
 can ; but even so, the very fact that it is, or has to be, " tested," 
 
 shows that it is a human device to begin with. What Poincare 
 
 says of science in general is unquestionably true, and obviously so 
 
 in the more abstract sciences. "We can only think our thoughts," 
 
 he says, " all the words we use to speak of things only express 
 
 thoughts." 
 
 The logical necessity with which the intellect develops its 
 concepts, exerts indeed all the apparent compulsion on the mind 
 which outer things possess. But this merely means that the 
 human intellect has a definite structure with a definite kind of 
 function all its own ; and it is in pursuance of the laws of this 
 structure, with its corresponding function, that its method of 
 procedure secures the necessity characteristic of scientific abstract 
 thought. Our minds are so made that they work in one way 
 
238 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 towards logical coherence, and in one way only ; and hence we 
 are compelled to accept the result. The concepts of science are 
 our mental ways of working ; their laws of connection are the 
 method of our mental procedure. Neither the concepts nor their 
 logical connection is arbitrary ; but they are both relative to the 
 human mind. 
 
 We can put the same view in another way. The processes 
 of scientific thinking are to begin with tentative and experi- 
 mental. Whether we seek to explain a fact of outer nature or to 
 solve a mathematical problem, we try now this direction and now 
 that, to see, as we say, how it turns out, or how it " works out." 
 Many of our lines of thought lead nowhere ; many are inaccurate 
 and have to be discarded ; some are entirely untrue. We go from 
 hypothesis or suggestion till we strike the true theory. Now, all 
 these tentative efforts surely and without question take place within 
 our minds. There are no hypotheses in outer nature. Nature 
 works no experiments for us and contains none of our errors. 
 
 Ill 
 
 If the process of carrying on our thoughts in this manner is 
 entirely our own, if it is guided by the laws of our own intellect 
 and directed towards satisfying our minds, we cannot possibly 
 maintain that at a certain stage it ceases to be ours and suddenly 
 becomes something independent of our minds. If the process 
 belongs to our mental procedure, the; result must likewise be our 
 own achievement. When the result is false or inaccurate we never 
 hesitate to ascribe it to our own thought. But equally, if the 
 result is true, it must be the outcome of our thought ; otherwise the 
 specific function of the human intellect would be to make mistakes. 
 Why should the result of an erroneous process of thought fall 
 entirely within our mind, and that of a true process of reasoning 
 fall outside it .? Since the condition in both cases is the same, 
 the effect must be the same. Once again, therefore, it is evident 
 that the concepts and the connections of scientific concepts are 
 from first to last nothing but the operations of our human 
 intellect, and do not come to us from without. Scientific truth 
 is the creation of the scientific mind and not of outer nature. 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 239 
 
 This is still further confirmed by the fact that much that has been 
 discovered in science has been due to the effort of what can only 
 be called individual genius, whether it be the genius which 
 consists in a stubborn attempt to master the facts, or that which 
 consists in a successful and inspired intuition. For such dis- 
 coveries the outer world clearly gives no direct assistance 
 whatever. Their source and origin are solely the individual 
 human agent. 
 
 The supposition that mathematical science is an exception to 
 this general character of all science — its relativity to the human 
 mind — is a mere superstition. The argument usually put forward 
 to support this contention is ; that mathematical truth compels 
 such absolute assent from the intellect, and is so universally true 
 for all space and all time, that it must be considered independent 
 of every individual human mind altogether. The argument in- 
 volves a fallacy. It asserts that, because a truth holds for every 
 mind, it is therefore independent of all minds. But if a truth holds 
 for every mind, this just means that it cannot be independent of 
 all minds : it must be the way all minds work when they 
 think logically and coherently on the subject. To suppose that, 
 because it should hold for every mind, it is therefore independent 
 of any given mind, is indeed an accurate statement, for a given 
 mind may not yet have understood it ; but what we imply is that, 
 if it did understand the truth, the truth would be admitted. The 
 supposition that, when a truth holds good independently of a 
 given mind, this truth is true independently of all minds whatso- 
 ever, is like saying that though Jones is absent from a dinner-party, 
 the dinner is none the less good, and indeed is good though 
 nobody eats it at all. The peculiar convincingness of mathe- 
 matical truth is due to the peculiar character of mathematical 
 concepts. They are so abstract, and deal with such universal 
 aspects of human experience, that all must accept them. But 
 this, so far from proving them to be more than human, only 
 shows how completely they are bound up with the very structure 
 and life of the human mind. 
 
 The more concrete the objects are with which a science deals, 
 the less difficult is it to see how entirely our thinking about such 
 objects bears the stamp of our humanity. Thus in biological 
 
240 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 science, which is admittedly one of the most concrete and 
 difficult of all the sciences of outer nature, the very clue to the 
 mystery of living process has to be sought in what, as human 
 beings, we find life to be in our own case. We cannot even 
 imagine what the mental life of animals is except from what we 
 are pleased to call the analogy of our own mentality. All the 
 language used in describing the ways and doings of animals is 
 drawn directly from the habits and modes of action of human 
 individuals. The conception of evolution arises from, and 
 depends ultimately for its meaning on, the idea of human 
 progress. The conception of adaptation to environment, so 
 familiar in the interpretation of living beings, is partly ethical, 
 partly artistic in its origin ; that of division and co-operation of 
 functional activity is drawn from the economic order of human 
 society. As every one knows, Darwin derived from Malthus' 
 study of the relation of population to food supply, the suggestion 
 that the whole course of evolution was determined by the 
 struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, both the 
 terms, " struggle " and " fittest," being clearly anthropomorphic in 
 character. Further illustration of the same human origin of the 
 main biological concepts need not be given. 
 
 Again let it be said there is no ground for supposing, 
 because these conceptions are derived from human life, that 
 they are on that account invalid or even inaccurate. On the 
 contrary, it seems self-evident that if we are to interpret life 
 we must start from life at its highest, and, for human beings, 
 human life is the highest form of life we know. If we wish 
 to understand what the human individual really is, we must 
 look at him from the point of view of society, where we find 
 human life fully expressed. If we wish to know all that a rose 
 may be, we shall find what we want in the La France of our 
 gardens better than in the dog-rose of the hedgerows. So, to 
 understand the elementary forms of life, we rightly take as our 
 clue the more complex type of life which man presents. But 
 the point of interest for our argument is that the procedure 
 of biological science illustrates in a peculiarly striking and 
 unmistakable manner the human origin of all scientific con- 
 cepts, on which we have been laying stress. In biological 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 241 
 
 science the source from which they come can not only not be 
 outside us, but is even frankly acknowledged to be that of 
 human life. I would urge that, just because this procedure 
 is thus inevitable when we are dealing with the most concrete 
 order of natural objects, the procedure is the same in the case 
 of the other sciences. This is merely concealed by the abstractness 
 of their method, but becomes patent to the eye of impartial 
 analysis. 
 
 IV 
 
 The analysis of the character of the concepts of science 
 leads us, then, to but one conclusion : science is through and 
 through anthropomorphic. It is, if we care to put it so, a human 
 invention. Another and entirely different line of thought leads 
 us to the same conclusion. Its importance cannot be sufficiently 
 emphasised. We find that the scientific attitude to the world 
 is historically but a specific expression of the life of humanity 
 as a whole. Science, as we understand it, is an historical 
 phenomenon like Mohammedanism or the French Revolution. 
 It is only found in certain races of mankind, and is indigenous 
 to peoples inhabiting certain circumscribed geographical areas 
 of the globe. It is in a very real sense dependent on climatic 
 conditions, as well as on racial qualities ; and these two are 
 inseparable. It surely gives cause for reflection that the 
 scientific spirit was planted and has grown to maturity on 
 European soil — and indeed only in certain portions of Europe. 
 Its domicile seems as much restricted to specific localities as 
 a botanical or an animal species. The native habitat of the 
 modern scientific spirit has been primarily the middle region 
 of Europe, extending from the north-west to the south-east, 
 and forming a kind of rough triangle whose apex lies in Italy 
 and whose base stretches from the southern shore of the Baltic 
 Sea across Scandinavia to Scotland. There are regions outside 
 this area in which occasionally science has been in some degree 
 found; but these are either exceptional, or are traceable, 
 directly or indirectly, to the influence of the central region of 
 Europe. The mood of science finds its peculiar climate in this 
 
 R 
 
242 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 region,^ meaning by science the deliberate and continuous 
 prosecution of the study of the world for the purpose of attaining 
 a coherent logical interpretation of facts. The vast continents 
 of Asia and Africa and non-Europeanised America have no 
 scientific areas. The inhabitants of these non-scientific regions 
 have indeed knowledge of their own, and a wisdom of their own ; 
 but it is not science. Asia and Africa, especially the former, are 
 mainly religious and ethical in their frame of mind, not scientific. 
 Science is a creation of the European West. 
 
 This geographical limitation of science is indeed a remark- 
 able fact, the importance of which our familiarity with the 
 scientific mood and our insularity of mind constantly tend to 
 obscure. We talk glibly of science uniting all mankind in 
 the bonds of truth. This is a mere academic superstition. 
 Laughter will hold people together better than logic. We 
 should not forget that millions of human beings have no 
 interest in the scientific mood at all, and seem by constitution 
 to have no capacity for it. Scientific truth is not their way of 
 truth. It merely seems to them a matter of astonishment, a 
 curious manifestation of the life of a race strangely different 
 from their own. Some individuals among these non-scientific 
 peoples may, and do, assimilate the science of the West. But 
 experience seems to show that such acquisition is at best a 
 mere accomplishment, and leaves the racial structure and 
 composition of their minds unaffected.^ In other words, it 
 does not create in them the scientific mood. There is as much 
 difference between this assimilation of science and the scientific 
 frame of mind as there is between learning the technique of 
 dancing on a tight-rope and learning to walk. The non- 
 scientific peoples take up science as they put on Western 
 clothes. One may change one's clothes, but there is no changing 
 the skin. The fact is that the scientific mood arises from a 
 peculiar attitude of the mind to the world found amongst 
 certain peoples of the globe ; and without this attitude science 
 will always appear a curiosity or an irrelevance. The attitude 
 
 ^ For a remarkable array of facts to establish this proposition, see De CandoUe, 
 
 Histoire des Sciences et des Savants. 
 
 ^ Whether Japan will prove an exception to this statement remains to be seen. 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 243 
 
 may be shortly described as due to a sense of the detachment 
 of man from the world as something alien and external, to a 
 sense of the supremacy of his aims over the processes of outer 
 nature. This is quite peculiar to certain peoples, and is not 
 found in all. In the East, for example, man seems to feel no 
 sense of alienation. He seems to feel himself as much a part of 
 the universe as a plant is inseparable from its environment. 
 So much is this the case, that man's life is felt to be part of 
 the very current of the stream of the vaster life of the world. 
 He realises his state best when he is absorbed in the larger 
 being of the universe. His individual life is literally to him 
 no better than a flower of the field. His mind is as a shadow 
 produced by his finite substance intercepting the light of the 
 world. This profound difference between West and East is 
 probably ineradicable ; it is constitutional and climatic, and not 
 accidental. It is the cause of the emphasis or over-emphasis 
 upon, and predilection for, science in the one case and religion 
 in the other. Science is thus but the consequence of a peculiar 
 frame of mind which characterises certain Western peoples. It 
 is neither universal to humanity nor essential to all mankind. 
 
 It is in a sense but an historical incident in the vaster history 
 of the human race. It is a factor, but no more than one factor, 
 in the complex system of aims and forces which make up 
 human civilisation. Greater than any science or any number 
 of sciences, is the stupendous and awe-inspiring spectacle of 
 human life on the planet. So limited is science in significance 
 that it even requires a certain level of temperature for its 
 successful prosecution. It is not for want of leisure that the 
 peoples of very warm or very cold climates have not the 
 scientific mind. They have leisure in abundance, the leisure 
 of the timeless forests or the timeless wastes. It is rather that 
 the mental energies will only undertake the peculiar labour of 
 impartial investigation of science for its own sake either where 
 the equilibrium between man and nature is fairly steady, or 
 where the advantage is preponderantly in favour of man's 
 supremacy. Where the powers of nature, heat and cold, 
 seasonal changes, and the resurgence of nature's forces, over- 
 whelm man's life, science is not a possible mood for man at all. 
 
244 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 The human mind merely accepts the situation and becomes 
 acclimatised in every sense. 
 
 Science must keep to its peculiar geographical region of the 
 globe, if it is to be carried on and if its ends are to be realised. 
 Nor need we wonder or complain at this state of affairs. There 
 is indeed, we may say, a division of labour amongst the races 
 of mankind as there is a division of labour amongst the in- 
 dividuals of a society. One race takes over one task, another 
 race takes over a different task ; and all combine, more or less 
 unconsciously it is true, to fulfil the whole purpose of human 
 life on the earth. 
 
 We but exaggerate the importance of our own interests 
 and point of view when we imagine that our peculiarly scientific 
 turn of mind is the best, or the standard to which all human 
 life should aspire. Such an exaggeration is little better than 
 the vanity and conceit of insular self-satisfaction. The scientific 
 mood is important ; it is not all-important. Even where it is 
 prosecuted, it is primarily an attribute of the masculine mind 
 rather than of the feminine intelligence. Ordinarily speaking, 
 a woman regards the scientific mind with a mixture of good- 
 humoured consideration and detached indifference. But no 
 sane person would consider or desire the feminine intelligence 
 to be merely a duplicate of the male mind : each is radically 
 different from the other, and each is extremely important for 
 the realisation of human life as a whole. Nor need we suppose 
 that the scientific mind has all the advantages on its side, and 
 the non-scientific all the disadvantages. There are advantages 
 and disadvantages in the possession of the scientific mood and 
 in the prosecution of scientific interests. I need but recall in 
 this connection the pathetic regret of Darwin that his over- 
 cultivation of the scientific attitude destroyed his power of 
 appreciation of beauty in art and literature. In the same con- 
 nection it is worth observing how the over-indulgence in the 
 luxuries of science seems to destroy a man's balance of judgment 
 in other realms of experience, practical and religious. So 
 much is this recognised, that the very name "scientific expert" 
 is almost a by-word for general intellectual incompetence. 
 Specialisation, so essential to science, distorts the mind to the 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 245 
 
 verge of indiscretion and unreliability ; it produces cloistered 
 lives that have lost touch with the complex richness of full 
 humanity. 
 
 V 
 
 This brings us to the last question I should like to consider : 
 how are we to connect the claims of science with those of 
 humanity, so as to do justice to both ? I have indicated some 
 reasons for maintaining that they cannot be really opposed. From 
 these it should be evident that since science is itself one of 
 the activities of mankind, the so-called opposition of science to 
 humanity as such is in principle absurd. What part, then, does 
 science play amongst the activities that make up human life ? 
 What, in a word, is the relation of the end of science to other 
 ends which man pursues ? 
 
 We are accustomed to distinguish three primary ends in 
 human life, under which all its various aims can be grouped. 
 These are truth, beauty, and goodness. The distinction is 
 convenient and useful, if it does not lead us to cut these ends 
 off from one another. We shall avoid this mistake if we look 
 upon them as but different ways in which man seeks to realise 
 the unity of his individual life, the primary colours which make 
 up the divine light which illumines his experience, the main 
 avenues of approach to supreme self-fulfilment and to supreme 
 reality. They refer to the three component factors of his mental 
 constitution. The fulfilment of the claims of his intellect is the 
 attainment of " truth " ; the fulfilment of the life of feeling is 
 attainment of " beauty " ; the fulfilment of will is the accomplish- 
 ment of " goodness." They deal with the three aspects of the 
 world with which he is concerned — the aspect of order, the aspect 
 of sensibility (including sensation and emotion), and the aspect 
 of sociality. The articulate consciousness of unity in the form of 
 order is what we mean by truth ; the articulate consciousness of 
 unity in the form of sensibility is beauty ; that of unity in the 
 form of sociality is goodness. The deliberate and exclusive 
 pursuit of truth creates Science and Philosophy ; the deliberate 
 and exclusive pursuit of beauty creates Art and Literature ; the 
 
246 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 deliberate and exclusive pursuit of goodness creates Morality and 
 Social Institutions. 
 
 The important point to grasp is that these ends, separately 
 and together, are ways in which the individual spirit of man 
 realises itself, and thus maintains its place in the universe. In 
 Wordsworth's language, they are ways in which man discovers — 
 
 " How exquisitely the individual Mind 
 (And the progressive powers perhaps no less 
 Of the whole species) to the external World 
 Is fitted : — and how exquisitely too — 
 Theme this but little heard of among men — 
 The external World is fitted to the Mind ." 
 
 They are none of them merely accidental expressions of his 
 life ; they are all necessary if he is to be himself and become 
 aware of what his life consists in. They are pursued for his own 
 sake in the first instance, because man in the first instance lives 
 to himself. But this does not mean that he makes the world 
 what he likes. The life of man is as much a part of the con- 
 stitution of things as the existence of beings independent of and 
 different from him. Human nature is as real as any other kind of 
 nature, and has laws and conditions of its own. Man's business 
 is to fulfil human nature and to follow the ends by which that is 
 realised. The ends which regulate his life dictate the course he 
 has to take. In obeying them he is thus realising his place in 
 the world ; and in living to himself in this way he finds he is 
 living for the whole world at the same time. To be himself 
 completely he has to become conscious of the order of the 
 world, conscious of its beauty, conscious of goodness. He under- 
 takes the journey of his life pursuing his own ends, follows 
 whither they lead him, and, in following them, finds, like Saul, 
 that he has gone out apparently on a casual errand and is led 
 by his destiny into his kingdom — a kingdom which is his own 
 and is more than his own, a kingdom whose foundations were 
 laid at the dawn of time and whose towers catch the white 
 radiance of eternity. 
 
 These ends are all necessary if man is to rise to the full 
 measure of his stature ; and they are all inseparable from one 
 another and from the integral life of the individual. We get 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 247 
 
 the richest form of human life where all are pursued in perfect 
 freedom, and where one is not allowed to interfere with the 
 other. We do not find all peoples and nations on the earth 
 cultivating these ends. Most peoples lay greatest stress on the 
 requirements of social fellowship, and treat with comparative or 
 complete neglect one or both of the other two. The one most 
 generally ignored, as we have said, is that of truth for truth's 
 sake, the cultivation of the scientific spirit. There are, perhaps, 
 few communities of men in which we do not find a certain 
 development of artistic interest, sometimes indeed to a high 
 degree, though the conditions of their social life may be very 
 simple. In other words, in most communities we find two of 
 these human ends pursued ; a very few pursue all three ; in 
 fewer still are all three ends pursued with equal disinterested- 
 ness and freedom. We may with justice find here, perhaps, the 
 best criterion by which to arrange the various civilisations 
 amongst mankind on a scale of value. Those communities in 
 which these ends have found freest expression seem to be the 
 highest ; those in which any one is hampered or excluded will 
 be lower according to the extent to which this takes place. 
 Hence it is that the excessive development of science is not an 
 effective criterion of a high civilisation. The cultivation of the 
 scientific spirit is not alone a guarantee of a high level of 
 humanity— a conclusion which has been painfully brought 
 home to us at the present stage of human history. In the same 
 way the intensive cultivation of the arts is not enough to bring 
 human life to fruition. It is found, indeed, to be consistent with 
 ignorance, narrowness, and even the degradation of humanity. 
 Ancient Greek society is not an unfair illustration of this type 
 of civilisation. Similarly, exclusive emphasis on mere goodness 
 does not bring out all the resources which make man's existence 
 precious, powerful, and secure. It too often leads to the im- 
 poverishment of life physically and mentally ; it encourages 
 obscurantism and ignorance ; while the neglect of the cultivation 
 of beauty commits the spirit of man to the acceptance of ugliness, 
 gloom, and joylessness. The ancient Hebrew society is an 
 historical illustration of this type. The adoption of the point of 
 view of this society by many of the inhabitants of Europe has 
 
248 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 in the past produced, as every one knows, results which can only 
 be regarded as baneful and disastrous to their intercourse with 
 their fellow-countrymen. 
 
 What we cannot too carefully observe is that the cultivation 
 of all three, even to a slight degree, tends not only to their mutual 
 furtherance of each other, but to the enrichment of human life 
 in its entirety. The cultivation of goodness is intensified if the 
 intellect is liberated into the ways of truth ; the cultivation of 
 truth becomes deeper, more inspired and inspiring, when it 
 increases the sense of community and fellowship between 
 human beings — when, in other words, it goes hand in hand with 
 goodness. In Bacon's princely language, " It is heaven upon 
 earth when the mind moves in charity, trusts in Providence, and 
 turns upon the poles of truth." Similarly, the pursuit of the 
 beautiful in art, whether it be poetry and music, painting, or 
 sculpture, acquires an added value when it adorns, refines, and 
 dignifies the life of a community ; and conversely, goodness 
 becomes gracious and winsome, richer in substance and dearer to 
 men, when human life is arrayed in the garment of joy which is 
 woven at the loom of art. 
 
 We need not therefore suppose that these three ends are 
 in principle independent, though not necessarily of equal 
 importance. Neither in practice nor in principle is their 
 independence defensible. When these ends are pursued in 
 independence, the result invariably is that one is taken as the 
 only real end ; the others become looked on as secondary or of 
 no account at all. We find such exaggerations constantly made 
 in practice, and they are in every case the mere mental? con- 
 sequence of special predilection and excessive interest. Thus 
 many scientists and some philosophers say that truth is all in all, 
 and everything else a mere means or a mere incident in life. In 
 the light of facts, and after what has been said, this will be seen 
 to be the contention of the mere partisan. The artist, again, is 
 apt to hold that beauty is all in all — that, in Keats's language, 
 " beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth 
 and all ye need to know " ; or, in Wordsworth's more carefully 
 formulated statement, " poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all 
 knowledge, the impassioned expression which is in the counte- 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 249 
 
 nance of all science.'' These are intelligible but obvious ac- 
 centuations of a special bias. Neither Keats nor Wordsworth 
 knew much about science. Similarly, the enthusiast for human 
 welfare declares that mere goodness is everything, that the only 
 end of life is to love one's neighbour. Here, once more, we have 
 another form of exaggeration. For love to be at its best, men 
 must have the best kind of neighbours. 
 
 In principle, however, there is no room for such extreme 
 views. Each is not independent of the other. Nor are all 
 of the same value. What seems first in importance (though 
 again let me say not exclusively important) is sociality whose 
 controlling end is goodness. This is first because all the ends 
 which man pursues are in the long run for the sake of man, and 
 man's fellowship with his kind is the governing interest of the 
 human species. From this all his interests proceed, to this they 
 must ultimately converge. The human species is more concerned 
 with its own maintenance and furtherance than with anything 
 else whatsoever. This is not merely an instinct ; it is in the 
 nature of the case ; for all other kinds of beings exist by 
 the same condition, whether they be planets or plants or 
 protozoa. 
 
 This complete socialisation of human life should not be con- 
 ceived in any narrow sense. It must not be interpreted in a 
 form which makes so-called practice and practical considerations 
 predominant over so-called theoretical or ideal considerations. 
 Practice and ideal aims, whether in science or art, both lead and 
 contribute to the same result, as indeed is plain to any careful 
 observation of the facts of life. Human beings are brought into 
 fellowship, not merely on the basis of practical action, but on the 
 basis of community of thought and feeling. Indeed, as history 
 shows, even erroneous theories and convictions can hold people 
 together and intensify their living interest in one another. The 
 earlier theories of the origin of man's life and of the central 
 position of the earth in the planetary system, sufficiently illustrate 
 this point. Similarly, mistaken practical enthusiasms can bind 
 human beings into a common fellowship which seems to magnify 
 human welfare, as the pathetic history of the Crusades well 
 shows. If false theory and mistaken practical aims accomplish 
 
250 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 so much, how much more is it certain that the pursuit of verifi- 
 able truth, of ideal beauty, and genuinely real practical ends will 
 further and increase the fellowship of man with his kind. All 
 men's ends whatsoever, practical and ideal — if we must make 
 this questionable distinction, — contribute in the long run to the 
 socialisation of human life. In the realisation of this result they 
 may find their highest fruition ; in this achievement all the 
 efforts of individuals find their amplest reward. If we may 
 recast the somewhat ornate language of an earlier epoch we 
 might say that man's chief end is to make human life glorious 
 through beauty, truth, and love, and to enjoy this consummation 
 all his days — an end which is great without being imposing, and 
 accessible without being any the less magnificent. 
 
 VI 
 
 It may be worth while to note the bearing of the ideas which 
 have been sketched on certain practical problems which confront 
 us at the present time. 
 
 For one thing, we can see at once the error of making 
 an opposition between the requirements of practical social life and 
 the interests and aims of science. It is as false to take immediate 
 practical social needs as a standard to test the value of science 
 to human life as it would be to try to determine the truth of a 
 biological law or a proposition in geometry by an appeal to the 
 sense of justice between man and man. If we say it is 
 ridiculous to make goodness a criterion of scientific truth, it is 
 equally absurd to regard immediate social welfare as a test of 
 the worth of science to humanity. If we take long views, and 
 maintain a wider outlook on human life, we cannot fail to see 
 that all science in the long run conduces to human welfare in 
 the full sense. Indeed, the history of the relation of scientific 
 discovery to the betterment of social conditions amply shows 
 how inseparably social life and science are connected, how closely 
 even immediate practical needs and scientific pursuits are bound 
 up. It is safe to say that some of the most difficult problems 
 which face the social reformer at the present time would be in a 
 great measure solved if we could intellectually penetrate further 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 251 
 
 into the secrets of electro-magnetism, the life of the cell, or 
 chemical energy. 
 
 The supposed cleavage between so-called practical social 
 needs on the one hand, and scientific pursuits unfettered by con- 
 siderations of pence or prejudice on the other, has been one of 
 the most painful misunderstandings from which human life has 
 suffered in the past and still suffers to some extent. 
 
 It is an opposition which has produced very futile opinions 
 and most frequent quarrels. And the quarrel has not been all 
 on one side. For it takes two to make a quarrel as it takes two 
 to make love ; and scientists have often stated their case as 
 wrongly as the so-called practical people. Scientists sometimes 
 speak as if the improvement of society depended on the attain- 
 ment of correct scientific conclusions, as if society should be 
 controlled by scientific experts, and as if life existed mainly 
 or solely for the advancement of the ideal interests of science. 
 Such claims are quite extravagant. They provide a curious 
 parallel to the mediaeval conception of human society, according 
 to which society was held to exist solely to further the ideal 
 interests of religion. Science does not by itself improve man 
 as a social being ; this can only be done by the cultivation of 
 good-will between man and man. And why should society be 
 directed or controlled by scientists any more than by artists ? 
 Society no more exists simply to produce the means for scientific 
 research and to establish a corporation of scientific bureaucrats, 
 than science can only be justified if it gives us more or better 
 food supplies, or brings us quicker from one place to another. 
 Truth must be pursued for its own sake, and untrammelled by 
 social prejudice or social ambition, if its full human value is to be 
 secured ; and until we are prepared to pay for it and to pursue 
 it in this sense, we are traitors to our own best interests and 
 depriving ourselves of the full heritage of humanity. Both to 
 scientists and to those who care for practical social welfare 
 we would offer Plato's counsel, " let each pursue his own business 
 if he would seek the best interests of all." 
 
 Similarly again, the supposed opposition between the Sciences 
 and the Humanities is one of the most obstinate of popular 
 fallacies. Science, as we have seen, is itself a creation of humanity 
 
252 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 alone, and exists solely for humanity. Science properly under- 
 stood is literally one of the Humanities, one of the factors that 
 express, raise, and enrich human life. We too narrowly use the 
 term " Humanities " when we restrict its application to the 
 literatures which have been created by the artistic imagination ; 
 and to apply the term solely to the literatures of Greece and 
 Rome is largely an abuse of language. Literature alone does 
 not give all that is best in the arts which have dignified 
 and adorned humanity. Sculpture, music, and painting have 
 expressed man's sense of the beautiful quite as much as, and to 
 some peoples even more than, literature. It is one of the great 
 defects of our higher education that this has not been properly 
 realised and appreciated. In few universities is there instruction 
 in Music and Fine Art. Certainly literature and the other arts, 
 along with history, in a peculiar way deal with human life : they 
 are in a sense all about man primarily or entirely, and moreover 
 about man at his best as well as at his worst. The cultivation of 
 the Humanities in this wide sense is thus in a special way 
 humanising, i.e. it expands our acquaintance with human beings, 
 their peculiar aims and their peculiar interests. But they deal 
 with only certain phases of the life of humanity. Literature, e.g., 
 uses as its material, and seeks to articulate, man's emotional 
 responses to nature and to his fellows ; history, the forms and 
 course of his political and social life. These, however, do not 
 exhaust man's human nature or his human concerns. The 
 cultivation of these studies is therefore not all that man requires 
 if he is to know himself, and if he is to be himself. Exclusive 
 devotion to them, or excessive emphasis upon them, narrows the 
 outlook on man, and narrows human life ; and these two go 
 together. Man has more to think about than himself. He has to 
 think about the world around him. Doubtless the "proper 
 study of mankind is man," or at any rate the study of man is a 
 very proper study. But man is only man in the full sense when 
 he knows something more than himself ; for he only finds himself 
 when he becomes conscious of the world in which he lives and 
 moves and has his being. In science he becomes aware of the 
 resources of his own nature quite as much as of the objects he 
 investigates. He finds the rationality for which his spirit craves. 
 
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES 253 
 
 In a word, the scientific study of the world and of man himself 
 draws out his humanity — humanises him. To speak of a conflict 
 between the Sciences and the Humanities is thus as ridiculous 
 as to speak of a conflict between the earth and the moon. Both 
 are parts of the same stellar system, both are creatures of the 
 same solar body. 
 
 It follows that an education which is solely indebted to the 
 Humanities, or solely indebted to science, is neither complete nor 
 satisfactory. For education is surely the realisation of the 
 potencies of human life to the fullest extent of which the in- 
 dividual is capable. An individual may have taken all science 
 to be his province, and still be an uneducated man. He may have 
 absorbed the literature and the history of mankind, and still feel 
 himself a stranger in a world which should be his home and not 
 his hiding-place. A scientific mind unilluminated with the light 
 of art is little better than an intellectual factory ; an artistic mind 
 unenlightened by scientific thought may be an articulate picture- 
 gallery. Neither the one nor the other alone can produce a truly 
 educated mind. Nor indeed, for that matter, can the two 
 together bring out all that the spirit of man requires. Science 
 and art, truth and beauty, detached from the cultivation of man's 
 living relation to his fellows, are the wine of life without the 
 guests at the feast. We have probably all known, or known 
 about, first-class scientists and scholars who were little better 
 than social curiosities ; or men of first-rate artistic sensibilities 
 who were undesirable aliens in their own community. Unless art 
 gives grace and refinement to the human character, it has failed 
 of its complete purpose : unless science makes the whole life 
 intelligent and tolerant, it has not succeeded in its aim : unless 
 the one adds sweetness and the other adds light to the spirit of 
 goodness, neither has fully justified its existence. 
 
IX 
 
 LAUGHTER AND TEARS : 
 THE SENSE OF INCONGRUITY 
 
 "The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his 
 mirth . ' ' — Johnson . 
 
 " To weep is to make less the depth of grief." — Henry VI. 
 
 When we reflect that laughter and tears have accompanied the 
 life of man from the remotest date of his recorded history, it 
 seems curious that observers of mankind have given so little 
 attention to these twin eruptions of human emotion. Doubtless 
 this is partly due to their transitory and apparently incidental 
 character. They are so capricious in their occurrence that they 
 seem hardly to call for analysis. They seem also so individual 
 and variable as to make analysis into general terms impossible. 
 Laughter has, indeed, secured a certain amount of interest. 
 Aristotle and Hobbes made passing reference to it, and Bain 
 brought his acute mind to bear on the topic, while in more recent 
 times there can be found a modest list of writers who have dealt 
 with the subject. But tearful emotion has been almost totally 
 neglected. And no one seems to have treated the two together 
 as complementary emotional expressions, which they obviously 
 are. In what follows an attempt will be made to bring out the 
 real meaning of each in the light of their mutual contrasts. 
 
 I shall deal with these emotions as conscious states which are 
 at once body and mind. Mind is strictly inseparable from the 
 bodily aspects which are the '' expression of the emotions," ^ in 
 Darwin's sense of the term. But their significance and certainly 
 their main interest in the economy of human nature lie primarily 
 in the mental process which they involve. 
 
 ^ On the nature of the physical expression, see note at end. 
 254 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 255 
 
 Regarding the mental process, the question is : Into what 
 conscious factors can we resolve the consciousness of the laughable 
 on the one hand, and the tearful on the other ? 
 
 The most general characteristic of the normal consciousness 
 of the ludicrous is that there is always some situation presented 
 before the mind ; and on this situation some judgment is 
 formed, in consequence of which a laugh ensues. We must be 
 aware of something to laugh at, before laughter can arise. If 
 laughter arises which, on analysis, does not reveal this most 
 general of all conditions, we say the laughter is meaningless, 
 absurd, hysterical, and so forth. All such laughter we condemn 
 or pity. We condemn it because it does not fit into the context 
 of anyone's experience, not even that of the person laughing, and 
 therefore cannot be tolerated ; or we pity it because such laughter 
 has the appearance of the unconsciously irrational, the person 
 laughing is under the sway of aon-voluntary forces beyond his 
 own control, and no one can enjoy when there is no object of 
 enjoyment. This condition is all-important and most significant. 
 Laughter does not normally arise like the feeling of high spirits, 
 or like a vague desire or craving, or again, like a fit of nervous- 
 ness. In the laugh of the child, or the grown-up, we have a distinct, 
 though it may be a very short, interval between the consciousness 
 of a certain kind of situation and the judgment passed upon it, 
 as the result of which the laugh takes place. These factors are 
 so complicated, and imply such a relatively high level of con- 
 sciousness, that it is not surprising to find many thinkers maintain- 
 ing that we only find laughter in the proper sense when there are 
 evidences of marked conscious rationality of behaviour. 
 
 When a given situation is presented to us, the first attitude, 
 which we adopt towards it is simply to apprehend what it contains 
 It is so much matter-of-fact, and, to begin with, nothing more 
 than this. Our initial interest in it is, as indeed we often say, a 
 " matter-of-fact interest." At this stage there is no difference 
 between our apprehension of a situation which turns out to be 
 amusing, and our way of apprehending any other fact whatsoever, 
 e.g. a flower, the size of a house, or the law of gravitation. 
 
256 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 Whether we merely take note of an isolated fact or develop our 
 first view of it into an elaborate system of connected thought 
 which we call "understanding" it, the general mental attitude 
 towards it is essentially the same — we are merely concerned to 
 grasp the meaning of what is before us, the internal connection 
 of its parts, and its external connections with other facts. 
 
 Now, when our interest in a situation is solely of this character 
 laughter never arises. We merely understand, and this attitude is 
 complete in itself, so complete that it even brings a pleasure all its 
 own. Hence people whose interest in things is limited to under- 
 standing them, proverbially display no sense of the ludicrous. 
 By contrast we call them " serious-minded " or " over-serious." 
 Excessive concentration on this attitude tends indeed to destroy 
 the spirit of laughter altogether. This is in part the explanation 
 of the unmerited jibe at the Scotchman's incapacity to see a joke : 
 he seems too anxious to understand. For the like reason it is 
 both difficult and dangerous, as every one has learned, to 
 " explain " a joke : for, what we try to explain to the dull-witted 
 is the nature of the situation, and the very process of explaining 
 tends to turn his attention upon the mere understanding of the 
 object before him ; and this has in itself no place for laughter at 
 all. Often the fun of the situation lies in a side issue suggested 
 by the situation ; and to explain the case may blot out all 
 suggestion of side issues, or take the edge off all interest in 
 them. The malicious, the stupid, and the laughter-hating are fully 
 alive to this effect of mere understanding, and well know how 
 to turn the tables on the jester and spoil his fun by demanding 
 a fuller explanation. When this deeper explanation is seriously 
 given, the basis of laughter is often undermined in the process 
 and the jester humiliated by the general collapse of the laughable 
 situation.^ 
 
 1 This effect of the mere understanding of a situation has given rise to the curious 
 view that laughter is due to imperfect or partial understanding of things, and hence 
 that the more we understand the less we are able to laugh. Goethe, betraying 
 perhaps a national defect of mind, held this opinion, and expressed it in the somewhat 
 pedantic form " the man of ' understanding ' finds almost everything laughable, the 
 man of ' reason ' almost nothing." No doubt it is true that the better we understand 
 the less superficial our laughter, and perhaps on that account the more rarely we 
 laugh. But it is obvious from experience that superficial laughter is but the 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 257 
 
 Apprehending a situation, then, does not by itself create 
 laughter, but is, in general, a precondition of it. Apprehending, 
 in fact, prepares the ground for another way of looking at the 
 situation. This further interest, as distinct from understanding, 
 we call appreciation. The peculiar character of this mental 
 attitude towards the situation is that we look at it in the light of 
 an end which it seeks to fulfil. Both in principle and in every- 
 day experience we draw a sharp distinction between apprehend- 
 ing a thing and appreciating it, whether the object be a man's 
 action, a poem, or a picture. We " understand " it if we know 
 how its parts are connected and the laws that control its being : 
 we " appreciate " it when we relate it to some end, and we express 
 this appreciation when we judge its value. Now it may be said 
 with fair accuracy that all our ways of looking at things fall under 
 one or other of these two classes : apprehending, or understand- 
 ing, and appreciating. Since laughter, as we have seen, does not 
 issue upon mere understanding, it may be due to an operation 
 of the process of appreciation. And this, we shall try to show, 
 seems actually the mental cause of the state of laughter. 
 
 II 
 
 The points to consider are : (i) What kind of end is involved 
 in the constitution of a laughable situation .■' (2) In what sort of 
 relation to the end do the facts in the situation stand when 
 laughter is created ? 
 
 As regards the first point the answer is fairly simple. 
 Whether we take the ceaseless varying ends of everyday life, 
 the ends pursued in morality and social life, the ends pursued by 
 the scientist, the religious man, the artist — in all these domains 
 alike, laughter can be, and is, created. The spirit of laughter is 
 
 correlation of superficial understanding, and that profound understanding fortunately 
 is often accompanied by a keener appreciation of the ludicrous. The wisest minds 
 have in most cases a sombre awareness of the pathos underlying the ludicrous in the 
 world ; and their laughter may be as the ebullition of a well of tears. As the poet 
 puts it — 
 
 " Our sincerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught.'' 
 
 S 
 
258 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 no respecter of places, persons, or things. The very gods are 
 supposed to indulge in this display of emotion, both when they 
 have dealings with one another, and more especially in their 
 dealings with mankind. The highest moods of experience, 
 indeed, like the pursuit of the ends of religion, have perhaps 
 been responsible for adding more to the fund of human laughter 
 than any other form of experience. For there we find a play of 
 imagination and a free manipulation of human purposes, which 
 constantly put us into the hands of the imp of laughter, and 
 place us at its mercy. As we are accustomed to say, everything 
 has its humorous as well as its serious side, and even in the 
 direst situations and most sombre occasions we find men breaking 
 the bounds of their constraint in a chuckle of spiritual freedom. 
 Every one must have felt at times a difficulty in strangling a 
 laugh at some part of the procedure of a solemn public festival ; 
 and even the pomp and circumstance of decease seems singularly 
 fertile in provoking a smile. 
 
 Thus the range of ends in connection with which laughter 
 may be invoked, is strictly unlimited. There is no single end 
 which peculiarly calls forth laughter. But the same end may 
 or may not produce laughter according to circumstances. What, 
 then, are the circumstances .■' In other words, in what relation 
 must things stand to an end, in order to give rise to a situation 
 which we appreciate as laughable .■' Formulated in this way the 
 question is not so difficult as it appears on a first look. 
 
 There are two ways in which facts may stand in relation to an 
 end in view. They may be so carefully planned, and arranged 
 in such an order, that the end is successfully reached, and reached 
 even with a kind of steady necessity from step to step in the 
 process. When this happens, even though the success be only 
 approximate, we never laugh. We praise or admire, or just 
 accept the achievement. We may feel happy in the result, but 
 this happiness does not provoke laughter ; it is rather akin to the 
 sense of well-being, and may provoke an articulate outburst like 
 a shout, hurrah, etc. Or, again, we may feel angry or dis- 
 appointed, and may blame or denounce the result, if the end thus 
 successfully achieved is one which destroys some previously 
 accepted scheme of good. This resentment or disappointment 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 259 
 
 is inconsistent with laughter ; and such resentment would only 
 be called forth if the result had been planned and to some 
 extent actually achieved. If no such result were attained, if no 
 such plan were accomplished, we should not feel resentment 
 justified. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the end may be neither attained nor 
 renounced. The relation between things and the end in view may 
 be incoherent, disconnected, in all degrees from sheer irrelevance 
 up to partial but more or less haphazard co-ordination with a 
 view to the result ; and this relation may be temporary or 
 permanent. In these cases, no praise or blame is attached, for 
 an end is neither accomplished nor defeated. The end remains 
 secure and safe despite the incoherence of the process ; the 
 incoherence throws the end into relief and even emphasises its 
 importance. We are, therefore, neither happy nor miserable. 
 Since, however, the facts and the end stand in an objective, real, 
 relation to one another and constitute a single situation, we 
 must, and do, take up some mental attitude towards it. We can 
 and do appreciate the situation as it stands. Now, it is in such 
 cases that we laugh. And here, it seems to me, we have the 
 essential nature of the situation which causes laughter, as 
 illustration will abundantly show. 
 
 Laughter arises when the character or process of an object, 
 which is considered to refer to an end, real or supposed, is judged 
 to be partially or wholly incongruent or incoherent with the end 
 in view. It is important to note that the end must not be given 
 up but must still hold good in spite of the incongruity ; and also 
 that the object laughed at must not give way and must be none 
 the worse for its incoherence with the end. The relation of the 
 object or its process to the end must in fact subsist without either 
 factor disappearing or being overthrown ; the object must point 
 in the direction of the end, the end must continue to claim a 
 control over the object. If, for any reason, we lose sight of 
 either of these factors, the laughter is at once dissipated. 
 
 A situation, we thus see, is rendered laughable not simply in 
 virtue of incongruity, as so many have said. It is a specific kind 
 of incongruity, the persistent incongruity between an object or 
 its process and the end at which it certainly but vainly aims, or 
 
26o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 seems to aim. Every kind of incongruity does not give rise to 
 laughter, as Bain long ago pointed out, and as in fact is fairly 
 obvious on reflection. When two ideas contradict one another, 
 we have incongruity ; but that does not cause laughter, but 
 irritation or disappointme nt. When two billiard balls collide, we 
 have contrariety of motion and incongruity of position ; but here 
 again there is no laughter. When a man is overwhelmed by 
 disaster after struggling against great odds, we have also 
 incongruity ; but this is the reverse of laughable, as we shall see. 
 Mere contrast, again, is not the essence of the situation, as 
 others have supposed. Contrast undoubtedly there is. But the 
 world is full of contrasts which evoke no laughter — day and 
 night, light and darkness ; and many contrasts lead to tears. It 
 is the particular kind of contrast between the incongruous 
 process and the end sought, which starts the laughter. The 
 element of contrast is partly the source of the surprise which 
 is felt in many kinds of laughable situations, though not in all. 
 The contrast may suddenly appear at a certain point in the 
 incongruous relation of the process to the end, and the recog- 
 nition of this startles us, so to say, into the consciousness of the 
 situation which we feel to be laughable. The contrast need not 
 be sudden, and laughter still results ; or we may watch the 
 contrast and continue to laugh. But the abrupt realisation of 
 the contrast of the kind described gives a vivid interest to the 
 laughter ; though no doubt in some cases the very suddenness of 
 it may tend to check laughter until we have made quite sure it 
 is the sort of contrast which we appreciate as laughable. Mere 
 suddenness of contrast may take us unawares and call out 
 laughter which jars, or makes us ashamed of ourselves, when we 
 find out that the relation has not been properly appreciated. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Let us take some typical illustrations to give concreteness 
 to this statement of the nature of laughter. Almost every child 
 seems moved to laughter at the spectacle of a malicious wind 
 playing havoc with a dandy's dignity and carrying his hat by 
 leaps and bounds far down the street, with its owner in hasty 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 261 
 
 pursuit. Here the orderly connection between the object and 
 the wearer, which is required to maintain the dandy's dignity, 
 has been ruthlessly broken ; the object makes off on its own 
 account, regardless of its place in the purposes of his life ; the 
 dandy insists on the relation between himself and his hat being 
 kept up, while the hat as obviously disowns the relationship. 
 Neither can get rid of the other, and yet both are for the time 
 being incongruent with each other, the dandy's dignity with the 
 present position and doings of the hat, the hat with the present 
 feelings of the dandy. Observe, again, that the important agent 
 in the situation — the dandy — is not really injured in the process, 
 he is only temporarily discomfited. Substitute a frail old man 
 for the dandy, and the situation ceases to be laughable to all 
 but the ill-disposed, and calls forth other emotions, such as pity. 
 
 Acts unintentionally incongruous with the end in view afford 
 excellent illustrations of the laughable. A beginner's efforts to 
 perform any feat of skill, or any task requiring delicacy of 
 adjustment and long training, whether it be golf, swimming, 
 skating, making a first speech in public, exercising social savoir 
 faire, or talking a foreign language — these afford subjects of 
 laughter to all, and they illustrate so clearly this incongruity of 
 the details of the process with the end aimed at that we need 
 hardly stop to deal with them. 
 
 But not merely do the incongruities that arise from want of 
 skill in its many forms produce laughter. The possession of 
 skill may be directed to the creation of situations which cause 
 laughter ; and, in fact, the capacity to do so is often a sign of real 
 mastery, as we all know. Here we have an end in mind, and 
 create incongruous material to stand in relation to it. The 
 incongruity can be, and because invented generally is, quite 
 as startling, unexpected and novel as in the unintentionally 
 laughable acts of the unskilled. Such skill is most frequently 
 exercised in the manipulation of ideas and in the manipulation 
 of words which symbolise ideas. These are doubtless not 
 strictly separable, and sometimes are consciously combined. 
 The most familiar and best type of the former (the manipulation 
 of ideas) is what we call wit, and consists in suggesting a truth 
 either by bringing out a similarity between incongruous ideas or 
 
262 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 incongruous differences within the same general idea. When 
 Sydney Smith remarked to his vestry, who were finding 
 difficulties in the way of paving with wood the streets round a 
 certain church, that the thing could be quite well done if the 
 members of the vestry would only put their heads together, — we 
 have a good illustration of the first form of wit. The most 
 frequent and best known type of the use of words to create 
 laughter is what is called the "pun," which is a legitimate 
 enough source of laughter, especially if well done, and should 
 not be condemned as bad wit, since it does not profess to be wit 
 at all. The setting of amusing conundrums is a common form 
 of this artificial creation of laughter out of ideas and words. 
 Incongruous ideas may also be used to bring about a definite 
 practical result, and then we have neither wit nor pun but a 
 form of practical joke. This may be malicious ; or it may be 
 agreeable. Dean Swift, being annoyed by a crowd of his 
 admiring parishioners collected on his doorstep to watch an 
 eclipse, sent out his servant with a handbell to announce that by 
 the order of the Dean of St. Patrick's the eclipse was postponed : 
 the crowd dispersed in laughter. 
 
 Again, we have a notable case of laughter in pompous 
 pretentiousness and affectation of speech and behaviour. The 
 behaviour of the gentleman bourgeois or the awe-inspiring 
 office-boy creates laughter because the end to be attained stands 
 confronted with an agent whose mental and physical structure or 
 attainments are totally incongruous with the demands made upon 
 him. He therefore does not merely come short of what is wanted, 
 which might be merely dull ; he does the inconsequent act and 
 the irrelevant thing, which frustrates the attainment of the end 
 to which he nevertheless clings so strongly as even to imagine 
 that it is really embodied in his incongruous action.^ 
 
 ' Take, again, a verjf different case : that of the laughter wliich sometimes 
 accompanies joy. The joy is due to a sudden and unusually heightened sense of well- 
 being, a "sudden glory," arising from the attainment of an end either altogether 
 unexpected or preceded by a period of restraint and mental tension. The laughter, 
 which sometimes accompanies the mood, arises not from the mere removal of restraint, 
 but firom our becoming aware, almost simultaneously, of the discontinuity, often the 
 sheer irrelevance, between the preceding experience and the end which has suddenly 
 been made our own, and which, therefore, must have been waiting securely all the 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 263 
 
 Of all kinds of situations those of social life afford the richest 
 field of the permanently laughable. The reason is that here we 
 have on the one hand well-known and well-established ends 
 towards which human life not merely is directed, but ought to be 
 directed, and on the other hand an extremely complex range of 
 detail which is drawn from nature and human nature, and is 
 placed in subordination to those social ends. The possibility of 
 the laughter here is in consequence almost endless, so much so 
 that it often seems to many from first to last a long jest. The 
 laughter may be directed upon isolated momentary situations and 
 actions, such as the compromising position of a Mr. Pickwick ; 
 or the complexity of a situation may be so very great that it 
 takes days, months, and even years to reveal itself in all the 
 extent of its laughable character. We sometimes use the word 
 comedy to cover both the isolated instances and the long sequence 
 of events in which the situation is realised : sometimes we use 
 the word comedy for the second alone. This, however, is a mere 
 matter of words. There is no difference in principle between the 
 two as laughter-producing situations ; for obviously the time it 
 takes to develop the incongruity, from which the laugh arises, 
 does not in the least affect the nature of the situation itself 
 Moreover, the long sequence of events comprising a single 
 laughable situation may, and generally does, give rise in its 
 course to a succession of laughable situations ; the parts may be 
 in themselves laughable, as well as the whole. Whether, then, 
 the situation is isolated and momentary, or drawn out over a 
 long time, the same principle operates in the emotion of the 
 laughter to which the situation gives rise. We have a social end 
 of some sort on the one side, and, on the other, human actions 
 performed which are incongruous with the ends accepted as 
 standards of these actions. 
 
 The incongruity arises from three chief sources, in the case of 
 the socially comic, and these largely determine the different kinds 
 of comedy. It may arise from nature itself ; it may arise through 
 the designed or undesigned acts of individuals ; and it may also 
 arise from the free inter-play of many persons living together, 
 
 while. The laughter of children on regaining their liberty after school hours is a 
 simple case of this kind. 
 
264 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 each following his or her own individual purposes, which inevitably 
 intersect and thwart each other at some points, since the in- 
 dividuals coexist in the same field of social life and yet are all 
 separate. How nature upsets the calculations of the cleverest of 
 men we all know ; how its laws and processes capriciously hold 
 sway over men's purposes and their fulfilment is only too evident, 
 whether it be the winds and the waves that bring Ferdinand on 
 his way to his Miranda, or FalstafTs struggle with the over- 
 grown proportions on which nature planned his structure. 
 The complicated interplay of human purposes in every 
 Comedy of Errors makes merry havoc with the best intentions 
 of the actors. When each of these sources of incongruity 
 operates alone it is quite enough to thwart the efforts of the 
 agent to reach his ends ; when all work together, the wonder Is 
 not that comedy arises so often, but that any purpose is ever 
 seriously and successfully carried out at all in social life. 
 
 It must be carefully observed that in all comic situations the 
 end must never be abandoned or overthrown if the situation is to 
 be, and to remain, laughable ; nor must the effort to reach it 
 through incongruous or incoherent acts be given up ; nor, finally, 
 must the person of the agent or agents be really disabled in the 
 process. If any of those qualifications is absent, laughter ceases. 
 There is always in the best comedy a deferred triumph of the end 
 in view and of the person pursuing the end. The immediate 
 realisation of the end and the indefinite postponement of its 
 realisation (which is practically equivalent to defeat) are both 
 hostile to the spirit of laughter. For the end is important, at 
 least to the individual, and generally to social life as a whole. It 
 will, therefore, not be set aside merely because the process of 
 reaching it is so inadequate and confused. On the other hand, 
 should the end be carried out with uninterrupted success, there is 
 no room for laughter. Time and entanglement must intervene 
 between the end and the details in which fulfilment is sought, if a 
 situation for laughter is to be created. Sometimes the entangle- 
 ment may be so serious for the agent that he can laugh only 
 when the end has triumphed, and when on looking backwards he 
 sees the end standing out in contrast to the incongruity of the 
 process. Joyous laughter is a case of this kind, as is also 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 265 
 
 the laughter tliat arises after a state of long tension or 
 restraint. 
 
 The social purposes controlling individual lives have varying 
 degrees of importance ; some are trivial or accidental, some 
 fundamental or essential to human well-being. Hence we have 
 comic situations which are merely on the surface of social life, 
 others which go down to its very depths. These last give rise to 
 the higher dramatic forms of comedy ; the former are the source 
 of farce of every description. The characteristic of higher comic 
 drama is that it seizes on vital ends of social welfare, the main- 
 tenance of family greatness, the love of social power and glory, 
 the deep passions of sex affinity, and similar factors. It shows 
 them controlling the acts and thoughts of individuals, sometimes 
 half consciously, sometimes with clear intention, and yet frustrated 
 by the inadequacy of judgment, the complexity of circumstances, 
 the diversities of personal interest in the issues involved. The 
 whole dramatic scheme seems a contest of fate with chance for 
 the mastery of social ends ; fate consisting of purposes which are, 
 or should be, or must be somehow, realised ; chance consisting of 
 the incalculable succession of isolated events without which there 
 is no realisation possible or worth pursuing. We watch the 
 conflict with lively expectation of the happy issue, and are 
 amused at the various steps, for their own sake, and because we 
 are sure neither side will give way in the long run : the man will 
 have his mate and all will be well. That is the essence of the 
 higher comic drama — the clear consciousness before the mind, at 
 least of the dramatist, that there is the final triumph of the good 
 end in the most complex of situations. 
 
 IV 
 
 A comic drama reveals a plan all unknown to the actors. 
 It is not this plan as completed which creates the laughter ; for 
 the plan requires that the end be realised, and is based on a 
 rational insight into the coherent structure of social life. The 
 laughter arises from the incongruity displayed by the actors in 
 their efforts and actions to secure an unfulfilled end, or one 
 attained almost in spite of their efforts. Hence while laughable 
 
266 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 situations are the material of comic drama, and while comic drama 
 inevitably creates laughter, the creation of laughter is not the sole 
 purpose of a comic drama. When, as the curtain falls, the actors 
 shake hands, fall on each other's necks, or go off to church, we 
 feel satisfied that the right thing has happened ; we should not 
 have been satisfied with the drama if this had not happened. But, 
 if there has been much laughter in bringing all this about, the 
 result, though correct, is apt to produce a reaction. It may 
 perhaps seem familiar, and we give a clap of general approval of 
 the skill in bringing about the conclusion we have taken for 
 granted all the while : or the plan, which has led to the issue, may 
 seem so complete that the sheer human joy at the triumph of 
 good over such obstacles may overwhelm us in tears. Comic 
 drama, in short, is a planned arrangement of laughable situations, 
 which is constructed on the assumption that the good end must 
 finally triumph over all obstacles and fulfil or satisfy the agent 
 not simply, and certainly not always, in the sense of giving him 
 all he wants or saving him from all pain, but in the sense that 
 his life as a member of a given society finds the real good it 
 desires when the end is attained. 
 
 Herein lies the difference between the point of view of comic 
 drama and that of morality. The comic drama takes for granted 
 that the good end will inevitably triumph over all interruptions ; 
 and reveals this by selecting a well-established and what may be 
 called a perfectly safe, conventional, social good, which has long 
 had control over the life of a society. Such a principle is so 
 secure in its grip that it can be relied upon almost to play with 
 the individual wills and events which seem to interrupt its 
 fulfilment, and it will work itself out to a happy issue through all 
 waywardness, with a kind of irresistible necessity. The moral 
 point of view, on the other hand, is inward, something more than 
 the merely conventional and well-established routine of social 
 welfare ; it has its eye on an ideal or a good above the present, 
 and better than it, and in the light of which it judges the actual. 
 Its face is towards the better and the best ; it praises and blames, 
 and allows no routine or social customs to stand in its way. So far 
 from allowing itself to be under the sway of even social necessity, 
 it demands man's free choice and free judgment at all costs. 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 267 
 
 It looks to the future, not to the past, and bends the present in 
 that direction. It therefore leaves nothing to chance and never 
 supposes chance will work out the best. All this is different from 
 the dramatic attitude. A comic drama never teaches or preaches 
 intentionally. A moral agent cannot leave morality to the mercy 
 of chance. The dramatist is more confident in his moral beliefs ; 
 the moral agent more strenuous in his conduct of life. A 
 dramatist can afford to create a laugh at the expense of morality, 
 for he is sure it will succeed in the long run. Morality wants the 
 good done now ; and the pith of moral energy would be paralysed 
 if the moral agent felt anything but the immediate compulsion 
 of high seriousness. When a moral agent uses the resource 
 of laughter for his purposes, he does so through mockery and 
 satire ; and then the laughter is directed not upon the good and 
 the virtuous, but upon the bad and the vicious. 
 
 To the comic dramatist, the moral life is material which he 
 uses to work up into a plan of social existence, a plan which he 
 sees to be controlling the apparently rambling and disconnected 
 actions of men ; to the moral agent, there is no such plan, and no 
 order in life except such as he makes by his own voluntary acts. 
 Hence we often find the best comic dramas, e.g. those of Moliere, 
 appearing when a social life has reached a highly organised level 
 of intensive development and carries itself on by its own 
 momentum in spite of, and through, the free play of the individual 
 lives of men and women. 
 
 When we reflect that it is in the treatment of the deeper and 
 more universal social ends that we get the best comic drama, we 
 can understand why it is that such dramas make a universal 
 appeal to readers or observers of every nation. A Chinaman can 
 laugh with Aristophanes, with Moliere, with Shakespeare, because 
 those fundamental social ends, whose operation is portrayed in the 
 higher drama, are ends which control the life of developed social 
 man everywhere. Dickens can make a successful appeal in 
 Tokio as well as in London, for the same reason. 
 
 V 
 
 The different kinds of laughter, which socially laughable 
 situations create, are due both to the character of the ends we 
 
268 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 have in mind, and the degree of incongruity in the process of 
 pursuing them. We distinguish between what we call good and 
 bad laughter. We say some things should be laughed at, and 
 other things should not ; meaning thereby, not that there is a 
 moral code in laughter, but that the judgment of appreciation, 
 from which, we saw, the laugh starts, may be accurate and 
 inaccurate in its operation, may be wise or foolish, much in the 
 same way that a judgment of a work of art may be sound or 
 unsound. Again, since the laugh is always spontaneously the 
 outcome of the individual's appreciation of a situation, and as 
 unprepared for as a cry of pain, it is quite true to say that a man's 
 laugh betrays the kind of man he is ; the laugh, in fact, often 
 betrays the man to himself as well as to others. It is also true 
 to say, as Goethe does, that nothing shows the character of men 
 more than what they find laughable, if we mean by that state- 
 ment to refer to the laughter directed upon the ends of social life, 
 good or bad. But it is not true, if we mean to refer to all 
 laughter ; for laughter is not the outcome of character, but of a 
 judgment upon a certain kind of incongruity ; and only in so 
 far as a man's character may affect this judgment is the statement 
 of importance. 
 
 The good and the evil ends are equally able to start laughter, 
 and to some minds the indecent seems peculiarly able to excite 
 it. Rabelaisian laughter and the laughter of the Contes drola- 
 tiques always make a strong appeal to a certain type of mind, 
 especially that type which lives on extreme or abstract levels of 
 experience. This is what we may expect from the nature of the 
 case. There is no greater contrast than that between the high 
 and the low, and nothing seems more incongruous. Certainly 
 nothing can so easily give rise to the incongruous as the natural 
 conditions of man's higher spiritual ends. They cannot be 
 always ignored or despised : and yet they do not always or 
 generally fit into the higher purposes. In such cases laughter to 
 some minds seems inevitable. 
 
 So much does individuality count that even the same 
 person will not always find himself able to laugh at the same 
 situation, even though this be essentially ludicrous. Laughter 
 varies from individual to individual, and with the state of 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 269 
 
 mind of an individual at a given time. The judgment 
 of appreciation is thus sharply different from the judgment of 
 understanding. The truth about a thing once established will 
 always seem true to the same mind, and, for that matter, to all 
 minds who understand it. But the laughable in a situation has 
 not this quality. Its universality does not mean that we 
 will always laugh ; but that the situation may be expected to 
 create laughter. This expectation is, however, sufficiently well 
 grounded to justify us in stating to one another a laughable 
 situation, in constructing a comedy, and in creating situations to 
 provoke laughter. Whether we succeed must depend on the 
 chance of finding the hearing ear and the appreciating heart. 
 This we cannot rely upon.i Hence the wise man's remark, " A 
 jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him who hears it, not in the 
 tongue of him who tells it." Hence, too, when a jester laughs at 
 the situation as he is portraying it to us, he almost invariably 
 spoils his jest, not simply because this tends to interrupt the 
 listener's attention, but because he is forestalling the spon- 
 taneous appreciation of his listener and makes this but an 
 echo of his own. The jester assumes too much, and, so to say, 
 invades the listener's individual right of private judgment of the 
 case, to which no independent-minded listener will submit. The 
 rudeness of the jester thus destroys the virtue of the jest. 
 
 The best kind of laughter, however, is held to be that in 
 which all can join ; and it is held to be the best just on that 
 account. The more a laugh is restricted to one or a few in- 
 dividuals, the more it tends to be depreciated. That seems the 
 only standard by which we test healthy and unhealthy, real and 
 false laughter ; and the test is clearly a social test. The bitter 
 laugh, the cynical laugh, the hard laugh, etc., is not encouraged, 
 because it arises from some special personal interest. The man 
 who can only laugh at others' expense and cannot join the laugh 
 at his own expense, is suspect. Healthy laughter rests on a 
 judgment of an actual objective situation, and is always detached 
 from personal bias. Hence it is difficult for most people to 
 
 ' It has been remarked by a distinguished actor, that it is only possible to perform 
 the same piece night after night because different audiences take up the points of the 
 play in different ways. 
 
270 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 laugh at themselves ; as one writer has put it, the nearer a 
 situation affects ourselves the less we are inclined to laugh at it. 
 In general, it is true, a situation must be remote from our own 
 interest to make it possible for us to enjoy laughter. It is 
 obvious, however, that the social standard of what is laughable 
 will vary from society to society, and from time to time in the 
 same society. The things which our forefathers took seriously 
 become objects of laughter to their successors, and situations 
 which created laughter in them seem often dull or offensive to 
 ourselves. 
 "^ Laughter is not less keen because it is conventional. For 
 much laughter is the result of social education, imitation, and 
 habit. And this must necessarily be so because- of the jnherently 
 social nature of our lives. We find a curious corroboration of 
 this feature of laughter in the fact that the mere observation of 
 the facial expression of a laughing person will be found in many 
 cases to set up, by imitative sympathy, the corresponding facial 
 expression in the observers, and thus force the laugh from them 
 almost before they are aware of the source of the laughter. This 
 can be seen any day in an audience listening to a comedian on 
 the stage. Laughter, as we say, is contagious or infectious. 
 
 There is another aspect of the sociaT side of laughter to 
 which it is worth while referring. The laughter arising from the 
 appreciation of a given situation implies, as was said, that the 
 end is assured and holds its own against the incongruity in 
 the process of arriving at it, and perhaps in the long run may 
 turn this incongruity to good account. Such an assurance may 
 be tentative or very strong. When tentative we have the timid, 
 hesitating, or nervous laugh ; when strong, the burst or peal of 
 unrestrained laughter. Now, the assurance gains enormously 
 through social intercourse. If it is shared by other individuals, 
 it does not merely gain in intensity for each individual, but the 
 sharing of it acts as a bond of closer fellowship between the 
 individuals. A joint assurance thus plays a great part in enrich- 
 ing social intercourse. The situation itself seems more laughable 
 just because laughed at by several individuals. Hence it is that 
 we do not merely enjoy a laugh better which is shared, but we 
 enjoy the society of those who can laugh with us, for their society 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 271 
 
 strengthens our judgment of appreciation. This accounts largely 
 for the curious experience that very few care to laugh when they 
 are quite alone, still fewer to laugh alone in a company. Let any 
 one tell a funny story to himself, and note the effect. If we find 
 ourselves laughing when we are alone, we feel either that we 
 must try to find somebody to enjoy the fun with us, or else the 
 echo of our own laughter tends to sound weird and ghostlike, as 
 if we overheard ourselves, or detected ourselves off our guard, or 
 saw ourselves turned inside out. Again, to laugh alone in a 
 company is not merely a breach of decorum ; it is a proclamation 
 that our judgment is not ratified by the common intelligence of 
 the group in which for the time being we find ourselves. It is an 
 insult to their intelligence, or a condemnation of our own. 
 
 On the other hand, the effect of this socialising tendency of 
 laughter is that we do not care to laugh with those in whose 
 society, for any reason, we do not care to continue to be. No 
 upper servant will allow himself or herself to laugh freely in the 
 company of a servant of lower standing. The laughter is always 
 condescending on the one side, and restrained or servile on the 
 other. Similarly, no master or mistress cares even to enjoy the 
 same kind of laughable situations as his or her servant. We 
 object to a judge laughing with the man in the dock ; or the 
 officer with the private. Laughter so breaks down the restraints 
 of normal personal life that the free laughter of master and 
 servant together would, so to say, fuse them and imperil the well 
 recognised lines of demarcation which are really necessary to 
 keep up the social relationship between them. On so slight a 
 thread does the safety of public and private dignity depend ! 
 Because all rigid distinctions of privilege and person melt before 
 the flame of laughter, one of the readiest ways, as we all know, 
 of overcoming awkward situations in social life is to create a 
 laugh. This at once reduces or raises human beings to their 
 common humanity, and so smooths away the lines of separation 
 for the time being. 
 
 Since laughter has this levelling and socialising influence, it is 
 plain at once that the essence of laughter cannot lie, as some 
 have held, e.g. Aristotle and Bain after him, in a consciousness of 
 superiority on the part of the person laughing, and of inferiority 
 
272 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 or degradation on the part of the person laughed at. This is so 
 obviously inadequate, after what has been said, that I need not 
 discuss it at length. Some kinds of laughter involve distinctions 
 of this kind. But they do not cover all possible situations that 
 are laughable even in social life. The familiar instance of a man 
 joining in the laugh against himself makes nonsense of the theory. 
 We laugh at things, as well as at persons, and there is no mean- 
 ing in saying that the person laughing is superior to the thing he 
 laughs at. It would be as true, though equally one-sided, to 
 maintain that laughter reduces the person laughing to the level 
 of the object laughed at. Laughter neither belittles nor magnifies 
 the person laughing or the object of laughter. The theory rests 
 on a confusion between detachment from a situation, which is 
 certainly necessary to free laughter, and superiority to the 
 situation, which is quite another matter. 
 
 A theory, akin to this, is that which declares that we can only 
 laugh at little things, small matters, or relatively unimportant 
 situations, and that laughter reduces great things to small pro- 
 portions. Such a theory touches the mere surface of the situation, 
 and confounds lightness of heart with littleness of value. We 
 can laugh at all things, small and great ; for the laugh is not the 
 result of a calculation of weight or of importance, but of the sense 
 of incongruity of process with end in view, whatever the process 
 be, and whatever the end be. 
 
 VI 
 
 I come now to the mental process involved in the state of 
 weeping. For the analysis of this we have already to some 
 extent prepared the way. It, too, presupposes a consciousness 
 of some situation before us, owing to the nature of which weeping 
 arises. But the mere understanding of the situation is not what 
 creates the tearful mood ; in some cases, indeed, understanding 
 may arrest the flow of tears. Many tears, like much laughter, 
 are due to one-sided and often superficial understanding of a 
 situation. Hence we cry more in childhood than in maturer 
 years. But tears are not the prerogative of the young, and no 
 amount of experience can get rid of them. As Goethe puts it : 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 273 
 
 " The man perhaps a hero seems 
 Who stifles tears in sorrow deep, 
 But if in grief of soul he yearns, 
 God grant him power to weep. " 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Who never ate his bread in tears, 
 
 Who never spent the midnight hours 
 Upon his couch in grief and fears, 
 
 He knows ye not, ye Heavenly Powers." 
 
 Understanding, then, does not of itself create tears, nor does 
 complete understanding prevent them. They arise, like laughter, 
 from an appreciation of a situation of a certain kind. There is 
 some discordance~in'^^rocess : we judge the sftuation to be of 
 this nature and we judge it in the light of an end. But while in the 
 case of laughter the end holds out securely against the incongruity 
 of the process of reaching it and remains to the last undefeated, 
 in the case of tears the end always is, in fact or in imagination, 
 defeated, and is overthrown by some process that has proved 
 definitely hostile to its preservation. But it is not the mere defeat 
 of the end that is the essence of the situation : for an end may be 
 frustrated without tears thereby arising. The loss of an end 
 may spur us on to new effort to reach it ; we may blame ourselves 
 for its loss, and in consequence resolve to try again. We do not 
 weep in such cases : we regard the loss as temporary, and desire 
 starts afresh in pursuit. Or again, the end may be finally defeated 
 and we may accept the fact with indifference, turning away to 
 new ends to be attained in other directions. In this case also 
 tears do not arise. It is when the end is admitted as finally lost 
 and yet is allowed still to control the current of our desire to 
 possess it, that tears begin to flow. And this situation arises 
 where the process which brought about the overthrow of our end 
 is recognised as fatefully incongruous with the cherished object of 
 our desire. The incongruity is essential, because this alone can 
 account for, and even justify, the continuation of our desire in 
 spite of defeat ; and the supreme value of our end to us throws 
 into relief the discordant character of the process at the mercy of 
 which it has been placed. Where the end lost is all of a piece 
 with the process which has brought about the result, we recognise 
 
 T 
 
274 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 no incongruity, and in consequence there are no tears. Similarly, 
 when the good lost is seen from a wider or another point of view 
 to be retained in a fuller sense as part of a completer good, the 
 tears are again arrested, because the incongruity is no longer felt. 
 Thus, it is the recognition of the sharp discontinuity between the 
 course of nature and the sudden disappearance of the life long 
 precious to us, that starts the tears of sorrow over the departed. 
 If we come to see that the good life we valued was bound up 
 with the process of nature by whose gradual operation the life 
 has been terminated, the tears are arrested. This is more easy in 
 the case of those who have reached the full term of years, than 
 in the case of the comparatively young. Hence grief for the latter 
 is more poignant than'in the case of the former. Or again, if we 
 come to see that the life lost, even though young, after all enters 
 into a completer life which endures beyond the changing course 
 of things, griefs anguish is largely assuaged. This last point is 
 admirably illustrated in the movement of Shelley's thought in 
 Adonais. The overwhelming grief which heaven and earth are 
 called upon to share fills the mind of the poet only so long as 
 his thought dwells upon the profound discontinuity between the 
 frailty of nature's process and the precious good that has gone 
 from the world. When, however, the poet recognises that the 
 life that is fled may yet retain its dominion in a fuller reality, the 
 sorrow passes away and he sings almost in joy — 
 
 " He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
 Mourn not for Adonais. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 Which once he made more lovely." 
 
 In most, if not all cases of tears, the end lost is one we have 
 strongly desired personally. In order to feel the loss we must have 
 felt the object to be a great good.^ And the intensity of our grief is 
 often accentuated because of the sense of the defeat and of the 
 futility of the effort spent in striving for the end. 
 
 There are two secondary influences which tend to increase the 
 pain of the loss and to open wider the gates of sorrow. One is the 
 
 1 This is so even where, as in the case of children, the good may seem to a 
 maturer judgment to have been imaginary or trifling. 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 275 
 
 sense of our impotence in the face of an incongruous process 
 which has our ends at its mercy and over which we cannot exert 
 any control. The other is the overshadowing of our whole scheme 
 of good by the actual loss of one element. Our whole good 
 is correspondingly diminished, is lowered in value, and the 
 energy of life is brought down to a poorer level. The influence 
 of each of these varies greatly in different cases and with 
 different people ; but they are each present to some extent in 
 most cases. 
 
 These seem the essential elements in the situation in which 
 tearful emotion occurs. Incongruity or discontinuity between the 
 end, which has been finally frustrated, and the process that led 
 up to the result, is involved in the situation that gives rise to tears. 
 The incongruity must be real or imagined as real, just as the 
 personal loss* must be real or imagined as real, before tears 
 come. We may prove to be mistaken on these points, but we 
 are not aware of being mistaken while the tears last. Hence the 
 seriousness of childhood's tears, and also the facility of allaying 
 them, owing to the frequency of error of judgment in the inex- 
 perienced. At the same time, the good lost must still dominate 
 our desire, if tears are to arise. Without this we do not have the 
 shock of arrestment in our pursuit of our end, which is a marked 
 peculiarity of the tearful emotion. The end continues to hold our 
 desire in spite of the recognition of its final loss. 
 
 VII 
 
 Sometimes the process or the materials for obtaining the end 
 lie outside ourselves in the course of nature, or in the actions of 
 other wills than our own. We watch these from the outside and 
 await a much desired issue. When failure of our desired end 
 comes, we are stricken, and our very helplessness adds bitterness 
 to the tears ; we feel overwhelmed. Sometimes the past process 
 of bringing about the frustrated end was partly or wholly in our 
 own control. When this happens we are filled with regret which, 
 if accompanied by self-blame, intensifies the emotion over the 
 defeat of our purpose. Hence, when people weep for their sins 
 or their wrong-doings, it is not because they blame themselves 
 
276 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 that they cry ; it is because the ends of goodness have been 
 frustrated by their own actions, and this frustration is their loss : 
 their blaming of themselves is a complication which blends with 
 the regret,- and by its influence heightens the feeling of loss of what 
 is good. Thus, as we say, the tears of a penitent are really the 
 beginnings of a reformation of character ; for it is the sense of a 
 loss of good that produces the flow of tears. This cannot take 
 place unless he is to some extent aware of the good lost, and to 
 be aware of good is the beginning of a better life. On the other 
 hand, if a man weeps at the frustration of his evil ends, as is quite 
 possible, he is in a fair way to be a captain of the powers of evil, 
 for he has thereby indicated that evil is his good ; for him no re- 
 formation is possible. If, again, a man weeps over the evil he 
 has deliberately done and would do again deliberately in order to 
 accomplish some end he thinks to be a good one — e.g. the Kaiser's 
 tears over the destruction of Louvain — we say that such a person 
 is on the borders of lunacy, or is indulging in artificially created 
 or " crocodile " tears. 
 
 These, then, are the main types of situation the appreciation 
 of which causes tears : the situation where the process and 
 material for attaining a desired end were outside our control, and 
 that where they were at least in some degree under our control. In 
 both, the end has moulded the direction of our desire, and given 
 it a set tendency which remains in us after, and in spite of, the 
 actual and accepted defeat of the purpose. If we could put this 
 desire aside at once when defeat takes place, we should never 
 weep. It is because we do not or cannot put it aside that we 
 are constrained to shed tears — constrained, because the momentum 
 of the initial tendency of our desire being suddenly arrested 
 without the desire being abandoned, the mental shock must 
 seek some outlet, and our judgment of the case find expression. 
 It expresses itself in the flow of tears. 
 
 The tears, though constrained, are quite spontaneous. Some- 
 times their expression affords relief to mental tension, by slightly 
 directing attention from the situation to the tears which it has 
 produced. Often in children we find that attention to the tears 
 may become so absorbing that they cease to cry. In other cases, 
 again, tears are apt to turn the mind back to their cause, and the 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 277 
 
 knowledge of the effect adds its influence to the knowledge of 
 the cause and increases the flow of tears. That explains how 
 children, and even older people, can " work themselves up " into 
 a so-called paroxysm of weeping. 
 
 Yet, in general, the tears are drawn reluctantly from the 
 individual, because they arise through a check to the trend of his 
 activity, through a thwarted desiring tendency ; and the individual 
 does not accept this state without reluctance. The situations 
 involved always imply a fait accompli. The end actually is 
 frustrated, at least to all appearance if not in reality, before tears 
 flow. If a person weeps before the issue in point of fact takes 
 place, it is because the issue has been anticipated, and the 
 imagination of the frustrated end starts in tears. If this occurs 
 when the process is under the person's control, as in the case of 
 a child over a difficult lesson, a boy in a fight, or a lover in 
 pursuit of his heart's desire, the situation is apt to create 
 irritation or amusement in the spectator : irritation, since the 
 tears anticipate an issue which the agent might by effort 
 prevent ; amusement, since the end being still effective (for the 
 agent pursues it) there is transparent incongruity between the 
 process the agent is adopting and the end which still holds its 
 own over his efforts. We never weep over a situation which is 
 really regarded as undecided. There is thus a sharp contrast 
 between laughter and tears. For in laughter the end is secure 
 though the issue is in the balance : in tears the issue is settled, 
 for the end must have been in fact or in imagination frustrated 
 before tears flow, and when the end is frustrated the process 
 towards it has ceased to exist. We therefore weep only over 
 what is regarded as past, never over what may be in the future. 
 But we do not weep over the past merely as what is past ; if so, 
 we should never be done weeping. It is the past which has 
 frustrated ends enduring still within our present desire, that starts 
 the tears. It is the past in its bearing on our present desire that 
 is of importance in tears ; and desire is always a present ex- 
 perience. Thus we find that as the past fades away from us it 
 gradually ceases to trouble the waters of our sorrow ; for the 
 ends which the past frustrated gradually lose their appeal to our 
 desire. Their interest diminishes through repeated experience of 
 
278 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 their inefficacy. New ends arise which are effective and so replace 
 the old. The old ends themselves disappear into the past ; they 
 become ends that were, not ends that are desired. Their very 
 memory becomes altered for us. And so the past no longer joins 
 with present desire in a situation that causes tears. We may 
 even be amused at what we formerly wept over ; or the tearful 
 situations of former days may be seen through a perspective in 
 which " the thought of our past years may bring perpetual 
 benediction." 
 
 It is because the situation causing tears involves a finished 
 result that in the emotional state of weeping the individual has a 
 sense of resignation as to a kind of fate against which his desire 
 beats in vain. The acquiescence is, doubtless, a matter of degree, 
 and may be very reluctant ; but it is there. Tears of rebellion 
 are an extreme illustration of reluctant resignation, the rebellion 
 being due to an attempt to believe the end to be still possible in 
 spite of its actual defeat. This sense of fatefulness in the situation, 
 because it is finished, is the point of contact, as we shall presently 
 see, between the tearful situation in the proper sense and tragedy 
 in the strict dramatic sense. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The end which has been frustrated in the tearful situation is in 
 the first instance an end affecting our own personal welfare in some 
 form or other. To begin with, we do not weep for other people's 
 losses, but for our own, and only with developed social conscious- 
 ness can we so assimilate ourselves to the situations in which 
 other people find themselves as to weep for or with them.^ Even 
 then, it is by imaginatively regarding their situation as our own 
 that we do weep ; partly too, especially in the case of children, it 
 is sometimes the result of a sympathetic imitative reproduction 
 of the physical conditions of tears. Thus the range of tears is 
 much more restricted than the range of laughter. It is in fact 
 confined to situations affecting personal welfare, directly or 
 
 ' Tears shed over the fate ot pet animals is an extension of the same social 
 consciousness. The fate of wild animals never seems to call forth this degree of 
 emotion. 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 279 
 
 indirectly, our own individual welfare being of chief concern. We 
 do not take up a detached spectacular attitude towards such 
 situations. For the essence of the situation involves the tendency 
 of our own desire in the direction of the end frustrated, and the 
 arrestment of our own activity in that direction consequent on 
 this frustration. Unless we feel this, we either do not cry, or we 
 start artificial tears, i.e. simulate the tearful state ; and every one 
 regards this as hypocritical. The nearer persons stand to our- 
 selves in intimacy, the more readily are we able to weep in 
 sympathy for them and with them. The further away they are 
 the more difficult it is to do so. It was hardly possible for us to 
 weep for German sufferers in the late war ; it was not even easy for 
 the sympathetic to weep for Belgians ; it was perfectly easy to do 
 so for the afflicted at home. There is thus an individual 
 insularity about tears that contrasts strongly with the intensely 
 social character of laughter. The more solitary the grief, in 
 fact, the more the tears flow ; to weep in sympathy, or to have 
 others weep in sympathy together with us, mitigates the bitter- 
 ness of tears. Individuals in sorrow and tears prefer to be alone, 
 to go into seclusion, or hide in a corner. Each heart alone 
 knows its own bitterness. An assembly of weeping men and 
 women is difficult to keep together ; it has in some cases, e.g. in 
 the East, an artificial air. People who are massed together tend 
 to give each other energy and strength, and this is opposed to the 
 tearful mood. It is thus not surprising that the honest outspoken 
 Sterne, on reading out the text " It is better to go into the house 
 of weeping than the house of feasting," began his sermon by 
 bluntly saying, " That I deny." People, of course, may and do 
 weep together quite genuinely, but that is only when they each 
 have an individual situation to weep over. Even then, and where 
 it is a genuine group of mourners, we find that some of those 
 who join with the group in a common orgy of tears are apt to 
 become suddenly aware of a certain unreality in the proceedings, 
 and to break out into suppressed laughter. With this essential 
 isolation of the individual in the tearful mood is associated the 
 feeling that tears mean weakness, and no one cares to reveal 
 weakness in a company. On the other hand, again, the very 
 solitude of tears, especially when they affect the individual 
 
28o STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 profoundly, often compel him, in default of the support of his 
 fellowmen, to fall back on the refuge of his religious life. 
 
 The ends, the defeat of which causes tears, are limited fto the 
 range of personal welfare, but within these limits we find that the 
 number of ends with which tears may be associated is very con- 
 siderable. In early life especially, when every end pursued 
 seems important, the loss of any end that is much desired may 
 bring about tears. That is because in early life the standard of 
 individual values has not been definitely set up, and everything 
 aimed at seems equally significant. There is no differentiation 
 between important and unimportant, accidental and vital. This 
 only comes with experience and with the perspective which 
 mature experience affords. A child will cry at the privation of 
 anything it wants very much. Savages, again, the children of 
 civilisation, are often found to weep abundantly for quite slight 
 causes, like the New Zealand chief who cried because his cloak 
 was soiled. Later on, when a truer sense of proportion is 
 obtained, only the ends which concern permanent human welfare 
 can, when lost, superinduce a flow of tears. Even of these only 
 a very few will affect some individuals in this way, such as the 
 loss of the intimate associations or associates that make human 
 life really precious or even possible at all. In the case of a 
 certain number of persons, mainly men, no loss seems able to 
 move them to tears. This is not strictly because they do not 
 regard any loss as important. The reason is largely social ; it is 
 looked upon as unmanly to indulge in tears, and at all costs a 
 man must maintain his manhood with his fellows and in his own 
 eyes. Tears are then considered the refuge of a feminine nature. 
 But while this view is fairly common, both among civilised and 
 uncivilised races, it is by no means universal. Most men succumb 
 at some time or other without being considered unmanly. It is 
 a matter of degree, and varies in extent and in its occasion with 
 racial characteristics and national custom.^ It takes a good deal 
 to make an Englishman cry, less to make a Scotchman, but not 
 so much to make a Frenchman weep. 
 
 ' Thus it is the custom in a certain primitive tribe to express welcome by 
 shedding tears (see above, p. 140, note). 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 281 
 
 IX 
 
 While the ends involved in the tearful situation are primarily 
 ends affecting personal welfare, there is an easy mental transi- 
 tion from weeping at the loss of one's own individual ends 
 to weeping at the loss of those of another individual. This is a 
 most interesting complication of the social consciousness. We 
 find, for example, that when people weep for those who are dead 
 and gone, they do so, or at least express themselves, as if they 
 were shedding tears for the loss which the other individual has 
 sustained.^ Strictly speaking, it is because the ends of the 
 other have been so closely identified with ours that we fail to 
 distinguish the two, and assign the cause of the tears to his 
 loss instead of to our own. Love for the departed makes us 
 feel that his love has lost our fellowship, and we weep, as we 
 say, for him. But his love for us is really inseparable from our 
 love for him, both in fact and in idea ; and it is this latter love 
 which psychologically plays the greater share in moving us to 
 tears on his account. Our love has lost him and all he meant 
 for our world. This is correctly put in the Sonnets* in the 
 words — 
 
 " How many a holy and obsequious tear 
 Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye 
 As interest of the dead." 
 
 The loss, we have said, always affects personal welfare in 
 some form. But it may affect it in two ways, either by taking 
 away part of its substance, or by removing some hindrance that 
 was seriously threatening our welfare. The former is no doubt 
 the more familiar and commoner source of tears. The latter is 
 what we have in the curious case of tears of joy. Here the 
 dreaded issue we were thinking of intensely and, to all appearance, 
 seeing carried out (perhaps even assisting to carry out), was one 
 which would overthrow a great good we wished and hoped for. 
 Events remove the impending or imagined issue, and the 
 
 1 "Oh, weep for Adonais — he is dead." "Weep for him" because cut off 
 arbitrarily from all the good he knew and which we know : " weep for him " because 
 he cannot weep for himself. 
 
 ' Shakespeare, Sonnets, 31. 
 
282 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 previous current of our thought is arrested. But its sheer 
 momentum, which would have terminated in tears had the issue 
 really taken place, carries us still on in the direction of that 
 issue, and we break down into tears even though the actual 
 result is joyful and gratifying. We do not really weep over the 
 good realised, nor over the loss of the evil that actually did 
 imperil it, but over the loss of the end that we imagine was really 
 impending. At what time we begin to think of the loss of this 
 end, is a subordinate point. Sometimes we think of it before- 
 hand, as when a parent thinks a son injured or dead who after- 
 wards returns : sometimes we think of it after the happy 
 result has arrived, as when the mother begins to weep when she 
 hears from her son in what terrible dangers he has been placed 
 while she supposed him safe and sound. ^ Sometimes it is the 
 discovery of the privation that existed prior to the arrival of a 
 happier state of affairs, as when a poor man weeps on discovering 
 he has been left a substantial fortune. Tears of gratitude, so 
 closely akin to tears of joy, are of this character. In general, 
 any fears and hopes may give rise to tears ; and the alternation 
 from one to the other has a mentally disturbing effect which 
 facilitates the flow. As it is put in another of the Sonnets ^ — 
 
 " What potions have I drunk of Siren tears 
 Distilled from limbecs foul as hell within, 
 Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears 
 Still losing when I saw myself to win." 
 
 It need hardly be said that the increment of good creating 
 joy does not always produce tears, but only in certain highly 
 susceptible natures. 
 
 Sometimes the ends in relation to which tears arise are not 
 clearly before our minds at all. They well up from we know 
 not where, and we know not why. 
 
 ' It is in such cases that we have often an alternation of tears and laughter, an 
 alternation which is not due to hysteria, but is perfectly normal. For in these cases 
 the mind attends alternately to the end as triumphant over haphazard events, and to 
 the end as imperilled or overthrown by such events. The first creates laughter, the 
 second tears : and the alteration of the direction of attention produces the oscillation 
 in the kind of emotion displayed. 
 
 - Sonnets, 119. 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 283 
 
 " Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
 Tears from the depths of some divine despair 
 Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, 
 In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
 And thinking of the days that are no more." 
 
 The last line perhaps gives a very definite clue to the source 
 of the tears, and shows them to be not idle or without meaning. 
 But the poet is portraying a very real and a not unfamiliar 
 experience, at least to those whose appreciation of the world 
 goes deeper than the surface of this sea of change in which we 
 float through space and time. Not merely happy autumn fields, 
 but the glory of light and colour in an awakening spring, or the 
 beating life of a refulgent summer day, can create a mood that 
 overwhelms the spirit by a sadness interfused with joy, if once 
 we have learned 
 
 " To look on nature not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue." 
 
 A similar effect can be produced by unusual beauty in 
 poetry, or again, by certain strains of music. How are these 
 half-unconscious overflowings from the well of human tears 
 to be accounted for ? In some cases no doubt they stir up 
 memories of a tearful kind that mingle with the present, as in 
 the case when we think on " the days that are no more." In 
 others, it is hardly possible to discover anything specific or 
 definite to which to attach the emotion, and give the cause a 
 local habitation and a name. What takes place in such cases is 
 that, underlying the loveliness that meets the eye or ear, there is 
 the sense of the destiny controlling, be it ever so kindly, the 
 transitory purposes of our individual life. The very perfection 
 which makes the loveliness what it is, rests upon a masterful 
 necessity greater than ourselves, and in relation to which, 
 because it seizes us so irresistibly, we seem as nothing. Our 
 mood is hence a compound of a sense of pathos and a feeling of 
 fulfilment ; the fulfilment gives us the gladness that tips with 
 silvery joy the towering waves of feeling ; the pathos carries us 
 to the grim depths whose sombre and unimaginable power 
 
284 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 strikes awe into the very heart of life. In all such moods the 
 individual feels himself, as it were, overwhelmed : his selfhood 
 seems to disappear altogether and to melt away into the 
 impersonal being of the world. 
 
 X 
 
 This complex mood naturally leads to the last point that is 
 worth referring to — the connection between tears and tragedy. 
 We saw before, that comedy is a dramatisation of situations 
 which have in them the conditions of laughter, but that the 
 drama, in virtue of its planned arrangement to secure a happy 
 issue, is something more than a mere series of laughable situa- 
 tions. This something more is the controlled relation of the 
 steps in the drama to produce a result that satisfies the actors in 
 terms of an accepted standard of social good. The agent and 
 the spectator can thus at last see both the how and the why of 
 the process which has taken place. The laughable situation 
 shows the incongruity of a process with an end which holds its 
 own, if necessary even in conflict with the process : the dramatic 
 situation brings out the end finally triumphant over all obstacles. 
 In the first, the issue is in suspension ; in the second, it is 
 definitely realised. 
 
 In tragedy we have a corresponding dramatic development 
 of the tearful situation. In a situation causing tears we find, as 
 we saw, a finished series of events whose effect is to produce 
 the actual loss of an end desired as a good. Such situations 
 constantly occur in the individual's life history, and in each case 
 he is face to face with a completed process of events beyond 
 his power to change. The issue is not in suspense ; it is done, 
 and the end is done away. While the process was taking place, 
 there was some possibility of the good coming through safely. 
 A finished process is beyond recall or modification. It must be 
 accepted as a necessity, as a fate. It brings home poignantly to 
 the individual that his human purposes, those ends that make 
 his life worth while, are not always in favour with the course of 
 the world ; shows to him that at least his individual purpose is 
 not merely at the mercy of agencies which may thwart him, but 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 285 
 
 that he is impotent to prevent or alter their operation. Such a 
 situation is unintelligible, when the end desired is, and continues 
 to be, precious ; and none the less unintelligible because the 
 process which thwarted the end may have been inevitable from 
 point to point. The individual thus feels himself and his ends 
 alienated from, and opposed to, the sequence of events without 
 which his purpose cannot be realised, and yet with which, as the 
 issue shows, that purpose cannot succeed. 
 
 This is more or less dimly appreciated in every situation 
 which causes tears. Now, the transition in thought is easy from 
 what has happened to what may at any time happen, i.e. to the 
 conception that the very nature of things is such that at some point 
 or another the individual's particular ends, no matter how much 
 desired, nay, that even the individual himself, be he never so 
 good, may be thrust aside and overthrown. When this con- 
 ception of things is grasped and worked out in a consecutive 
 plan of action, we have tragic drama. The essence of the tragic 
 situation is that the course of events in nature and human life 
 can and does, in obedience to its own appointed laws or condi- 
 tions, take a direction which frustrates even the most treasured 
 ends of the individual, and may, if need be, completely over- 
 whelm the personality itself. Whether it be the course of nature 
 alone that does so, as in the tragic ruin of the human splendours 
 of Pompeii, or whether it be the operation of social forces that 
 brings disaster to human individuals and whole nations, as in 
 the supreme tragedy wrought out recently in the case of Belgium, 
 or whether it be both together — in each and every case the 
 situation is the same. The situations lie as evidently and as 
 really within the system of things as life and death. The 
 tragic dramatist seizes on the underlying principle, selects a 
 definite situation, and gives it intellectual and articulate ex- 
 pression. No doubt the most poignant tragedies are those where 
 the very action of the social forces, that make for the welfare 
 of the individual, seems so arranged as to bring about the over- 
 throw of his ends and of his personality ; for there the ends of 
 the individual are so intimate to him that they prescribe the very 
 laws on which his life as a human being is constructed. To be 
 overthrown in obeying these is indeed to be overwhelmed. It is 
 
286 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 such tragedies that we find commonly portrayed in the greatest 
 works of both ancient and modern tragic drama. Sometimes it 
 is the legitimate but overstrained ends of individuals which are 
 overthrown, and which overthrow the persons themselves, as in 
 Julius Caesar or Macbeth. At other times it is the spontaneous 
 operation of perfectly normal and healthy purposes whose tragic 
 overthrow we are allowed to witness ; and then the tension and 
 pathos of the situation reach their highest point This we 
 have, e.g., in King Lear, surely the high-water mark of human 
 tragedy. 
 
 But whatever be the situation, the aim of the dramatist is to 
 bring out to view and lay before us such a plan at work in the 
 affairs of men as leads to the overthrow of his cherished ends, or, 
 again, of his entire personality. The difference between the 
 tearful situation and the tragedy lies in the conscious absence in 
 the one case, and the conscious presence in the other of a scheme 
 of events which leads steadily on to the final result. In both the 
 situation is in principle the same. And since life precedes 
 reflection, it seems possible that the everyday fact of the tears 
 of men and women provided the first concrete material to the 
 tragic dramatist, and suggested the task he seeks to fulfil in the 
 higher spiritual interests of humanity. 
 
 We must not, however, suppose that the tragedy presents a 
 series of opportunities of tears for the spectator. True comedy 
 is more than a succession of ludicrous situations ; tragedy more 
 than a succession of tearful situations. The success of the tragedy 
 depends on the degree in which the dramatist can portray the 
 steady inevitableness of the issue. When this is displayed, there 
 comes to light a certain coherent orderliness in the whole proceed- 
 ing, which reacts on our attitude towards the situation itself. 
 Reasonableness has the effect of reconcilement. It furthers the 
 mood of submission and acquiescence. We find that if the tear- 
 stricken individual can realise this, his tears are sweetened, and 
 may even be assuaged. The reasonableness, however, appeals 
 most to the onlooking spectator : a man can rarely be a spectator 
 of his own woes. The spectator, as he observes the development 
 of the plan or plot, finds his immediate sympathy with the actors 
 losing its intensity and giving way before his interest in the 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 287 
 
 clear view of the whole issue. The intensity of his sympathy- 
 would lead him, as it does in everyday life, to weep with the 
 sufferers. Some dramas produce this effect on some spectators. 
 But the comprehension of the plan generally alters his emotional 
 attitude to the actors. Instead of breaking down in tears, the 
 spectator is moved, as Aristotle said long ago, to pity and to 
 fear : pity for the individuals overwhelmed, fear for himself lest 
 he find himself in circumstances which, because typical and 
 general, might very well be his own. The plan is objective, 
 outside the spectator, and grasped as something external. Hence 
 both pity and fear are, so to say, spectacular in character ; they 
 can be shared and understood by the spectators in common, and 
 are the emotional correlatives of the intellectual comprehension 
 of the plan which is laid before them. 
 
 It need not be said that tragedy is not written or presented 
 in order to create such pity or fear ; or in order to " purify " the 
 emotions of the spectators. Aristotle's language would seem to 
 suggest this educative influence of tragedy. But it is no more 
 the business of tragedy to educate or exhort than it is the aim 
 of comedy to give moral lessons. The educative effect produced 
 by tragedy is a subsidiary and indirect consequence. The point 
 rather is that the emotions of pity and fear are those awakened 
 by the tragedy, just as the emotion of gladness or satisfaction 
 is the necessary outcome of a successful comedy. Both tragedy 
 and comedy qua drama are outside the sphere of morality ; they 
 take the moral point of view for granted, and use it to supply 
 material which can be re-cast and interpreted from the dramatic 
 point of view. 
 
 XI 
 
 It is of interest before leaving the subject to try to answer 
 the question, What is the mental value of laughter and tears 
 in the economy of human experience .'' What is their vital 
 significance 1 We seem bound to consider them to be as inevitable 
 expressions of human mentality as joy or fear, or as the pursuit 
 of truth or beauty. There seems no justification for regarding 
 them as pathological in any sense of the term. That they may 
 
288 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 take pathological forms is obvious ; so can any normal instinct 
 assume pathological shapes. But the distortion of a human quality 
 is not the test of its meaning. We must therefore rule out as 
 both inadequate and absurd the contention of one medical writer, 
 no less a person than Sir Arthur Mitchell, who maintains that 
 " laughter is a state of mental disorder." Such a view reminds 
 one of the theory that genius is insanity, because, presumably, 
 it is exceptionally sane, or perhaps because some insane people 
 have had moments of unusual inspiration. There is a want of 
 both clear reasoning and accurate analysis in such distorted 
 theories. 
 
 Nor can I agree that laughter and tears are in any way due 
 to misapprehension or illusory apprehension of actual human 
 situations. This is in essence what Bergson's view of laughter 
 amounts to. He says, " attitudes, gestures, and movements of the 
 human body are laughable in the exact proportion that the body 
 makes us think it a simple mechanism ; " ^ again, " every incident 
 is comic which calls our attention to the physical aspect of a 
 person, when the peculiar shape of this physical aspect had its 
 source in moral causes : " further, " laughter always i arises when 
 a person gives the impression of a thing : " and once more, 
 " every arrangement of acts and events is comic which gives the 
 illusion of life, and the mere sense of a mechanical arrangement." 
 In a word, laughter arises through an illusory apprehension of 
 a living thing as a mechanism. But the effect of laughter is, he 
 oddly says, to correct the illusion : it is a reaction against illusion 
 or disorder, which thus reinstates the truth, and abolishes the 
 disorder. Surely this is straining intelligence to misunderstand 
 a very simple phenomenon ; it is verily a comic distortion of 
 laughter itself. Doubtless in many cases when life takes on the 
 appearance of a mechanism, we certainly laugh : e.g. at a clown's 
 movements. But in other cases we are as certainly moved to pity 
 or pain at the sight, e.g. when an individual is hypnotised or in a 
 state of somnambulism. Again, we also laugh when a mechanism 
 
 ' Spinoza is said to have found it laughable to watch the straggles of a fly trying 
 to escape the fateful entanglements of a spider. His enjoyment over this minor horror 
 of animal life is perhaps explicable in the light of his theory that animals were 
 automata, 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 289 
 
 simulates life, e.g. a Punch and Judy show ; but in other cases we 
 are terrified at the sight of mechanism assuming the powers of 
 living agents. Moreover, the theory at its best could cover only a 
 limited range of cases of laughter, those, namely, which are or 
 can be visibly mechanised. But it does not apply, e.g., in the 
 complex contretemps of social life, where we have eminently 
 laughable situations which cannot be placed on the stage all at 
 once, and whose elements consist of emotions, motives and ideas. 
 Moreover, Bergson's view does not cover even cases which he 
 considers, e.g. the comic element in words ; for this, he has to 
 invent a different interpretation, — the confusion, irregular con- 
 junction or transposition of words and their meanings. It is 
 straining terms to the verge of absurdity to regard this as a 
 mechanising or materialising of the living sense of language. A 
 theory of laughter should be in such a form that it can be applied 
 in the same sense to all cases where laughter occurs. Behind 
 Bergson's view there lies perhaps a vague insight into the principle 
 that I have put forward — that laughter is the appreciation of the 
 incongruity of a process or its elements with an end which holds 
 its own in spite of the incongruity. This clearly covers cases 
 where the mechanical aspect of a process stands in relief against 
 a living reality which it seems to counterfeit, for this living reality 
 is obviously one that works according to ends. 
 
 But the most important objection to Bergson's view is that it 
 regards laughter as arising out of illusory apprehension, and in 
 that sense is a kind of illusory experience. In actual experience, 
 however, if there is anything we are sure of, it is that our laughter 
 is no illusion to ourselves, but an intensely vivid experience, that 
 it neither rests on illusion nor consists in illusion, so far as our 
 own experience goes at the time we laugh. For nothing can 
 shake us out of our laughter, except the alteration of our appreci- 
 ation of the situation. From the point of view at which we see 
 the laughable situation, the laughter arises as inevitably and as 
 spontaneously as fear before a terrifying spectacle. It is highly 
 questionable, indeed, if there is any meaning in the phrase 
 " illusory emotion." All emotions are real while they last, what- 
 ever else may be said of them. Our appreciation may be mis- 
 taken, and laughter may arise from the mistake ; but the 
 
 u 
 
290 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 laughter is justified by the appreciation, such as it was ; and 
 again, a perfectly correct apprehension, as we saw, will in many 
 cases lead to laughter. In short, we do not make things laugh- 
 able by illusory apprehension ; laughter results because a 
 situation is such that to be aware of it at all will bring about 
 laughter. The situation suggests the appreciation, and so the 
 laughter. The apprehension does not distort the situation. 
 Bergson's mistake lies in confusing those two kinds of knowledge 
 which we carefully distinguished — the intellectual apprehension 
 of a situation, and the appreciation of it. For Bergson, comedy 
 is essentially due to an intellectual understanding or misunder- 
 standing of a situation. As he says, " Comedy is addressed to 
 the pure intelligence." If this were true, then doubtless the 
 laughter might be due to an illusory apprehension, and the 
 correctness of the understanding would, as we said, dissipate 
 the illusion and so abolish the laughter. But laughter is not due 
 to a mere process of understanding at all. The apprehension 
 of a situation is presupposed in laughter ; but in order that 
 laughter may arise, the situation must also be appreciated, i.e. 
 must be judged in the light of an end to which the process or 
 material, involved in, the situation, stands in a certain relation, 
 namely, the relation of incongruity. The incongruity is an actual 
 fact, so is the end, and therefore the appreciation is bien fondu, 
 and is perfectly correct. 
 
 The same line of criticism would apply to the case of tears, 
 which, however, Bergson, among his many ingenious discussions, 
 has not yet dealt with. 
 
 Setting aside such views, the one to which our analysis points 
 is this. There are many situations in our experience which 
 present real or imagined incongruities, and to these we must 
 and do take up a definite mental attitude. All our mental 
 operations may be said to be simply adjustments of our mind to 
 its mental environment, to its world ; they are ways in which we 
 preserve our identity or unity in the midst of the endless 
 manifold with which we are confronted. Sometimes the manifold 
 details can be well knit together, sometimes they cannot. Yet 
 in both cases we must adapt ourselves to what lies before us. If 
 we cannot put the details of experience into an orderly setting 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 291 
 
 at once, or after an effort, then we must, to preserve our mental 
 balance or mental unity, meet the facts in some other way which 
 will still maintain a sense of security in face of the confronting 
 environment. The variety of our emotions — fear, hope, etc. — 
 testifies to the variety of our mental attitudes to those things 
 confronting us, which we are unable adequately to grasp in 
 a coherent, intelligible way. Now the emotional attitude 
 expressing itself in laughter is that attitude which we assume 
 towards a situation where a real incongruity exists, or is felt to 
 exist, between a process or element standing in relation to an 
 end which holds its own, but is not fulfilled. The inarticulate 
 outburst of sound in which laughter is expressed, corresponds 
 precisely to the admitted unintelligible character of the situation. 
 We must adopt some attitude to such a situation ; it is there to 
 be met, and has to be faced, if we are to give it a place in 
 experience at all. The way we do this is to laugh at it. This 
 preserves our stability of mind, our unity, in the face of this 
 particular portion of our environment ; and we do not preserve 
 it in such cases by any other way. The laughter at once 
 expresses its value for us, and gives us the sense of detachment 
 from what would otherwise be a situation creating serious mental 
 perplexity. Chaos in our environment means chaos in our 
 mental outlook : and chaos is the one supreme peril that our mind 
 cannot possibly meet or endure. To prevent any mental 
 disaster, therefore, we must meet situations containing this sort of 
 incongruity in a manner consistent with our mental stability. 
 Hence laughter ; and hence the note of triumph which almost 
 invariably rings through healthy laughter. It is a note which is 
 justified, for we have in laughter triumphed over the incoherent, 
 we have kept up our belief in the end which holds its own, and we 
 have preserved ourselves in the face of the incongruous. 
 
 In tears again, an analogous attitude is taken up to a situation 
 which actually presents an uncomprehended conflict between the 
 course of events and our still desired ends. There is no doubt 
 about the vivid reality of such a situation ; it is not an illusion, 
 it is a fact, and a cruel fact in many cases, that the ends we cherish 
 and pursue are thwarted and overthrown by the course of things. 
 We must meet this situation somehow by taking up an attitude 
 
 U 2 
 
292 STUDIES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 which will keep our mental balance in the face of the environment 
 that confronts us. We appreciate its significance for us, and 
 must, if possible, express what it means. Otherwise, our mind 
 would recoil in helplessness and alienation from the situation 
 that is presented. This we cannot do, for the simple reason that 
 our mind and the confronting world are inseparably connected, 
 and to give up our capacity to make a proper mental adjustment 
 is to give up being or having a mind altogether. In tearful 
 emotion we meet the situation that spells the failure of our 
 cherished purpose, by assuming an attitude which at once con- 
 fesses our loss and at the same time the continued value to us 
 of the cherished end which still holds sway over our desire. We 
 submit, but we still sustain our mental unity in clinging to the 
 desired end. The world has foiled our purpose but cannot foil 
 ourselves. If we cannot gain our end, we can at least retain it 
 in our sense of the loss ; and to express this keeps us from 
 sheer mental disorder and confusion. We succumb to a situation 
 which admits of no intelligent reconcilement, and in order to 
 express ourselves, we make use of inarticulate processes of 
 organic emotion. We break down into tears which we readily 
 allow to flow. By so doing we relieve the tension which has been 
 created between us and our environment by the defeat of our 
 purpose. And by relieving the tension we help to fill the 
 breach between the two. This prepares the way for new 
 efforts to realise new ends in spite of a temporarily hostile 
 environment. Hence, the curative effect of tears is no merely 
 physical accident due to exhaustion, but implies a vital connection 
 between the mind and its environment. 
 
 Bearing in mind the apparent connection between laughter 
 and tears on the one hand, and comedy and tragedy on the other 
 we cannot be surprised that the dramatic aspect of life, which is 
 so profound in its importance and so true to our experience, should 
 take such a hold upon us. Our experience involves the whole in- 
 corporated structure of individuality, physical and mental; and 
 part of it can come to light in the apparently fortuitous, but 
 really inevitable, form of laughter and of tears. 
 
LAUGHTER AND TEARS 293 
 
 Note. — A passing reference may be made to the physiological side, if only for 
 the light it throws on the contrast these emotions bear to one another. 
 
 To the physiologist laughter appears as a vocal sound of an explosive character, 
 produced by the chest relieving itself of a deep inspiration of air through disconnected 
 spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm, which vary in interval, volume, and quality 
 according to the special structure of individuals and the character of the emotion to be 
 expressed. Its cause seems to be the sudden liberation of a temporarily increased 
 accumulation of central nervous energy, which seeks to discharge its whole force at 
 once, and in doing so diffuses this force throughout the entire organism, but more 
 especially through the outlet of the throat and mouth, in a succession of gradually 
 diminishing shocks or shakings. This explains why the blood is congested prior to 
 the laugh and resumes its normal flow after the laugh has taken place. As a result of 
 the deep inspiration of oxygen and the flooding of the blood vessels, the eye brightens 
 and the face " lights up." The whole organism is raised to a higher pitch of vitality, 
 and when the laughter dies down there is an intense organic sensation of " relief." 
 
 In crying, on the other hand, the physiologist sees a muscular compression of the 
 gland situated in the upper outer and nasal side of the eye, and containing a 
 transparent liquid whose chief constituents are water and salt. The primary function 
 of this gland is to lubricate constantly the inner lining of the eyelids and thereby the 
 outer surface of the eyeball, in order to replace the moisture evaporating from this 
 outer surface exposed to the rays of light and heat. Thus, just as laughter is an 
 emotional utilisation of the function of breathing, so weeping is an emotional 
 utilisation of an organic function of lubrication. Development has brought about this 
 transformation and only e-xperience can discover the connection between mental states 
 and bursts of sound on the one hand, and an unusual flow of lubricating fluid on the 
 other. 
 
 The cause of weeping seems to lie in a sudden lowering of the tone and flow of 
 vital energy, which reverses its primary tendency outwards and turns the energy of the 
 organism against itself. This disturbance finds expression in effusions of the 
 lachrymal gland, and gradually by a series of convulsions leads to the general collapse 
 of the organism ; and in this lower state its equilibrium is restored and rises again 
 approximately to its previous level. 
 
 The contrast between laughter and tears on their physical side is plain and is 
 instructive. In laughter we have a sudden heightening of the vital energy of the 
 organism ; in weeping a sudden arrest and lowering of the normal outward flow of 
 energy. In laughing we have spasmodic liberation of the accumulation of vital energy 
 in a series of shakings of gradually diminishing violence ; in crying a forceful attempt to 
 restrain the outgoing energy in its primary direction. Both are forms of restoration of 
 equilibrium — laughter the restoration from a heightened potential, crying a restoration 
 from a lowered potential. Both again are forms of expression of organic energy, and 
 hence both terminate in a state of relief from nervous tension : in the case of laughter 
 it is the relief of free expansion, in tears the relief from prolonged repression. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute, 12 
 Animism, 150 n. 
 
 Anthropomorphism, 21 if., 131, 139 
 Aristole, 4 n., 51 n., 87 n., 141, 168 n., 
 
 212 n., 226 n., 254, 271, 287 
 Art, 163, 219, 247 
 Athanasius, 46 
 
 B 
 
 Balfour, 182 n., 190 n. 
 
 Bain, 254, 271 
 
 Beauty, 39, 43, 161, 245 
 
 Bergson, 192 n., 215 n., 288 f. 
 
 Bosanquet, 3 n., 6 if., 16 n., 62 n., 131 n., 
 
 214 n., 227 n. 
 Boutroux, 98 
 Bradley, 34, 36, 38, 43, 62 n., 84 n., 86, 
 
 99, 118, 121, 124, 130, 213 n. 
 
 Categories, 67 if. 
 
 Combarieu, 91 n., 162 n. 
 
 Comedy, 265 if 
 
 Common sense, 10 
 
 Comte, 98 
 
 Conceptions, 22 if., 64 if. 
 
 Congruence, 28 
 
 Continuity in memory, no ff. 
 
 Contradiction, 7 n., 31 if. 
 
 Copying, 51 n., 57 f., 225 f. 
 
 Cournot, 98, loi 
 
 D 
 
 Darwin, 240, 244 
 
 De CandoUe, 242 n. 
 
 Denial, 173 
 
 Desire, 51 
 
 Dickens, 267 
 
 Divine, emotional consciousness of, 141, 
 
 165 ii. 
 Divine, knowledge of, 55 
 Dogmatism, 173 
 
 Education, 253 
 
 Education of emotion, 152 f. 
 
 Emotion, 40 f., Jo, 78 if., chap, v., 175 
 Ends in laughter and tears, chap. ix. 
 Ethical theories, 4 
 Existence, 143 n. 
 Experience, 192 f. 
 
 Fabre, 88 n. 
 Faith, 44 if., 167 
 Frazer 140 n. 
 
 Goethe, 256 n., 273 
 Goodness, 245, 247 
 Greek Sceptics, 177 
 Greek thought, 135 
 Grey, 102 n. 
 
 H 
 
 Hamilton, 124 
 
 Hartmann, 4 n. 
 
 Hegel, 34, 192 f., 223 
 
 Human beings, knowledge of, 54 
 
 Humanities, 245 ff., 252 f. 
 
 Humanity and philosophy, 196 ff. 
 
 Humboldt, 97 n. 
 
 Hume, 34, 128, 135, 175, 190 
 
 Huxley, 84 n., 215 n. 
 
 Hypothesis, 29 
 
 I 
 
 Ideal, 76 
 
 Ideas, scepticism regarding, I So ff. 
 Imagination, 88 ff. 
 Incongruity, chap. ix. 
 Individuality, 17 if., 76, 144 fi". 
 Inference, 74 if. 
 Intellect, 22 ff., 92 ff. 
 Intellectualism, 135 f. 
 Italian sceptics, 173 
 
 Judgment, 65, 72 ff. 
 Judgment in memory, 105 ff. 
 Judgment of appreciation, 256 f. 
 Judgment of understanding, 256 f. 
 
 295 
 
296 
 
 INDEX 
 
 K 
 
 Kant, 33, 34, 36, 62 n., 192 
 Keats, 223 n., 247 
 Knowledge, 10 ff., chap. ii. 
 
 Laughter, 255 ff., 28S ff. 
 Leisure, 202 f. 
 Locke, 62 n. 
 Logic, 2 f., 77 
 Lotze, 36 n., 62 n. 
 Love, 167 ff. 
 
 M 
 
 Mach, 235 
 
 Mathematical method, 9 n. 
 
 Mathematical science, 239 
 
 Memory, 91 f., chap. iv. 
 
 Metaphysics, 4 ff. 
 
 Method in philosophy, 228 n. 
 
 Merz, 86 n., 98 n., 100 n., 204 n. 
 
 Mill, 215 n., 227 n. 
 
 Milton, 98 
 
 N 
 
 Nature, 231 f., 234 f. 
 Negation, 173 
 
 O 
 
 Object in knowledge, 52 ff., 63 
 Object in memory, 108 ff. 
 Objectivity of conceptions, 13, 14, 
 
 Past, 108 ff., Ii4f. 
 
 Pater, 99 n. 
 
 Perception, 30, 60 f., 174 ff. 
 
 Personality, g, 12, 165 ff. 
 
 Poetry, 38 
 
 Poincare, 237 
 
 Philosophers, 9 ff., 197 ff. 
 
 Philosophy, i, 10 ff., chap. vii. 
 
 Practice, 20 n., 80 f., 251 
 
 Pragmatism, 14 f. 
 
 Progress in philosophy, 1,229 
 
 Pythagoras, 93 n. 
 
 26 ff. 
 
 R 
 
 Real, 57 
 
 Reality, 6, 10, 12, 37 ft., 46, 144 ff., 
 
 160 ff. 
 Recollection, 125 
 Reminiscence, 125 
 Reproduction of real, 58 
 Russell, 87 
 
 Satisfaction, 211 
 
 Scepticism, chap. vi. 
 
 Science, 233 ff., 241 ff., 247 
 
 Science and philosophy, 199 
 
 Scientific procedure, 231, 234 ff. 
 
 Self in memory, 120 f. 
 
 Self-will, 186 
 
 Sense qualities, 59 
 
 Shakespeare, 41, 267, 281, 282 
 
 Shelley, 274, 281 n. 
 
 Sidgwick, 4 n. 
 
 Social life, 25, 100 f., 116, 146 n., 155 ff., 
 
 208 ff., 263 ff., 270 ff. 
 Spencer, 227 n. 
 Spinoza, 167 n., 288 n. 
 Systems of philosophy, 67, 206, 221, 227 
 Sterne, 279 
 
 Tears, 272 ff., 291 f. 
 
 Thought, 10, 17, 22 ff., 34 f., 61 ff. 
 
 Tragedy, 284 ff. 
 
 Truth, 13 ff., chap, i., 245 
 
 Tyndall, I02, 103 
 
 U 
 
 Universality, 25 
 
 Unity of thought, 216 ff. 
 
 W 
 
 Winner, 91 n., 161 n. 
 
 Wallace, 219 n. 
 
 Wallas, 221 n. 
 
 Ward, 7 n. , 98 
 
 Wordsworth, 5, 90, 223 n., 246, 248 
 
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