fyxmll Hmremtg Jitot^g BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDpWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Sdenr^ W. Sage 1S91 a-mam;. s^/;//?/^ Practical Idealism. l>v,,Kffli,,!3lSiiiiM " olln 3 1924 028 936 396 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028936396 PRACTICAL IDEALISM PRACTICAL IDEALISM BY WILLIAM DeWITT JHYDE PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE AUTHOR OF " OUTLINES OF SOCIAL THEOLOGY," ETC. Neto gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1892 ■^ All rights reserved Copyright, 1897, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE In these days when, attracted by the achieve- ments of the specialist in every other field, Phi- losophy herself is sorely tempted to forsake her mission as interpreter of the world as a whole and guide to noble living, for the mystical cult of the* devotee or the technical craft of the critic, it may not be amiss to try to tell once more in simple terms how Thought constructs the Natural World in which we dwell ; and how Love is striving to create a Spiritual World that shall be as fair as the face of Nature and as free as the will of man : and to point out plainly the things that are best worth seeing along the great highway, surveyed by Plato and Aristotle, and reopened by Kant and Hegel, which leads from the mist- enshrouded vale of sense up to the sunlit heights where the pure in heart stand face to face with God. This attempt to interpret the spiritual signifi- cance of everyday life originated in a course of lectures delivered at the summer school at Colo- vi PREFACE rado Springs, at the summer term of Chicago University, and at the Chautauqua Assembly. Its practical aim precludes the discussion of ultimate metaphysical problems, and confines it to those concrete aspects of philosophy which lie closest to the common concerns of men. By way of compensation for this summary treatment of great themes numerous quotations and references to philosophical writers are introduced, in the hope that this brief excursion may stimulate a few choice members of the party to undertake a more extended and strenuous journey with some of these native guides. WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE. BowDoiN College, Brunswick, Me., July, 1897. CONTENTS Part I THE NATURAL WORLD CHAPTER I PAGE The World of Sense-perception . . . . i The two elements in knowledge. Locke's doctrine of the passivity of the mind. Its correction by Leibnitz and Kant. Knowledge a joint product of sensation and thought. The infant's first impression confused. Analysis of the confusion. Sensation and perception. Apperception. Perception of distance. Inadequacy of perception. Memory an extension of perception. Testimony of others. The bondage and arbitrariness of the world of sense-perception. Facts of sense largely constructions of the mind. CHAPTER II The World of Association . . 36 The world-process not fixed but fluid. No isolated things or events. All exist in relations. Association by contiguity and by similarity. The reconstruction of wholes when only parts are given involves large liability to error. Descartes' systematic doubt. Illusion. Ghosts. Hallucination. Hypnotism. Mental therapeutics. Imagination. Dreams. Control of dreams. Recapitulation. The test of reality. VIU CONTENTS CHAPTER III PAGE The World of Science 68 Can we transcend perception? Observation. Experi- ment. Hypothesis. The formation of concepts. Animal and human reasoning. The nature and validity of inference. Hume and Mill. Mediation through concept. Heat and expansion. Empirical and logical lavi-s. The laws of thought and the principles of the syllogism. Sigwart, Bosanquet, Hibben, on ground of inference. Science deals with con- cepts. Cause. Canons of scientific investigation. Illus- trations of scientific reasoning from Plato and Darwin. Science not ultimate reality. CHAPTER IV The World of Art . 113 Science deals with essential elements; art with character- istic wholes. Mechanic arts and fine arts. "Art for art's sake." Art not an abstraction. Decoration the soul of art. Art rests on scientific laws. Art improves Nature. Realism and idealism in art. John La Farge. The truth realism intends. Objective idealism. Morality and art. The free- dom of art. Universal Principle suggested by science and art. Part II THE SPIRITUAL IVORLD CHAPTER V The World of Persons 137 Philosophy reduces the manifold to unity. Persons less tractable than things. Truth, beauty, and goodness. Evo- lution of personality. Appreciation of personality of others essential to our own. Royce. Interpretation of others by ourselves. Freedom. The " fall " a stage of evolution. CONTENTS IX FAGB Man lower or higher than brute. Sin of indifference. Con- sciousness of kind. Love the creator of the social world. Matthew Arnold, Browning, Wordsworth. Immortality. Literature the interpretation of life. Literature and phi- lology. CHAPTER VI The World of Institutions 162 Individuals apart from institutions mutually exclusive. The family. Schopenhauer on love. Hegel on the family. Mackenzie. Edward Caird. The increasing complexity of life and the strain upon the family. Marriage growing bet- ter and worse. The training of children. Relation of members of family to each other. The school. End of education. The new education. The kindergarten. The " three R's " instruments but not substance of education. Dangers of a merely formal education. Manual training. Examinations. Modern language and physical science in lower schools. Literature in school. Drawing and music. Crisis of public schools. Social mission of public school. Results expected of the new education. Industry. Social significance of work. Harris. Hegel. Laissez-faire and socialism. Moral socialism and economic individualism. Bosanquet. The state. War and arbitration. Patriotism. Currency. Taxation. Pensions. Civil-service reform. CHAPTER VII The World of Morality . . .... 219 Unconscious conformity to custom. Collision of interests. The necessity of choice. Appetites good in themselves be- come bad when preferred to greater good. Inferior natural good is .the morally bad. Intuitionism, hedonism, and ideal- ism. Self-realization. The ordering of the desires with reference to an end. Two elements of moral end : univer- X CONTENTS PAGE sality of sympathy and individuality of function. Concen- tration essential to greatest contribution. The danger to woman in modern life. Rules relative to the end, and to the circumstances of the individual. Duty is the affirmation of universal interests as binding on the individual will. Murder; theft; lying. Conscience. Abstract discussion of virtue unprofitable. Vice is meanness, the choice of the lesser good. Moral evil, impossible to inanimate nature and the animal, enters in the child as naughtiness. It consists in deliberate choice of lesser good, when the greater is pres- ent to the mind, because the soul is small. Cowardice, ava- rice, drunkenness, licentiousness, are all the sacrifice of large interests to small. Strength of evil is the little good it holds. Why iron ships float. Remedy lies in the enlargement of the soul. Application to the four examples of evil. Temp- tation always takes the form of something good. The hardening of moral evil into sin. Morality prescribes the remedy; but religion induces the patient to take it. CHAPTER VIII The World of Religion . 277 Wholeness of view, wholesomeness of feeling, holiness of character not yet reached, yet implied in each lower stage. Religion the ultimate unification of life. The personality of God. Idea of God as ultimate unity of thought and being latent in all finite consciousness. The gospel of the concrete universal. Incarnation the corner-stone of Christianity. " Back to Jesus ! " a false cry, if it means that the particu- lar as particular expresses the universal. Christ in America to-day our hope of glory. Religious rites, institutions, per- sons, how far sacred. The Bible. The church. The creed. The sacraments. Tendency to corruption and superstition. Criticism and credulity. Science and religion. The prob- lem of evil: evil in nature, badness in others, sin in our- selves. Natural evil due to collision of finite forces, each of which in itself is good. Volcanoes. Bacteria. Cle- CONTENTS XI PAGE anthes' hymn. The wickedness of others. Vengeance and punishment. Forgiveness and grace. The teaching of Jesus. Sin in ourselves. Repentance. Faith. Salvation. Sacrifice and Service. Religion the victory over man's last enemies, evil without and guilt within. Wherein religion is superior to morality. Religion brings infinite significance into daily life. The union of philosophic insight to see the world as a whole, and the religious spirit to serve God in the persons of our fellows the great need of the present day. Index . 32; Part I THE NATURAL WORLD INTRODUCTION There are no worlds ready-made for sale or to let. Each man must build his own. This effort of the mind to build the materials of sensation into an intelligible world, and this struggle of the will to mould the relations of persons into a moral order, is philosophy. Every man must have a philosophy, just as he must "wear a coat. It may be a firmly woven and well-fitted garment : it may be a patch-work of tradition and prejudice. We live by faith in a world-order ; and that world- order is an affair of our own construction : albeit the pattern was woven in eternity; and a copy is imbedded in the structure of each individual mind. Out of the chaos of elementary sensation qualities, 42,415 in number according to the reckoning of Professor Titchener,^ and out of the collision of personal interests, we build the world in which we dwell. How full and fair this world shall be rests partly with the heredity, partly with the training, partly with the will of the builder. We all build better than we know. Yet the study of the process is full of interest, and fruitful of practical results. ^ " Outline of Psychology," page 67. 3 4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM This fundamental truth that we must build our world, and cannot take it as we find it, is so forci- bly set forth by Professor James ^ that his words may serve as the text for our whole discussion. "The world's contents are given to each of us in an order so foreign to our subjective interests that we can hardly, by an effort of the imagination, picture to ourselves what it is like. We have to break that order altogether, and by picking out from it the items that concern us and connecting them with others far away, which we say belong with them, we are able to make out definite threads of sequence and tendency ; to foresee particular lia- bilities and get ready for them ; to enjoy simplicity and harmony in the place of what was chaos. Is not the sum of your actual experience taken at this moment and impartially added together an utter chaos .' The strains of my voice, the lights and shades inside the room and out, the murmur of the wind, the ticking of the clock, the various organic feelings you may happen individually to possess, do these make a whole at all .' Is it not the only condition of your mental sanity in the midst of them that most of them should become non-existent for you, and that a few others — the sounds, I hope, which I am uttering — should evoke from places in your memory, that have nothing to do with this scene, associates fitted 1 " Psychology," Volume II, page 635. INTRODUCTION 5 to combine with them in what we call a rational train of thought? — rational because it leads to a conclusion which we have some organ to appre- ciate. We have no organ or faculty to appreciate the simply given order. The real world as it is given at this moment is the sum total of all its beings and events now. But can we think of such a sum .-" Can we reahze for an instant what a cross-section of all existence at a definite point of time would be ? While I talk and the flies buzz, a sea-gull catches a fish at the mouth of the Amazon, a tree falls in the Adirondack wilder- ness, a man sneezes in Germany, a horse dies in Tartary, and twins are born in France. What does that mean .-" Does the contemporaneity of these events with each other, and with a million more as disjointed as they, form a rational bond between them and unite them into anything that means for us a world .■' Yet just such a collateral contemporaneity, and nothing else, is the real order of the world. It is an order with which we have nothing to do but to get away from it as fast as possible. As I said, we break it : we break it into histories, and we break it into arts, and we break it into sciences, and then we begin to feel at home." This passage from Professor James shows that the world in which we live is a construction made by the mind in the interest of the heart and will ; 6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM and that in this one great world there are sub- ordinate worlds of history, science, and art. It shows how utterly unintelligible and uninhabitable and unendurable a real as opposed to an ideal world would be ; and that Practical Idealism is simply a presentation of the familiar facts of every- day life in their rational relations, as elements in a logical process and parts of an organic whole. PRACTICAL IDEALISM CHAPTER I THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION The world of sense-perception is the world of things and events : the world of chairs and tables, of stars and seas ; the world of planting and reap- ing, of cooking and eating. "Surely," the hard- headed reader will say, " there is no room for your idealism here ; it is certainly all nonsense to talk about the mind's constructing these things which we see and hear and smell and taste and handle. Whatever may be true of your scientific theories and your metaphysical systems, these particular concrete things come to us just as they are. They walk straight into our minds through the open doors of the five senses. There is noth- ing ideal or mental about them." Idealism joins issue with materialism precisely at this point. " Show me a single thing," Idealism replies, " which enters the mind ready-made ; point out a single item of knowledge, the main part of which does not come from the stores of the mind which knows it, and I will stop right here, and 7 8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM confess that what you prove to be true of a single thing in the world, of a single idea in your mind, is true of the universe as a whole, and of all know- ledge whatsoever." This is an old controversy, however, and the masters shall speak for them- selves. The man who tried hardest to get along without this constructive principle, involved in the very nature of intelligence, is John Locke. He tells us, " All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas ; how comes it to be furnished .' Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety ? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge ? To this I answer in one word, from experience ; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ulti- mately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and re- flected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge from whence all the ideas we have, or naturally can have, do spring." Locke is here opposing the doctrine 1 " Essay on the Human Understanding," Book II, Chapter i, Section 2. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 9 of innate ideas, which he understood to mean that there are "certain innate principles, — some pri- mary notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it." ^ Locke triumphantly and completely overthrows the crude notion against which he so cogently and valiantly contends. Not that his own conclusion is by any means satisfactory. Far from it. But he raises the question, and he gives a definite if not a conclusive answer. And in philosophical studies, questions and suggestions, yes, spurs and provocations, are quite as valuable as answers and results. The man who makes us pause and won- der and doubt and differ and deny is doing us no mean philosophical service. Now good John Locke was a pious and devout believer in God, and even spoke respectfully of angels. Yet he was the father of British material- ism. Logically thought out to its legitimate con- clusions, the doctrine of these opening chapters of his lucid Essay is fatal to those spiritual faiths his heart so fondly cherished. For us, to-day, it is simply impossible to accept his psychological doc- trine, and at the same time subscribe to his spirit- ual creed. This word of warning is not thrown out to 1 " Essay on the Human Understanding,'' Book I, Chapter ii, Section I. lO PRACTICAL IDEALISM frighten the reader away from Locke's position. If it is true, we must accept it, no matter what be- comes of the things we would like to believe. As Leibnitz says, " Our interest is not the measure of truth." We are in search of facts for the founda- tion of our world ; and we must take them as we find them. The appreciation of the immense spiritual interests at stake, however, may lend to this rather technical discussion an interest which the dry details alone might lack. Laying founda- tions always involves digging and drudgery ; and the foundations of our world must be laid in patient psychological analysis. We have had Locke's clear, flat-footed state- ment. Now let us hear him justify it by putting his principles into practice. In Book I, Chapter ii. Section 15, he tries to give account of the actual working of the first of his two principles, sensa- tion, and to show us how sensation alone gives ideas. "The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet ; and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the- memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding fur- ther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discur- sive faculty ; and the use of reason becomes daily THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION II more visible, as these materials that give it employment increase." If now the reader will read and re-read, and probe and ponder these few lines of Locke, he cannot fail to notice one or two points of moment- ous significance. First, he tells us that the mind into which the senses bring ideas is an " empty cabinet." In the previous passage it was "white paper, void of all characters." Yet in the very next line he tells us that "the mind by degrees grows familiar" with some of these ideas. Now did anybody ever know of an empty cabinet, or a sheet of white paper, which by degrees grew familiar with ideas .'' The looking-glass does not grow familiar with the pictures presented to it. The phonograph does not come to be on intimate terms with the sounds it registers. No more could the mind, if it were like a phonograph or a mirror or an empty cabinet or a sheet of paper, or any material object or receptacle whatsoever. Even in Locke's own chosen sentences the mind refuses to be consist- ent with the passive, receptive, mechanical r61e he would assign it. In Book II, Chapter i. Sec- tion 25, he tells us that in the reception of simple ideas "the understanding is merely passive." In the passage quoted above he tries his best to keep the mind down to this " merely passive " attitude. The "yet empty cabinet" is "furnished" by the 12 PRACTICAL IDEALISM senses with ideas, which are "lodged in the mem- ory." Nevertheless he finds it impossible to write half a dozen lines in description of what actually takes place without as many times employing terms which attribute active and constructive processes to this " merely passive " mind. It " grows famil- iar," "proceeds further," "abstracts," "learns," "exercises its discursive faculty," "uses reason," finds " employment." This " empty cabinet " has more in it than the trickiest spiritualist ever con- cealed in his. This "white paper" has been secretly sensitized. Later on Locke himself^ qualifies this statement of the passivity of the mind in sense-perception by the remark, " In bare naked perception the mind x's.for the most part only passive." The correction of Locke's one-sided view was made by Leibnitz.^ He supplements the contribu- tions of sense by the reaction of the mind. He says: "Faculties without some act are only fiC' tions, which nature knows not, and which are obtained only by the process of abstraction. For where in the world will you ever find a faculty which shuts itself up in the power alone without performing any act } There is always a particular disposition to action and to one action rather than ^ Book II, Chapter ix, Section I . 2 " New Essays concerning Human Understanding." Translated by Alfred G. Langley. " Critique of Locke on Human Under- standing," Book II, Chapter i. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEFflON 13 another. And besides the disposition there is a tendency to action, of vvhicli tendencies there is always an infinity in each subject at once ; and these tendencies are never without some effect. Experience is necessary, I admit, in order that the soul be determined to such or such thoughts, and in order that it take notice of the ideas which are in us ; but by what means can experience and the senses give ideas .' Has the soul windows, does it resemble tablets, is it like wax .' It is plain that all who so regard the soul, represent it as at bottom corporeal. You oppose to me this axiom received by the philosophers that there is nothing in the soul which does not come from the senses. But you must except the soul itself and its affections. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, excipe : nisi ipse intellectus." A thing as we know it then is composed of two elements : one of which is sensation, or reflection ; the other of which is the mind itself and its own ways of working, or forms of thought. A simple illustration may help to make clear this union of sensuous and intellectual elements. Cotton cloth is made of cotton. There is noth- ing but cotton in it. You cannot make it without cotton. Is cotton cloth therefore mere cotton } Will cotton alone account for it .? Do the fibres of cotton weave themselves into cloth ? No. The machinery through which it passes imposes upon 14 PRACTICAL IDEALISM it certain forms of orderly arrangement. The picker and card and spinning jenny and loom add no new material to the cotton. But they separate and straighten and twist and weave it into shape. The finished cloth is matter reduced to precise and definite form. So things as we know them are made out of sensations; and without sensa- tions there would be no knowledge. Without sensations the machinery of the mind would lie forever idle ; the storehouse of intelligence would stand perpetually empty. Yet it does not follow that the things we know are mere sensations, dumped into the mind as bales of cotton are dumped into the picker-room. Our knowledge of things is the product of sensation wrought over by the forms and processes which consti- tute the action of the mind. Not until cotton can weave itself into cloth, will sensation alone account for our knowledge of a single object, or materialism become a satisfactory explanation of the world. It was the great achievement of Kant, not merely to recognize, as Leibnitz had done, the presence of these two factors in the production of knowledge ; but to describe with marvellous in- sight and accuracy the exact element which each piece of our mental machinery contributes to the process, and to enumerate the precise stages through which the raw materials of sensation have THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 15 to pass on their way to the final .product of an orderly and intelligible world. The general prin- ciple *:hat there are these two factors in all know- ledge he states as follows : ^ — " Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our soul. We call sensibility the receptivity of our soul, or its power of receiving representations whenever it is in any wise affected, while the understanding, on the contrary, is with us the power of producing representations, or the spontaneity of knowledge. We are so constituted that our intuition must always be sensuous, and consist of the mode in which we are affected by objects. What enables us to think the objects of our sensuous intuition is the understanding. Neither of these qualities ov faculties is preferable to the other. Without sen- sibility objects would not be given to us ; without understanding they would not be thought by us. Thoughts without contents are empty ; intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding cannot see ; the senses cannot think. By their union only can knowledge be produced." Things and events as we know them, then, are a joint product of sensation and thought. Sensa- tion is the starting-point of all our kn,owledge of the world. Sensation, however, does not begin, as Locke supposed, with letting in clear-cut,, partic- ^ Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason," translated by F. Max Miiller. "Transcendental Logic," Introduction, Section i. 1 6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM ular, simple ideas. Modern Psychology ^ lays down as its first principle that the infant's original sensa- tion is vague, general, and confused. According to Professor Baldwin, the first sensation is "an undifferentiated sensory continuum." In the words of Professor James,^ "The physiological condition of this first sensible experience is probably many nerve-currents coming in from various peripheral organs at once ; but this multitude of organic conditions does not prevent the consciousness from being one consciousness. The object which ' The best general treatises on Psychology are those of Bald- win, Ladd, Dewey, James, and Titchener. The works of Baldwin and Ladd are the more exhaustive and scientific. Dewey's is the most philosophical. The conception of the world as a creation of the mind out of the materials of sensation by the increasingly elabo- rate and complex interpreting activity of intelligence, which we are trying to develop here, is wrought into the structure of Dewey's " Psychology." Titchener gives the most recent and readable ac- count of psychology from the experimental or physiological side. James is gifted with literary genius. His book is human and alive. And though we may lament his lack of proportion, regret the order of presentation, deplore the unfilled gaps, and reject his favourite conclusions, yet we must admit that there is no book like James' " Psychology : Briefer Course," to arouse in the uninitiated a zest for psychological study. For example, contrast in the passages quoted the two phrases by which Baldwin and James characterize the vagueness of the primitive sensation. One calls it " an undifferenti- ated sensory continuum." The other, " one big, blooming, buzzing confusion." Both mean the same thing. One strikes you so that you can never forget it. The other sends you off to grope among the reminiscences of your Latin lexicon before you appreciate its force. This is a fair specimen of the world-wide difference of style between James and all the other writers on Psychology. 2 " Psychology : Briefer Course," page i6. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 17 the numerous inpouring currents of the baby bring to his consciousness is one big, blooming, buzzing confusion. That Confusion is the baby's universe ; and the universe of all of us is still to a great extent such a Confusion, potentially resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not yet actually resolved, into parts. So far as it is unanalyzed and unresolved, we may be said to know it sensationally ; but as fast as parts are dis- tinguished in it, and we become aware of their re- lations, our knowledge becomes perceptual or even conceptual." The problem before each one of us is to pick this "big, blooming, buzzing Confusion" to pieces, and then to put it together again so as to make it a radiant and rational order. The " big, blooming, buzzing Confusion " undergoes constant change. It is not the same at any two successive periods. Yet it does not change all at once. Some of its elements come and go at stated intervals. The infant has his milk and is happy. Then he has it not ; and in due time becomes unhappy. Then he has it again and is happy once more. Hence, as hunger is a large element in his total conscious- ness, the alternating presence and absence of its satisfaction come to stand out as distinct from the more constant and less intense background of the big Confusion. The recognition of this recurring phase of experience, as distinct from the 1 8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM whole experience of which it is a part, consti- tutes separate sensations of hunger and the taste of food. Thus a simple and rudimentary memory, and the dawning of a permanent self is involved, even in the simplest sensation which is recognized as distinct from the total consciousness. Recogni- tion comes before cognition, paradoxical as the statement seems.^ To know anything implies bringing together at least two elements. One of these elements must be present, and the other must be past ; one particular, the other universal. Sen- sation in general, or the big, blooming Confusion, we might have without contrast of present with past ; and, consequently, without knowing that we were having it. In that case, we should not have it : we should rather be it. Consciousness with- out contrast is impossible. Indeed, the word " consciousness," literally, knowing with or know- ing together, bears etymological witness to the psychological fact. Still, in even a distinct and separate sensation, so long as it remains unrelated, we know, as yet, qualities only, not things. The infant knows looks-bright, but not candle ; the general satis- factoriness of the thumb-in-mouth condition, but not thumb nor mouth : tastes-good, but not milk ; being-cuddled, but not mother : in other words, 1 For an explanation of this seeming paradox see Titchener's " Outline of Psychology," pages 266-268. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 1 9 the quality as it affects him, not the thing or person as they are. All this, of course, no mother is expected to believe. If it seems hard and cruel to say that the infant does not know and love his mother, it is equally true that he neither knows nor loves himself. It is too bad to steal away the infant's charm in this merciless, analytic fashion. We can only say with Keats : " Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings." Let the grieved and wounded mother, then, be patient, and in due time she shall have her dear child back again with all his angelic charms restored. Thus, by breaking up the big Confusion into its more striking constituent parts, the infant acquires the sensations of warmth, colour, sweetness, noise, motion, and the like. He knows not things ; but he knows some of the qualities of things. He knows not persons, either himself or others; but he knows how the acts of persons affect him. He has gathered a few materials out of which to build his world. In sensation the mind is confined to what is pre- sented here and now. Beyond this point of space, this moment of time, it cannot go. In one moment of time, and from one point in space, however, more than one sensation may be presented. Our infant 20 PRACTICAL IDEALISM may get from the same place looks-pretty and feels^ hard ; and at the same time, sounds-loud. Repeated experiences with that concentrated mystery which we call his rattle establish the constant connection between these three sensations. Whenever one is present the other cannot be far away. So he comes to tie these three sensations in one bundle by the two strings of space and time ^ which he always carries with him in the pocket of his mind. This tying up of two or more sensations in one bundle prepares the way for perception. Perception arises when one of these sensations becomes the sign of the other sensations which are tied up in the same bundle with it by these two strings of space and time. He sees looks-pretty, and recognizes that it means feels-hard, and sounds-loud. He takes hold of it and shakes it, and behold ! out of looks- pretty, feels-hard and sounds-loud obediently come forth. He has found the mental key which fits the lock of the external world, and opens wide the doors of sense-perception. Sensation no longer can imprison him in the narrow confines of the here and the now. He begins to feel the freedom of an unfettered mind. He can pass from the present sensation back to sensations which he has had be- fore ; forward to such repetitions of past-sensations 1 For the classic discussion of the nature and function of space and time as factors in our knowledge see the Transcendental .(Esthetic in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason.'' THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 21 as he desires. The immediate and the present has become the symbol of the absent and the remote. He gets a very dim and fleeting glimpse of an ideal, a universal, an eternal world. And this emancipation of self, this construction of our own world, by making the presentations of sense sym- bolic of a larger possible experience, which enters here at the very threshold of perception, is, as we shall see, the essence of the entire intellectual pro- cess by which the mind builds its worlds of art and science, and poetry and philosophy, and morals and religion. Perception gives us sensations tied to- gether in space, or things; and sensations tied together in time, or events. Perception enables us to interpret sight in terms of possible hearing ; hearing in terms of probable feeling ; feeling in terms of prospective tasting. Perception takes a part of a thing or an event as the sign and symbol of the whole. Our most elaborate processes of scientific reasoning, and our most exalted exercise of spiritual faith proceed in precisely the same way. Sensations are the common materials out of which the world of the nursery and the world of the uni- versity are constructed. The difference between the simple world of the infant, and the complex world of the sage, the saint, and the seer, is in the amount of elaboration to which these sensations are subjected, and the amount of symbolic mean- ing they are compelled to support. In the words 22 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of Professor Dewey/ "Perception is the stage of knowledge least advanced in the interpretation of sensations." Perception consists in the enrichment of a sen- sation by adding to it all the remembered past, and therefore possible present or future sensations that go with it in the unity of the thing which these combined sensations represent. When I say I see a tree, I have merely the sensation of an irregular coloured outline in the field of vision. That sensation of sight becomes the sign and symbol of the number of steps I should have to take in order to be able to place my hand on it, or its distance ; the nature and extent of the resist- ance I should feel in trying to reach around it, or its size ; the resonance I should get if I were to strike it with an axe, or its sound ; the warmth I should get were I to ignite portions of it in my fireplace, or its chemical constitution ; the shade I should receive were I to lie underneath it, and the beauty it adds to the landscape, or its aesthetic charm ; the price I could get for its timber and wood, or its market value ; its relation to other trees, and its structural peculiarities, or its botani- cal classification. I perceive all this in the tree ; but I see only the patch of colour. Thus all perception is apperception. We see in any presented object just as much as there is of 1 "Psychology," page 158. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 23 that object already in us. To return to our tree. The infant who has not had experience in walk- ing does not see the distance of the tree. He is as likely as not to reach out and try to grasp a tree that is a dozen rods away. He does not see its size, never having handled anything so large be- fore. Never having chopped, he has no idea of the resonance the axe would evoke. Never having lighted a fire, it suggests to him no warmth for winter nights ; and never having sought protection from a summer sun, it suggests no grateful shade. Not being a merchant, it is destitute of value to his mind ; and not being a botanist, it has no technical terminology tacked on to it. The tree which each man perceives is the tree which experience, observation, study, and reflection has built up in his own mind. The botanist sees its structure and genetic relation- ships ; the merchant sees its market value ; the landscape gardener sees its beauty ; the woodman hears the ring of the axe ; the housekeeper feels the fireside glow ; the surveyor estimates its size and distance. Thus even at an elementary stage of knowledge the greater part of the truth we perceive at any given moment comes from within, rather than from without. As Browning says, « To know, Rather consists in opening out a way 24 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be -without." One of the most interesting of our perceptions, is that of the distance of an object. As Berkeley ^ showed conclusively, it is impossible to see dis- tance directly. The lines of light are projected endwise toward the eye; and it is impossible by looking at the end .^f a line of light to see how long it is, just as it is impossible to see the length of a pencil which is held in such a way that you can see only the end of it. It nviy have a sixteenth of an inch, it may have six inches hid- den behind the end we see. We perceive the distance of objects exclusively by the interpreta- tion of signs. First, the dimness of the image is a sign of distance ; the clearness of the image is a sign of nearness. Second, the more nearly the eyes look in parallel lines, the greater the distance ; the more they converge, the less the distance. Third, the less the strain of accommodation, the greater the distance ; the greater the strain of accommodation, the less the distance. . Fourth, the fact that near objects cover remote ones and, when we move, the near objects seem to pass by the more distant objects, helps us to determine their relative distances. Fifth, apparent size, in proportion as it is less than the real size, is a sign l"An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision." THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 2$ of distance. Thus our perception of the distance of an object is a purely mental interpretation of the elements which sensation gives. The great truth in the doctrine of apperception ^ is the principle that previous experience deter- mines what the new sensation shall signify ; and also that the new sensation, as soon as it is taken up into the body of this previous experience, re- acts upon it, and unites with it to form a new mass of experience, which in turn determines anew the significance which all subsequent experience shall have for us. The action of the mind upon the sensation has been part of the recognized doctrine of perception since Leibnitz and Kant. But the equally important reaction of the sensation on the perceiving power of the mind is a comparatively modern conception ; of great pedagogical as well as psychological significance. What we can per- ceive at any given time depends not merely on the formal powers with which we are endowed at birth, but on the nature and extent of the use we 1 Herbart and his numerous interpreters have assumed to monop- olize this term, and that school has been most active in developing the many important applications of the doctrine to pedagogy. But under one name or another the substitution of an active, organic assimilation of elements, for a mechanical aggregation of units, is common to all modern psychology. A fresh account of it will be found in Stout's " Analytical Psychology," Volume II, pages 1 1 1- 167, where apperception is defined as "the process by which a mental system appropriates a new element, or receives a fresh determination." 26 PRACTICAL IDEALISM have made of them. The city child, to whom a fern is a bunch of green feathers, had substantially the same faculties to start with as the country boy who knows a fern the instant he sets eyes on it. The country boy, however, has had his power to perceive ferns developed by a host of previous perceptions. The city child has never seen that particular shape tied up with anything but the properties of feathers; and therefore a bunch of green feathers the fern must be to him. In the same way as a plant or animal transforms the sub- stances which it takes into its system, the mind transforms sensations into such bundles of sensa- tions, or perceptions, as it has had experience with before. What it cannot thus assimilate, it rejects as insignificant and unintelligible. Hence the maxims of Herbartian pedagogy, that it is worse than useless to present to a child's mind new matter which his mind has not been prepared by previous lessons to assimilate ; and that the awakening of interest in a subject, by showing its relation to what is already known, is the essential condition of effective study and the supreme art of good teaching. In thus interpreting present sensations in terms of sensations that we have had or expect to have, we obviously take great risks. The facts we get in this way may turn out not to be facts at all. Hereafter we shall have occasion to consider some THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 2/ of these fancies which try to pose as facts, and to find some way of discriminating between fact, and fancy palming itself off for fact. For the present, however, let us not attempt to go behind the returns which sensation, interpreted in terms of previous experience, gives. Let us assume for the time being that everything is a fact which our mind accepts as such. Even in that case we should not be able to proceed far in the build- ing of our world. We should find ourselves dwelling in tents of the flimsiest texture, liable to be blown away by every fresh breeze of sense, and swept beyond our reach down the swift stream of time. The things and events which perception gives us are almost, though not quite, as fleeting and evanescent as the sensations out of which they are constructed. No sooner do we get them than they are gone. One crowds out another in an endless procession. Were perception our only mode of communication with the world, we should be compelled to watch a perpetual pano- rama of things and events, unrelated save in this mere order of succession, and consequently desti- tute of theoretical coherence or practical utility. Bound to the particular spot in space where acci- dent had placed them, chained to the ever-van- ishing moment of the present time, creatures of mere perception, though more free than creatures 28 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of mere sensation, would still remain for the most part in the narrow prison-house of sense. The next step out into broader space and last- ing time we take in conscious memory. An un- conscious activity of memory has been involved already in perception. This emancipating func- tion of memory has been so well set forth by Professor Dewey,^ that I will state it in his words. " Memory removes one limitation from know- ledge as it exists in the stage of perception : the limitation to the present. The world of strict perception has no past nor future. Perception is narrowly confined to what is immediately before it. What has existed and what may exist it has nothing to do with. Memory extends the range of knowledge beyond the present. The world of knowledge as it exists for memory is a world of events which have happened, of things which have existed. In short, while the characteristic of perception is space relations, that of memory is time relations. Knowledge, however, is still lim- ited to individual things or events which have had an existence in some particular place and at some particular time. Memory, therefore, like perception, is an active construction by the mind of certain data. It differs from perception only in the fact that the interpreting process which is 1 "Psychology," page 176. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 29 involved in both is carried in memory a stage furtlier. In perception, the sensation is inter- preted only as the sign of something present, which could be experienced by actually bringing all the senses into relation with it. In memory it is interpreted as the sign of some experience which we once had, and which we might have again, could we accurately reproduce all its conditions." Thus memory emancipates from the particular and the momentary, and gives us in some meas- ure the largeness and liberty of an ideal world. Still the emancipation which mere memory brings is very imperfect. Memory gives us a larger and more lasting world than the world of sensation and perception, but it is not of necessity either a happier or a nobler world. He who lives in the world of memory is tied by a longer rope than he who lives in a world of immediate perception. But he is tied nevertheless. His prison is larger, but it is a prison still. Man endowed with memory remains a slave. And often this slavery of memory is more cruel than the slavery of the senses. For sensation, at least, constantly shifts the scenery, and gives us novelty and variety, if nothing more. While an idea, once fixed in the memory, may remain to haunt us at all seasons and all hours. Memory is impartial. It makes the happy man happier by keeping 30 PRACTICAL IDEALISM his happy experiences ever present. It makes the wretched man more wretched by keeping his unhappy experiences always with him. As a means of storing up materials for higher faculties to select from and work over, memory is an indispensable and invaluable instrument of our spiritual emancipation. But we are now con- sidering the mental faculties, one by one, in im- aginary abstraction and isolation from the rest ; and so considered memory is only a larger and more enduring form of perception, and the world it gives us is simply a permanent copy of the world of fleeting perceptions. Memory, being merely the accumulation of the individual's perceptions, is limited to what the individual has perceived. Our individual senses, however, even though exercised through a long period of years, bring us into contact with only a small fragment of the world, and consequently give us but an infinitesimal fraction of the facts of which it is composed. One other principle comes in to supplement the inadequacy of the indi- vidual's own senses. That is the testimony of others. Through acceptance of the spoken and written words of others, we appropriate the results of their perception and memory ; and thus multi- ply the range of our individual perception by the speeches we hear, and the books and newspapers we read. THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 31 Thus the world of known things and events comes to be made up of what we perceive through the senses ; what we remember to have perceived ; and what we accept on the testimony of others as having been perceived by them. There are ob- vious elements of uncertainty entering at each of these stages. We may be deceived in our interpretation of our sensations ; we may be de- ceived in our recollection of what we think we have previously perceived ; we may be deceived through the fallible perception, the uncertain mem- ory, or the wilful misrepresentation of others. These sources of possible error must be reserved for subsequent consideration. For the present, we will accept as final all the facts presented by healthy perception, normal memory, and pre- sumably reliable witnesses. Such, taken at its best, given the benefit of all that is offered in its favour, undisturbed by the suspicions of doubt that may justly be brought against it — such is the world of things and events, based on sense-perception, present or past, of ourselves or of our fellows. What now is lacking in such a world ? Why is it not good enough to dwell ia.' Why not build tabernacles here ? Are not facts everything ? This world of sense-perception, this world of things and events, in spite of its enlargement through memory and the testimony of others, re- 32 PRACTICAL IDEALISM mains to the last a narrow prison. There is no real freedom in it. As Wordsworth says : " Whose mind is but tlie mind of his own eyes, He is a slave the meanest we can meet.'' These things that the world is full of, these events that comQ and go, are neither the expres- sion of our reason nor the product of our choice. The infant's world is not the world he wanted ; but the world he had to take, because he found it there. He may fuss and fume as much as he pleases ; these same things will stand there and defy him; these same events will persist in pro- voking him. Other persons, more intelligent than he, may indeed come to his rescue, interpret his impotent and futile complainings, and remove the cause for him ; but they do so by introducing vicariously into his world laws and principles of which as yet he himself knows nothing. If his nurse were, like him, limited to the world of sense- perception, the world of presented things and pass- ing events, the nurse would be as impotent as he to assuage his grief and calm his troubled spirit. And that is the great reason why the mature man cannot endure to dwell permanently in the world of bare fact, of presented things and events. This is a world of iron necessity. These things are alien to himself. These events are utterly regardless of his wishes. They bring him what THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 33 he does not want ; they take away relentlessly the sources of his dearest joys. As Mr. Bradley says : " These particulars have got no permanence ; their life endures for a fleeting moment. They can never have more than one life ; when they are dead they are done with." Man is the passive sport of an omnipotent caprice. If he tries to content himself long with this world of unrelated things and events, he is sure to fall into pes- simism and despair. Pessimism is the only con- sistent and logical attitude for any man to take who conceives the world he lives in as a mere aggregate of facts ; the mere presentation in time and space of objects and events. No wonder that the child's first language is a cry. Left to himself he could only cry himself to death. Not until either actually for ourselves, or vicariously as the child does through his nurse, we can go behind the things and events of mere perception, and shift the scenes, and mould the forms, and guide the forces, and appreciate the meaning of the world, does it become a place of freedom and dignity and worth. To show how the mind goes behind the returns of mere perception, and out of these facts builds up a series of worlds more and more to its own liking, and thus gradually emancipates itself from the bondage of sense and wins the liberty of the spirit, will be the problem of suc- ceeding chapters. Perception has moulded the 34 PRACTICAL IDEALISM clay of sensation into the hard, regular bricks of things and events. Our own memories, sup- plemented by the testimony of others, have heaped high the piles of these bricks on the platform of our intelligence. Yet they remain a mere heap; a chaos, not a cosmos. We have the materials to make a world, but no form to give it ; no plan to build it by. We started out with the incipient sensational- ism, the latent materialism of the inconsistent, and, in spite of his premises, more than half-spiritual Locke. Following Leibnitz and Kant and James and Dewey, and the whole trend of modern psy- chology, we have been compelled to abandon it even at the very outset of our journey. We have seen that sensations with no intelligence acting upon them, and reacted upon by them, would give no knowledge within and no world without. These sensations have had to be unified in the forms of space and time ; bound together with those that come before and after and lie on either side. In place of the " empty cabinet " of a mind that is, "for the most part, merely passive," we have found even perception an active process of action and reaction, in which the mind is ever as completely the dominating factor over the sensa- tions presented to it, as is a plant or animal organ- ism over the chemical constituents of the food which it takes into its system. Sensation, indeed, THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 35 furnishes the elements which are wrought into the structure of the mind by the reaction of its own vital processes upon them ; but in turn it is the mind which, out of the elements of its gradually assimilated sensations, builds even the fragmentary objects and events which, taken together, consti- tute the world of sense-perception. CHAPTER II THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION In our treatment of the world of sense-percep- tion, for the sake of clearness and simplicity, we have been abstract, and to that -extent misleading. It was unavoidable.. The world-process is not fixed but fluid. There is no precise point where one process begins and another ends. Things and events are in perpetual flux and flow, pass into each other by imperceptible gradations, and stand in mutual relations. In order to describe and classify these things and events, however, we have to pull them apart from these relations, and treat them as fixed and isolated. Thus only can we get the clear-cut objects of perception and memory. Yet these isolated things and events do not actually exist. Just as sensations alone do not exist, but are elements in things and events; so things and events do not exist alone, but are elements in larger groups and vaster processes. Each thing has its halo of relations ; each event has its fringe of antecedents, concomitants, and consequences. The world of association is the world we get by grouping things and events according to their more obvious relations. 36 THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 37 Association is a continuation of the process in- volved in perception. Association is the tendency of the mind to reconstruct a total previous ex- perience when any element of it is presented in perception or revived in memory. Now if the same groups of elements were always found in the same wholes, as is more frequently, though by no means universally, the case in our perception of things, association -would be a very simple and perfectly infallible process. These elemental experiences, however, ar6 like the letters in a font of type. The same letter or group of letters may form part of a great variety of words. The same idea or group of ideas may form a part of a great variety of different experi- ences. The capacity to put our perceptions into such wholes as subsequent experience will verify is what we mean by sagacity, good judgment, common sense. Association works along two lines : contiguity and similarity. In association by contiguity we put together elements which have previously been found together in the outside world. The sight of the postmaster on the street calls up the idea of the post-ofKce where we have usually seen him. The whistle of the locomotive calls up the train and track with which it has been connected in previous experience. The letters A and B call up the letter C, because they have always gone 38 PRACTICAL IDEALISM together in the repetition of the alphabet. What time and space have bound together, the mind is loath to put asunder. Association by similarity is a much more subtle process. We put together elements which stand related in our minds. A watch calls up the town clock. The two things are far apart in space, and may never have been seen at the same time. But the idea of the watch and the idea of the clock have the same element of time-keeping, and the same general configuration of face and hands. In simple association by similarity we do not make this common, identical element an object of precise definition and explicit reference. Were we to do that we should pass beyond mere association and enter the world of science, with its reasoning and classification and law. In asso- ciation by similarity we pass over this bridge of an identical element common to both ideas ; but the transition is so rapid, and the eye is so intent on the practical goal, that we do not stop to examine the bridge, or to pay toll to the logician at the gate. Association by similarity is the intuitive performance of the function which science and reasoning make explicit. There is, however, an element of necessity about reasoning, which is absent, or at all events latent, in association by similarity. While this tendency to reconstruct wholes out THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 39 of parts in these two ways is ever present, yet the extent to which the actual reconstruction shall be carried depends on the frequency, the recency, the vividness with which the whole has previously existed in our minds. Mental training and emo- tional states have much to do with it. The ab- sence of conflicting lines of thought is a condition of the higher forms of association. Since association consists in reconstructing a whole experience, when only a part is given ; and since the same part may be an element in many different wholes, obviously association affords large opportunity for mistakes. We may put the given part into a whole to which it does not belong. That is the essence of illusion in all its forms. And because there are so many ways in which this mistake can be made, one might almost call the world of association the world of illusion. Inasmuch as perception involves association, illusion is possible, even in our perception of the simplest objects. In considering perception, in the last chapter, we took things as the senses gave them, asking no questions as to whence they came, or by what authority they were given to us. While in this way we got a fairly well-furnished world, we were not quite sure that its foundations were solid; we could not say with certainty that any given piece of furniture really belonged to us ; and we had discovered no 40 PRACTICAL IDEALISM principles by which to arrange these scattered unauthenticated articles in an orderly and beauti- ■ ful whole. This problem of orderly arrangement must be postponed still further. The question of the foundations we will consider now. Descartes ^ shall state the problem for us. In the First Medi- tation he tells us, "All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes misled us ; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have been even once deceived. I am in the habit of sleeping and representing to my- self in dreams those same things, or even some- times others less probable, which the insane think are presented to them in their waking moments. How often have I dreamt that I was in these familiar circumstances, — that I was dressed and occupied this place by the fire, when I was lying undressed in bed .■■ There exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distin- guished from sleep. Let us suppose, then, that we are dreaming, and that all these particulars — namely, the opening of the eyes,the motion of the head, the forth-putting of the hands — are merely illusions ; and even that we really possess neither 1" Discourse on Method and Meditations." Translated by John Veitch. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 41 an entire body nor hands such as we see. Still, whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three make five, and that a square has but four sides. I will suppose then that some malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his arti- fice to deceive me ; I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, figures, sounds, and all external things, are nothing better than the illu- sions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity ; I will consider myself as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these; I will continue resolutely fixed in this belief, and if indeed by this means it be not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of truth, I shall at least guard with settled purpose against giving my assent to what is false. I suppose, accord- ingly, that all the things which I see are false (fictitious); I believe that none of those objects which my fallacious memory represents ever ex- isted ; I suppose that I possess no senses ; I be- lieve that body, figure, extension, motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind. What is there, then, that can be esteemed true .' " If our knowledge of the world of sense-percep- tion came to us ready-made, then indeed such sweeping, searching doubt as this of Descartes would be absolutely fatal to it. Fortunately, how- 42 PRACTICAL IDEALISM ever, we found that there was something more involved in the act of sense-perception than mere sensation dumped into an empty cabinet, a passive mind. This active, mental element now turns out to be the one rock of salvation, to rescue the valid- ity of all knowledge whatsoever from the floods of doubt which threaten, in the merciless pages of Descartes, to sweep all certitude and objective reality away. Our analysis of the process of nor- mal sense-perception and association has given us a key to the interpretation of illusion and halluci- nation, which robs them of all their terrors. When one has clearly grasped the mental ele- ment in all perception, it is easy to see how illu- sions^ arise. Indeed, the wonder is that we are not subject to more illusions than we are. Take the matter of distance. In a clear, dry air we get the distinctness of outline which is ordinarily con- nected with the nearness of an object. Hence the visitor in a mountainous region, who brings his principles of interpretation from the coast, is liable to set out to walk before breakfast to foothills twenty miles away. The story is told of an East- ern man who had been frequently deceived in his estimate of distance to the great amusement of his Colorado host, that on one occasion, when they ^ See chapter on Perception, Chapter xx, James' " Psychology : Briefer Course." For an exhaustive treatment, see " Illusions " by James Sully, The International Scientific Series. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 43 came to a little rivulet, a foot or two in width, the Eastern man sat down on the bank and began to pull off his shoes and stockings, preparatory to wading. His friend expostulated with him, and asked him why he did not jump across ? " How do I know that it isn't quarter of a mile across ? " was his reply. His Eastern principles of interpre- tation had proved illusory so often that he was prepared to abandon them altogether. The psychological process in illusion is precisely the same as that in perception. In illusion and in perception alike, we add to the presented sensa- tion other elements which usually accompany it in the unity of one thing or event. In perception we add the right accompaniment; in illusion we add the wrong accompaniment. That is the dif- ference. What we add in perception, subsequent experience proves to be actually there. What we add in illusion proves not to be there. The following illusion, experienced by Professor W. R. Sorley, is an example of thousands which might be cited. "Lying in bed, facing the win- dow, I saw the figure of a man, some three or four feet from my head, standing perfectly still by the bedstead, so close to it that the bedclothes seemed slightly pushed towards me by his leg pressing against them. The image was perfectly distinct, — height about five feet eight inches, sal- low complexion, gray eyes, grayish moustache. 44 PRACTICAL IDEALISM short and bristly, and apparently recently clipped. His dress seemed like a dark gray dressing-gown, tied with a dark red rope. " My first thought was, ' That's a ghost ' ; my second, ' It may be a burglar whose designs upon my watch are interrupted by my opening my eyes.' I bent forward towards him, and the im- age vanished. "As the image vanished, my attention passed to a shadow on the wall, twice or three times the distance off, and perhaps twelve feet high. There was a gas lamp in the mews-lane outside, which shed a light through the lower twelve inches or so of the first-floor window, over which the blind had not been completely drawn, and the shadow was cast by the curtain hanging beside the win- dow. The solitary bit of colour in the image — the red rope of the dressing-gown — was immedi- ately afterwards identified with the twisted ma- hogany handle of the dressing-table, which was in the same line of vision as part of the shadow. " I wondered very much afterwards that I had not identified the image with my brother, who is about the same general build and height, and wears a short moustache which he sometimes clips. Probably the identification was prevented by the burglar-scare occurring to me. I did not think at the time of any one in connection with the image." THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 45 In this case, we see how elaborate an image the mind can construct out of very slender materials. One very important species of the genus ghost is constructed on this model. Illusion is a large part of the stock in trade of professional spiritualists. The resemblance which Professor Sorley saw to his brother explains the facility with which be- reaved patrons find consolation at spiritualistic seances. Expectancy is the explanation of a large class of illusions. We see that of which our mind is already full. The features which we carry in our mind and heart are projected upon any ob- jective sensation, however faint and shadowy and dim ; and out of the shadowy sensation and the vivid image in the mind there is constructed a supposed object which combines the reality of the objective sensation and the vividness of the sub- jective image. The following confession of an exposed medium illustrates the ease with which such recognitions of materialized spirits may be brought about. "The first stance I held after it became known to the Rochester people that I was a medium, a gentleman from Chicago rec- ognized his daughter Lizzie in me, after I had covered my small moustache with a piece of flesh-coloured cloth, and reduced the size of my face with a shawl I had purposely hung up in the back of the cabinet. From this sitting, my fame began to spread." 46 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Illusions are not confined to the sense of sight alone. The rattling of a loose shingle by the wind may become the groaning of a ghost in a haunted house; the reaction of the muscles, after continued pressure, may become the tap upon the shoulder by a departed spirit. Hallucination takes us one step farther from reality than illusion. An illusion clothes an ele- ment of sensation with a whole outfit of ideas contributed by the mind. But in illusion there is always a basis of objective sensation for the mind to put this ideal outfit onto. In hallucina' tion the mind projects the whole experience from within. Hallucinations are by no means uncommon phe- nomena. The Society for Psychical Research found no difficulty in picking up seventeen hun- dred fairly well attested cases, and came to the conclusion that about one person in every ten has an hallucination at some time in his life. Prob- ably nearly every one knows of persons in his immediate circle of relatives and friends who have had such an experience. I will relate one which happened to a friend of mine eight or ten years ago, and which he related to me. He was brought up under the strict religious discipline which for- merly prevailed in New England ; but had never experienced what is called conversion. While a strictly upright and moral man, and during his THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 47 thirty years of active life as a New York merchant a regular attendant at church, he had never united with any church; and on his retirement to the country he had fallen out of the habit of church- attendance, and had become decidedly sceptical as to the doctrines of Christianity. When about sixty-five years of age, and while living quietly upon the farm to which he had retired from business, he had, when wide awake and in good health, a vision in which the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him and pointed out with perfect dis- tinctness of detail two roads : one leading through delightful walks, underneath stately trees, amid beautiful flowers ; the other leading to barren sands. The Lord described at considerable length the courses of conduct which these two ways sym- bolized, and gave him a great deal of most sound and appropriate spiritual advice. Although a typical hard-headed business man, he never has doubted the objectivity of this vision. He has told me the whole story two or three times; and frequently, as we have been discussing religious subjects, he has quoted the words which he heard in connection with this vision. I give this case because it is one which has come to me directly at first hand. There are hundreds of such cases on record. The Proceed- ings of the Society for Psychical Research for August, 1894, devotes four hundred pages to the 48 PRACTICAL IDEALISM citation and discussion of the 1684 cases collected in its census. Hallucinations may be originated in two ways. First, they may originate in the bodily organs. Thus motes floating in the eyeballs may set up that irritation of the endings of the optic nerve which conveys to the brain sufficient stimulus to produce in the visual centre the strong explosion which is interpreted as an actual sensation of sight. Morbid conditions of the ear may likewise induce an explosion in the centres of hearing sufficiently strong to be interpreted as an objective sound. These hallucinations which originate in the organs of sensation are obviously very closely related to illusions. The ghost of illusion originates in light reflected from some external object; and this single element of sensation is clothed by the contributions of memory and imagination. The ghost of this first type of hallucination originates in a light which is due to some peculiarity in the structure or contents of the eye ; and this sensation of merely ocular origin is then clothed with the contributions of memory and imagination, pre- cisely as in the case of illusion. This is a fre- quent but not the only source of hallucination. Hallucinations of this class may be illustrated by a familiar parallel in dreams. We all know that if the bedclothes become loosened at the foot on a cold night, we dream of walking in snow. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 49 wading in cold water, and the like. An actual sensation of cold in our feet is interpreted in terms of cold external objects, as snow or ice- water. In dreams of this sort and in hallucina- tions of this class alike, a sensation originating in the body is projected by the imagination into an object appropriate to serve as the cause of the sensation. The second type of hallucinations are those which originate in the brain itself. In hallucina- tions of this type we have the cerebral process excited spontaneously within the centre, without any occasion either in external objects or the organs of sensation. This may come through changes in the blood-supply, as during fever, or in consequence of the use of opium or alcohol, or in madness, or in poor health ; and it may come to persons in apparently normal and healthy con- ditions. Whenever and however we get an excita- tion of a cerebral centre, due to no external object and no conditions of the organs of sense, yet as sudden and strong and intense as excitations origi- nating in sensation ordinarily are, then we inter- pret the excitation in terms of sensation and perception, and think we see or hear or feel an actual object. This is hallucination of the second type. An excitation as intense as that which sen- sation produces is interpreted as sensation. That is the principle which explains all these phenomena. 50 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Thus about simple and ordinary hallucinations there is no more mystery than there is about illu- sions or perceptions. Psychology has its simple formula to which all these marvellous tales are readily reduced. At the approach of this formula, the legions of apparitions and ghosts and spirits divest themselves of the aura of mystery and the supernatural, and quietly take their places in the museum of recorded and tabulated phenomena. There remains one class of hallucinations, how- ever, the so-called veridical hallucinations, which, if genuine, refuse to be thus easily disposed of. A veridical hallucination is one which coincides in time with a real event, otherwise unknown and un- expected by the percipient. Among the 17000 persons interviewed in connection with the " Cen- sus," out of the 1684 cases of hallucinations re- ported, and out of 322 cases of recognized appa- ritions of living persons recorded at first-hand, Mr. Frank Podmore ^ tells us that " we have 32 cases in which we have evidence of the occur- rence of a hallucination without -apparent cause, within twelve hours of the death of the person seen." These cases, if genuine, are far niore numerous than mere chance will account for; and suggest telepathy, or some mode of "communication be- tween mind and mind, otherwise than through the ^"Apparitions and Thought Transference," page 223. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 51 known channels of the senses." That these cases, or the general fact of which they are examples, are genuine, the very competent committee, of which Professor Henry Sidgwick was chairman, expressed their unanimous conviction in these words, " Be- tween deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact." Many other alleged facts point to telepathy as a vera causa. These phenomena, however, belong to the domain of research, rather than of accepted sci- ence and philosophy, and any hypothesis which attempts to explain them must be regarded as purely tentative. Hypnotism is a method of inducing hallucina- tion artificially. It is more than that, for it in- cludes the execution of motions expressive of the ideas thus produced. The way to an understand- ing of hypnotism is through the understanding of perception, illusion, and hallucination. The most convenient bridge on which to cross from the phenomena we have been considering to the phenomena of hypnotism is suggestion. In per- ception we saw that the object was constructed out of a presented sensation and a number of remembered ideas. Let us call the presented sen- sation the suggestion, in response to which the mind produces the ideas which previous experi- ence has associated with it. Looked at in this 52 PRACTICAL IDEALISM way, our knowledge of the external world arises in response to the suggestion given in sensation. An illusion likewise is a response made by the mind to a suggestion presented by the senses, and differs not at all from perception in the men- tal process involved ; but only in the fact that the other elements contributed by the mind in response to the suggestion are peculiar to the individual mind that contributes them, and have no objective basis in which other minds may find them. Hal- lucination is the response of the mind to a sugges- tion, originating either in the bodily organs, or in the brain itself. The ideas of a hypnotized per- son likewise are produced by the mind bringing out of its own treasures of memory, imagination, and experience, appropriate contributions in re- sponse to the suggestions of the hypnotist. In this case the suggestions are words, looks, or gest- ures, instead of the mere sights and sounds of ordinary sensation. And the patient is made re- sponsive to these verbal suggestions by a special preparation. This preparation may take several distinct forms ; but whether it is done by gazing steadily at a bright object, or by passes, or by talking sleep, or by fixing the attention, or by all these methods combined, the essential thing is to throw into temporary abeyance that self-control and self -direction toward a conscious end, which is the characteristic of our normal waking state. It THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 53 is a fundamental principle of psychology! that every idea that gains admission to our mind tends to surround itself with related ideas already in the mind, and to express the total state thus produced in outward action. In other words, infinite sug- gestibility is the prime mental fact. " Conscious- ness is by its very nature impulsive, " as James says. If we had no higher powers than those which we have considered thus far, this suggesti- bility would be absolute and unrestrained, and everything that came to us would at once call up its associates in our mind and proceed to external- ize itself in outward deeds. Hypnotism, by its devices, simply produces artificially and tempo- rarily this condition in which imagination, unre- strained by reason and unchecked by reference to objective standards and external ends, has its own fantastic way, and works its own sweet will. The hypnotized person is temporarily dwelling in a world in which fact and fancy are inextricably intermingled; into which no laws and no ends ■ are introduced, and over which he has no power of inhibition. There are other physiological phenomena, such as anaesthesia and hyperassthesia of organs, altera- tions in nutrition of parts, catalepsy, lethargy, con- tracture, rigidity, which are due to the intimate 'See chapter on Will in James' "Psychology," especially his discussion of ideo-motor action. 54 PRACTICAL IDEALISM connection between the nervous system and the vital functions, and which require for their ex- planation the hypothesis that the mind has sub- conscious as well as' explicitly conscious states and functions. Into the details of these phenomena our present purpose does not require us to enter. These mys- terious realms are interesting topics of research ; and incidentally principles are being discovered which give promise of considerable therapeutic value. There are certain classes of diseases for which hypnotic treatment is highly beneficial. Mental healing in all its various forms, in so far as it is valuable, rests on the principle that body and mind are very closely interrelated through the partly conscious but chiefly unconscious control of the vital functions through the nervous system; and that the state of the mind at any given time, and consequently the state of the body, in so far as we know it at that time, is made up of a relatively small presentation of sensation, and a very large contribution of associations. Hence a very slight suggestion through the senses, by speech, or physi- cal contact, or eradication of fixed images, anxie- ties, and fears, may introduce a new nucleus around which an entirely new set of associations will cluster; so that through the renewing of the mind the body may come to be transformed. So far forth mental healing rests on a sound psycho- THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 55 logical foundation, and unquestionably beneficial effects have in many cases followed from its application. One may heartily recognize this psychological principle of suggestion as the inciter of association, and through association the con- structer of the mind and the reconstructer of the body, without committing himself to that disregard of other agencies, and that peculiar "metaphysics" which characterizes its practitioners. Either with or without the accompaniments of hypnotism, or peculiar religious faiths or esoteric metaphysical speculations, the principle of association, based on suggestion, is a fundamental psychological fact; closely related to the process of ordinary percep- tion ; present under a slightly different aspect in all illusion and hallucination, and capable of being employed for good or evil, according to the intent and purpose of the operator. As such it has a legitimate application to the healing of disease, and ought not to be divorced from tech- nical scientific training; but should be taken up into the body of recognized medical science, and made a part of the equipment of every educated physician. Then we shall see it in its proportions: not despising it as humbug on the one hand, nor embracing it as a panacea on the other hand ; but accepting it as one among the many beneficent forces which make for human health and happi- ness. S6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Tricks like these, which are played upon us by physical forces, or personal influences, in illusion, hallucination, hypnotism, and the various forms of mental healing, a man may play upon himself for his own amusement. This playing upon our own credulity, and at the same time standing off and recognizing that it is nothing but mere play, is fancy or imagination. It is a source of infinite delight; and, when worthily employed, one of the noblest of our faculties. Thus Keats advises, " Ever let the fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home ; At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth. Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ; Then let winged fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her ; Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar." Imagination is confined to the materials which sensation and perception bring, and memory stores up for us. Yet among those materials imagination takes what it pleases and rejects the rest. It com- bines these materials in new and original ways; and while it gives us no new sensations, it does give us new combinations of sensations, or new things, and new events. What sensation gives at rare intervals, only to snatch away, imagination holds permanently before the mind. What in THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 57 actual perception comes in scant quantity, and imbedded in a mass of unsightly and irrelevant detail, imagination disengages from its unworthy environment, and presents in concentrated form and worthy setting. Thus imagination gives the world of gods and heroes, goddesses and angels, Elysian fields and heavenly places ; the world of poetry and romance ; the world of art and fancy. All mythologies, and all the traditions and histories of early tribes and races, are products of the pious imagination, portraying patriarch, lawgiver, ancestor, king, not as they were to the immediate perception of their contemporaries, squalid, coarse, sensual, cruel ; but as generations later loved to think of them, noble, brave, pious, generous. Thus it is that in many respects the earliest literature remains to this day the most precious that we have. In it material is most freely moulded to ideal ends. Imagination to-day cannot regain the nalvet^ and freedom of the Iliad and the Odyssey ; of Genesis and Samuel. In our writing we have to choose between dry, cold, hard fact, which has lost all the charm and freedom of the imagination, or else fiction, which has lost even the semblance of reality. These primitive writers had not yet drawn that sharp distinction, and so they mixed up the two with perfect freedom and incomparable charm. Hence Wordsworth's lament, 58 PRACTICAL IDEALISM " The world is too much with us ; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ; This sea that bares her bosom to the moon. The winds that will be howling at all hours. And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outwiorn ; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." Imagination gives us free range throughout the entire realms of space and time. All the experiences of our remembered past, all the an- ticipations of our possible future, it brings and concentrates within the present moment. The objects we have seen in our travels, the scenes that we read about in books, the regions which the telescope and the microscope disclose, imagi- nation places before our eyes. It can erect castles in the air; entertain us with visions of Oriental splendour; win battles, make fortunes, and fill our day-dreams with every conceivable delight. Yet there is an unreality about it all. Revels of this kind are soon ended : " the baseless fabric of the vision" dissolves, the "insubstantial pageant" fades, and "leaves not a rack behind." Again, though all particular things are at her THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 59 beck and call, the imagination is tied down to the particular, and holds its riches in the inconvenient and perishable form of an aggregate of particulars. Imagination alone is unable to bind particulars together into the unity of law. It can indeed select one particular object as the type of a class, and thus idealize the particular. It cannot, how- ever, realize the universal. Imagination, therefore, can give us ideals, but not laws; types, but not principles; art, but not science; mythology, but not philosophy. Imagination, however, is not content to' serve as the docile and demure handmaid of the waking and normal intelligence. She plays all sorts of tricks upon us as we lie asleep, or linger in the borderland between sleep and waking. Dreams are simply the unrestrained carnival of the imagi- nation. All recent, intense, and exciting experi- ences are potentially present in the modified structure of the brain, and all that is needed to call up these experiences is the excitation of the centres in which these potential experiences reside. A hearty meal before going to bed, or hard mental work late in the evening, or exces- sive strain, either mental or physical, throughout the day, produce changes in the structure and the blood-supply of the brain which excite these cen- tres of potential experience, and dreams appear. In general, whatever causes cerebral activity to be 6o PRACTICAL IDEALISM kept up during sleep, produces dreams. The way to avoid dreams, therefore, is to avoid food and drink in such quantity, or of such quality, or at such times as will induce activity in the brain at night ; and also to avoid such over-exertion as will make necessary the repair of large waste during sleep. This indirect approach to dreams through their physiological conditions is the most effective means of gaining control over them, and exclud- ing unpleasant dreams from our sleeping con- sciousness. Still, to a certain extent, it is possible to gain a direct control of them through sugges- tion just before going' to sleep. If unpleasant dreams cannot be avoided, they can to some extent be controlled. For instance, my favourite form of mild nightmare, in days when I was beginning to speak in public, used to be that of finding my- self before an audience, and suddenly discovering that I had no manuscript, and no coherent ideas. Between rushing off home in breathless haste after my lost manuscript, while the audience was kept waiting, and failing to find it, or else beat- ing my brains for some sort of notion of what I was expected to talk about, I used to spend as unhappy dream-hours as ever fell to the lot of an inexperienced speaker to endure in actual life. After a little practice in charging my mind before going to sleep, with the idea that if one found him- THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 6 1 self in that plight he had nothing to do but simply dismiss the audience with an apology and an explanation; and that such things do not happen anyway except in dreams ; and probably any such experience that might come to me was a dream, I managed to dream myself out of the situa- tion in one of these ways. I suppose I have in my dreams dismissed forty or fifty disappointed audiences; I have a hundred times dreamed my- self out of awkward and frightful situations by the formula : " Such hopelessly horrible situations as this happen only in dreams, and it is time to wake up." Emerson has gone so far as to attribute a moral significance to dreams. He says : " A skilful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge ; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them, — a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part.-" However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth." "Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes as they fall The bias of thy will betray." As Goethe said, " These whimsical pictures, in- asmuch as they originate from us, may well have an analogy with our whole life and fate." We have now considered several ways in which the mind may, so to speak, take the bits in its 62 PRACTICAL IDEALISM own mouth, cut loose from the vehicle of sense to which it was originally harnessed, and run away on frolics of its own. Let us, by way of a brief review of all we have done thus far, consider the various ways in which we may get the vision of a man. First : The image projected on the retina from the actual man, physically present before the phys- ical eye, gives rise to a photo-chemical process which disintegrates the pigments with which the endings of the optic nerve are laden, and so sets up a commotion which is transmitted to the occipi- tal lobe of the cerebrum, and there produces an explosion of considerable force. The sudden and violent explosion at this point revives afifiliated processes in this brain-tract that have been dor- mant, associated ideas are grouped with the new sensation, and the whole is interpreted as the vision of an actual man. This is ordinary per- ception. Second : This same centre may be excited over again, together with other centres, in a more gradual and more gentle manner. This re-exci- tation, in connection with other centres, and of milder intensity, is the cerebral condition corre- sponding to remembering the vision of a man. Third : A portion of this cerebral centre, say that which corresponds to the rough outline of a man, may be excited through the regular physio- THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 63 logical channel of retina and optic nerve, with all the intensity that accompanies ordinary sensation ; and the rest of the excitation which ordinarily goes with it to form the perception of a man may be contributed, gratuitously and erroneously, by the mind. This is illusion ; and differs from percep- tion only in the fact that, whereas in perception the associations which the mind contributes in interpreting the sensation may be verified by sub- sequent experience, in illusion the contribution which the mind makes cannot be thus verified, and has corresponding to it no possible sensation which subsequent experience can realize. Fourth : We may have the physiological pro- cess in the optic nerve, which ordinarily accom- panies sensation, induced there, however, not by rays of light reflected from an external object, but by motes floating before the eye. This is the first type of hallucination, and is exactly like illusion in all that takes place after the excitation is once produced in the optic nerve ; but differs from illusion in the source of the physical stimulus which gives rise to this excitation. Fifth : We may have the cerebral process ex- actly like the cerebral process in perception, illu- sion, and the first type of hallucination ; and yet it may be due to nothing before the eye or in the eye itself, but to the nature of the blood-supply which the feverish or intoxicated or otherwise 64 PRACTICAL IDEALISM abnormal system sends to this brain-centre. This is hallucination of the second type, or centrally initiated hallucination. Sixth : In response to a suggestion from another who has first put our powers of resistance and contradiction into temporary abeyance, and then says emphatically, " See that man there," the cerebral activities which correspond to the vision of a man may be set into vigorous activity, and con- sequently give rise to the same experience that we ordinarily have when these same centres are ex- cited by the ordinary process of sense-perception. This is hypnotism. And if, instead of being told to see a man, we are told we are well, and at the same time feel the reassuring touch of a firm hand and a strong personality, we get one of the numerous applications of the essential principle of hypnotism which underlies the various forms of mental healing. Seventh : We may deliberately arouse the dor- mant centres, whose activity corresponds to the vision of a man, by trying to think of him ; and thus call the vision of him before our mind. This, done in the waking state, and when we know what we are doing, is imagination. Eighth : When asleep these processes which have previously been brought into activity in per- ception, or imagination, or memory, may keep up their activity, and, inasmuch as there is little or THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 6$ nothing to compete with them for our attention, may come to occupy for the time our entire con- sciousness, in which case we shall have the vision of a man before the mind's eye. This, of course, is dreaming. Of these eight ways, two — perception and mem- ory — give us facts; the other six — illusion, the two types of hallucination, hypnotism, imagination, and dreams — give us fictions. How do we know whether a given experience is a perception or an illusion ? By what test shall we discriminate fact from fancy ? This question has kept rising up to disturb our equanimity at every turn. And Descartes raised it in thorough and systematic fashion, once for all. We have kept pushing it farther and farther along ; but have not answered it. We have described perception and memory ; we have described illusion, hallucination, hypnotism, imagination, and dream. We can de- scribe either when we have it ; but how shall we know which we have in any given case .'' Alas ! Experience does not come to us with the appro- priate label pasted upon it. For ordinary purposes we have three rough and ready tests. First : The strong, pungent excitation is due to sense; the weaker, vaguer image is due to imagination. The hard, sharp, clear outline is fact; the dim, shad- owy, confused impression is fancy. The second practical test is the witness of different senses. If 66 PRACTICAL IDEALISM we can see the object which we seem to hear, if we can go up and touch the thing we seem to see, then waking illusion is ruled out, though hallucina- tion, hypnotism, and dreaming is still a possible in- terpretation. The third practical test is the testi- mony of our fellows. If they see and hear and touch and handle the same thing that we do, and their testimony corroborates our own experience, then, although dreaming or hypnotism might pro- duce in us the idea that these other persons testify to having the same ideas that we have, still we are practically sure that we are in contact with objec- tive facts. These rough tests do well enough for everyday, practical affairs ; but they fail us in the exceptional cases where alone a test is really needed. The ultimate test is to be sought in worlds we have not yet explored. We may, however, intimate by way of anticipation what such a test must be. Reality must be self-consistent. If a fact be a real fact, it must take its place in a system of things, side by side with all the other facts we know. The working out of this principle of self-consistency takes us into the world of science ; and introduces us to logic, which is the law of science. Experience, whether of one sense or of many, whether of myself or of my fellow-men, simply tells me what appears to me or to them. There is no necessity, and therefore no ultimate cer- THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 6/ tainty about it. Science with its conception of a coherent system of experience, logic with its postulate of the self-consistency of knowledge, is the final arbiter between the rival pretensions of sense-perception and the various forms of illusion which we have been considering. The world of association is by its very nature so liable to all sorts of deception and illusion, that it can never take us beyond the sphere of the usual and the probable, into the realm of necessity and univer- sality. CHAPTER III THE WORLD OF SCIENCE The " big, blooming, buzzing confusion " with which we started is for the most part an un- resolved confusion still. We have, to be sure, — thanks to our two strings of space and time, — tied up a few groups of qualities into distinct things, and a few series of sequences into distinct events, which we recognize when we see them. Associa- tion again has grouped these things and events into larger wholes, on whose constancy and uni- formity we are accustomed to rely. Still, the discovery that the greater part of the experience we tie up together in perception and association comes from within, rather than from without, and our consequent liability to mistake subjective con- tributions for objective data, has greatly shaken our faith in the reality of these perceptions and associations. Unless we can discover a higher unity and a stronger bond than coexistence in space, sequence in time, and association in our experience, we shall not gain the freedom of the mind and the orderliness of the world of which we are in search. Is there such a higher unity ? Is 68 THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 69 there such a stronger bond ? Can we put things and events together in our minds in ways in which they must stand together in all other minds and must hold together in the external world itself? Can we be as sure of facts which we do not immediately perceive, as we should be if they were actually presented in immediate sensation ? These are the problems of science, vital and practical in themselves, and of momentous theoretical and spiritual significance. To answer them we must leave the pleasant and fertile fields of psychology, where we have been lingering hitherto, for the higher altitudes and thinner air of the more for- bidding realm of logic.^ Science begins when we pass from mere percep- tion of facts as they flow by us on the ceaseless stream of sensation, or flit across our pathway on the light wings of fantasy, to precise and accurate 'The best books on logic for the general reader are Jevons' " Elementary Lessons in Logic," which presents the traditional forms and terminology; Hibben's "Inductive Logic," which shows by the aid of abundant modern illustrations the methods and principles on which scientific investigations proceed and scientific conclusions rest; and Bernard Bosanquet's " Essentials of Logic," which sets forth with great clearness and force the main thesis which this book is trying to establish, — that the world in which we live is not a ready-made world, but an affair of our own con- struction. For more fundamental and exhaustive discussions of the subject the reader is referred to the Logics of Sigwart, Bradley, and Bosanquet, Jevons' " Principles of Science," and Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," with its numerous commentaries of which "The Critical Philosophy of Kant," by Edward Caird, is the best. JO PRACTICAL IDEALISM observation. Observation, viewed from the stand- point of psychology, is attention. In observation we concentrate attention on a single feature of the vast mass of phenomena which sensation brings ; we watch for its recurrence, and carefully note its antecedents, concomitants, and consequences in each recurring case. The scientist repeats his observation many times, to make sure that it is coloured by no tempo- rary phase of his sensibility. He has others note the same or similar facts, to make sure that the thing he perceives is not affected by his personal equation. Through such careful observation the scientist, while he never gets at facts apart from the reaction of his own perceptive powers, or the perceptive powers of others, upon the data pre- sented, — which would be an impossibility, a con- tradiction in terms, — does get facts as they present themselves to the normal perceptive powers of all men. Observation, however, is only the beginning of science. It is a slow process. For even the most careful observation deals with a great mass of irrelevant matter from which it has to fish out the thing it is after as it comes along. The next great step is experiment. Experiment is observa- tion under artificial circumstances. Experiment is the observation of phenomena, which have been brought together on purpose to exemplify the THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 71 particular critical point which is the object of inquiry. In experiment we can multiply instances ; control the time and manner of their appearance ; disentangle essential from non-essential features ; and vary particular conditions in such ways as to show the varying results which accompany the variation of these conditions. Experiment involves, consciously or uncon- sciously, hypothesis. An hypothesis is a work of imagination. It undertakes to say how things will look before we have seen them ; to tell us how things are related to each other, although we have before us only the unrelated elements. Thus, in the making of hypotheses, we assume that things stand to each other in precise and definite relations. What those relations are, we do not know at this stage of the inquiry. But that there are such re- lations, so much, at least, is involved in every hypothesis we make and every experiment we perform. There is just one way in which a set of facts will hang together. Imagination, in the form of hypothesis, tells us what that one way ma:y be. In the words of Professor Tyndall, in his address on the Scientific Use of the Imagination, "Bounded and conditioned by co-operant Reason, imagination becom es the mightiest instrument of the physical discove rer, and by this power we can Hghten the darkness that surroun ds the world of the senses. In fact, without this power, our knowledge of 72 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistences and sequences. We should still believe in the succession of day and night, of summer and win- ter ; but the so ul of Force would be dislodged from our universe ; causal relations would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the parts of Nature to an organic whole." In observation and experiment we have kept close to sense-perception. Or if we have ventured beyond, it has been in the merely tentative way of pure hypothesis. Now, neither sense alone, nor sense and association together, can give science. Both in the world of sense-perception and in the world of association we have failed to find any- thing universal, necessary, systematic. We have had facts and fancies in abundance ; but nothing to hold them together in bonds of rational unity ; in other words, no logic, and therefore no science. Aristotle has stated the fundamental defect of sense-perception, once for all. " Nor is it possible to obtain scientific knowledge by way of sense- perception. For even if sense-perception reveals a certain character in its object, yet we necessarily perceive this, here, and now. The universal, which is throughout all, it is impossible to perceive, for it is not a this-now. If it had been, it would not have been universal, for what is always and every- where we call universal. Since, then, scientific demonstration is universal, and such elements it is THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 73 impossible to perceive by sense, it is plain that we cannot obtain scientific knowledge by way of sense. But it is clear that even if we had been able to per- ceive by sense {e.g. by measurement) that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, we should still have had to search for a demonstra- tion, and should not, as some say, have known it scientifically without one ; for we necessarily per- ceive in particular cases only, but science comes by knowing the universal. Wherefore, if we could have been on the moon, and seen the earth coming between it and the sun, we should not by that mere perception have known the cause of the eclipse. Not but what, by seeing this frequently happen, we should have grasped the universal, and obtained a demonstration ; for the universal becomes evident out of a plurality of particulars, and the universal is valuable because it reveals the cause." Before these facts, which observation and ex- periment gather, can serve the purpose of science, they must be sorted and classified. This sorting too must go deeper than surface appearances. Not merely the things that are found together and look alike, but qualities which are identical must be put in the same class. This involves pulling things to pieces, or analysis. This power to analyze a complex situation into its constituent elements, and then to select the one element which is essential to our purpose, and make 74 PRACTICAL IDEALISM that Stand for the whole, is the essence of reason- ing. The brute and the unreflecting man reason from wholes to wholes. The horse turns into the stable where it has been well fed, with the confident expectation that it will be fed well there again. The man, before he expects good fare at a hotel where previously he has been well entertained, asks whether it is under the same management. If the horse is disappointed, it is an ultimate, inex- plicable fact. If the man fares poorly, he wants to know the reason why. That is, he breaks the whole situation up into its constituent elements, and lays the blame on the proprietor, the cook, or the waiter. This is the great difference between animals and men. Paulsen ^ remarks, " As a rule, the behaviour of animals and the thoughts by which they are guided differ from human conduct in this, that animals react upon complex situations or processes with stereotyped inferences and acts. Human thought, and consequently human conduct, is more flexible : it analyzes the phenomenon into its essential factors and accidental circumstances, and hence separates real and constant sequences from accidental and transitory combinations." ^ Assuming now that our ideas have been made ^ " Introduction to Philosophy." Translated by Frank Thilly, page 411. 2 For a clear and readable account of the process of practical reasoning see James' " Psychology : Briefer Course," Chapter xxii. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 75 perfectly clear and distinct by careful observation, ingenious experiment, and correct analysis, are we competent to draw from the results of our observations, as they are stored up in these ideas, a valid inference ? An inference is a judgment which affirms a fact on the ground of its relation to a concept. Have we any right to pass from concept to fact, from thought to things ? That we do thus pass from thought to thing, from concept to case, everybody admits. As to the grounds on which the process rests, and the degree of certainty attained, there is wide differ- ence of opinion. The empirical school, the school of Hume and Mill, representing what is known as the " Theory of the Association of Ideas," or the " Philosophy of Experience," undertake to base the validity of inference on the mere fact of mental habit, or association in our experience, supported by the assumption to which this habitual association gives rise, that the course of Nature is uniform. Now unquestionably a large class of our infer- ences rest on no better basis than that. For practical purposes this immense probability of the continued uniformity of Nature amounts to all the certainty we need. The expectation of the child, that fire will burn his hand if he touches it ; the expectation of the savage, that the sun will rise to-morrow as it has on all previous days ; the ex- 76 PRACTICAL IDEALISM pectation of the mason, that his mortar will harden as it always has heretofore, — these are all inferences based on mental habit and the tacit assumption of the uniformity of nature. Reasoning of this nature is simply an extension of the principle involved in sense-perception. It accepts association as the sole and ultimate bond between ideas. A law which rests on this basis alone is called an empiri- cal law. We find that it is true in many cases ; but can give no reason why it must be so. A logical reason, a scientific law, on the con- trary, rests on the mediation of a concept which binds the two terms of the proposition together as parts of a rational whole. For instance, the belief of the scientist, that heat tends to expand substances, does not rest on the mere fact that heat has been seen to expand substances in multitudes of cases. Heat to him is a mode of molecular motion. The hotter a thing becomes, the more motion there must be among its molecules. For increased heat is increased molecular motion. But increased molec- ular motion involves certain other phenomena. If these molecules move more rapidly, they strike each other harder, and tend to drive each other farther apart. They strike the medium which surrounds them harder, and tend to push farther out into it. But this tendency to drive the molecules farther apart, and to push those on the outside farther out into the surrounding space, — this is what we mean THE WORLD OF SCIENCE "jy by tendency to expand. Therefore heat and ten- dency to expansion are parts of one inseparable pro- cess. They are bound up together in the unity of the concept of molecular motion. What the scientist means by heat is inseparable from what we all mean by tendency to expansion. It is impossible to think of the one without thinking of the other, provided you employ the concept of molecular motion as the essential characteristic of what heat is. Heat and the tendency to expansion, therefore, do not merely hang together in the habit of our minds, as the result of numerous ex- periences. They are bound together, in the very structure of our minds, by the strong cement of a concept common to both. We cannot think of heat, in terms of the scientific conception of heat, without at the same time, and as an essential ele- ment of the same thought, thinking of a tendency to expansion. Have we then a universal law that all substances expand under the influence of heat .-" Not quite. As a matter of observation, all gases obey that law ; but a few solids and liquids do not. For instance, a few substances which have the queer property of being cooled by compression, of which iodide of silver is one, contract with rise of temperature. If we suspend by means of a soft rubber tube a weight heavy enough to stretch the tube consider- ably, and then heat the tube by means of a Bunsen 78 PRACTICAL IDEALISM flame, the tube contracts and lifts the weight. Water turns into ice with increase of volume, while heat is flowing out from the water. In the face of these exceptions, what becomes of our law, that substances tend to increase under the influence of heat ? It stands unshaken. The words "tend" and "tendency "save it from destruc- tion. In these apparent exceptions the tendency to expand has been counteracted by the molecular attractions, or chemical changes, in the molecules ; and the contraction of the total substance repre- sents the excess of these molecular attractions over the molecular activities which are insepa- rable from the concept of heat. Indeed, it is the peculiar glory of a logical as distinct from an empirical law, that it can meet and include ex- ceptions without being overthrown by them. In such cases the exception is not to the logical iden- tity which holds the terms of the proposition together. The exception is due to the fact that the concrete phenomenon, though appearing simple to the casual observer, is really complex ; and in- cludes, side by side within itself, the working of the law which the logical proposition affirms, and the working of other laws, which in the particular case happen to be more effective than the law under consideration ; and so give a total result which to the superficial observer seems to contradict it. In the case of heat and expansion the possibility THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 79 of exception was due to no defect in our process of reasoning, but to the complexity of the phenome- non, which allowed other forces than that under consideration to come into play. In order to pass from a logical law, which is true in itself, but may admit of exceptions when applied to concrete phe- nomena, to a law which is absolutely and uni- versally and necessarily true, we have simply to eliminate the element of complexity, which in the previous case came in to vitiate the universality of our proposition, that all substances expand under the influence of heat. Such abstraction from all complexity of content, such pure simplicity, we get in mathematics ; and consequently there we get ab- solute, universal, and necessary truth. The propo- sition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles is true in just the same way that it is true that heat tends to expand substances. You cannot think of heat in scientific terms with- out thinking of the tendency to expansion as an element in the total conception. So you cannot think out accurately in scientific terms what you mean by a triangle, without having to include among its properties the equality of its three angles to two right angles. A figure which did not have its three angles equal to two right angles would not be a triangle ; just as a body whose particles were not hitting each other harder and tending to drive each other farther apart, and so tending to 8o PRACTICAL IDEALISM occupy more space, would not be increasing in heat. But there is this difference between the two cases. Into our conception of a heated substance other elements besides that of rapidity and force of molecular motion may enter ; and consequently give a result different from that which this element alone would give. Hence the possibility of ex- ception, even to a logical law, when applied to the infinite complexity of physical phenomena. The introduction of new elements gives results which counteract, while they do not contradict the law with which we start. Chemical affinity produces re- sults contrary to those which gravitation acting alone produces. The root-hair of the plant, in turn, breaks up the combinations which chemical affinity forms. The animal transforms the tissues of the plant to serve physiological functions of its own. And the mind and will of man transform the substance and modify the action of his own organs in ways which physics, chemistry, and physiology together cannot account for. In mathematics, on the other hand, no such com- plication can enter. The mathematical concept is by definition pure form, abstracted from all texture and content. Nothing can enter into our concep- tion of a triangle, which by any possibility can affect its nature, or make it possible for its three angles to be more or less than two right angles. The mathematical concept is a closed system, into THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 8l which no disturbing element can enter. Therefore the propositions of mathematics are absolutely, universally, and necessarily true. The terms of a mathematical proposition stand related to each other in bonds of such rational and inseparable systematic connection, that where the one is the other must be. You cannot pull them apart with- out separating a thing from itself ; without cutting the universe of truth into two repugnant and unre- lated halves ; without vivisecting your own intel- ligence. The validity of all reasoning ultimately rests on the power of the mind to form and hold fast per- manent conceptions. In the words of Professor James.i " Each act of conception results from our attention's having singled out some one part of the mass of matter-for-thought which the world presents, and from our holding fast to it without confusion. Each conception thus eternally re- mains what it is, and never can become another. This sense of sameness is the very keel and back- bone of our consciousness. The mind can always intend, and knows when it intends, to think the same." Hence, what is once true is always true of that same conception. Mathematical reason- ing is more certain than physical or sociologi- cal reasoning, simply because by virtue of its formal nature we can always be sure that in 1 " Psychology : Briefer Course," Chapter xiv. G 82 PRACTICAL IDEALISM mathematics we are dealing with the same, and nothing but the same, conception with which we started out. This principle of sameness or iden- tity is what underlies the so-called laws of thought and the principles of the syllogism. The three primary laws of thought are : 1. The Law of Identity. Whatever is, is. 2. The Law of Contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be. 3. The Law of Excluded Middle. Everything must either be or not be. On these laws rest the two fundamental princi- ples of the syllogism : (i.) Two terms agreeing with one and the same third term agree with each other. (2.) Two terms, of which one agrees and the other does not agree with one and the same third term, do not agree with each other. When a conclusion conforms to these laws and principles it is in form absolutely and universally true. The only uncertainty that can pertain to such a proposition is the uncertainty whether the facts have been accurately observed and the terms correctly defined. The tendency of modern logic is to go behind these formal laws and princi- ples and affirm the great fundamental law or prin- ciple on which they all rest. That fundamental principle is that the world is a self-consistent, ^ Jevons' " Elementary Lessons in Logic," Lesson xiv. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 83 rational whole, and consequently everything in it has definite and precise relations to everything else. Hence each part of the world, each fact and concept, has relations to other facts and con- cepts which together with it make up a self-consist- ent whole. Hence if we know two things which necessarily involve a third thing, we know the third thing just as surely as we know the first two. In the language of Professor Hibben,i "Our knowledge is capable of arrangement in a self-con- sistent and harmonious system, and which, more- over, in its content and form faithfully represents objective reality. We find, therefore, that in the focus of consciousness at any one time, whether in the sphere of presentation or in the region of repre- sentative or the conceptual processes, whatever is given carries with it always certain implications, and therefore certain necessary relations. To un- fold any data in all their manifold implications is the process of inference. Therefore a part being given, we supply in our minds other parts, or the whole to which the part must necessarily belong. To achieve this, with logical warrant, our know- ledge of the part must be adequate to the extent that we know that the element under considera- tion cannot be complete in itself, but must be sup- plemented by its appropriate related elements which with it go to make up the complete system. 1 " Inductive Logic," Chapter i. 84 PRACTICAL IDEALISM We infer the nature of the flower not yet in bud by the sprouting leaf. The one necessitates the other by virtue of their common inherence in the same plant system. Columbus, noting the sea- weed and birds and the drift of the sea, inferred a shore beyond, to which he was constrained by the necessities of thought to refer them. It is said of Cuvier that he was able to reconstruct part for part the entire frame and organism of an ani- mal whose fossil tooth alone formed the original datum. He knew the system to which it must have belonged and to which it alone could possibly be referred." Bosanquet likewise bases the valid- ity of inference upon this recognition of the sys- tem in which the parts or members of necessity inhere. " System is a group of relations, or prop- erties, or things, so held together by a common nature that you can judge from some of them what the others must be." From this point of view which regards infer- ence as "interpreting the implications of the system to which the given in consciousness be- longs," it is easy to see the difference between induction and deduction. This has been so well stated by Professor Hibben,i that I quote him again at length. "When the system can be considered as a whole, and is apprehended in its entirety, then it may become the ground upon 1 " Inductive Logic," Chapter ii. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 85 which the inference is based, resulting in unfold- ing the necessary nature or relations of any of the parts. The procedure in such a case is from the nature of the whole system to the nature of the several parts and their existent relations, and this is deductive in its essential features. On the other hand, when we know the various parts and proceed from them as data to construct the system which their known nature and relations necessitate, it is induction, or procedure from elementary parts to the whole thus necessitated. From a knowledge of the planetary system, we can infer the necessary positions of sun, moon, and earth at any required time, as, for instance, in the calculation of an eclipse. This is deduction. But when we begin with investigating the several movements of the different planets, and from them infer the necessary nature of the system of which they are parts, we have the process of induction. Such processes we see must be com- plementary and mutually dependent." According to Sigwart, " The logical justification of the inductive process rests upon the fact that it is an inevitable postulate of our effort after know- ledge that the given is necessary, and can be known as proceeding from its grounds according to universal laws." According to Bosanquet this postulate of knowledge, which is the basis of inference, is that " the universe is a rational sys- 86 PRACTICAL IDEALISM tem, taking rational to mean not only that it can be known by intelligence, but that it can be known and handled by our intelligence." Pro- fessor Hibben,^ from whose pages I have taken the above definitions, gives his own definition of this postulate as follows : " That our knowledge must be consistent throughout with itself, part to part, and parts to whole, and that the world for us is the world as constructed by our know- ledge. Whatever is given in consciousness must belong, therefore, in the one place where it appro- priately and necessarily belongs. Here also there must be a place for everything, and everything in its place. Whenever a concrete instance is present in consciousness, its existence must be considered as necessitated by some ante- cedent which can satisfactorily explain it, and which can at the same time be appropriately adjusted to the whole of our knowledge in inter- preting it." This interdependence of all phenomena in a single, rational system, of which the elements may be singled out and held fast in permanent con- cepts, and in which the relations between these concepts may be declared in universal laws, is what we mean by causation. Short of this whole interdependent system it is impossible to stop in the attempt to assign the specific cause of any ^ " Inductive Logic," Chapter iii. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 8/ specific effect. This is happily illustrated in an example given by Bosanquet.^ "We start, no doubt, by thinking of a cause as a real event in time, the priority of which is the condition of another event, the effect. Pull the trigger — cause — and the gun goes off — effect. The moment we look closer at it, we see that this will not do. Pull the trigger .' — yes, but the cartridge must be in its place, the striker must be straight, the cap must be in order, the powder must be dry and chemically fit, and so on, till it becomes pretty clear that the cause is a system of circumstances which include the effect. But then our troubles are not ended. Only the essential and invariable conditions enter into the cause, if the cause is invariable. This begins to cut away the particu- lar circumstances of the case. You need not use the trigger, nor even the cap ; you may ignite powder in many ways. You may have many kinds of explosives. All that is essential is to have an explosion of a certain force and not too great rapidity. Then you will get this paradox. What is merely essential to the effect is always something less than any combination of real 'things' which will produce the effect, because every real thing has many properties irrelevant to this particular effect. So, if the cause means some- thing real, as a material object is real, it cannot 1 "Essentials of Logic," page 164. 88 PRACTICAL IDEALISM be invariable and essential. We can only escape this by identifying both cause and reason with the complete ground, that is, the nature of a sys- tem of reality within which the cause and effect both lie." Still, while in the ultimate analysis we cannot stop short with any particular finite cause for any particular phenomenon, it is useful for practical purposes to treat certain invariable antecedents as proximate causes, and to have reliable methods for determining such causes, in advance of our ability to apprehend the systematic relations in which the phenomena stand, and to deduce our conclusions therefrom. For this purpose, and as a preliminary stage on the way to the comprehen- sion of the system to which the phenomena belong, the scientist has frequent occasion to avail himself of the well-known methods of induction, formulated by John Stuart Mill. The method of agreement depends on the principle that, " If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the cir- cumstance in which alone all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon." The Method of Difference proceeds on the principle that, "If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 89 former, the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an in- dispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon." The principle of the Joint Method is, " If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur have nothing in common, save the absence of that cir- cumstance, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances always or invariably differ is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause of the phenomenon." The Method of Residues is, " Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents." The Method of Concomitant Variations is, "Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner, whenever another phenomenon varies in some par- ticular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation." By the application of these methods of induc- tion ; by apprehension of the system of relations which the facts gathered by induction involve, and require for their explanation ; and by deduction in strict accord with the laws of thought, we get truths of physical and social science which are of go PRACTICAL IDEALISM objective and universal validity. These sciences do not tell us, like the laws of mathematics, that things must have been and always must continue to be as we know they are. They depend upon experience for their facts, and for the first sug- gestion of the nature of the system to which the facts belong. They tell us, however, that within the system of things which experience presents, and the only system of which we have any know- ledge, and with which we have any practical concern, things not only are but must be of a certain nature. Whether or not there might be a different world from that in which we live, science does not undertake to say. But it does tell us that some elements of this actual world can- not exist apart from other elements of it ; and that if we have some of these elements, we must also have such others as are inseparable from those we have. With this single qualification, physical and moral and social science gives laws which are as necessary and universal as the laws of mathe- matics. Science, and logic which is the formulation of the method of science, proceeds on the postulate and rests its conclusions on the conviction that the world is not an aggregate of unrelated atoms, but an organism of rationally related members. The universe is like the body of an animal, not like a heap of sand. Inference is valid, science is certain, THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 91 law is reliable just so far as it is based first of all on facts of sense-perception ; and, second, on such a clear and comprehensive conception of the system of things to which those facts belong, that out of perceived facts and the known system, together, the unperceived facts which belong with the per- ceived facts in the unity of the system may be predicted. As illustrations of this process of inference by which we pass from what is known to what was previously unknown or unrecognized, let us take two examples : the first, a rather abstract specula- tive discussion of ethical principles by the great master of ancient dialectic ; the other, a scientific generalization of innumerable facts by the fore- most of modern scientists. Both are striving to establish views which had previously been un- recognized, and which their contemporaries were not predisposed to accept. Socrates was the first to make explicit use of the process of inference. He confined it to the discussion of ethical questions. His method was that of question and answer. There is no better way to bring out the essential features of the process than to take one of his ethical problems and see how he handled it. In the Gorgias Plato represents Socrates as conversing with Polus, a conceited young upstart, who advocates the Sophis- tic doctrine that it is all right to do wrong, pro- 92 PRACTICAL IDEALISM vided you don't get punished. Socrates draws out the statement of this position in the most emphatic and uncompromising form, and then a few pages later compels the young fellow in spite of him- self to profess allegiance to exactly the opposite doctrine. Let us see how he does it. As usual, he starts with a concrete case. I will give Plato's words, slightly condensed.^ " Polus. You see, I presume, that Archelaus, the son of Perdiccas, is now the ruler of Macedonia .■' Socrates.. At any rate I hear that he is. Pol. And do you think that he is happy or miserable .'' Soc. I cannot say, Polus, for I have never had any acquaintance with him. Pol. And cannot you tell at once, and without having any acquaintance with him, whether a man is happy "i Soc. Indeed, I cannot. Pol. Then clearly, Socrates, you would say that you did not even know whether the great king was a happy man .? Soc. And I should say the truth ; for I do not know how he stands in the matter of education and justice. Pol. What ! and does all happiness consist in this > ' Plato : " Gorgias," Jowett's translation, 470-475. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 93 Soc. Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine ; the men and women who are gentle and good are also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and the evil are miserable. Pol. Then, according to your doctrine, the said Archelaus is miserable ? Soc. Yes, my friend ; if he is wicked, he is. Pol. I cannot deny that he is wicked, for he had no title at all to the throne which he now occupies, as he was only the son of a woman who was the slave of Alcetas, the brother of Perdiccas, and therefore in strict right he was the slave of Alcetas himself; and, if he had meant to do rightly, would have remained his slave, and then, according to your doctrine, he would have been happy ; but now he is unspeakably miserable, for he has been guilty of the greatest crimes. In the first place, he invited his uncle and master Alcetas to come to him, under the pretence that he would restore to him the throne which Perdiccas had usurped; and, after entertaining him and his son Alexander, who was his cousin and nearly of an age with him, and making them drunk, he threw them into a wagon and carried them off by night, and slew them, and got both of them out of the way ; and when he had done all this wickedness, he never discovered that he was the most miser- able of all men, and was very far from repenting. I will tell you how he showed his remorse. He 94 PRACTICAL IDEALISM had a young brother of seven years old, who was the legitimate son of Perdiccas. This was the heir to whom of right the kingdom belonged ; but he had no mind to be happy by bringing him up as he ought and restoring him to the kingdom ; and, not long after this, he threw him into a well and drowned him, and declared to his mother, Cleo- patra, that he had fallen in while running after a goose and had been killed. And now, as he is the greatest criminal in all Macedonia, he may be supposed to be the most miserable and not the happiest ; and I daresay that his misery would not be desired by any Athenian, and by you, least of all, certainly not : he is the last of the Mace- donians whose lot you would choose. Soc. I praise you at first, Polus, for being a rhetorician rather than a reasoner. But, my good friend, where is the refutation .' I certainly do not admit a word that you have been saying. Pol. That is because you won't, for you surely must think as I do. Soc. Not so, my simple friend ; but because you will refute me in the way which rhetoricians fancy to be refutation in courts of law. For there the one party think that they refute the other when they bring forward a number of witnesses of good repute in proof of their allegations, and their ad- versary has only a single one, or none at all. But this kind of proof is of no value where truth is THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 95 the aim. And now I know that nearly every one, Athenian as well as stranger, will be on your side in this argument ; if you like to bring witnesses in disproof of my statement, you may summon, if you will, the whole house of Pericles, or any other great Athenian family whom you choose : they will all agree with you. I only am left alone and cannot agree, for you do not convince me, you only produce many false witnesses against me, in the hope of depriving me of my inheritance, which is the truth. But I consider that I shall have proved nothing, unless I make you the one will- ing witness of my words ; neither will you, unless you have made me as the one witness of yours — no matter about the rest of the world. For there are two ways of refutation : one which is yours and that of the world in general ; but mine is of another sort, and therefore I will begin by asking you about this very point. Do you not think that a man who is unjust and is doing in- justice can be happy, seeing that you think Arche- laus unjust and yet happy.? Am I not right in supposing that to be your meaning.' (Observe that here Socrates turns from the particular case to the universal — "a man who is unjust") Pol. Quite right. Soc. Now the point of difference between us is this, is it not .' I was saying that to do, is worse than to suffer injustice.? - 96 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Pol. Exactly. Soc. And you said the opposite ? Pol. Yes. Soc. I said, also, that the wicked are miserable, and this again you denied .-' Pol. Yes, I did, and no mistake. Soc. But that was only your opinion, Polus .' Pol. Yes, and I am surely right. Do you not think, Socrates, that you have been sufficiently refuted when you say that which no human being will allow .'' Ask the company. Soc. O, Polus, if, as I was saying, you have no better argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you make a trial of the sort of proof which, as. I think, ought to be given; for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of my words, and he is the person with whom I am arguing ; his suffrage I know how to take ; but with the many I have nothing to do, and do not even address myself to them. May I ask, then, whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to the proof.' For I certainly think that I, and you, and every man do really believe that to do is a greater evil than to suffer in- justice. Pol. And I should say that neither I, nor any man believes this ; would you yourself, for exam- ple, suffer rather than do injustice .' Soc. Yes, and you, too ; I and any man would. THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 97 Pol. Quite the reverse ; neither you, nor I, nor any man. Soc. But will you answer ? Pol. Certainly, I will, for I am curious to hear what you are going to say. Soc. Tell me, then, and you will know, and let us suppose that I am beginning at the beginning ; which of the two, Polus, in your opinion, is the worst — to do injustice or to suffer? (Thus far we have had merely a clear statement of the universal proposition, bringing out sharply the point at issue. Now Socrates will begin to develop the content and meaning of the term "injustice." Not until the two agree as to what the precise and universal and constant character- istic of injustice is, will they be in a position to agree as to whether it is better to do or to suffer injustice. Injustice has so many aspects that it is useless to discuss it as an unresolved whole. He will analyze it, and deal with what he regards as its essential element. Let us watch him as he sticks in his bill, and pulls out the one abstract, universal quality on which the whole discussion is to turn.) Polus having repeated his assertion, " I should say that suffering was worst," Socrates now puts the crucial question. Soc. And which is the greater disgrace 1 An- swer. 98 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Pol. To do. (Socrates has got him on his hook. He starts to pull him in at once, but Polus is not ready to come, so he lets him play with it awhile, and in the meantime fastens it more securely in his mouth.) Soc. And the greater disgrace is the greater evil .' Pol. Certainly not. (Socrates has not yet reached a term sufficiently abstract and universal to compel agreement. He and Polus appear to differ as sharply about the term "disgrace," as they did about the term "injustice." So he will proceed to analyze this term "disgrace," and this time he employs the dilemma, which, by breaking a term up into mutually exclusive parts, is bound to pin his opponent down to something from which he cannot escape. By this time Polus realizes that he is in a precarious situation, and is likely to be wary. So the shrewd old angler, Socrates, conceals the hook under the opposite of that term which he really wishes to analyze. Conse- quently we have an apparent, though not a real digression. Instead of disgrace and deformity, it is the opposite — beauty — which is the next topic of inquiry.) Soc. And what do you say to this .^ When you speak of beautiful things, as, for example, bodies, colors, figures, sounds, institutions, do you not call them beautiful in reference to some standard .' THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 99 Bodies, for example, are beautiful in proportion as they are useful, or as the sight of them gives pleasure to the spectators : can you give any other account of personal beauty ? Pol. I cannot, Socrates, and I very much approve of your measuring beauty by the standard of pleasure and utility. (Having thus gained his hearty assent to the proposition about beauty, he now turns to the opposite, which he was after all the time.) Soc. And deformity, or disgrace, may be equally measured by the opposite standard of pain or evil } Pol. Certainly. Soc. Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds the other in beauty, the excess is to be measured in one or both of these, that is to say, in pleasure or good, or both. Pol. Very true. Soc. And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in deformity or disgrace, exceeds either in pain or evil, — does not that follow .-' Pol. Yes. (Now Socrates begins to wind up his reel and pull the unsuspecting Polus in.) Soc. But then, again, what was that observation which you just now made about doing and suffer- ing wrong .■• Did you not say that suffering wrong was more evil, and doing wrong more disgraceful ? Pol. I did say that. Soc. Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful lOO PRACTICAL IDEALISM than suffering, the more disgraceful must be more painful, and exceed in pain or in evil, or both : is not that the necessary inference ? (Note the word "necessary" coming in here. It is now no ques- tion of opinion, or majority vote.) Pol. Of course. Soc. First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in pais. Do the injurers suffer more than the injured.' Pol. No, Socrates ; certainly not that. Soc. Then do they not exceed in pain ? Pol. No. Soc. But if not in pain, then not in both .' Pol. Certainly not. Soc. Then they can only exceed in the other. Pol. Yes. (Now Socrates begins to pull him out of the water. The next answer will land him high and dry on the shore ; and it will only remain to make him realize where he is.) Soc. That is to say in evil .' Pol. True. Soc. Then doing injustice, having an excess of evil, will be a greater evil than suffering injustice .'' Pol. Clearly. Soc. But have not you and the world already agreed that to do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer .■• Pol Yes. Soc. And that is now discovered to be more evil? THE WORLD OF SCIENCE lOI Pol. True. Soc. And would you prefer a greater evil or a greater disgrace to a less one ? Answer, Polus, and fear not, for you will come to no harm if you nobly give yourself to the healing power of the argument, which is a sort of physician, and either say " Yes " or " No " to me. Pol. I should say not. Soc. Would any other man .? Pol. Not according to this way of putting the case, Socrates. Soc. Then I said truly, Polus, that neither you nor I nor any man would rather do than suffer injustice, for to do injustice is the greater evil of the two. Pol. That is true. Soc. Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my friend ? You deemed Archelaus happy, because he was a very great criminal and unpunished ; I, on the other hand, maintained that the doer of injus- tice, whether Archelaus or any other, is more mis- erable than the sufferer — was not that what I said.' Pol Yes. Soc. And that has been proved to be true.' Pol. Certainly." In this brief dialogue the whole principle of inference is involved. Injustice is not an isolated fact, which one man can see in one light and 102 PRACTICAL IDEALISM another in another. Injustice is an element in a system of ethical relationships, and has various con- stant and universal characteristics. One of these constant, universal characteristics is deformity or disgrace. Disgrace, again, is not an isolated fact, concerning which there may be two contradictory opinions held by two disputants. Disgrace has certain constant characteristics. It' is, as the opposite of beauty and honour, either painful or evil or both. Hence, siace it is more disgraceful to do than to suffer injustice, it must be either more painful or more evil, or both. But it is not more painful. Therefore it must be more evil. The doing of injustice is inseparable from the greater disgrace, and the greater disgrace is the greater evil. Therefore the doing of injustice is a greater evil than suffering it. Darwin's explanation of the origin of species by natural selection is a good example of scien- tific reasoning. Darwin was not the author of the idea that species originated through the gradual transformation of simpler, primitive forms. That idea was already present as a speculative hy- pothesis, and dates back to Aristotle, Empedocles, and in very crude form to Anaximander. Eras- mus Darwin, Goethe, and especially Lamarck had attempted to fill in the intervening gap between primitive and present forms ; but with only partial and fragmentary success. Lamarck attributed the THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 1 03 transformation to the crossing of previous species, to the influence of environment, and to the effects of use and disuse of organs. These principles, especially the last two, are true causes, and enter as elements into the theory of Darwin ; but stand- ing alone are inadequate to account for such extensive transformations. What the Greeks dimly foresaw ; what Goethe's poetic intuition perceived in the parts of the flower; what Lamarck antici- pated, but could not fully explain, Darwin con- clusively proved. And his proof consisted in showing the intermediate links which bind the present to the primitive forms in the unity of a coherent and consistent system. There are sev- eral of these links, — variation, artificial selec- tion, fecundity, struggle for existence, adaptation to environment, survival of the fittest, and the chain which all these links compose is natural selection. Let us consider the links of this chain in order. The first link is the fact that no two descendants of the same parents are quite alike. The minute differences between them are what he calls varia- tions. The second link is the fact that these variations may be inherited. The offspring of parents which have a given variation tend to reproduce the same variation in themselves, and to hand it down to their offspring. I04 PRACTICAL IDEALISM The third link is artificial selection. This link, however, is illustrative of the argument, not a feature of the process. By selecting the varia- tions which please him, and accumulating them through a series of generations, man develops from the same species diverse breeds of domestic animals and cultivated plants. For instance, the carrier, the tumbler, the turbit, the trumpeter, the fantail, have all been developed from the wild rock- pigeon by this process of artificial selection. The fourth link is the fact of enormous fecun- dity : the significance of which was suggested to Darwin by Malthus. Plants and animals tend to increase in a geometrical ratio. "Every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair." The fifth link is the struggle for existence. The means of subsistence are limited. In this struggle the many perish ; only a few survive. The sixth link is the survival of the fittest. Adaptation to the environment enables a few to survive, while the less adapted multitudes perish. And since the survivors alone can transmit their characteristics to offspring, only the most favorable variations are perpetuated. These six links taken together constitute the chain of natural selection which is merely a com- prehensive term for the total process by which THE WORLD OF SCIENCE I OS Nature, working through the forces of fecundity, variation and heredity, struggle and survival, in the reaction of organisms upon their environment, selects the best for preservation and perpetuation. The theory receives further corroboration from facts of morphology and embryology, which show that allied species, such as the gorilla and man, have the same fundamental plan of structure, and a complete correspondence of parts ; that man and the apes alike possess in a rudimentary form organs or parts which are present in the lower animals ; and that the foetus of the human child and of the ape go through the same stages of embryological development in which they present a recapitulation of the very process of evolution which, according to Darwin's theory, these species themselves have passed through on their way from the primordial forms to their present specific characteristics. Inasmuch as the theory of natural selection bridges this gap between primordial and present forms of plant and animal life ; inasmuch as it shows the whole history of plant and animal life as one continuous system ; inasmuch as by its aid we can see how each existing form stands related to coexisting and preceding forms, it has been accepted at least as a working hypothesis by all scientists of repute. There are indeed differences of opinion as to the extent of the influence of natural selection and the mode of its operation. I06 PRACTICAL IDEALISM But it harmonizes so many facts which otherwise would be left standing apart in helpless, reasonless isolation, and reduces them to so coherent and consistent a unity, that it has been accepted by the consensus of the competent as the law of all beings which live and reproduce in competition with each other in blind obedience to their natural impulses. Natural selection is the cause of exist- ing species in the sense which we have attributed to the term "cause"; that is, natural selection represents the group of forces and relations which are most immediately connected with the forms and functions of existing plants and animals. Darwin's doctrine of natural selection is at the same time an excellent illustration of the limita- tions of science. It does not offer any ultimate explanation of phenomena. Because, by the aid of such mechanical devices as the pulley and the inclined plane, we can lift a weight a given distance with a thousandth part of the force by applying it a thousand times as long, it does not follow that we could do the same work by applying no force whatever an infinite length of time. And because Darwin, by the device of natural selection, has showed that changes can be brought about by applying through thousands of generations very little purposive intelligence at any given point, it does not follow that by making the amount of time indefinite you can explain the total process without THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 1 07 any purposive intelligence whatsoever. How pri- mordial forms, environment, and tendency to vary came to be so related that out of their mutual re- lations, under the law of natural selection, there evolves a hierarchy of forms, having at its head man "crowned with glory and honour" is a question of philosophy, to which Darwin has given, and science alone can give, no satisfactory answer whatsoever. Darwin himself sometimes in words attributes this total process and tendency to "the Creator"; but the logic which betrays his more characteristic thought, when he speaks of variation as spontaneous and indefinite, inclines to rest the whole on chance. Now chance is merely another name for ignorance of the definite and subtle conditions which together constitute the cause. When we say that the throw of the dice, the turn of a wheel, or the deal of a pack of cards is due to chance, we really mean that these things are due to such secret and subtle and undiscover- able forces that we cannot apprehend them with sufficient definiteness to predict the result. If, however, we could know the original position of the dice in the bottom of the box; if we could know the force and direction of each impulse given to them in the process of shaking and throwing, we could from these data predict with absolute certainty every time precisely what figures would come out on top. I08 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Darwinism, therefore, contributes to philosophy the negative result of banishing special creation and external teleolegy. To the fundamental prob- lem, as to whether the universe is a product of blind mechanism or intelligent purpose; to the problem of immanent teleology, which is the only form of teleology seriously entertained by intelli- gent persons to-day, Darwinism contributes noth- ing whatsoever ; but leaves the question precisely where it found it. The alliance of Darwinism and materialism is entirely unwarranted, although Dar- win's disposition to regard variation as spontaneous and indefinite, a view in which the most competent naturalists have refused to follow him, pointed in that direction. The positive, scientific contribu- tion, and the negative, philosophical consequence of it, were great achievements. They have vastly widened and impregnably intrenched the legiti- mate field of science, making it extensive as the interrelation of objects and the sequence of events in space and time, and warning off from this broad field all metaphysical and theological intruders. It has enthroned evolution as the supreme formula under which particular sequences must be inter- preted and particular forms must be explained. Into the question of the ultimate nature of this process as a whole, and man's relation to it, and to its origin and outcome, its immanent law and its universal life, neither physical science in general, THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 109 nor Darwinism in particular, has any authoritative word to say. Still, although science answers not the ultimate philosophical problem, it does restate it ; it does, as we have seen, tell us that one seemingly simple answer cannot be accepted ; and in doing these things it also hints at what the nature of the answer must be. Science shows that all the sepa- rate departments of the world are held together by precise and invariable laws. It shows that these laws are universal as space ; enduring as time ; absolute and eternal as the mind whose concep- tions they are. Since Plato, it has been impossible to think consistently, without thinking that it is a greater evil to do wrong than to suffer wrong. Since Darwin, it has been impossible to think of the origin of species candidly and intelligently, without thinking of natural selection as an element in their development. Now if the parts of the world are thus held together by precise and immu- table laws; if the widest gaps of space and time have been bridged by the laws discovered by Newton and Lyell ; and if the last gap of all has been satisfactorilj^ spanned by Darwin's principle of natural selection, it becomes extremely proba- ble that whatever else the world may be, it is a unity, consistent from first to last, rational through and through. Thus the self-consistent unity and rationality of no PRACTICAL IDEALISM the universe, which is the postulate of logic, finds its confirmation in the formulas of science. These laws of science are not foreign to the mind, as the isolated facts at first seem to be. They are not capricious. We can rely upon them. Though in the immense complexity of actual phenomena we may not be able to trace them ; though in the confusion and strife of affairs their working may be obscured ; yet the man of science knows that there are laws everywhere, and that they are akin to his own intelligence, and that, if clearly appre- hended and faithfully observed, they are bound to be his servants and his friends. In science mind finds itself reflected back from objective nature, and begins to feel at home in the outside world. Science bears witness to the twofold truth that the real is rational and the rational is real. It intimates the kinship of Nature and man, and points toward a common source, at onee infinite as Nature and personal as ourselves. From the point of view of science, however, these intimations are mere suggestions, and nothing more. Science has shown conclusively that the various departments of the universe are rational. It may nmt be a long step from that conclusion to the intuition that the uni- verse as a whole is the expression of One Infinite Reason. But it is a step which science alone is not concerned to take. It is no small gain to have become convinced that the world without THE WORLD OF SCIENCE III and the world within are permeated by rational principles common to both, even if we do not press at once the question, How came this to be ? and, What must be the nature and source of such rational principles ? In science we find an objective reality which is akin to our intelligence. And yet we must not confound these laws of science with the ultimate reality. The world of science is real, but it cannot claim to be the only or the ex- clusively real world. As Mr. Bradley says,^ " The synthesis of facts may be partly the same as our mental construction ; but in the end it diverges, for it always has much that we are not able to represent. We cannot exhibit in any ex- periment that enormous detail of sensuous context, that cloud of particulars which enfolds the meeting of actual events. We may say, indeed, that we have the essential ; but it is just because we have merely the essence that we have not got a copy of the facts. The essence does not live in the series of events : it is not one thing that exists among others." Because our science must ever be " abstract and symbolic, it mutilates phenomena, it can never give us that tissue of relations, it can- not portray those entangled fibres, which give life to the presentations of sense. It offers instead an unshaded outline without a background, a remote 1 " Principles of Logic," p. 528. 112 PRACTICAL IDEALISM and colourless extract of ideas, a preparation which everywhere rests on dissection and recalls the knife." Science is, after all, a skeleton, of which the sev- eral natural laws are the constituent bones. Like bones, these laws are hard and rigid. They do not bend and yield and pass away like fleeting facts and fading fancies. They dwell in a change- less world, enduring as the mind whose nature they reflect. They are independent of the ca- price of the individual ; they ask no favour ; they compel the consensus of the competent. Yet, though real and universal, these laws, like bones again, have no warmth and life in themselves, apart from the flesh and blood of concrete facts and forces. Their life is in the facts, and their worth is in the power they have to control facts and forces. This control of the facts and forces of the world through ideals according to laws, however, is not science, but art ; and this will be the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER IV THE WORLD OF ART Science gives us only the skeleton of a world. Its laws are after all only bones ; in themselves devoid of life and beauty; yet the indispensable frame- work of the living flesh and breathing beauty of the organic whole. Art, on the other hand, gives us the warm tints of the flesh; the graceful out- lines of the form; "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." The world of Art is the world of significant expression. Science abstracts from the living texture of facts and events the universal principles which are com- mon to them all. Experiment and inference are the hook and line by which Science fishes the dry formulas out of the fluid facts. Art, on the con- trary, puts into selected facts thoughts and imagi- nations of the mind. Science is analytic. Art is synthetic. Instead of fishing out what Nature has put into the stream of life, Art undertakes to stock the stream with choice specimens of her own breeding and selection. Art is dependent on Science, inasmuch as it is impossible to put I 113 114 PRACTICAL IDEALISM together what has not first been broken apart ; yet Art is the nobler of the two, inasmuch as to create is greater than to dissect. Science deals with essential elements ; Art presents characteris- tic wholes. Science by the aid of imagination and reason extends the world of sense-perception through its concepts and hypotheses and laws until it is vast enough to draw general conclusions from. Art, on the contrary, seizes and constrains, limits and confines imagination, until its ideals are precise and definite enough to be embodied within the hard and fast limits of the world of sense. Sci- ence brings facts of sense-perception under con- cepts and laws. Art expresses ideals and principles in terms of sense-perception. Science, as we have seen, is not a mere aggre- gation of facts : it is the extraction from facts of universal principles or laws imbedded in them. Art likewise is not the mere reproduction of facts. It is not mere imitation of Nature. As Browning says, in " The Ring and the Book," " Fancy with fact is just one feet the more ; To wit, that fency has informed, transpierced, Thridded and so thrown fast the facts, else free." The ideal arises out of a felt contrast between what we have and what we want ; what we are and what we long to be. The practical arts arise from THE WORLD OF ART 1 15 this felt need of food, shelter, and raiment. Hav- ing experienced the satisfaction of these needs, and finding himself without the present means of renewing that satisfaction, man sets himself the task of providing them. His ideal is always a con- ception of himself, as enjoying something which is not actually present. Although this ideal is for the most part composed of ideas previously experienced, yet the imagination, working freely upon the suggestions of memory, may transcend those suggestions and improve upon the past. Such improvement is originality. It is the pre- rogative of imagination. In its highest forms it is the expression of genius. The discovery of the principle of the arch in architecture was such a stroke of inventive genius. The aim of the mechanic arts is utility ; the satisfaction of felt physical or social needs. The aim of the fine arts is beauty, or the satisfaction of the aesthetic feelings. The mechanic arts and the fine arts are closely related in their psychologi- cal origin, being both alike attempts of man to realize an ideal of himself. In practice the two kinds of art ought to be kept closely together. The tendency to divorce them ; to manufacture useful things which have no beauty ; and to collect together beautiful things apart from their natural associations with utility is fatal alike to the truest utility and the highest beauty. Every useful thing Il6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM must have some form, and that form must be either beautiful or ugly. Every beautiful thing must be placed somewhere, either where it be- longs, or where it does not belong. The place for beautiful things, if they have the true beauty of expressiveness and characterization, will always be in the most natural relation to the domestic or social or civic or religious life of man. "Ab- straction," says Bosanquet, in his " History of -Esthetic," "is a sure sign of decadence. Art for Art's sake is a silly notion." Not until we insist on having the conditions of our everyday life beautiful, do we really love beauty. The at- tempt to worship beauty exclusively in the museum is as fatal to art, as is the attempt to wcrship God exclusively in the church fatal to religion. Beauty is the appropriate form, as religion is the appro- priate spirit of all life ; and until they are brought out of the gallery and the cloister into the public square and the market-place, into the school and the home, they are but ghostly abstractions, haunt- ing the borderland of our real lives ; and we re- main at heart pagans and barbarians. Decoration, instead of being a side issue, is the very heart and soul of true art. In the broadest sense of the word all business, commerce, manufacture, war, housekeeping, school- teaching, as well as painting, architecture, poetry, and music, are forms of art. For in them all man THE WORLD OF ART 1 17 forms in his imagination a picture of himself as enjoying, or helping others to enjoy, something which is not yet real, and apart from his efforts would never become real. In all these activities man is maker, creator, poet, artist, realizer of ideals. Professor Barrett Wendell, in his recent book on Shakespeare, points out that the acquisition of a fortune, and the purchase of his estate at Strat- ford out of the proceeds of his labours as play- writer and theatre manager, was quite as much an achievement of the imagination, as the writing of his immortal plays. The bridge by which the artist gets from the picture in his imagination over to the solid reality of fact, is the very one which the scientist has laboriously built for him, — the bridge of universal laws. In order to build a ship that will float, and attain a given speed, he must know and reckon with the laws of specific gravity, the lines of least resistance, the strength of materials. He can em- body his vision of his swift ship in wood and iron, because he can count upon certain universal and constant properties of water and air and wood and iron, and certain definite relations between them. The actual ship is the designer's vision, limited and defined by the properties of the materials used, and embodied in these materials in conform- ity to mechanical laws. An ideal is not a mere fiction of the fancy. It is the product of imagina- Il8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM tion, subdued and chastened by the laws of science and the limitations of fact. Art, therefore, is an improvement upon Nature, inasmuch as it is an adaptation of natural forces to ends for which Nature has failed to make adequate provision. At the same time it is in subjection to Nature, inasmuch as it must take its materials from her hands, and obey implicitly her laws. It is through strict obedience to law, that Art, like Science, se- cures its liberty. Thus art, as Schiller expressed it, is a process of "widening Nature without going beyond it." In the words of Edward Caird, the artist is an " organ by which Nature reaches a further develop- ment." The artist moulds materials which he takes out of the vast network of natural facts and forces into an expression of an idea in his own mind and heart. Yet, while this idea is his own, it is at the same time an expression of more than his private, subjective self. Subjective whims and caprices refuse to be embodied in art ; external facts and forces refuse to lend themselves to such idle and trivial service. It is only true and objec- tive ideas, ideas which are not peculiar to the individual, but are common to humanity, and in harmony with the ongoings of Nature herself, which can find perfect and worthy embodiment in art. As Ruskin is forever insisting, the tree in general, the tree that is neither maple nor oak nor THE WORLD OF ART ng spruce nor hemlock, it is impossible to paint. The artist must first conform his ideas to the laws and principles of Nature, before Nature will honour his drafts on her resources. As Caird has said, " If he remoulds the immediate facts of the world of experience, it must be by means of forces which are working in it as well as in himself, and which his own plastic genius brings to clearer manifesta- tion. The facts are changed, but the change is such that it seems to have taken place in the fac- tory of Nature herself. Creative imagination is a power which is neither lawless, nor yet, strictly speaking, under law ; it is a power which, as Kant says, makes laws. It carries us with free steps into a region in which we leave behind and forget the laws of Nature ; yet as soon as we begin to look round us, and to reflect on our new environ- ment, we see that it could not have been otherwise. The world has not been turned upside down, but widened by the addition of a new province which is in perfect continuity with it." ^ From this point of view the foolish controversy between so-called realism and idealism in art be- comes manifestly absurd. There is no such thing as realism. It is a psychological impossibility ; and the attempt to realize it is likely to lead to either artistic monstrosity or moral perversity, or both. A work of art is a product of the mind of ' "Literature and Philosophy," pages 58-60. I20 PRACTICAL IDEALISM the artist and the materials and laws of Nature : a union of presentations of sense with the precon- ceptions of his mind. What facts he sees will depend on what training his eye has previously had. All perception, still more all memory, is a process of selecting the significant and interest- ing few out of the irrelevant and unimportant many presentations of sense. What is interest- ing and significant to the individual depends on what sort of a person he is. A work of art is not and cannot be a picture of a reality unmodified by the selective attention of the beholding artist. If the predominating effect of a picture is ugly, it is an evidence either that the artist loves ugliness, or else is incompetent to portray beauty. If the pre- dominating tone of a novel is filth and licentious- ness, it is infallible proof, not that nature and reality, but that the heart and soul of the writer is vulgar and libidinous. He tells us that he has represented what he sees, to which psychology replies : " Yes ; but you see what you are looking at ; you look at what catches your eye ; and what catches your eye is what you have an aflfinity for ; and what you have an aflfinity for is what you are." It is not ethics alone which they affect to despise : it is the clearest, coldest, hardest facts of scientific psychology which con- demns this rotten realism. It tells these realists in the plainest sort of language, not that they THE WORLD OF ART 121 are bad merely, which they would rather con- sider a compliment, or, at any rate, an advertise- ment ; but it tells them that they are fools, and that their boasted contention is self-contradictory nonsense. This is so well stated in John La Farge's recent " Considerations on Painting " that I quote at length from his second lecture on "Personality and Choice." "Though we do well to tend towards an absolute way of painting, there is no such thing, if by painting we mean the representation of what can be noticed or seen. But there are wise ways and less wise ways, more generous ones, less narrow ones, more universal ones, some more per- sonal, others more general. But each of these is based on what the man intended. Of him we can judge as we judge men; and strange to say, it will always be more or less by a moral idea, by an appreciation of the way he looked upon the world." (Note please that these are the words of a master artist, not a professional preacher or moralist.) " And in the artist, have you ever noticed how simple it is to disentangle the man .' When once the artist has summed up in himself the memories of his apprenticeship, the acquired memories of others, and his own, —derived from them perhaps, but at any rate added to them, — you can try with him the following experiment. Take him to ten 122 PRACTICAL IDEALISM different places ; set before him ten different sub- jects ; ask him to copy what he sees before him. I say to copy, so as to make our task of finding him out more easy. All of these so-called copies, which are really representations, will be stamped in some peculiar way, more or less interesting, according to the value of our artist. And you will recognize at once that they are really ten copies of his manner of looking at the thing that he copies. "Suppose again that you persuade ten men to copy, as I have called it, the same subject in nature, the same landscape ; and you will have ten differ- ent landscapes, in that you will be able to pick out each one for the way it was done. In short, any person who knew anything about it would recog- nize, as it were, ten different landscapes. " I remember myself, years ago, sketching with two well-known men. What we made, or rather, I should say, what we wished to note, was merely a memorandum of a passing effect upon the hills that lay before us. We had no idea of expressing ourselves, or of studying in any way the subject for future use. We merely had the intention to note this affair rapidly, and we had all used the same words to express to each other what we liked in it. There were big clouds rolling over hills, sky clearing above, dots of trees and water and meadowland below, and the ground fell away sud- denly before us. Well, our three sketches were, THE WORLD OF ART 123 in the first place, different in shape. Two were oblong, but of different proportions ; one was more nearly square. In each picture the distance bore a different relation to the foreground. In each picture the clouds were treated with different precision and different attention. In one picture the open sky above was the main intention of the picture. In two pictures the upper sky was of no consequence — it was the clouds and the moun- tains that were insisted upon. The drawing was the same, that is to say, the general make of things ; but each man had involuntarily looked upon what was most interesting to him in the whole sight ; and though the whole sight was what he had meant to represent, he had uncon- sciously preferred a beauty or an interest of things different from what his neighbour liked. "The colour of each painting was different, — ^the vivacity of colour and tone, the distinctness of each part in relation to the whole ; and each picture would have been recognized anywhere as a speci- men of work by each one of us, characteristic of our names. And we spent on the whole affair perhaps twenty minutes. " I wish you to understand, again, that we each thought and felt as if we had been photographing the matter before us. We had not the first desire of expressing ourselves, and I think would have felt very much worried had we not felt that each 124 PRACTICAL IDEALISM was true to nature. And we were each one true to nature. " Of course there is no absolute nature ; as with each slight shifting of the eye, involuntarily we focus more or less distinctly some part to the prejudice of others. " All this sort of thing is perfectly well known, but on that very account you will have passed over the importance of its meaning. You will see again what I have been telling you that the man is the main question, and that there can be no absolute view of nature. If the experiments that I spoke of ; if the experiences such as I have just related about myself and others, bring out the re- sult that you have seen, there is for you practically no such thing as realism. If you ever know how to paint somewhat well, you will always give to nature, that is to say, what is outside of you, the character of the lens through which you see it — which is yourself." Absurd as realism is, when taken as a statement of psychological fact, or employed as a principle of philosophical interpretation, or put on as a cloak for artistic immorality, there is, nevertheless, a profound truth at the heart of it all. An illustra- tion from the kindred sphere of science may help to make its meaning clear. The scientific man must yield himself up unreservedly to the facts. No preconceived theory may alter or twist or manufact- THE WORLD OF ART 125 ure or explain away the actual facts. To that extent the scientist must be a realist. His theory must express the facts. At the same time the theory is more than the facts. It is contributed by what Professor Tyndall calls " that composite and crea- tive unity in which reason and imagination are together blent " ; and it " leads us into a world not less real than that of the senses, and of which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and justifi- cation." The man of science lays aside all pre- conceptions and prejudices that are private and peculiar to himself ; and allows the thought which is behind and within the facts to come forth in his imagination, and express itself in his thinking. Truth to the scientific man is the reproduction in him of a thought which was first produced in the world of facts. Not the facts themselves, but the inner law and meaning of the facts consti- tute scientific truth, and that is a product of an objective Thought which is common to facts with- out a»d thinking within. Art is science reversed. And the same prin- ciples hold good in both. The artist, like the scientist, must respect facts. He must produce nothing which the world of sense and fact does not, to use Tyndall's words again, "suggest and justify." If by realism you mean mere copying of facts, then as we have seen there can be no such thing ; for isolated facts, apart from an intelli- 126 PRACTICAL IDEALISM gence which groups them in relations and thinks them into a unity, have no existence for us, and consequently the theory of art that confines it- self to them can be nothing but a myth. If by realism, however, you mean fidelity to the thought or law implied in facts ; if you mean the stern sup- pression of private whim and personal caprice ; if you mean that the work of art shall contain noth- ing which the implicit logic of fact and reality can- not at once "suggest and justify," then realism or objectivity or impersonality, or whatever you please to call it, is as essential to the artist as it is to the scientist. Only the proper name for it is not realism, but rather objective or universal ideal- ism. For what the true artist and the true scien- tist alike are faithful to is not a reality which is opposed to thought or distinct from thought : it is rather a universal thought which is hidden within facts ; an objective law which is behind things ; a system of ideas which is the ground and principle of that spiritual reality of which particular things and events are but the temporary and partial embodiment. The twofold truth to which idealism and so- called realism are complementary witnesses is happily expressed in the closing line of Rudyard Kipling's poem, L' Envoi : " And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame : THE WORLD OF ART 12/ And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fanae ; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of things as they arey From this point of view we see how far mo- rality enters into art. The artist has no right to paint a picture or write a story, the predomi- nant and final effect of which is to hold lust or brutality or ugliness or deformity or meanness before the mind of the beholder. He has no right to do it because he has no moral right to be the kind of man who wants to do it. The man whose ordinary conversation is full of such things we set down at once as vulgar and low-minded. Art, however, is simply highly elaborate and endur- ing conversation. The picture or story is simply the artist's way of talking to the world, and tell- ing it what sort of things he loves to dwell on. The artist who is forever harping on indecencies, whose favourite theme is sexual perversity, and who leaves the taste of these things as the pre- dominant effect upon the normal reader's mind, is simply a vulgar and indecent person, unfit for decent society, and therefore incapable of produc- ing decent art. It is impossible for him to hide or excuse his indecency under the flimsy pretext of devotion to realistic art. On the other hand, avarice, cruelty, lust, jeal- 128 PRACTICAL IDEALISM ousy, vanity, vulgarity, are widespread and potent factors in the inconsistent and troubled life of actual men and women. They are parts of that whole which is the universe, permitted to be there by the law of its life ; though not permitted to abide there long without coming to shame and sorrow and disaster, and not permitted to occupy the foreground of any permanent social arrange- ment. To represent life as uninfluenced by these evil forces, and to represent it as dominated by them, is equally false to the facts. Sunday-school stories in which the boys and girls win cheap victories over temptations which are artificially easy, and yellow-covered novels where violent men and depraved women revel in bloodshed and lewd- ness, are equally defective from the artistic point of view. As the highest kind of virtue is that which meets and overcomes real temptation, and is wrought out in the face of the utmost wiles of the world, the flesh, and the devil, so the truest art represents purity and uncleanness, love and hate, heroism and cowardice, honour and shame, nobleness and baseness, fidelity and treachery, generosity and meanness, in actual collision and genuine struggle ; and at the same time shows, not necessarily the outward victory and material reward of virtue, but at all events the inner supe- riority and spiritual supremacy of good over evil. For such inner superiority and spiritual suprem- THE WORLD OF ART 129 acy is a law of the nature of things as inevitable and immutable as gravitation ; and whoever paints a picture or writes a novel in disregard or defiance of that law commits not only a moral sin, but an artistic blunder of essentially the same nature as if he painted a human figure in an attitude of repose whose centre of gravity should fall outside the base, or a human face with eyes at the sides and ears in front. Moral law, as we shall see when we come to it, is just as essential an expression of the facts of human life as natural law is an essential ex- pression of the facts of physical nature. And the artist is just as much bound to respect the one law as the other. In both cases it is not his whim and caprice on the one hand, nor isolated and unrelated facts on the other, which as artist he is called on to portray. In both cases it is the law of their mutual relations, "the linked purpose of the whole," in Emerson's phrase, which he is to express. If his forms are not self-con- sistent, if his denouement is not inevitable, his art is false, his product is a fiction of his fancy, not a creation of the imagination; and he himself is a slave of his own wayward caprice, not the ser- vant and friend of the ideal. This point of view shows the advantage Art has over Nature and wherein it can transcend her. In Nature the inner beauty of patience and gentleness is often obscured beneath inadequate and unworthy I30 PRACTICAL IDEALISM circumstance, and the shining forth of its superior- ity is often long delayed by untoward environment. Art can draw shy and modest beauty out of its hid- ing places, concentrate attention on a few " ultra- characteristic " features, and, by a sort of forcing process, hurry virtuous and vicious alike on to their inevitable fates. In both time and space, it disen- tangles the essential from the meshes of the irrele- vant, presents the significant features in clear outline, and brings the whole to a suitable and speedy consummation. At this point it is worth while to pause and gather up the significance of all that we have gained thus far. We could not rest in mere things and events as presented in the World of Sense-perception, because they are fleeting and ca- pricious. We do not gain our freedom there ; we do not find ourselves. In illusion and fancy, on the other hand, we find pure freedom, without let or hin- drance. But this abstract freedom of mere caprice, just because it meets no opposition, has no reality. Next we seek stability and permanence in Science and its laws. This self-surrender to law, however, is a very different thing from the abject slavery to brute fact, from which we first recoiled when we forsook fact for fancy. For, unlike fact, law is not capricious, and it is not alien to our own intelligence. Law, rather, is a uniform and constant expression of our own intellectual nature ; THE WORLD OF ART 131 and, in submitting to law, we are expressing our essential self. If Science in one aspect is the abstraction from facts of the reason that is in them, in another aspect it is the development from within our minds of the reason that is latent in us. Science is thus the meeting-point of Rea- son in Nature and the same Reason in man. Sci- ence is the manifestation and embodiment of the essential rational unity of the World of Fact with- out and the World of Self within, and is the in- fallible witness to the truth that Nature and man are the expressions of a single Principle common to both. Science unites the reality of fact with the rationality of self; and, in so doing, it at once reveals the rationality of the external world and the reality of our own intelligence. Still, inasmuch as Science starts from the side of external fact, the subjection of the mind to facts is the most prominent aspect of scientific pursuits. It is a bondage freely chosen, and it leads to ulti- mate freedom ; but it is a sort of bondage to the last. Though, as we have seen, there is large room for the free and spontaneous play of imagination, and as Tyndall and Darwin proclaim, Science can- not advance a step without the free use of imagina- tion in the form of hypotheses, still this freedom must be constantly checked and restrained within the hard and fast limits of farts as we find them. In Art finally we gain our real liberty, and we 132 PRACTICAL IDEALISM gain it just in proportion to the completeness of our previous surrender to fact and our obedience to scientific law. In artistic production we start from the self, and impose its desires, its longings, its visions, its ideals upon the world of fact. If the artist be a man who has seen the vision of goodness and truth and beauty ; and if he has also trained him- self to thorough mastery of the materials and methods of his art, then this hard World of Sense- perception, which before seemed so capricious and cruel, alien and hostile, hard and cold, becomes perfectly pliable and gentle, obedient and sym- pathetic, faithful and constant in his hands. The defiant foe becomes a devoted friend. The appar- ■ent barrier becomes a bridge. The rigid resistance is converted into plastic expressiveness. As Science reveals through law that our minds are the offspring of the Reason that is imbedded in Nature, so Art in turn reveals through its ideals that Nature is the expression of that Beauty and Beneficence w,hich is implanted in our hearts. That man apprehends the laws which underlie the facts of Nature ; and that Nature honours the drafts drawn upon it by human ideals : these two great fundamental departments of life are the in- contestable evidence of the kinship of Nature and man, and the revelation of their relationship to a common Principle. THE WORLD OF ART 133 Whether this common Principle is more akin to Nature or to man ; whether it is conscious or unconscious ; whether it is material or spiritual, personal or impersonal, we are not yet prepared to say. Before we can answer that question we must inquire more minutely into the nature of ourselves. Thus far we have been taking ourselves and other people for granted. So long as we were concerned merely with the relation of man to the external world, such assumptions were perfectly admissible. That ground, however, so far as our limits permit, we have now gone over. That half of the task we set ourselves is done. We have seen the world and the mind first set over against each other in the hard, repellent, mutually exclusive aspects of fact and fancy, perception and illusion, and then we have seen this opposition reconciled ; first, in Science, in which Nature renders up her secrets in the form of laws intelligible to the human mind ; and second, in Art, in which man embodies his feelings and affections in external forms. Through Science and Art, Nature and man are reconciled. There remains, however, the antagon- ism of man against man, and the reconciliation of that antagonism in the form of social institutions. And then when that peace shall have been won, we shall still be confronted by the discord of man within himself, or the moral problem ; and shall have to seek the reconciliation of this moral strife 134 PRACTICAL IDEALISM through acceptance of the deeper Self, of which in the unity of man with Nature we already have a suggestion, the Universal and Absolute Self, the Object of religion. Part II THE SPIRITUAL WORLD CHAPTER V THE WORLD OF PERSONS Our problem thus far has been to reduce the multiplicity of sense to the unity of reason and the harmony of beauty ; out of the sensible chaos to construct an intelligible cosmos, an enjoyable world. The natural world is a comparatively simple world, and the process of construction con- sists in simply putting together natural facts and forces according to the laws of their mutual rela- tionships. Disentangle' the rational principles from the mass of sensuous detail, and you have the world of science. Impress the ideal on a passive and pliant medium, and you have the world of art. Neither of these processes is altogether easy ; but both are simple in comparison with the complicated problems involved in the world of persons. For, unlike physical facts, persons have wills and wishes of their own ; and they stoutly refuse to be put together and pulled apart according to our notions of scientific analysis or artistic synthesis. A thing does not exist in and for itself, but only in itself and for us, to use the Hegelian phrase. In other 137 138 PRACTICAL IDEALISM words, it is not aware of its own existence, and has no concern about its own welfare. We may do with it as we please, so long as we do not violate those rational relationships which are inherent in it, but of which it knows nothing. Persons, on the contrary, exist both in and for themselves. They know themselves ; they know what they want, and insist on being consulted in any arrange- ments and dispositions we seek to make of them. Unless we recognize these rights of personality in others, we cannot construct a satisfactory social order; we cannot even preserve intact our own personality. Slavery, which ignores and tramples on the personality of the slave, tends to make a brute of the master. In order to be a person one must respect the personality of others. In the words of Professor Howison, " The very quality of personality is, that a person is a being who recog- nizes others as having a reality of the same un- qualified nature as his own, and who thus sees himself as a member of a moral republic, standing to other persons in an immutable relationship of reciprocal duties and rights, himself endowed with dignity, and acknowledging the dignity of all the rest." The world of persons brings with it a new ideal. The world of science brought truth, or the har- monious relation of parts to each other in a system too vast for the harmony of the whole, or its beauty, THE WORLD OF PERSONS 139 to be sensibly perceived. The world of art brought beauty, or the complete and sensible harmony of relatively small wholes. The world of persons de- mands goodness, or the harmony of free and inde- pendent members in a whole of their own creation. Thus the common mark of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good is harmony, unity, self-consistency, wholeness, system, organization. The Good is the highest ideal of all, because the elements which enter into it are higher, freer, more complex. In the words of Professor Howison again, " Creatively to think and be a world is what it means to be a man. To think and enact such a world merely in the unity framed for it by natural causation, is what it means to be a Natural Man ; to think and enact it in its higher unity, its unity as framed by the supernatural causation of the pure Ideals, su- premely by the Moral Ideal, is what it means to be a Spiritual Man, a moral and religious man, or, in the philosophical and true sense of the words, a supernatural being." The first part of this book has described the natural man in his construction of the natural world. The second part will pre- sent the spiritual man, in his relation to other spiritual beings like himself, in the spiritual world. The appreciation of others in terms of ourselves gives us the world of persons ; and out of this world of' persons, and personal relations, springs the world I40 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of institutions, the world of morality, and the world of religion. Personality does not come to us ready-made. It is a slow and gradual development. As Tennyson says : "The- baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is pressed Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that this is I. But as he grows, he gathers much, And learns the use of I and me. And finds I am not what I see, And other than the thing I touch ; So rounds he to a separate mind, From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in, His isolation grows defined." This consciousness of self as distinct from one's separate sensations, this "use of I and me," is the mark of personality. Kant used to declare that when his horse could say " I " he would get off its back. Fichte gave a feast on the day when his son first said " I," as marking his real birthday. Hegel's comprehensive formula for all moral and social relations is, " Be a person, and respect the personality of others." Most of us regard other persons, except per- haps a few relatives and friends, not aS persons at all, but practically as things. Professor Royce^ 1 "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," pages 149-162. THE WORLD OF PERSONS 141 has stated the truth on this point forcibly : " The common sense, imperfect recognition of our neigh- bour implies rather realization of the external aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world of personal experience. Let us show this by example. First, take my realization of the people whom I commonly meet but do not personally very well know, e.g. the conductor on the railway train when I travel. He is for me just the being who takes my ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for cer- tain advice or help if I need it. That this conduc- tor has an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize at all. He has to excite my pity or some other special human interest in me ere I shall even begin to try to think of him as really like me. On the whole he is for me realized as an automa- ton. But still frequently I do realize him in another way, but how } I note very likely that he is courteous or surly, and I like or dislike him accordingly. Now courtesy and discourtesy are qualities that belong not to automata at all. Hence I must somehow recognize him in this case as conscious. But what aspect of his con- sciousness do I consider.? Not the inner aspect of it as such, but still the outer aspect of his con- scious life, as a power affecting me ; that is what I consider. He treats me so and so, and he does this dehberately ; therefore I judge him. But 142 PRACTICAL IDEALISM what I realize is his deliberate act, as something important to me. It seldom occurs to me to realize fully how he feels ; but I can much more easily come to note how he is disposed. The disposition is his state viewed as a power affect- ing me. " Now let one look over the range of his bare acquaintanceship, let him leave out his friends, and the people in whom he takes a special per- sonal interest ; let him regard the rest of the world, his world of fellow-men : his butcher, his grocer, the policeman that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in his kitchen, his busi- ness rivals whom he occasionally talks to, the men whose political speeches he has heard or read, and for whom he has voted, with some notion of their personal characters : how does he conceive of all these people .' Are they not one and all to him ways of behaviour towards himself or other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner life, of senti- ment, of love, or of felt desire .' Does he not naturally think of each of them rather as a way of outward action than as a way of inner volition .' Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself; as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife seems to him to be } Is it not rather their being for him, not for themselves, that he considers in THE WORLD OF PERSONS 143 all his ordinary life, even when he calls them con- scious ? They are still seen from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is realized, but their manner of outward activity ; not what they are for themselves, but what they are for others." This "illusion of selfishness " is the most subtle and insidious foe of man's spiritual life. Unless we can get outside of ourselves and into this reali- zation of the lives of others, we do not live a spirit- ual life at all. We do not enter the world of other persons ; and our own personality, thus bereft of all true spiritual companionship, shrivels and with- ers and dies. Continual contact with mere things ; and with persons who are thought of and treated as mere things, tends to reduce us to mere things ourselves. As imagination and reason were neces- sary to take us beyond the mere presented facts into the world of science and art ; so this social imagination and appreciative sympathy are the necessary steps from the brute selfishness of mere physical existence into the world of persons and personal relations. We interpret the experience of others through our own remembered past. George Eliot, one of the great masters of the supreme art of sympa- thetic interpretation of personality, defines sym- pathy as " a living again through our own past in a new form." In addition to the conscious memory of the individual there is an unconscious memory 144 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of the race, which for instance enables us to appre- ciate the terror of others even if we have not been seriously frightened ourselves. Yet both the racial and the individual memory fade out, unless revived by frequent experience or sympathy ; and the heart becomes narrow, cold, and hard. In our study of perception we saw that even in seeing an external object, like a tree, we see only so much of a tree as we have known before, and bring with us out of our past experience. In appreciating persons this prin- ciple is even more obvious. We appreciate in- tensely only what we have experienced. All else comes to us only through the medium of imper- fectly translated symbols. To a man who has never felt hungry, hunger is merely a name in a foreign language, which he can translate into his own vernacular only in some inadequate general term like pain. One who has never been in love can only interpret to himself the passion in terms of such fondness as he may feel for those whom acci- dent has made his chance companions. Wherein we judge another with relish and gusto, we thereby make public confession that the evil we thus de- light to dwell upon has its counterpart in our own secret experience. The scandal-monger is always a man or woman with a loveless spirit and an evil heart. The infallible mark of the highest character is that it "rejoiceth not in iniquity." This power to appreciate others in terms of self THE WORLD OF PERSONS 145 marks man off from the brutes. This is the power which, according as it is employed, lifts man into fellowship with God, or degrades him below the level of the beast, and makes a demon of him. The brute has ends and chooses means to realize those ends. Man, by virtue of his enlarged power of sympathy and appreciation, has competing ends before his mind at the same time, and not merely chooses appropriate means to realize these ends, but chooses between the ends themselves. Herein is man's freedom. The brute, selecting appropriate means to realize ends necessitated by its physical constitution, has only the form of freedom. Man, so long as he remains in this brutish condition, has only formal freedom. Real freedom enters when man presents to himself his own private good and the good of his neighbour as conflicting ends. The life of primitive men, like the animal life from which it emerged, was innocent ; and its in- nocence was due, not to the perfection, but to the imperfection of its moral consciousness. Primitive man was conscious of only two forces in the guid- ance of his conduct : his natural appetites and passions on the one hand, and the customs and conventions of his tribe on the other. These two forces had never been set over against each other in the consciousness of the individual. Of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the sense of self-conscious choice of one of 146 PRACTICAL IDEALISM these forces and deliberate rejection of the other, man had not yet eaten. Hence his obedience to the requirements of social custom was not morally good ; and his obedience to animal impulse was not morally bad. The purely impulsive and unre- flecting nature of both classes of action did not permit of that balancing of one set of interests against the other which is essential to the moral gpodness or badness of the inner motive as dis- tinct from the physical goodness or badness of the external act. That degree of self-gonsciousness and that power of self-determination in presence of simultaneous alternatives, which are the psycho- logical conditions of moral good and moral evil, had not yet been evolved out of the inherited ani- mal consciousness of immediate appetite and the primitive social consciousness of custom. That this was the condition of primitive man is ren- dered highly probable by what we know of animals, savage men, and very young children. Out of this primitive unconscious innocence man has passed into the stage in which he clearly recognizes that the impulses of his individual animal self, and the interests of others, and of the social order to which he and they belong, are frequently antagonistic ; and in which he is com- pelled to choose between sacrificing the interests of the social order as expressed in its customs, laws, and institutions in order to gratify his indi- THE WORLD OF PERSONS 147 vidual appetites and passions, or sacrificing his appetites and passions for the promotion and maintenance of the social well-being. This transition from the innocence which went with freedom from self-consciousness to the re- sponsibility which comes with conscious choice between these alternatives is the essential fact which Hebrew seer and Christian doctor sought to set forth in their doctrine of the fall of man; and this same fact is forced upon the modern scientist and philosopher who attempts to recon- struct the spiritual history of the race in the light of the doctrine of evolution. The fall of man was an essential stage in human evolution. It was a fall from innocence into responsibility ; from a condition in which holiness and sin were alike impossible, into a condition in which both are possible, and one or the other must be chosen. If it is not, as Lessing said, "a fall upward," it is a fall forward onto a plane where he cannot maintain his equilibrium, but must either consciously climb higher, or else deliberately sink lower than the plane of Nature whence he came. The fall of man marks the point where he ceases to be an obedient because blind servant of Nature, and is forced to become either a wilful rebel against divine and human law, or else a reverent child of his Heavenly Father and a loving brother to his fellow-men. 148 PRACTICAL IDEALISM There is an hereditary tiger, yes, worse than that, there is a potential or rudimentary Nero, in us all. The best boy civilization has yet bred has had a period of liking to torment and torture the kitten or the flies or the frogs. Christianity's finest specimens of girlhood are not without their stages of saying hateful things about their more homely or less well dressed sisters. Fired by lust, or liquor, or jealejusy, or avarice, cruelty is still a fearful factor even in the life of civilized society. Yes. Personality came into the world through a tremendous fall. Lower than the brute man h^s descended through the exercise of that faculty of the knowledge of good and evil, through which he is destined ultimately to rise into com- muniSH and fellowship with God. This tragic stage in human evolution is a stern fact which cannot be explained away. As Royce has shown us, the realization of others in terms of ourselves is not easy, and although we know better and mean better, we are con- stantly slipping back into that primitive condition which realizes only our own selfish wants, and regards other persons as mere means for our gratification. In spite of man's inheritance from the tigers and the Neros, it is probable that vastly more suffering and misery is caused by his inheritance from the oyster and the clam ; by in- difference and neglect, than by intentional malice THE WORLD OF PERSONS 149 and cruelty. A hundred husbands are unloving, where one is positively hateful to his wife. A hundred neighbours don't care what happens to the family across the street, where one wishes them harm. A hundred merchants will let an- other fail for lack of timely credit and support, where one will actually plot his downfall. A hun- dred men will lead a woman on to ruin under the guise of affection, where one could realize the woe and degradation it means to her, and deliberately plan for its accomplishment. A hundred women will destroy another's reputation by scandal where one would deliberately wound another's heart. A hundred capitalists will suffer employees to live and work in unhealthy conditions on unfair terms, where one would deliberately take the bread from the mouth of the starving or press poison to the lips of a fellow-man. A hundred men will share the profits of a dishonest deal, where one would deliberately steal his neighbour's pocket-book. Indifference is the largest factor, though not the ugliest form, which enters into the production of evil. If, however, selfishness and indifference are natural to man, sympathy and kindness are nat- ural too. If Hobbes with his Homo homini lupus, and Calvin with his dogma of total deprav- ity, and Kant with his doctrine of the bad prin- ciple in human nature, all have good grounds I50 PRACTICAL IDEALISM for their position; on the other hand Aristotle with his declaration that man is by nature a social being, Adam Smith with his principle of sympathy, Channing with his faith in the latent divinity of human nature, represent a still deeper aspect of the truth. And this conception of the essentially social nature of man is being brought to the front in our day as never before, through the increased devotion to anthropological and sociological studies. The outcome of these tendencies is forcibly expressed by Professor Gid- dings : ^ " Human nature is not the unsocial egoistic nature. Self-interest is not the distinc- tively human trait ; it is a primordial animal trait, which man, an animal after all, still possesses and must cultivate if he would continue to live. Human nature is the pre-eminently social nature. Its primary factor is a consciousness of kind that is more profound, more inclusive, more dis- criminating, more varied in its colouring, than any consciousness of kind that is found among the lower animals." The practical expression of this consciousness of kind is love. Love does for the world of per- sons what reason does for the world of things and events. Apart from reason, man would be chained down to the sensations of his individual organism, at the time and place where he might chance to be. 1 " Principles of Sociology," page 225. See also page 421. THE WORLD OF PERSONS 15 1 Reason, working upon facts, transmuting them through imagination, binding them together in the unity of laws, emancipates man from this bond- age to time and place and sense, and makes him a member of a universal kingdom, a sharer in an eternal life. Yet this life which man gains through reason working upon facts of the outward world, though infinite in range and power, is lack- ing in warmth and sympathy. Stoicism, indeed, in its poets, from Cleanthes to Matthew Arnold, has tried to establish some sort of spiritual com- munion between man and the " untroubled and unpassionate " processes of Nature. Such com- munion, though beautiful as the moonlight on Mount Auburn tombstones, is yet after all a cold and melancholy cult. And in his best moments our greatest modern poet of Stoicism rises above resignation and self-dependence to rest on human sympathy and feed on human love. His best poehis conclude with lines like these : "Ah, love, let us be true To one another ! for the world which seems To lie about us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." And, "Only — but this is rare — When a beloved hand is laid in ouns, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, 152 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd — • A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose. And the sea where it goes." This which comes as a sort of concession from the Stoic Arnold, is the Alpha and Omega of the gospel of the spiritual idealist Browning : the per- petual burden of his song. "There is no good of life but love — but love ! What else looks good, is some shade flung from love, Love gilds it, gives it worth." " For the loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." " For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love. How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world, And having gained truth, keep truth : that is all." THE WORLD OF PERSONS 1 53 No one has loved Nature more keenly than Wordsworth ; and no one is more ready to inter- mingle " The lake, the bay, the waterfall ; And thee, the Spirit of them all! At Tintern Abbey he is " A lover of the meadows and the woods. And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear ; " not for themselves alone but because of their as- sociations with God, with humanity, and with a dearest friend. " For I 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. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air. And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." " For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river ; thou ray dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend ; and in thy voice I catch 154 PRACTICAL IDEALISM The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes." " Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake." The simplest, though not chronologically the earliest, or socially the most important, manifesta- tion of love is friendship, or the mutual regard of individuals for each other, irrespective of family ties, business connections, or any external bonds of time and space. Friendship increases the range of life by making the interests, the aims, the affec- tions of others as precious and dear to us as our own. It divides sorrows and multiplies joys. Each friend is another self. Not only does friend- ship thus widen the range of life by this simple process of adding the interests of others to our own, and multiplying our sympathies by theirs: it raises our own life to a higher power. What we would hardly take the trouble to win for our- selves, we eagerly strive to obtain for our friends. The worth of each is enhanced by the regard of the other. Latent interests, dormant capacities, slumbering ambitions, are quickened into life and ripened into fruitfulness under the warm sunshine of the constant kindliness of friends. Without friends wealth is poor, talent dull, achievement THE WORLD OF PERSONS 155 wearisome, fame hollow, glory a mockery. Not until they are reflected from the eyes of those we love do these, or any external goods, acquire their true and spiritual worth. To make and keep friends is the great art of life : yet the easiest and simplest thing in the world. Everybody desires friends ; though from shyness, or pride which is often the veil of shy- ness, few are ready to meet us at first half-way. But if we can learn to ignore the thin films of diversity in training, station, interest, and aim, and go straight to the heart of our fellow-man, we are sure of finding a cordial response. All that is needed is first of all the imaginative sympathy to see what the other's heart is really set on ; and second, the generosity to make that other's point of view and centre of interest our own. The secret of the popularity and charm of a certain prominent woman was expressed by one who knew her well in the remark, " She is always of exactly the age of the child she happens to be with." With reference to this consummate tact, this universal friendliness, which immediately takes on the conditions and serves the ends of him with whom one happens to be, the question no doubt arises in many minds. Can this habitual gracious- ness, this impartiality of devotion, be really sincere ? That it may be counterfeited, that it sometimes is a mere trick of manners, is not to be denied. Yet IS6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM to say that it cannot be, and that in many persons it is not, a genuine expression of a large and gen- erous nature, is to lapse into the belief that human nature is fundamentally selfish and hopelessly bad ; it is to deny that any souls can be genuinely and really great ; and since all such judgments of others are based chiefly on our knowledge of ourselves, it is to make a rather humiliating confession about the capacity of one's own soul. That a large and genuine friendliness is unnatural to a little soul is obvious ; and for a little soul to make pretensions of this kind would be hypocrisy. But universal friendliness and all-including love are as natural and genuine and sincere in a great soul, as pride and exclusiveness and indifference are in a small one. Love is the solvent of society. Love lifts man out of his petty individuality, and makes him par- taker in a universal life. " In loving, the indi- vidual becomes re-impersonated in another ; the distinction of Me and Thee is swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life. The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks love ; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects, and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of his narrow self. It is a streaming THE WORLD OF PERSONS 1 57 outwards of the inmost treasures of the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of others. Love, which, in its earUest form, seems to be the natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing and disappearing at the suggestion of physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment, into an emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity which manifests itself in a perma- nent outflow of helpful deeds for man. It repre- sents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the expansion of the self, which culminates when the world beats in the pulse of the individual, and the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories of mankind, are felt by him as his own."^ Love is the creator of the social world, as reason is the creator of the natural world. The individual is far more essential to the social than to the natural world. For the natural world might exist in one mind, apart from any other mind to behold and apprehend it. Though in that case there would be no way of knowing whether this world, confined to a single mind, were a reality or a dream. The social world, on the other hand, could not exist without finite members. We are more than beholders, or even interpreters, of the social order. We are the organs through whom that order is realized and expressed. The 1 Henry Jones, " Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher," Chapter VI. IS8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM social world is as impossible without individual members, as the body is impossible without head and trunk and arms and legs. We are the con- stituent members of which society is made. Here lies incidentally one of the strongest intima- tions of immortality. If the social and spiritual, rather than the merely physical and natural, is the goal of evolution ; if God is to be conceived not as a superannuated mechanic but as an eternal Father, then the eternity of finite spirits like ours is as essential to him as his own being. As between the preservation and maturing of spirits trained and disciplined through the experiences of sense and flesh, and their destruction and the creation of others, all the analogies of evolution, all the force of the doctrine of the parsimony of causes, as well as the profoundest instincts and holiest aspirations of the human heart, point to the im- mortality rather than the mortality of the human spirit as the more rational, the more economical, the more consistent with the dignity of man and the glory of God. The great exponent of the life of love is lit- erature. Literature is the expression of human thought and feeling, human aspiration and achieve- ment, at its best. It is through this medium that our own lives and the lives of others are inter- preted. In biography and the novel, in poetry and the drama, we see the soul of man laid bare for THE WORLD OF PERSONS 159 our appreciation ; and by the reaction of literature upon us our own ideals are formed and our per- sonality is developed. That is the reason why in all sound systems of liberal education, language and literature, poetry and the drama, occupy so promi- nent a place. It is not for the vocabulary and the syntax and the philology which they contain that we require our choicest youth to become familiar with the language and literature of the ancient world. It is for the sake of that enlargement of vision, that emancipation of the mind, that appre- ciation of the best that has been thought and felt by man, that we begin our liberal education at the fountain heads, whence have sprung the concep- tions and institutions out of which society is formed. He who understands man has the key to the inter- pretation of Nature. For Nature comes to us through the medium of human thought and speech. To discriminate fine shades of meaning ; to appre- hend accurately human conceptions ; to take points of view widely remote from our own ; to transfer thoughts back and forth from one set of symbols to another; is the shortest, surest road to that appreciation of Nature and humanity which is the end and aim of education. In view of the im- mense spiritual significance of this power of litera- ture to interpret his larger self to man, it is high time for every lover of letters to resist the ten- dency now manifest in very iniiuential centres to l6o PRACTICAL IDEALISM convert the fortifications which have been erected for the preservation and defence of literature into the cheerless barracks of philology. With physical science itself the man of letters has no quarrel. In the proportion of attention received in the college and university curriculum it may be that science must increase and letters must decrease. It may be that Greek will cease to be an essential element in a liberal education. These, however, are relatively small matters. It is not aggressions and attacks from without ; it is treachery and betrayal within the camp of letters itself that is most to be feared. Classic literature is perfectly competent to hold its own against the legitimate claims of physical science in the free competition of the elective system ; provided anybody can be found to teach it. The present type of classical train- ing is not producing, and is not calculated to pro- duce, such teachers. The emphasis of nearly all the instruction, in French and German and even English, as well as in Latin and Greek, is upon the refinements of philology rather than upon the spirit of literature. Now, philology is important in its proper sphere. Like oleomargarine, it is harmless and useful under its proper label ; but most un- welcome when palmed off as a substitute for some- thing better. It is good and useful work in its way, to which a limited number of specialists should be set apart in each generation. To make THE WORLD OF PERSONS i6l that, however, the exclusive or the main concern of the great body of students and teachers of ancient and modern literature is to degrade men who should be architects into hod-carriers and bricklayers ; it is to leave the ministry of the living Word for the dissection of dead specimens ; it is to offer to those who ask for bread a stone.^ The love which builds the social world works in subtle and crafty ways. It assumes three essen- tial forms : first, institutions, customs, and con- ventions, which the individual finds ready-made and blindly and unconsciously obeys ; second, morality, which is the conscious reflection upon the institutions, customs, and relations which love is striving to establish between us and our fellows ; third, religion, which is the complete conscious acceptance of the principle of love as the law and inspiration of life. The three succeeding chapters will be devoted to these three ways in which the omnipresent and omnipotent spirit of love is silently and surely working to build a social world in which man can dwell in peace and blessedness. I ^ For a timely criticism of this tendency which has seized pos- session of the men whose position ought to make them priests of letters and prophets of personality, see Woodrow Wilson's " Mere Literature," and his address at the Princeton Sesquicentennial Cele- bration. CHAPTER VI THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS The world of persons, to which friendship is the private key and literature the open door, expands enormously our range of interest and sympathy, and thereby gives us something of the spiritual freedom that we seek. Yet the freedom we gain through this immediate relation to other indi- viduals, merely as individuals, is in many ways imperfect. It is at best an external union that we form. However profound the affinity, however sincere the affection, however constant the devo- tion, so long as it remains the relation of one indi- vidual to another it is of necessity the contact of mutually exclusive units, which may indeed be very close at certain points, but cannot pass over into a new and higher unity. Our friends in real life, our heroes and heroines in fiction and poetry, remain to the last alien and unassimilated beings. We, in- deed, find our best selves embodied in them, and reflected from them. But while we admire and adore, and give and take, and love and serve, there yawns, fixed and impassable, the great gulf between our separate individualities. 162 THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 63 " Yes ! in the sea of life enisled With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know. Who order'd that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd ? Who renders vain their deep desire? A God, a God their severance ruled ! And bade between their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." 1 This gulf, so impassable to the Stoic with his doctrine of extreme individualism, is bridged by the World of Institutions. Through membership in common institutions we become partakers in a common life which is neither mine nor thine, but in which " mine and thine are ended." These institutions are to persons what natural laws are to facts. They unite the multitude of individuals in a social order, just as natural laws reduce the manifold of sensation to the intelligibility of a scientific system. The first and fundamental social institution is the Family. The family is grounded by nature in the physiological fact of sex; but in its modern form it is also the product of personal freedom, expressing itself in the mutual love of one man and one woman for each other; and of both for their common offspring. The monogamous family 1 Matthew Arnold, " Switzerland." 164 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of modern civilization is the free creation of reason working through love. The family is the only form in which the physiological fact of sex, and the emotional fact of sexual love, can find expression without producing contradiction and chaos. Yet, while reason is the real force which produces the family and maintains it in existence, as Schopen- hauer has pointed out in his shrewd, cynical way, reason, or, as he would say, the will to live, ap- proaches this problem of the family by a very sly and circuitous route ; keeping herself entirely in the background, and contriving to put the most intense and passionate interest of the individual perpetually in the foreground. Love, however, is not the illusion which Schopenhauer represents it to be. Undoubtedly he is right in his contention that the will of the species gets itself performed through the individual without much conscious- ness on the part of the individual that he is at the same time serving the will of the species. But in the profoundest sense the lover is really serving himself and his own spiritual interests. If in one aspect he is falling into the illusion of passion, as Schopenhauer says, at the same time he is rising above the illusion of selfishness into a life of real unity with another. If in one aspect he is the slave of the will of the species, in another and higher he is gaining the true liberty of the spirit. The spiritual significance of the love which THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 65 founds the family, as the great deliverer from the illusions of self-sufficient independence, is set forth by Hegel ^ as follows : " Love is the consciousness of the unity of myself with another. I am not separate and isolated, but win my self -consciousness only by renouncing my independent existence, and by knowing myself as unity of myself with another and of another with me. But love is feel- ing, that is to say, the ethical in the form of the natural. The first element in love is that I will be no longer an independent self-sufficing person, and that, if I were such a person, I should feel myself lacking and incomplete. The second element is that I gain myself in another person, in whom I am recognized, as he again is in me. Hence, love is the most tremendous contradiction, incapable of being solved by the understanding. The solution of this contradiction is an ethical union." The measure of a man's life is the range of interests he makes his own. Judged by this stand- ard the family is the entrance to the larger life of the Spirit. He that climbeth up in some other way into the service of humanity, and devotion to general causes, is apt to have a certain coldness and abstractness of attitude and temper. We must love men and women before we can love humanity. We must be faithful members of a household before we can become the most loyal members of the state. > " Philosophy of Right," translated by S. W. Dyde, Section 158. [66 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Socialistic and communistic schemes, like the Re- public of Plato, which try to jump over the family to the community, in so doing leave out the very disci- pline and experience on which devotion to the larger community must rest for its foundation and inspi- ration. " Family life is the primary school of char- acter in the case of the majority of mankind. The unity which is founded on natural feeling must precede that which depends on acquired sympathies and thoughts. To begin with the love of human- ity would be to begin with a cold abstraction. . The family is like a burning-glass which concentrates sympathy on a point. Within that narrow circle selfishness is gradually overcome and wider inter- ests developed. Each one is supplied with the opportunity of knowing a few human beings thoroughly, than which nothing is more important as a first stage in the transcendence of the merely individual self. One who knows only himself in- wardly and sees others only by a kind of outward ob- servation, which in a large circle is an almost inevit- able result, is apt to become for himself too entirely the centre of his world, if, indeed, he ever forms a world or cosmos for himself at all. The family enables a few persons to become not merely objects for each other, but parts of a single life ; and the unity thus affected may then be very readily ex- tended as sympathies grow." ^ ^ Mackenzie, "Social Philosophy," page 315. THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 167 This last sentence, " The family enables persons to become not merely objects for each other, but parts of a single life," sums up in the shortest possible compass the ethical and spiritual signifi- cance of the family. As long as other persons remain merely objects to us, we are still confined within the hard and fast limits of the natural world. There are facts and forces, coexistences and sequences in this natural world, and these other people take their places in this world among the other facts and forces, and their feelings and actions fall into line with the ongoings of natural laws. It is not until we recognize these other persons as sharers of the same interests and aims, partakers in the same purposes, members of the same life, that we know them from within, and appreciate them as they really are. "The well- married husband and wife " are not merely the happy possessors of each other: each is partaker of a life larger than the individual life of either. They both are living in a richer, larger world. Edward Caird, in his " Critical Philosophy of Kant," expresses the same thought : " The true moral self-surrender is not simply the surrender of one self to another, but of all to the universal principle which, working in society, gives back to each his own individual life transformed into an organ of itself. What gives its moral value to the social life, is that it not merely limits the 1 68 PRACTICAL IDEALISM self-seeking of each in reference to the self-seeking of the rest, nor even that it involves a reciprocal sacrifice of each to the others, but that a higher spirit takes possession of each and all, and makes them its organs, turning the natural tendencies and powers of each of the members of the society into the means of realizing some special function necessary to the organic completeness of its life. A social relation, say the relation of husband and wife, would be an unsanctified unity of repellent atoms through desires which turn them into ex- ternal means of each other's life, if those who participate in it were not, by the fact of their union, brought into the conscious presence of something higher than their individuality. The surrender of the individual as a natural being, and his recovery of his life as an organ dedicated to a special social function, is the essential dialec- tic of morals, which repeats itself in every form of society. For the natural desires can be brought to a unity, only if the separate gratification of each of them ceases to be conceived as an end in itself, and if it is sought as an end only in so far as in it the principle of our rational life can reveal itself." When the family is thus apprehended as the primary institution through which man is lifted up out of his isolation as a solitary individual in a world of external men and things, and made a partaker in a larger social life, its sacredness THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 69 becomes at once apparent. The integrity and stability and purity of family life are the very foundation of the moral and spiritual order. It is not a relation into which one may enter lightly, or for external considerations. . Only those who are prepared to renounce the littleness of merely selfish ends are fit to enter this larger life : though by the gift of children nature shows a wonderful capacity for assimilating the unfit, and making the most sordid and selfish souls over into generous and devoted fathers and mothers. Parental affec- tion transforms thousands of fathers and mothers where otherwise conjugal affection would have failed. Association and habit in the course of time bind together many who at iirst seem destined to remain estranged. Divorce is a dreadful remedy, to be permitted only as the surgeon's knife is permitted, in extreme cases, where neither nature, nor affection, nor time, nor moral transformation give the slightest hope of the ultimate establish- ment of the true "unity of family life. Just as true marriage is the highest blessedness that can come to man or woman, so a false mar- riage, a marriage conceived in vanity or avarice or sensuality, is the most fearful calamity. The bind- ing of two loveless, seliish hearts together can only result in mutual misery. The resulting state is not simply hell, as it is frequently called. It is that more painful, but at the same time more I70 PRACTICAL IDEALISM hopeful condition, which in figurative language we may describe as the compelling of persons who are fit only for hell to dwell perpetually in heaven. It is a condition which calls for the expression of the most tender and unselfish love at every point of constant contact, imposed upon persons who have no love to give. The supreme blessedness of the ideal marriage measures by contrast the superlative wretchedness of a loveless union. The blame rests, however, not with the institution, but with the low natures of those who bring to it less than its high requirement. And the remedy for these evils, vast as they are, lies not in a weaken- ing of the marriage bond, but in the spiritual edu- cation of the race up to that unselfishness and purity where the bond will cease to be a fetter, and become instead the symbol of liberty won through the transforming power of genuine affec- tion. That marriage should be growing worse at the same time that it is growing better is inevitable. It is the working of the same fundamental law as that which tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer as the outcome of the same economic tendencies. A modern watch is a much better timepiece than a sun-dial or hour-glass. But the increased complexity and delicacy of adjustment which makes the watch better, when it is in order, also renders it liable to more serious maladjust- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 71 ments when it gets out of order. A grain of dust injures a fine watch more than a hurricane harms a sun-dial. Any blacksmith can repair the latter at short notice, but only a skilled jeweller can put the watch to rights. So a modern locomotive is a vastly better means of transportation than a wheel- barrow. But the locomotive is liable to disasters of which the wheelbarrow is incapable. It is a universal law that the more complex and highly differentiated a mechanism is, the more serious are the evils of maladjustment to which it is liable. The condition of its excellence involves increased liability to intensified disorders. Now the characteristic of modern society is the increased differentiation of its members. Each individual is different from every other. And this brings to the family which is to unite these diverse individuals at the same time the opportunity for a higher and better union, and the liability to more painful and serious " incompatibilities." In primitive agricultural conditions, wealth, culture, and social position were pretty evenly distributed. The boy and girl reared on adjoining farms, trained in the district school, or country academy, or parochial school, were homogeneous in mental outlook, social standard, aesthetic taste, and relig- ious conviction. They united easily and naturally along all these lines. And yet the resulting union was not so broad and deep as the modern union 172 PRACTICAL IDEALISM in which wider diversities are reconciled. The easier it was for any boy to be fairly adapted to any girl, and vice versa, the more difficult was it for the highest harmony of complementary qualities to be realized. At the present time the best marriages unite very diverse ways of thinking and feeling into a complex and at the same time harmonious union of opposites, which in simpler times would have been impossible. At the same time the average couple to-day find differences which if allowed to remain un- reconciled, bring into married life troubles and divisions of which the more primitive bride and groom could have no conception. In a word, the greater the differences to be reconciled and the more marked the individuality, the more difficult is it to unite the two lives harmoniously ; and at the same time the more rich and sweet and beau- tiful the harmony if it is really gained. The modern family is getting to-day the high premium in its best, and the terrible penalty in its poorest marriages, of the intense development of individu- ality. The modern man brings to his wife a wide range of business sagacity, political influence, scientific and speculative interests. The modern woman brings to her husband rich acquisitions in literary and aesthetic taste, social life and philanthropic and religious fervour. Each life is reinforced and multiplied by all that is in the THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 73 other ; and thus both enter through the portals of the family into the life of the Universal Spirit, of which at best only vague and shadowy glimpses came to them in the blindness of their individual- istic isolation. In the internal economy and regulation of the family there are two equally fatal extremes to be avoided. There are two ways of bringing up a child which are almost equally bad. One parent does everything for the child ; lays down rules for his conduct ; regulates minutely his going out and coming in ; chooses his playmates ; superin- tends his recreations ; and by his superior wisdom solves all his problems for him and determines everything he does. What is the result ? A poor, effeminate, namby-pamby, unsophisticated weak- ling. Having had no responsibility to bear, the feeble, flabby will is undeveloped and atrophied ; and when the props by which he has been sup- ported are withdrawn, he falls an easy victim to the first temptation that crosses his path. Parents must not bear the children's burdens for them so long and so completely, that the children acquire no strength wherewith to bear their own. A mistake that a boy makes himself, and corrects himself, is often better than a dozen right answers furnished for him ready-made by an over-solicitous father or mother. On the other hand, it is just as grave a mistake 174 PRACTICAL IDEALISM to leave him entirely alone. Left to himself, going and coming when and where he pleases, doing what he likes and shirking what he doesn't like, he is pretty sure to take the broad road to destruction. He has to meet the inherited force of animal appetite, the accumulated momentum of social temptation, single-handed and alone; with- out the warnings of experience, or the pleadings of affection, or the support of sympathy, or the inspiration of high ideals. The wonder is that the children of negligent and preoccupied parents do not turn out badly more often than they do. If, then, both these ways are wrong, what shall we do .' Put the two together. Give him his lib- erty, and keep his confidence. Let him choose his course ; but be so good and close a friend that he will not think of making an important choice without asking your advice. Spend much time with him ; talk much with him : but talk about his little interests, not your grand ideas. Never evade an honest question, or put off a legitimate curiosity. Make sure that his first intimations of the significance of sex are suffused with an at- mosphere of reverence for its sacredness. Never weary of the interminable prattle about his ex- ploits in play, the characteristics of playmates, the hardships of school, the mechanism of loco- motives, the aspirations to become an engineer, a stage-driver, or a soldier. Undoubtedly this union THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 175 of perfect liberty with perfect confidence is rather an expensive process in the time, patience, and sympathy of the parents ; but the reward is great and to be had with certainty on no cheaper terms. It is the one way to insure in the child a character which is at the same time strong and good. This union of liberty and sympathy is the secret of happiness in all the family relations, that of brother and sister, husband and wife. The ideal family is not that in which one arbitrary will is imposed on all the others ; nor yet one in which each individual has his or her own way. One of these conditions is tyranny ; the other is anarchy : both are departments of hell. The true family is that in which each member — father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter — has interests, enthusiasms, aims, peculiar to himself or herself, for which he or she assumes entire responsibility ; and at the same time no one has any interest, enthusiasm, or aim, which is not respected, encouraged, appreciated, and shared by every other member. That is heaven in a home. The institution which stands next to the family is the School. The school is the great reservoir where the accumulated results of civilization are stored, and from which they are communicated to the individual according to his capacity and needs. There the education begun in the home is continued and expanded. In the home the 176 PRACTICAL IDEALISM child has learned that he and his interests are dear to others, and been taught to hold the inter- ests of others dear to himself. The province of the school is to show the child that the same reason and law and love that animate the home also rule the universe. Instead of being a foreign and unexplored country, peopled perchance by superstition with fantastic shapes and hostile powers, the world of Nature and Humanity, through the interpretation given in the school, becomes familiar, friendly, homelike, and endeared. The school is established to make the child at home in this large world of men and things ; the master of its forces, the minister of its laws, the possessor of its treasures, the sharer of its joys. This world in which we live is established through wisdom ; founded on truth ; governed by law ; clothed in beauty ; crowned with beneficence. The business of the school is to open the mind to understand that perfect wisdom ; to appreciate that wondrous truth ; to respect that universal law ; to admire that radiant beauty ; to praise that Infinite beneficence. Humanity, of which we are members, has brought forth great men and glori- ous deeds ; it has formed languages and reared civilizations; it has expressed its ideals and aspi- rations on canvas and in stone ; it has uttered its joys and sorrows', its hopes and fears, in music and poetry. The province of the school is to THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 77 interpret to the scholar these glorious deeds of noble men ; to open to him the languages and civilizations of the past ; to make him share the. pure ideals and lofty aims of artist and architect ; to introduce him to the larger world of letters and the higher realms of song. Nothing lower than this interpretation of Nature and Humanity to man can be accepted as the end of education. To make one at home in the world, and friends with all which it contains, is the object of the school. The forms of natural objects, the laws of life in plant and animal, the principles of mathematics and physics, the languages which nations speak, the literature in which they have expressed their sorrows and joys, their hopes and fears, their achievements and aspirations; the laws of economics, the institutions of society, the in- sights of philosophy, the ideals of ethics and relig- ion — all these things are man's rightful heritage, and it is the aim of education to put man in pos- session of this rich inheritance. It is the attempt to reconstruct the common schools with a view to the realization of this social ideal of education which, consciously or uncon- sciously, is behind the various changes in pro- grammes, methods of instruction, and principles of administration which, taken together, consti- tute what is called the new education. Viewed separately, out of connection with this controlling 178 PRACTICAL IDEALISM aim, these innovations doubtless look like whims, fads, and excrescences. Viewed in the light of their common purpose, and in their relation to this social mission of the school, these changes are seen to be the indispensable means for the accomplishment of this social ideal of educa- tion. Let us now consider some of these means by which the new education is striving to realize it. The kindergarten introduces the child to the elemental forms and objects which constitute this larger world. It takes the child at the age when the instincts of observation, comparison, combina- tion, and imitation are fresh and strong within him, and helps him to create little spheres in which his own sense of proportion, harmony, beauty, and order are expressed. It peoples for him the great unknown with the products of a fancy kindred to his own ; and stimulates his native tendency to believe that this vast world is alive with the keen interests, the hard problems, the fierce conflicts, the generous enthusiasms, the splendid victories which already begin to stir the blood of his own throbbing heart. It teaches him to let the frail bark of his individual personality float out on the social waters of game and song and rhythmic motion. The child is learning that the world is congenial to his intelligence, responsive to his curiosity, plastic to his will, friendly to, his heart. THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 79 He in turn is learning to be interested, alert, resolute, persevering, sympathetic in his reaction toward it. The world is coming into his mind in forms of orderly arrangement ; his heart is going out into the world in acts of interested attention and affectionate regard. To lead the child from the intense interests and warm affections of the home out into an undimin- ished interest and an unchilled affection for the larger world is the province of the kindergarten. To omit this stage is to permit to remain unde- veloped powers of mind and capacities of heart which, if not developed at this time, can never be recovered in their freshness and vigour. Instead of the eager, enthusiastic, affectionate nature which such a training at this time develops, we have the dull, stupid mind, the hard, cold heart, which the imposition of technical formalities at this stage tends to produce. The capacity to deal naturally and effectively with the minute, formal, and arbi-' trary symbols involved in reading, writing, and arithmetic is not present at first in the normal child; and though we can force the process pre- maturely, and we have all seen classes of five and six year old children shown off as prodigies of fluency and facility, I trust that we are coming to realize that it is like vegetables out of season, a hothouse luxury, purchased at an exorbitant price, and indulged in at no little risk to mental l80 PItACTlCAL IDEALISM health. We purchase at a high cost of nervous strain what would have come easily and natu- rally a year or two later; and we pay for it the ruinous price of the permanent dulling of native interest in the forms and objects of nature, and the stunting of that imaginative play which is the secret of appreciation of literature and en- joyment of art. We have sacrificed the most precious substance of thought and emotion, for the sake of the premature ripening of the symbols by which thought and emotion is ex- pressed : and what wonder that education from this time forth becomes a dreary and mechanical drudgery, which the boy is all too ready to ex- change for what seems the more vital and inspiring reality of work. A year or two of kindergarten method and spirit, followed by a year or two of devotion to reading, writing, and arithmetic, are more productive of facility in the latter studies than the entire time devoted to these alone ; and in addition you have the infinite advantage of a developed power of thought and capacity for feeling, without which these formal facilities are but an empty shell. The good kindergarten is the connecting link between the happiness of the home and the glory of the great world. The true kinder- gartner is the mediator between the human parent and the Heavenly Father ; leading the child not the less effectively because for the most part un- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS l8l consciously from the love of the one to the love of the other. In going out to meet the child, as the kinder- garten does, there is some danger of excessive con- descension on the part of the teacher; a tendency to consult the child on every matter, which results in fostering inordinate conceit and wilfulness in the child. These evils are not inseparable from the kindergarten : though no commendation of the kindergarten system should be given unless accom- panied by a warning against them. This danger has never been more clearly and forcibly stated than by Hegel : ^ " The necessity for the education of children is found in their inherent dissatisfac- tion with what they are, and in their impulse to belong to the world of adults, whom they rever- ence as higher beings, and in the wish to become big. The sportive method of teaching gives to children what is childish under the idea that it is in itself valuable. It makes not only itself ridicu- lous, but also all that is serious. It is scorned by children themselves : since it strives to repre- sent children as complete in their very incomplete- ness, of which they themselves are already sensible. Hoping to make them satisfied with their imperfect condition, it disturbs and taints their own truer and higher aspiration. The result is indifference to and want of interest in the substantive relations of 1 "Philosophy of Right," translated by S. Vf. Dyde, Section 175. 1 82 PRACTICAL IDEALISM the spiritual world, contempt of men, since they have posed before children in a childish and contempti- ble way, and vain conceit devoted to the contem- plation of its own excellence." In the tendency, so prevalent in home and kindergarten alike, to become the companion and playmate of the child, rather than his guide and ruler, the modern parent and teacher are in danger of losing those deeper influences which come through reverence, admira- tion, and aspiration. It is not by becoming child- ish that we shall win children to true manhood. Still, to appreciate the danger, is not to discredit the immense value of the kindergarten and its methods. The world to be mastered, however, is too large for the eye of the child to see, for his ear to hear, for his hands to handle, even in its elemental forms. If he is to apprehend the universe as it stretches away from the particular spot he now occupies into the twin infinitudes of time and space, he must acquire a set of symbols far more arbitrary, techni- cal, and universal than the gifts and occupations of the kindergarten. All things stand to each other and to their own constituent parts in definite numerical relations. Arithmetic is the science of these numerical relations. All things and all as- pects and relations of things which men regard as important have received names, and are expressed in words and sentences. This spoken language THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 83 the child already knows. But he cannot have some one by his side all the time to tell him just what he wants to know. Reading, writing, and gram- mar are the system of symbols by which the child learns to apprehend and communicate with the world which is beyond the range of his vision, the sound of his voice, and the reach of his hands. As instruments of education these numerical and verbal symbols are absolutely indispensable. And yet they are mere instruments, and little more. A man is not nourished by having a knife and fork put into his hands. A soldier wins no victories by the skilful manipulation of his musket. The farmer gets no harvest by the mere possession of spade and hoe and reaper and rake. All these are well-nigh indispensable instruments ; but the instrument is not the substance, and can never be a substitute therefor. In these other spheres no one expects the mere possession of the instrument to accomplish great results. At the table we call for the roast beef and the pudding. In war we dismiss McClellan and call in Grant. On the farm we put vital seed into the upturned soil. And yet in the public school we have been too long content to give the great mass of scholars these arbitrary symbols and mere instruments of learning ; and graduate them from our grammar schools with the expectation that they will prove educated men ! What wonder 1 84 PRACTICAL IDEALISM that we are disappointed ! What wonder that crime does not diminish ! What wonder that morality declines, and religion languishes, and art decays, and man degenerates. What wonder that now by the tongue of the demagogue, now by the bribe of the plutocrat, the masses of the people are corrupted and misled. The giving of the instru- ment without the substance is everywhere a dan- gerous thing. The knife and fork without the food provoke to suicide. The musket and knap- sack without the just cause and the campaign invite sedition. The pitchfork with no hay upon its tines is the appropriate emblem of an agrarian uprising. And reading, writing, and arithmetic, with no sound science to feed upon ; no manual training to apply them to; no hard problems of history and civil government to grapple with ; no diificulties of foreign language to conquer ; no ideals of great literature to cherish and delight in, are very dangerous implements to have lying about loose in a democratic society. The public school must do either less or more, if it is to be a real educator of youth, an effective supporter of the state. This devotion to arithmetic and grammar, this cultivation of the purely ceremonial and symbolic side of the intellectual life, is indeed important, nay essential and indispensable. But it is no sub- stitute for the weightier matters of the law, which THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 85 in education are science and history, and literature. As Jesus said to the* Scribes and Pharisees in his day, so the educational reformer says to school principals and superintendents to-day: "These ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone." It is perfectly possible to do these two things in our grammar schools. With a properly constructed curriculum, and with properly qualified teachers, it is perfectly possible to teach all that is valuable in the arithmetic that has hitherto been taught, and the elements of algebra and an ac- quaintance with physical phenomena besides ; all that is valuable in the geography that has hitherto been taught, and a considerable knowledge of what has taken place in these lands besides ; all that is valuable in the reading, writing, and grammar that has hitherto been taught, and a genuine apprecia- tion of the great masterpieces which fall within the range of youthful and popular comprehension. The traditional grammar school has fed the chil- dren on husks. Now husks are valuable in their time and place as wrappers and protectors of the substantial and nutritious corn. But husks alone are not fit food for children, and if you feed chil- dren on them long enough you will turn them into swine. You must fill out these husks of arith- metic, geography, and grammar with the nutritious grains of science, history, and literature, before they are fit mental diet for a growing child. 1 86 PRACTICAL IDEALISM The teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and the old-fashioned geography must be done in the elementary schools. That we all rec- ognize. That we all take for granted. But all that is the mere shell of learning. To use another figure, it puts the keys of knowledge into the scholar's hand, but it does not unlock the doors and open the treasures of wisdom to his mind and heart. Of what use is it to teach him to read if he reads nothing but sensational accounts of crime and scandal in the newspapers .'' Of what use is it to teach him interest and partnership, if he spends his earnings for fraudulent insurance and quack medicines ? Of what use is it to teach him the boundaries of the nation and the capitals of states, if he can be made to believe at each election that the perpetuity of this nation or the prosperity of these states depends on making money cheaper by a law, or food and raiment dearer by a tax. These people that know how to read and write and parse and know little or nothing else ; — these are the people who furnish fuel for the flames of jingo folly and A. P. A. fanaticism. These are the people who clamour for fiat prices at which to sell their goods and fiat money with which to pay their bills. These are the people who would substitute quackery for medical science ; mob violence for law ; theosophy for religion ; impulse for reason ; crazes and caprices for conscience and the constitution. THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 8/ A merely formal education makes a man a stronger force for either good or evil ; but it does nothing whatever to determine whether his strength shall be exerted on the good or on the evil side. The education which is to give wisdom to its scholars and security to the community must induce, not the mere smartness that comes of formal facil- ity in intellectual gymnastics, but the reverence and love that come of communion with the solid realities of natural facts and forces, and fellowship with the thoughts and deeds of human hearts and hands. Manual training is an essential feature of the social mission of the common schools. It unites mind and body in harmonious development and healthful exercise. Those who are to be artisans need it, if industrially we are to keep pace with the manufacturing nations of Europe in the skill of our workmen and the artistic finish of our manufactured goods. The surgeon, the dentist, the artist all need it for their professions. But they need it most who will never use it in these special ways. No man can thoroughly appreciate a good thing made by another, unless he has some faint conception of how to make the thing himself. Manual training is essential to elevate the taste of the consumer as well as to increase the skill of the producer. It is necessary as a common bond of appreciation and fellowship between rich and poor. This is its great social mission. Says Felix Adler : 1 88 PRACTICAL IDEALISM "Twenty-five years ago we fought to keep this people a united nation. Then was State arrayed against State. To-day class is beginning to be arrayed against class. The chief source of the danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes of society have become so widely separated by difference of interest and pursuits that they no longer fully understand each other, and misunder- standing is the fruitful mother-source of hatred and dissension. This must not continue. The manual labourer must have time for intellectual im- provement. The intellectual classes on the other hand must learn manual labour ; and this they can best do in early youth, in school, before the differ- entiation of pursuits has yet begun." Manual training calls into eager and enjoyable activity the whole power of the child; and thus crowds out the baser passions that root themselves in idleness and inactivity. It awakens self-confi- dence and dignity ; and rests the sense of per- sonal property on its true foundation in labour performed. By giving a tangible and interesting object to work for, it stimulates attention, con- centration, perseverance, and continuity of effort as no formal exercise of abstract will could ever do. It awakens latent constructive and artistic powers which would otherwise become atrophied by disuse. It stimulates invention, and cultivates taste. In the power to labour diligently and patiently THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 89 with hand and eye it lays the firm foundation for that patience and industry of mind on which all worthy intellectual achievements rest. Another condition essential to the social function of the public school is flexible programmes, with frequent irregular promotions and with examina- tions which test the power to do intellectual work rather than capacity to remember information. All children are not alike, either in their mental tastes and aptitudes, or in the rapidity with which they can acquire knowledge, or in the ability to recite what they have learned. There should be as much opportunity as possible for the individual aptitudes of the pupils to find exercise and expres- sion. Broadly speaking, all minds are divided into two classes, the literary and the scientific. Some boys will do splendid work in the laboratory who can get very little from the library. Some who shine in the library are utterly stupid in the lab- oratory. The good mathematician is often a poor linguist ; and frequently the good linguist is a wretched mathematician. As soon as possible, the children should be allowed to follow the native bent of their own minds ; selecting for study the things for which they are best fitted. This princi- ple of election has won its way in all our colleges. In the shape of two or three parallel courses it prevails in our high schools. The time is not far distant when a limited number of substantial I go PRACTICAL IDEALISM courses will be offered by the high school to all the pupils, and when each pupil will be allowed to select, with the advice of parents and teachers, his own course ; and the same diploma will be granted to all who have completed satisfactorily the re- quired number of courses. Thus, instead of trying to make alike the boys and girls whom nature has made unlike, we shall rather endeavour to develop the unlikeness and individuality of our pupils, in con- tinuation of the good work which nature has begun. Examination should consist, not in a test of a student's power to disgorge the crude materials which he has hurriedly crammed ; but rather in a test of his power to apply the principles which he has gradually assimilated to the problems with which they are concerned. In actual life the test of efficiency is not, " How much information can you repeat by rote without looking at your book .' " but it is, " What problems can you solve, what presentation of a case can you make, with all your books and tools before you ? " The time is not far distant when we shall no more expect a pupil to dump upon an examination paper all that he has learned during a term than we shall expect him to regurgitate all the food that he has eaten during the same length of time. We shall expect him to keep a record of work done through- out the term, which shall be open to inspection ; we shall expect him to show his ability to com- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 191 prehend statements and solve problems and dis- cuss questions which would have been altogether beyond him at the beginning of the term. The ideal programme is not a cast-iron one, over which every scholar must go at the same rate, and from which all shall show the same results, but a flexible programme, in which each shall study the subjects for which he is best fitted ; over which the bright scholar shall pass quickly, and the dull scholar slowly ; and from which each scholar shall show some growth of power and quickening of intelligence and interest peculiar to himself. The introduction of modern languages, and phys- ical science, and advanced mathematics into the grammar schools for pupils at the age of from eleven to thirteen is in the interest of the more perfect accomplishment of its social mission by the public school. To keep scholars grinding away at the refinements of arithmetic and Eng- lish grammar year after year, at this most enthu- siastic and susceptible period of life, is to disgust them forever with all that has the name of educa- tion. By the time a boy is eleven years old he may have all of these matters that will ever be of any value to him ; and to keep him grinding away at them for two or three years longer is a wicked waste of the most precious intellectual opportuni- ties of his whole life. Then, if ever, he should have a chance to learn his own language by the 192 PRACTICAL IDEALISM fascinating and fruitful acquisition of a language other than his own. Then he should fix forever his arithmetic by carrying the principles of it up into algebra, out into geometry, and making appli- cation of it all by weighing and measuring and calculating the forms and forces with which physi- cal science is concerned. Emerson has said that no man ever does anything well who does not come to it from a higher ground. The surest approach to a thorough comprehension of English grammar is through Latin or French. The best way to retain arithmetic is to preserve it in the form of algebra. The best way to assimilate what we have learned already is not to keep digging away at it after all its freshness has been worn out ; but to go right on using the power acquired in master- ing one subject for the conquest of another.- The introduction of physical science, first in the form of object lessons and familiar talks, and then in systematic study as a substantial subject, before the great mass of children leave school altogether, is an important element in the social mission of the school. There is a time in the life of al- most every boy and girl when interest in natural objects is keen and eager. Let the student then be trained to observe things at first hand ; to weigh and measure, to perform experiments, to keep a record of things seen and done, and he will thus acquire a lifelong interest in THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 93 nature. This is equally desirable for the great majority of children who leave school for work, and for the few who go to college. To those who go to work at once, it gives a more intelligent interest in the familiar objects with which they have to deal, and a wider companionship in the world of which they form a part. To those who go to college it gives a training in accurate obser- vation, and a facility in experiment which lays a foundation for the accurate scientific studies of their college course. Now, the great majority of boys come to college with their powers of obser- vation, and their interest in natural phenomena, stunted and atrophied by prolonged disuse, and crowded out by the mere book-learning on which our narrow lines of requirement have forced them to concentrate. Scientific studies pursued by sci- entific methods are an element of training for the largest and truest enjoyment and usefulness of life which no system of education which will fulfil its social mission can omit. What observation and experiment and the methods of the laboratory are in relation to Nature, that good literature is to Humanity. Literature presents the ideal of human life as it has expressed itself in the great institutions of family, church, state, and society. It clothes these ideals in the flowing robes of the imagination and adorns them with the jewels of well-chosen words, 194 PRACTICAL IDEALISM set in rhythmic and melodious forms. To feed the mind of youth on the ideals of a noble and elevated human life : to win his fidelity to the family through sweet pictures of parental affection, and filial devotion, and pure household joys ; to secure his loyalty to the state by thrilling accounts of the deeds of brave men and heroic women ; to make righteousness attractive by pointed fable, or pithy proverb, or striking tale of self-sacrificing fidelity to the costly right against the profitable wrong; to inflame with a desire to emulate the example of patriot, martyr, and philanthropist ; this is the social mission of good literature in the public schools. To interpret this literature so that it comes home to the boys and girls ; so that they see reflected, in it the image of their own bet- ter selves ; so that they carry with them its inspira- tion through all their after lives ; is the duty and the privilege of the public school. It is not of so much consequence what a boy knows when he leaves school, as what he loves. The greater part of what he knows he will speedily forget. What he loves he will feed on. His hunger will prompt his efforts to increase his store. The love of good liter- ature — a genuine delight in Longfellow and Whit- tier, Lowell and Tennyson, Hawthorne and Scott, Shakespeare and Homer — is, from every point of view, the most valuable equipment with which the school can send its boys and girls into the world. THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 195 For the same reasons drawing and music should be prominent features of the public-school cur- riculum. To what purpose does the artist "re- create the glory of the world," and the musician "re-echo its loveliest songs," unless there be developed in the great mass of his fellow-men the power to appreciate the beauty and harmony of form and sound. It is not to make artists and musicians, it is to create appreciation of art and music, and to make these the ministers of gladness and hope and cheer in every humblest home, that the school should teach its pupils to draw, to model, and to sing. It places within the reach of every child sources of innocent and wholesome pleasure which riches cannot give nor poverty take away. I have endeavoured to present, first, the motive or ideal of the new education, which is nothing less than the fitting of each individual member of society for a useful and enjoyable participation in all that is purest, noblest, and highest in our com^ mon intellectual and social life. I have pointed out some of the more important features on which the new education insists as essential to the ac- complishment of this, its social mission. Physical and manual training ; flexible programmes and rational examinations and frequent promotions ; science and literature, drawing and music ; kinder- garten methods to start with, and opportunity for the individual to determine his own course with 196 PRACTICAL IDEALISM reference to individual aptitudes, and future occu- pations — these are some of the things which the new education finds essential to its social mission. The present is a time of crisis for the public schools. I do not refer to political dangers, either such as may come from partisanship in the attempt to use school offices as party spoils ; or to reduce appropriations from motives of short-sighted econ- omy ; serious as these evils must always be in a democratic government. I do not refer to ecclesi- astical jealousies and antagonisms, disastrous as these may become wherever diversities of relig- ious faith prevail. Both these dangers the public schools will pass ; for the properly conducted pub- lic school is so manifestly superior to anything that sectarian ecclesiasticism ever can furnish, that its inherent superiority will continue in the future as in the past to vindicate its claim to popu- lar support. The only thing that any institution really and permanently has to fear is the substitution of something better in its place. Now there is some- thing better than the public-school system as it exists to-day. A school system where the promo- tion is frequent, and the programme is flexible, and instruction is personal and individual, and exami- nation is rational and natural, and where the great topics which call out youthful enthusiasm and min- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 97 ister to intellectual and social delight are introduced as early and rapidly as they can be appreciated and enjoyed, is infinitely preferable to a system where everybody must take the same course in the same time in the same way ; and be worried once in so often over the same arbitrary and formal examina- tions, and waste the same number of precious years in the same dreary and monotonous drudgery upon subjects which have long since lost all interest and charm. The wealthy and intelligent portion of the community are beginning to understand that the public school of to-day is not the ideal school ; and that fact constitutes the crisis of the hour. Shall this demand of the intelligent and wealthy parents be met by private schools to which the children of the more favoured classes shall be sent, and by leaving the public schools exclusively for the poorer children whose parents cannot afford to send them to a better school } The moment that policy is permitted to prevail, the public school receives a more fatal blow than it was ever in the power of politician or ecclesiastic to inflict. The public school will conquer every inferior rival. Its rivals hitherto, both private and parochial, have been hopelessly inferior to the public school ; and in spite of all opposition, the public school has thus far come out of every conflict magnificently triumphant. Unless the public-school system it- self responds at once to the new ideal, it will, ere igS PRACTICAL IDEALISM long, find itself confronted for the first time by a rival whose superiority to itself will render it really formidable. The public school is the institution which says that the poor boy, though he may eat coarser food, and wear a shabbier coat, and dwell in a smaller house, and work earlier and later and harder than his rich companion, still shall have his eyes trained to behold the same glory in the heavens and the same beauty in the earth ; shall have his mind developed to appreciate the same sweetness in music and the same loveliness in art ; shall have his heart opened to enjoy the same literary treas- ures and the same philosophic truths ; shall have his soul stirred by the same social influences and the same spiritual ideals as the children of his wealthier neighbours. The socialism of wealth, the equalization of material conditions, is at present an idle dream, a contradictory conception ; toward which society can take, no doubt, a few faltering steps, but which no mechanical invention or constitutional device can hope to realize in our day. The social- ism of the intellect, the offering to all of the true riches of an enlightened mind and a heart that is trained to love the true, the beautiful, and the good ; this is a possibility for the children of every workingman : and the public school is the channel through which this common fund of intellectual THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1 99 and spiritual wealth is freely distributed alike to rich and poor. Here native and foreign-born should meet to learn the common language and to cherish the common history and traditions of our country ; here the son of the rich man should learn to re- spect the dignity of manual labour, and the daugh- ter of the poor man should learn how to adorn and beautify her future humble home. Here all classes and conditions of men should meet together and form those bonds of fellowship and ties of sym- pathy, that community of interest and identity of aim, which will render them superior to all the divisive forces of sectarian religion, or partisan politics, or industrial antagonisms ; and make them all contented adherents, strong supporters, firm defenders of that social order which must rest upon the intelligence, the sympathy, the fellow- ship, the unity of its constituent members. What will be the result of this introduction of real matter instead of mere form into the element- ary schools .'' Will it make physicists and biolo- gists, historians, and literary critics of the children } By no means. It will, however, hold a larger proportion of children in school until in the high school and the college they can begin the study of separate sciences and departments of know- ledge. They will not leave school at the first opportunity, as so many have done in the past, in 200 PRACTICAL IDEALISM sheer disgust at the monotonous routine of dry formalities. Yet the great majority, even under the best system of instruction, must leave school finally from one of the elementary grades. What will they carry with them, which has been lacking in the past ? Will they have merely a little larger amount of scattered bits of information .'' If that were all it would be little gain. If even in this cursory and general way nature and human history and life have been intelligently and interestingly taught, the scholars will carry with them, in uncon- scious and unreflecting form no doubt, the growing conviction that this world in which they live is constructed on a beautiful plan and ruled by defi- nite and inexorable laws ; and that the life of man in the world is a struggle and conflict with evil in which noble aims and high ideals may be sought and won. These reasonable convictions will bear appro- priate fruit in later life. Such a reverence for natural law, and such an enthusiasm for human ideals, will prove a stronger safeguard against intemperance than special lessons on morbid physiology. The child thus trained will not be so eager to fight a foreign nation ; or to perse- cute the adherents of another religious faith ; or to resort to a general remedy for an undefined ailment ; or to believe that national prosperity depends on either high taxes or cheap money ; THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 20I or to prefer the hasty impulse of a mob to the safeguards of the constitution and the deliberate judgment of the courts. In short, even the grad- uates of our elementary schools will have the ele- ments of civilization imparted to them ; which are reverence for natural law, and respect for consti- tuted authority ; and a belief that there were brave men before Agamemnon, and sound political ideas before the latest deliverance of their party platform. They will be able to face the dema- gogue with the conviction of the Pope's Legate, in Browning's "The Soul's Tragedy," "I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolts." Knowledge, as distinct from the mere forms and symbols and instruments of knowledge, must be imparted to the child, if we are to expect his edu- cation to bear the civilizing fruits of wisdom and intelligence and virtue and piety. The province of the public school is the introduction of the child to the two great worlds of nature and human so- ciety. To give him six or eight years of mental discipline in the symbols of knowledge without opening his mind and heart to the apprehension of the real substance of the natural and spiritual world, is simply to sharpen up his wits, and throw him back on his sensual appetites and passions, on vile images and low ambitions for the actual material to exercise his sharpened wits upon. An empty mind is ever the fit abode of devils. But 202 PRACTICAL IDEALISM nowhere do they hold such horrid carnival as in a mind that is swept and garnished by a merely formal training, and at the same time empty of all positive contents. And that is precisely the kind of mind the grammar schools which refuse to adopt the new subjects and methods into their curricula are pre-eminently fitted to turn out. Such schools are Godless in a far deeper sense than it has oc- curred to any one thus far to accuse them of being. Whether they admit or exclude religious exercises, they commit the serious and fatal crime of with- holding from the children at their most sensitive and impressionable age an appreciation and love for those aspects of Nature and Humanity in which the divine wisdom and goodness is most impressively and convincingly revealed. Industry has become so highly organized in modern times that it deserves the rank and exerts the power of a great social institution. It is, or ought to be, a mighty force for the spiritual libera- tion of man. Carlyle exclaims, " Blessed is he who has found his work ; let him ask no other blessed- ness. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work. Work is worship. All true work is sacred. All works, each in their degree, are a making of madness sane ; truly enough a religious operation." THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 203 Work, under modern conditions, is not a mere satisfaction of individual wants. We cannot draw our individual sustenance direct from nature, like the savage. We can satisfy our wants only through the mediation of society, and through this satis- faction we are brought into the closest relations of mutual service with our fellow-men. Professor George Harris ^ has happily expressed this social dependence of the individual : " If a cross-section showing a single day in the life of a civilized man could be exposed, it would disclose the services of a multitude of helpers. When he rises, a sponge is placed in his hand by a Pacific Islander, a cake of soap by a Frenchman, a rough towel by a Turk. His merino underwear he takes from the hand of a Spaniard, his linen from a Belfast manufacturer, his outer garments from a Birmingham weaver, his scarf from a French silk grower, his shoes from a Brazilian grazier. At breakfast, his cup of coffee is poured by natives of Java and Arabia ; his rolls are passed by a Kansas farmer, his beef- steak by a Texan ranchman, his orange by a Florida negro. He is taken to the city by the descendants of James Watt ; his messages are carried hither and thither by Edison, the grandson by electrical consanguinity of Benjamin Franklin : his day's stint of work is done for him by a thousand Irish- men in his factory ; or he pleads in a court which ' " Moral Evolution," page 36. 204 PRACTICAL IDEALISM was founded by ancient Romans, and for the sup- port of which all citizens are taxed ; or in his study at home he reads books composed by English his- torians and French scientists, and which were printed by the typographical descendants of Guten- burg. In the evening he is entertained by German singers who repeat the myths of Norsemen, or by a company of actors who render the plays of Shake- speare ; and finally he is put to bed by South Amer- icans who bring hair, by Pennsylvania miners and furnace workers who bring steel, by Mississippi planters who bring cotton, or, if he prefers, by Russian peasants who bring flax, and by Labrador fowlers who smooth his pillow. A million men, women, and children have been working for him that he may have his day of comfort and pleasure. In return he has contributed his mite to add a unit to the common stock of necessaries and luxuries from which the world draws. Each is working for all ; all are working for each." As one's wants are supplied by multitudes of others, so the individual in his work is compelled to consult. the taste and desire of others in the quantity, quality, form, and style of the commodity he produces in return. The carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, the tailor, must produce, not the thing which happens to strike his individual fancy, not the thing which his untrained eye and hand can turn off most readily ; but what the experience THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 205 and taste of society demands of him. Not until he has entered into the thought and feeling and will of society with reference to the article he pro- poses to produce ; not until he has made his eye and hand and brain implicitly obedient to that social will, can he be accepted as the servant of society, and by virtue of that service claim an equivalent social service in return. Thus indus- try, both in its demands and its supplies, compels the individual to become a producer and a partaker of what society has come to consider good. This liberalizing and socializing function of industry is clearly and profoundly set forth by Hegel : ^ "Labour has as its aim to satisfy the private wants of the individual. Yet by the introduction of the needs and free choice of others it rises to universality. Through the compulsion I am under to fashion myself according to others my wants take on a universal form. I acquire from others the means of satisfaction, and must accordingly fall in with their opinions. At the same time I am compelled to produce the means for the satis- faction of the wants of others. One plays into the other, and the two are interdependent. Every- thing, particular becomes in this way social. This social element brings a liberation, by which the stringent necessity of nature is turned aside, and man is determined by his own universal opinion. 1 " Philosophy of Rights," Sections 189-208. 206 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Through the dependence and co-operation involved in labour, subjective self-seeking is converted into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the wants of all others. The universal so penetrates the particular that the individual, while acquiring, producing, and enjoying for himself, at the same time produces and acquires for the enjoyment of others. Private persons through self-seeking are compelled to turn themselves out towards others." Thus the industrial order is by its very nature a great social force, imposing its standards on all and exacting its tribute of each. This it does by the force of the reason that is latent in it. The effort of socialism to grasp this immanent reason in definite rules, and compress it into a system, and impose it by authority, would be destructive of the freedom, and ultimately of the rationality, of the industrial order. The attempt to mark out by public authority just what everybody shall want, and what part each person shall take in the production which shall satisfy those wants, would be fatal alike to individuality and taste in consumption, and origi- nality and enterprise in production. The competi- tive system unquestionably has grave defects, and needs reform at various points. But these reforms should be made in the interest of greater rather than less freedom of individual initiative, and in the protection of the weak against the unscrupu- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 207 lous ; not in the destruction of freedom, and the reduction of weak and strong alike to a dead level of uniformity and monotony and inefficiency. Cruelly as the present industrial system crushes certain individuals, heavily as it rests on certain classes, wickedly as it works under certain condi- tions and in certain hands ; nevertheless the power it gives on the whole, and in the long run, to every- body to become a contributor to the social prod- uct and a partaker to the extent of the market value of his product in the whole wealth of the social world, renders it, like the family, the school, and the state, one of the great social institutions which make for the liberation of man from the limitations of natural necessity and selfish iso- lation from his fellows. Destined undoubtedly to undergo many and radical transformations, the institution of organized industry, resting on the free determination of the individual, expres- sive of his taste, responsive to his will, and met- ing out to each, according to the social value of his product, his proportionate share in the diver- sified wealth of the world, is one of the most marvellous products of that practical reason which is immanent in society, and one of the most beneficent institutions for the spiritual emancipa- tion of man. The twofold principle previously applied in the family indicates the right relation of society to 208 PRACTICAL IDEALISM the individual in economic relations. There must be the union of liberty and sympathy. Laissez-faire says, Let each man look out for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. When the weak are driyen to the wall, when the poor are plundered just because of their poverty, when the family is undermined, when children are starved and stunted, when men are degraded by drink, and women are starved into dishonour, this doctrine raises no protest, but looks com- placently on, finding abundant consolation in the reflection that the more keen the struggle and the more cruel the competition, the stronger and fitter will be the remnant who survive. Socialism, on the other hand, would provide the individual with a suitable tenement, send his chil- dren to school, furnishing instruction and books, even clothes and food if need be, at the public expense, direct his industry, guarantee him steady employment at a remunerative wage, manage his mines, railroads, factories, and farms for him, adjust supply and demand by special legislation, and insure to everybody happiness and prosperity ready-made. Now, neither of these attitudes is more practi- cable or less cruel than the other. We must put the two together. We must unite what Bos- anquet calls "moral socialism" with "economic individualism." We must let each man develop THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 209 the Strength and independence that comes of try- mg to bear his own burden, and then we must give him all the help in doing so that is consistent with that development of strength and indepen- dence. In the words of Bosanquetr^ "You must let the individual make his will a reality in the conduct of his life, in order that it may be possible for him consciously to entertain the social purpose as a constituent of his will. Without these con- ditions there is no social organism and no moral socialism. Economic socialism rests on the in- dividualistic fallacy of thinking that you can main- tain a moral structure without maintaining the morality which is the cohesion of its units. Thrift, in the shape of a resolution to bear at least your own burdens, is not a selfish but an unselfish quality, and is the first foundation, and the well- known symptom, of a tendency, not to moral in- dividualism, but to moral socialism. The man who looks ahead and tries to provide for bearing his own burden is the man who can appreciate a social purpose, and who cares for the happiness of others. Economic socialism fails to appreciate the depth of individuality which is necessary in order to contain, in a moral form, the modern social purpose." The social problem is to make each citizen strong and energetic and wise enough to bear his ^ "Civilization of Christendom," page 330. 2IO PRACTICAL IDEALISM individual burden and take care of himself ; and at the same time make all citizens generous and public-spirited enough to provide such general ad- vantages as education, and sanitation, and factory legislation, and tenement-house inspection, and insurance supervision, and parks and holidays, and reasonable hours and healthful conditions of labour, and relief in unavoidable disease and disaster for all. The bearing of one another's burdens by men who have the energy and enterprise and indepen- dence to try their best to bear their own ; — this is the ideal industrial order. In the state or nation, and the social life which it supports, however, man finds the fullest and freest realization of himself. For the state is founded, not on the necessities of reproduction and nutrition which lie at the base of family life and the industrial order ; but on man's widest social relations to his fellow-men. As we have already seen, man exists side by side with multitudes of other human beings like himself. In some way or other he must come into conscious relations to these other persons. He may engage in strife and warfare ; but these prove unsatisfac- tory and suicidal. He must ultimately seek peace ; and this can only come when his interests and the interests of these other beings shall be blended and transformed into a social interest common to them all. The state is such a transforming insti- THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 211 tution. By its laws, customs, and institutions ; its officers and courts and armies, the state breaks down the hard and fast separation of individuals from each other; suppresses the strife of indi- viduals against each other; and transforms these warring individuals into co-operating members of a united whole. The spirit of nationality is thus the spirit of liberty. It enlarges the range of the individual's interest and sympathy and devo- tion ; making him one with all the other citizens of the nation to which he belongs. In times when nations were comparatively small, when boundaries were vague, and laws were un- developed, frequent wars were inevitable. The spirit of nationality found its most frequent and natural expression in antagonism to other nations. Kings and irresponsible rulers frequently found it for their interest to stir up strife between nations for their own glory and aggrandizement. For the control of uncivilized races; for the suppres- sion of internal disorder; for the preservation of peace and the protection of life and property of citizens in foreign lands, fleets and armaments are still a necessity ; and legitimate wars may yet be waged. But between the civilized Christian nations of the present day war is unnecessary and inex- cusable. The so-called jingo spirit, which seeks pretexts for fighting, and threatens the perma- nence of peace by needless preparation for improb- 212 PRACTICAL IDEALISM able wars, is a relic of the dark ages, which ought to be thoroughly exterminated before the dawn of the twentieth century. The railroads, the tele- graph, the telephone, the extension of travel and commerce, the spread of a common religion, the international organization of labour, the common interest of literature, science, art, and philan- thropy are combining to unite all the nations of the earth in a common brotherhood. International arbitration affords a mode of settlement for dis- putes between nations, far more economical, far more just, far more creditable, far more bene- ficial alike to victor and to vanquished, than the cruel arbitrament of arms. Scientific inven- tion is bringing the weapons and engines of destruction to such deadly efficiency, that the very perfection of the art of war will render its practice on any large scale and for protracted periods impossible. The dawn of universal peace, though doubtless not quite at hand, is not far distant. The federation of all civilized and Chris- tian nations, and their united protectorate over the uncivilized communities through the develop- ment of international law and the establishment of some' form of international tribunal, is a con- summation of the prolonged struggle of man for liberty, which persons now living may hope to see within their lifetime. There is abundant room for patriotism outside THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 213 of the particular field which jingoism has appro- priated to itself. There are enemies enough to conquer, even if we do not get up a war with England or Spain. The enemies of the modern state are within ; its foes are they of its own household. The chief danger of the modern democratic state is that certain classes, instead of supporting the state in a loyal and disinterested devotion, will use their political power to make the state serve their private interests ; and true patri- otism at the present time manifests itself chiefly in resistance to these special classes, so far as they seek to manipulate the government in their private interest. True patriotism is the strenuous, vigi- lant, and intelligent devotion to the common good of all, as against the attempts of private parties and classes to secure for themselves special favours at the general expense. Let us consider, in order, some of these special points at which the true patriot must be on his guard. First : The currency. A stable, reliable, and universally acceptable medium of exchange is a matter of prime importance to the welfare of the nation. A currency liable to serious fluctua- tion in its intrinsic or sudden alteration in its conventional value, cuts the nerve of legitimate business, and leads to panic and disaster. Not merely the fact, but the expectation of such fluctuations and alterations is a national calamity 214 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of the first magnitude. Yet it is for the interest of the creditor class as such to contract the volume and appreciate the value of the currency. It is likewise for the interest of the debtor class, and of the owners of silver mines as a class, to expand the volume and depreciate the value of the cur- rency. To vote on either side from these merely private and class considerations is to be a traitor to one's country in one of the chief ways in which treason is possible in a peaceful modern republic. True patriotism at this point demands that a man study the currency question fairly, fully, and impartially ; and then vote, not as creditor or bond-holder; not as debtor or mine-owner; but as a citizen intent on securing that stability and acceptableness in the currency on which the true economic prosperity of the whole community depends. Another point on which the true patriot must be watchful against the encroachments of private interests is taxation. Taxation is one of the most fundamental and sacred powers intrusted to gov- ernment. It allows the state to step in and take from the labourer such portion of the product of his day's work as it sees fit. From the wheat of the farmer; from the web of the weaver; from the house of the carpenter ; from the rent of the landlord ; from the profits of the merchant ; from the salary of the clerk ; from the fees of the THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 21 5 lawyer; from the earnings of the corporation, taxation takes its inexorable toll. Such being the omnipresent and almost omnipotent social power of taxation, it is obvious that so sacred and im- portant a function should be exercised scrupu- lously and exclusively for the public good. No individual, and no class of individuals ; no private corporation, or combination of corporations, should be allowed to use this sacred governmental func- tion for the promotion of their personal and pri- vate profits. And yet it is for the interest of the importers as a class to have duties removed from the commodities in which they deal. It is for the interest of manufacturers as a class to force the duties up on the commodities which they produce. Here comes in a second great opportunity for treason against the state. The man who votes one way or the other on the tariff, simply with a view to the effect that tariff will have on his private business, or the profits of the class to which he belongs, is as false and black a traitor as the conditions of a peaceful industrial republic make it possible for him to be. He is the kind of a man who in warlike times would have been a Benedict Arnold. He is willing to put his private interest above the general good : and that is the essence of treason in all times, the world over. The true patriot at this point is the man who studies the enormously dry and detailed sub- 2l6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM ject of the tariff patiently, thoroughly, and impar- tially, and casts his vote, not in the interest of his business, nor according to the prejudice of his locality, nor at the dictation of his party, but in the interest of that justice and equality which is the foundation on which republican institutions rest. A third point where true patriotism is in demand is that of pensions. The roll of pensions in the United States has risen from 345,125 in 1885 to 970,524 in 1895. The disbursements have in- creased within these ten years from ^65,693,706 in 1885 to ^140,959,361 in 1895. Now in so far as these pensions represent the gratitude of the country for actual disabilities incurred in its de- fence, there is no expenditure of the government which is more wisely bestowed, or more benefi- cently directed, or more cordially approved. But we are all aware that a very large part of the entire sum, and the larger part of this enormous increase of $75,000,000 within the past ten years, does not represent merited pensions freely bestowed by a grateful country ; but on the contrary represents unearned pensions extorted through iniquitous legislation, imposed upon political parties by the pernicious activity of the pension agents and the pensioners themselves. That again is treason, and the parties who have exerted their political influence for these selfish and unrighteous ends THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 217 are traitors to their country, in the modern mean- ing of that word. At this point true patriotism demands a firm and determined resistance to this plunder of the public treasury by members of a class, even though that class be one which, on general grounds, we deservedly honour above all others. Another point on which true patriotism is called for is the civil service. Sneered at, and betrayed, and starved, and decried by politicians, the reform of the civil service has gone -steadily forward until at length, after thirty years of agitation, 85,000 places, or substantially the entire national service, is brought under the rules. Much remains to be done to establish and perpetuate the reform, and to extend it in states and municipalities. But the principle has at last achieved a permanent and substantial victory in the field of national politics. By this reform offices cease to be party spoils, and become opportunities for public service. This is the most substantial victory which genuine patriot- ism has won in recent years. To show the countless concrete ties by which the individual is bound to the state, and to the social life and common interests which the state conserves and promotes, would take us into the boundless fields of politics and sociology. The state is about us as the very atmosphere in which our social life lives and moves and has its being: and it behooves 2l8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM US to keep the springs of patriotic feeling pure and sweet and simple and practical. This means that we shall not permit these feelings to be di- verted into the fanatical persecution of an ecclesi- astical organization, or the foolish jealousy of foreign countries ; that we shall treat as public enemies and traitors every man and every class of men who try to influence legislation or manipulate taxation, or bribe officials, or mislead the people, in order that out of public folly, or public privilege, or public franchises, or public plunder they may make private gain; and that against such efforts to betray general interests for personal profit we stand as disinterested and courageous defenders of the interest of the nation as a whole, and the rights of the people it represents. CHAPTER VII THE WORLD OF MORALITY Persons win our love before we know it. We do not choose them : they choose us rather, and draw us after them by their compelling charm. We love by pre-established harmony; because we belong to each other, and feel it is not good for us to be alone. Institutions, likewise, dominate us most completely when we are least aware of their subtle and pervasive power. Little do the youth and maiden concern themselves about the ethical nature of the family when they fall in love and engage to marry. It is well that it is so. The hearts of persons, the logic of institutions, are treasures far too precious to entrust to the caprice, or even to the conscience of individuals. The wise World-Spirit keeps these affairs for the most part in his own control, and not until the race is well on toward maturity does he begin little by little to delegate some of these functions to our clumsy hands. " Fate which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be, By what distractions he would be possessed, How he would pour himself in every strife, 219 220 PRACTICAL IDEALISM And well-nigh change his own identity, That it might keep from his capricious play His genuine self, and force him to obey. Even in liis own despite his being's law, Bade through the deep recesses of our breast The unregarded river of our life Pursue with indiscernible flow its way, And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, Though driving on with it eternally." ^ Such was the condition of primitive man, and many people to-day never get much beyond this immediate response to natural impulse and spon- taneous compliance with social customs and con- ventions. These are the happy souls of whom Wordsworth sings :^ " There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them ; who in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth ; Glad hearts, without reproach or blot. Who do thy work, and know it not." Jesus, deeply as he probed the paradoxes of self- consciousness, and mightily as he has strengthened the power of self-determination in man, yet had the most broad and generous recognition of this unconscious virtue which does not let the left hand know what the right hand doeth ; which "answered and said, I will not, but afterward 1 Matthew Arnold, "The Buried Life." ^ Qde to Duty. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 221 repented and went " ; which gives meat to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits the sick, all in utter unconsciousness that in so doing the individual is serving the uni- versal principle of duty and ministering to the supreme Lord of life. The mature modern man, however, is not al- lowed to linger long in the blissful unconsciousness of this Garden of Eden stage. He must needs eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and taste the bitter fruit of self-consciousness, with its fateful choices and heavy responsibilities, its inward compunctions and outward defeats, its unattained ideals and its flying goal. He must de- liberately take sides either for or against his own highest good and the welfare of his fellows ; he must be either the enemy or the friend, the hater or the lover, of his kind. There is no middle ground. Better or worse than the animal ances- tor and the primitive tribesman, the modern citi- zen and householder must be. He cannot rest in the easy-going average virtue which institutions and customs impose upon him from without. He must either array himself against these customs and institutions in wanton violation of their claims, and thus become knowingly wicked and responsi- bly guilty; or else he must cheerfully and heartily make the interests they represent his own, and so become positively and aggressively righteous. 222 PRACTICAL IDEALISM This consciousness of the collision between con- flicting interests, both of which appeal to sides of our nature, and the necessity of choosing the one and renouncing the other, is the root of the moral problem. It is in connection with the urgency of natural appetites and passions that this collision is first forced upon our attention, and the moral conflict is begun. Natural appetites and passions in themselves, or as they exist in the animal, are neither good nor bad. Taken apart from their relations to the other interests of our lives, and to the rights of our fellows, the appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex, the impulses toward wealth, power, fame, are mor- ally indifferent. There is no evil in their indul- gence, and no good in their suppression. If a man were merely one of these appetites and nothing else, and if he stood in conscious rela- tion to no other persons, then the greatest gratifi- cation of this one appetite or passion would be for this hypothetical man the supreme good. Fortunately, however, no man is or can be quite so small as that. He is greater than any or all of his appetites ; and, as Carlyle says, " His misery comes of his greatness." We have many appe- tites and desires, and we stand in conscious relations to many persons. To indulge one of these appetites to its full capacity, is to rob and stunt and dwarf and kill a hundred other interests THE WORLD OF MORALITY 223 of my own ; it is to trample on the rights and violate the claims, and destroy the happiness, and degrade the character of my neighbours. This consciousness of the conflicting claims of different sides of our complex nature, each of which in itself is naturally good, but of which in any given case some are so much better than others that by comparison the inferior natural good becomes the morally bad, — this is the funda- mental fact of ethics. From this insight all ethi- cal doctrine can be deduced. The end of conduct, the highest good, duty, law, virtue, and vice all become clear the moment you approach them in the strong light of this fundamental truth that the instincts and impulses, the appetites and pas- sions of our nature do not exist as isolated facts ; but side by side in a great mass of conflicting appetites and passions, all of which are naturally good : and consequently that no appetite or pas- sion is or can be morally good or bad in itself ; but becomes morally good when it is so subordinated and correlated with the other impulses and inter- ests as to promote the harmonious and efficient realization of the self as a whole ; and becomes morally bad when through insubordination and maladjustment to the other impulses and inter- ests, it brings disintegration and discord and in- efficiency to the self as a whole. Let us then examine the fundamental ethical 224 PRACTICAL IDEALISM conceptions in the light of this transparent truth. First : the end, the good, the moral ideal. Here, at the very outset, we enter debatable ground. On this question there always have been sharp differences of opinion. In general there are three ends which may be regarded as the supreme object of moral conduct. Of these three ends the first is based on the idea that natural appe- tites and impulses are worthless, if not positively evil in themselves ; and consequently the end of conduct is their repression or control. The second is based on the idea that natural appe- tites and impulses are not only valuable in them- selves, but the sole and ultimate values in life ; and consequently the end of conduct is their maximum indulgence. The third is based on the idea that natural appetites and passions have a natural value in themselves, but derive their moral worth from the relation in which they are placed to one another by the reason and will of the self to which they belong. First : We have the doctrine that appetites and passions are morally worthless in themselves (which is true) and must remain morally worth- less in relations (which is false) ; and consequently the end of conduct, the supreme good, is their repression and control. This is the view of Kant, and to this view the various forms of intuitionism. Stoicism, and asceticism are closely affiliated. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 225 Kant declares, "Nothing in the whole world, or even outside of the world, can possibly be regarded as good without limitation except a good will." i His categorical imperative is, " So act as if the maxim of thy action were by thy will to become a universal law." ^ Will and law, however, are both abstractions. The will that wills nothing is no will at all. The law that has no definite content is no law at all. Military discipline is a good thing in an army, but military discipline is nothing in itself, and apart from actual soldiers wins no vic- tories. The strictest martinet that ever wore shoulder straps cannot dispense with soldiers to impose his rules upon. Law and will likewise must have appetites and interests, and it is only in these appetites and interests that law and will acquire reality and moral worth. The good will is the will that regulates appetites wisely and furthers interests beneficently. The universal law is the law that regards persons and promotes their well- being. Were these natural appetites and social interests not capable of being made good, or ele- ments in the good, law would have no content, and will no object ; law would be empty, and will would be impotent. Now the empty law is not the uni- versal law, nor the impotent will the good will. Consequently formal conformity to law is not the ultimate end of conduct. Such an end is a mere 1 " Metaphysics of Morality," Section l . ^ Ibid., Section 2. 226 PRACTICAL IDEALISM abstraction. The man who fulfils the law will indeed be a good man. But his goodness will con- sist, not in the mere formal possession of a subjec- tive conformity to abstract law, but rather in that identification of himself with the interests of his fellows, and that devotion to the institutions in which the common life is expressed, which the law requires. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Unless we rise above mere conformity to law, to the social and spiritual plane of love to others and loyalty to the institutions in which that love must find its orderly expression, our lives remain cold, formal, and empty ; and before we know it pride, conceit, censoriousness, and all the seven devils that haunt the empty chambers of the isolated and self-sufficient heart will have come in and taken up their permanent abode. As a negative check on wrongdoing, this principle of conformity to law works well enough with cold-blooded and highly reflective minds. But on the hot appetites and burning passions of the average man this cold, calm declaration of a formal law makes but faint and feeble impression. Even to the few who heed its still small voice, while it affords a check against wrongdoing, it fails to give the specific guidance, the natural attractiveness, the warmth of feeling which goes with the highest type of virtue. Duty for duty's sake, virtue regarded as an end in itself, remains to the last a pale, bloodless abstrac- THE WORLD OF MORALITY 22/ tion. The extirpation of unruly appetites and pas- sions is an element in morality; just as ploughing, harrowing, and weeding are essential processes of agriculture. But the ploughed, harrowed, hoed, and weeded field is not the harvest ; and this legal, formal virtue is not the crown of life. The other type of moral abstraction, hedonism, exalts the emotional aspect of conduct into an end in itself. As Kant and the ascetics declare that there is nothing absolutely good but good will, hedonism declares that there is nothing absolutely good but good feeling. The one position is just as false and inadequate as the other. The de- fect of both is the same, — the taking of a sin- gle aspect of conduct as identical with the con- crete whole. Mill states the position as follows : "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness ; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends." ^ This is consistent hedonism. To be sure Mr. Mill, by introducing distinctions of quality into pleasure, by estimating this quality in terms of the superior dignity of the higher faculties, and the identification of self with others and with society, proceeds to part company with his hedonistic 1 Utilitarianism, Chapter ii. 228 PRACTICAL IDEALISM premises ; and in the end he gives us, thanks to his incomparable inconsistency, a most admirable set of ethical precepts, from which all trace of hedonism, save the mere name, has been elimi- nated. To return to the positive and consistent hedon- ism of Mill's first statement, and which we may accept as in its essential features the position of all consistent hedonists from Aristippus and Epi- curus to Hobbes and Spencer, the essence of the doctrine is that " pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends." That statement is from a psychological point of view absolutely false. So far from being the only ob- jects desirable as ends, pleasure and freedom from pain become objects of conscious desire only at rare and exceptional intervals in the life of the normal person ; and they are the habitual objects of desire of only a very small and contemptible class of persons, — the deliberate voluptuaries and epi- cures. When pleasure and pain are consciously present to the mind it is doubtless true that they are powerful agents in determining our conduct. But this theory declares that they are the only agents that can or ought to determine conduct. Says Professor James,^ "This is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of pleas- ures and pains upon our movements, they are far 1 "Psychology," Volume II, pages 549-558. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 229 from being our only stimuli. With the manifesta- tions of instinct and emotional expression, for ex- ample, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown } Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blushing.? Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the move- ments which he makes by the pleasures which they yield.'' The objects of our rage, love, terror, the occasions of our tears and smiles, whether they be present to our senses, or whether they be merely represented in idea, have this peculiar sort of impulsive power. The impulsive quality of mental states is an attribute behind which we can- not go. Some states of mind have it more than others. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it, and perceptions and imaginations of fact have it, but neither have it exclusively or peculiarly. It is the essence of all consciousness to instigate movement of some sort. All the daily routine of life — our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work, or carrying through of its various operations — is utterly without mental ref- erence to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions. A pleasant act and an act pursuing a pleasure are in themselves two per- fectly distinct conceptions, though they coalesce in one concrete phenomenon whenever a pleasure is deliberately pursued. I cannot help thinking 230 PRACTICAL IDEALISM that it is the confusion of pursued pleasure with mere pleasure of achievement which makes the pleasure theory of action so plausible to the ordi- nary mind. Action in the line of the present im- pulse is always for the time being the pleasant course ; and the ordinary hedonist expresses this fact by saying that we act for the sake of the pleasantness involved. But who does not see that for this sort of pleasure to be possible, the impulse must be there already as an independent fact ? The pleasure of successful performance is the result of the impulse, not its cause. You cannot have your pleasure of achievement unless you have managed to get your impulse under headway beforehand by some previous means. Because a pleasure of achievement can become a pursued pleas- ure upon occasion, it does not follow that every- where and always that pleasure must be what is pursued. This, however, is what the pleasure- philosophers seem to suppose. As well might they suppose, because no steamer can go to sea without incidentally consuming coal, and because some_ steamers may occasionally go to sea to try their coal, that therefore no steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of coal-consumption." I have introduced this long quotation from an unprejudiced psychologist, because the hedonists are wont to regard their position as so self-evident and axiomatic, that nothing short of prejudice in THE WORLD OF MORALITY 23 1 favour of some other ethical theory can prevent one from seeing its truth and force. The theory has indeed undesirable ethical tendencies. But the fundamental objection to it is not that it is ethi- cally injurious, but that it is psychologically, and practically, and scientifically without foundation in experience and fact. We simply do not act as this theory tells us we must act, and cannot help acting. Our interest, if we are healthy, nor- mal persons, is primarily and directly in objects, activities, persons, and personal relations. And though pleasure is an inseparable concomitant of such healthy and direct interest in persons and things, the thought of pleasure as a motive to action is a relatively rare experience in the life of the normal man ; and the man to whom this thought is not rare is himself such a rarity as to amount to a moral monstrosity. The consistent hedonist, or the outright voluptuary, is as abnor- mal a being as the consistent legalist, — the man whose every act is weighed and measured by con- scious reference to the amount of virtue it will develop in him. Both legalism and hedonism are unwarranted and unreal abstractions. Each takes an aspect which is latent or expressed in all conduct, and then declares that all conduct is and must be simply that isolated abstract aspect, and nothing more. Hedonism leads from the opposite side to the same fundamental defect as legalism. 232 PRACTICAL IDEALISM The hedonist, like the legalist, has no direct and genuine devotion to persons and institutions: he does not love and serve them for their own sake, but rather as means and instruments to his own pleasure. He does not get outside of his poor, petty, selfish individuality. Hedonism is the at- tempt to universalize subjective emotion, just as legalism is an attempt to universalize subjective conformity to law. And the hedonist, hugging his little armful of pleasures, is quite as pitiful a spectacle as the legalist gloating over his hoard of duties done and virtues gained. Both of them are dwarfed and stunted victims of a view of life which undertakes to make the individual self the centre of the universe, and to regard all outside objects as means and instruments of the individual's pleas- ure or perfection. Both theories have made frantic and desperate attempts to overcome the fatal limi- tation inherent in this merely subjective and in- dividualistic point of view. Both have tried to reconcile egoism with altruism, and to transcend the finitude of the subjective self, which both alike accept as their starting-point. Both theories have failed utterly in the attempt. And the reason for their failure in both cases is the same. Man is more than an isolated individual, and man is more than an abstraction. Both theories cut man off from a natural, normal relation to his physical and social environment ; and then are unable to THE WORLD OF MORALITY 233 restore the healthy, vigorous unity of life which this abstraction has sundered. Mill tries desper- ately, by the aid of pne of the most transparent fal- lacies ^ ever resorted to by man or logician, to set the bones his theory had broken; but with the result that he virtually gives us a new and better theory than his premises warrant. Kant, on the other hand, had to admit that his formal virtue is not for us mortals in this world of sense, and postponed its realization to a supersen- suous intelligible world. The world is none the worse for the impossibility of a practical realiza- tion of either the ethics of hedonism or the ethics of legalism. The paradise of mere pleasure-seekers and pleasure-givers would be the acme of insipid- ity. " The white-robed, harp-playing heaven of our Sabbath-schools, and the lady-like tea-table elysium represented in Mr. Spencer's ' Data of Ethics ' as the final consummation of human progress, are ex- actly on a par in this respect, — lubberlands pure and simple, one and all. If this be the whole fruit of the victory, we say, if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives ; if 1 Each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the gen- eral happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Mill's "Utilitarianism," Chapter iv. As Carlyle has pointed out, this argument, if it may be so called, would prove that because each pig wants all the swill for itself, therefore the herd of swine in the aggregate will be altruistic in its disposition of the contents of the trough. 234 PRACTICAL IDEALISM prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unex- ampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in secula seculorum their contented and inoffensive lives, — why at such a rate, better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business . that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding-up." ^ If the accomplished and full-fledged hedonist would be intolerable from flatness and insipidity, the consummate exponent of formal virtue is even more repulsive. It is the sanctimonious, conceited, cranky creatures of this type who have done so much to make the name of virtue a reproach, the aspect of goodness unattractive, and the atmosphere of piety stifling and unen- durable. You can't deny that these people have the abstract essence of righteousness bottled up inside them somewhere ; but the very sight of their cold, calculating conscientiousness makes us shiver ; and their advocacy of any good cause, like temperance or foreign missions, is enough to drive one to the haunts of carousal and the camp of the infidel. Aurora Leigh's frigid aunt, with her "smooth conscience," is a fine type of the charac- ter that comes of "duty for duty's sake." * Professor James, Unitarian Review for September, 1884. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 23 S " She did Her duty to me (I appreciate it In her own word as spoken to herself), Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out. But measured always. She was generous, bland ; More courteous than was tender, gave me still The first place, as if fearful that God's saints Would look down suddenly and say, ' Herein You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.' Alas, a mother never is afraid Of speaking angerly to any child, Since love she knows is justified of love." These last three lines of Mrs. Browning point to the true ethical end. The words "mother" and " child " and " love " take us out of the close, stifling atmosphere of either emotional or voli- tional individualism, and give us a breath of con- crete humanity with its warm atmosphere of personal affection. It is the fulfilment of the! concrete social relations in which one is placed;^ it is devotion to the persons with whom one is thrown ; it is absorption in the interests that lie i about us, that constitutes the moral life. "No heart is pure that is not passionate, and no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic," as the author of "Ecce Homo" tells us. Passion and enthusiasm are not engendered by abstractions. The true end of conduct is neither the suppres- sion nor the gratification of appetites and passions. The gratification or suppression of an appetite depends for its moral worth upon the relation in 236 PRACTICAL IDEALISM which it stands to other appetites : in the words of Mackenzie,^ upon the universe of desire of which it forms a part. Hence, not the suppres- sion of desires with the ascetic and the cehbate, nor the gratification of desires with the epicure and the aesthete ; but the subordination and or- ganization of desires with "the good neighbour and the honest citizen," to use the words of Pro- fessor Green, is the real ethical end. This ulti- mate end is so concrete and individual for each Iman that it cannot be adequately stated in words, lit is that realization of himself through his appe- tites, passions, desires, affections, energies, and activities which will make him the most useful and loyal and hearty and happy member of the social order to which, by his very birthright, he belongs ; and in which, for better or for worse, he has a definite place to fill and a specific function to perform. The moral ideal is a product of reason appre- hending our social environment and our relation to it. Reason affirms the reality of persons and institutions; and at the same time declares that we have no reality or worth apart from them. The ideal which reason presents is therefore the realization of ourselves in and through our recogni- tion of the rights and interests of our fellows, and our response to the claims of those institutions and 1" Manual of Ethics," Chapter v. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 237 customs which preserve and promote the common social good. " Moral conduct is the ordering of the desires with a view to the production of a social universe in which every person shall find his true realiza- tion. It is not meant, of course, that this idea of the end is present to the mind of every man who does right. Such a view would be contrary to all experience. It is meant, rather, that this statement makes explicit what is implicit in all conduct which can be truly called moral. A man lives a moral life by living out to the best of his ability his share of the life which is common to him and the social system of which he is an element. When he lives thus, he is really guiding himself by the ethical principle, for the Idea is useless for guidance as a mere empty form, and the- content which makes it useful is simply the whole process of human life."i This concrete moral ideal presents itself in two opposite and complementary aspects: sympathy and individuality. First it demands an expansion of our sympathy, so that we shall include the good 1 Charles F. D'Arcy, "A Short Study of Ethics," pages 105- 114. This view is most exhaustively set forth in T. H. Green's " Prolegomena of Ethics." The main features of this doctrine may be found in three recent books of moderate size and readable style: Muirhead's "Elements of Ethics," Mackenzie's "Man- ual of Ethics," and Dewey's "Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics." 238 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of all our fellows in the good we call our own. Kant, in spite of his attempted formalism, was obliged to introduce this social content into his ideal ; and in Mill's " Utilitarianism," it is stated in the most emphatic and uncompromising man- ner. Kant's second maxim is, " Act so as to use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always as an end, never merely as a means." ^ Mill, thanks to his incomparable inconsistency, states the same principle with equal force. " The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary ab- straction, he never conceives of himself otherwise than as a member of a body ; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an in- separable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. The deeply rooted conception, which every individual has of himself as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. He comes as though instinc- 1 " Metaphysic of Morality," Section 2. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 239 tively to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others." ^ Professor Royce states this social side of the moral ideal in the formulas, " Act as a being would act who included thy will and thy neighbour's will in the unity of one life, and who had there- fore to suffer the consequences for the aims of both that will follow from the act of either " ; and " In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at once thy neighbour and thyself. Treat these two lives as one."^ The "Golden Rule" is obviously a popular state- ment of the same principle. The ground of this social aspect of the moral ideal is our inability to accept as the expression of our heart and will any- thing narrower or smaller than the universal good which reason demands. To know the needs and hopes and aims and claims of a fellow-man, and at the same time not to feel a sympathy with them, and not to will their rightful satisfaction, is a con- tradiction which reason refuses to tolerate ; and if we try to force that contradiction upon her, reason, in the form of conscience, turns upon us and stings us with reproaches and brands us as recreants, until in shame and humiliation we confess our meanness and strive to bring our souls out of the little- ness of selfishness into the largeness of a love 1 " Utilitarianism," Chapter iii. ^"The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," pages 148, 149. 240 PRACTICAL IDEALISM and loyalty which reason can approve as commen- surate with her own universal claims. Thus on the one hand reason forces us to accept as our ideal and our end nothing less than the good of all persons, and the promotion of all enterprises and institutions which make for social well-being. It is not abstract law, nor abstract pleasure, which is the ideal and end of conduct ; but that realization of a social good in which all persons shall partake, of which law , is an indispensable condition and happiness an inevitable consequence. If the ideal thus expands us in sympathy and aspiration and endeavour, until it makes us sharers in a universal life, and promoters of a world-wide social good, so that nothing human remains alien to us and no social interest appeals to our apprecia- tion and our support in vain ; on the other hand the ideal is individual and definite, and limits and confines our actual service to the particular place which we occupy and the precise function which we are best fitted to perform. For although on the side of reason and appre- ciation we are potentially infinite ; on the side of physical power and nervous force we are very finite, and subject to the strictest limitations. One cannot do everything. The large-hearted, clear- sighted man cannot do more than one of a hundred of the things he knows ought to be done, and which he would like to do. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 24 1 Right here enters the most serious temptation to which good, strong men and bright, generous women are at the present tifne exposed. The gospel I am about to . preach is not for the lazy and the immature. For multitudes of such the spur and the goad is needed still. But for practically all persons of sufficient mental disci- pline and moral earnestness to read a book like this, the warning most needed is against the well- meant efEort to undertake too much, and spread themselves out too thin. The demands upon one's strength and endur- ance, one's time and talents, one's nerves and brain, in these days of the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone, these seasons of clubs and conventions, associated charity and organized phi- lanthropy, scientific societies and institutional churches, is simply overwhelming. The man or woman of any considerable intellectual or social gifts who has not the power to resolutely resist ninety-nine out of every hundred of these calls that come pouring in from every quarter is sure to be shorn of all real mastery and power to guide and help his fellows in original and valuable ways, and to become the mere slave and drudge of the status quo. The moral ideal is individual as well as univer- sal. It demands that each man shall give his best ; that is, the thing that by endowment, train- 242 PRACTICAL IDEALISM ing, position, and influence he is specifically fitted to do better than anybody else can do it. It requires that, for the sake of this specific thing which he can do better than others, and which rep- resents his best, he shall cut off remorselessly all other things, however good in themselves and however desirable that others should do them, which interfere with this one thing which is his nearest duty and his specific function. The su- preme importance of health, not in the sense of mere immunity from actual disease, but in the sense of surplus vitality, unspent energy, overflow- ing vivacity, imperturbable good nature, irrepres- sible and contagious buoyancy of spirits, must be recognized as the all-essential condition of the greatest individual efficiency. To overdraw one's stock of nervous energy, unless it be in an emer- gency with strict determination to make good the deficit at the earliest possible opportunity, is a greater crime than to overdraw one's bank-account. To be sure, Nature is at first more indulgent than the bank cashier and gives us longer credit. In the end she is more inexorable; and nervous break- down, whether in sudden collapse, or protracted depression of spirits and depletion of vitality, is a far more serious thing than financial bankruptcy. For the largest usefulness, and for any considera- ble happiness whatever, it should be the rule of every person who has important duties and respon- THE WORLD OF MORALITY 243 sibilities never to do anything unless one has a stock of surplus energy to do it with, so that one can do it with that eagerness and zest with which a strong man rejoices to run a race. No doubt the first effect of putting this rule in general practice would be a panic and crash in our educational, social, philanthropic, and religious cen- tres worse than was ever known in Wall Street : but if we could once get through the panic, and resume business on the basis of the rule proposed, we should, as business men say, be on bed rock ; we should know where we are, and in the long run there would be a great increase in the worth of our work, to say nothing of the inestimable in- crease in the pleasure of doing it. The moral ideal will accept nothing which does not increase the efficiency and freedom and power of the particular life it enters. Whether it is a whist party or a prayer-meeting ; whether it is a Browning club or a dance ; the question which the moral ideal puts is not merely whether this thing is good or bad in itself; but whether for me, with my station, my duties, my opportunities, my state of body and of mind, the engagement in question will be a hindrance or a help to my high- est individual development and largest social ser- vice. The moral quality of an act does not depend on the thing in itself : it depends on the part that 244 PRACTICAL IDEALISM thing plays iri the life of the individual who takes it up into himself. If it promotes the end of a good man, it is good for him. If it obstructs the good man in the prosecution of a good end, it is bad for him. And the sooner we recognize this principle, the quicker we shall quit passing snap judgments on our fellows for this or that particu- lar thing they do or fail to do, and the less atten- tion we shall pay to such judgments when passed upon ourselves. Women especially should heed this law of limitation. Woman has the vitality and welfare of future generations intrusted to her care and keeping, and for a woman to overdraw her store of physical and nervous force in severe intellectual pursuits or intense social strain in the years between fifteen and thirty, is not simply to rob herself of the best part of her own future hap- piness, and to make her a burden rather than a blessing to her friends ; it is to impair the stock and to lower the tone of her children ; it is practi- cally to bring about the extinction of her line within at most two or three generations, and hand over our institutions to the care and keeping of the descendants of the women who are to-day liv- ing lives in closer touch with nature in our fac- tories and on our farms. These evils are not inseparable from the edu- cation and the so-called emancipation of women ; but if women are to enter into the intense strain of THE WORLD OF MORALITY 245 intellectual, business, and charitable activities, and escape the destruction of themselves and the ex- tinction of their families, they must learn to limit themselves to what they can do quietly, calmly, healthily, and heartily, and give up the silly ambi- tion to be first and foremost in half a dozen lines at once ; they must put health above everything else ; and care more to be centres of love and gladness in a small sphere than recipients of flat- tery and fame in a large one. Every woman of intellectual attainments and social leadership, who either breaks down herself, or brings into existence puny, neurotic offspring, is doing more to dis- credit the cause of woman's education and influ- ence than a dozen brilliant scholars and reformers can do to commend it. Not that woman is inferior to man and should be deprived of opportunities. Far from it. Woman has a higher function than man, a more vital rela- tion to the welfare of the race, and at the same time a more sensitive and delicate organization. Therefore both for herself and for her offspring she needs to guard herself even more carefully than man against the consuming craze for excessive activity and ephemeral distinction, which just now is laying its destroying hand upon her. The one feature of my short service as a pastor to which I look back with unalloyed satisfaction, is the fact that it was my practice to discourage 246 PRACTICAL IDEALISM women who were teachers in public schools from teaching in Sunday-school and attending the sec- ond church service. It is so easy to appeal to the conscience of these tired and overworked women, and get them to take on an extra burden to help one out, and then it is so much easier to get one who is doing enough to do more, than it is to get some lazy creature who is doing nothing to do anything, that we are all sorely tempted to secure for our pet scheme, whether it be church or charity, club or entertainment, as president or secretary, director or speechmaker, some one who has more than enough to do already. The only remedy is for each person to limit himself strictly to the narrow line in which he can serve to the best advantage, and throw the thousand and one appeals from other sources remorselessly into the waste-basket.^ This principle of limitation is not incon- sistent with the principle of expansion. Self- preservation is not inconsistent with sympathy. For a true and far-sighted devotion to the social good requires us to promote that good, not by miscellaneous activities in every direction, but by making the one part of that whole with which we iPor the importance of this element of the moral ideal see Dewey's "Outlines of Ethics," Section 40, Spencer's "Data of Ethics," Chapter xi, and the earlier chapters of Harris' " Moral Evolution." THE WORLD OF MORALITY 247 have immediately to do, the sound, healthy, happy, cheerful, vigorous, vital member of that whole it ought to be. Differentiation is essential to inte- gration. The more completely each man is him- self, and sticks to his own business, and looks out for his own health, the better member of society he thereby becomes. For no amount of bustling and miscellaneous activity in other lines can make up for the failure of the mason to lay a solid wall; the carpenter to build a tight house; the plumber to make proper connections with the sewer ; the physician to master the forces of disease ; the teacher to set forth the truth ; the mother to give a sound body and a sane mind and a trained will to her children. The end of conduct, the moral ideal, the highest good, therefore, is this combination of a world-wide devotion to the com- prehensive social good, with the strictest concen- tration on the specific place and function in that great whole through which we can make our most individual and characteristic contribution to it. Inasmuch as the end, or the supreme good, is thus concrete and individual, it is impossible to draw up rules that will have universal application. Shall a man bestow his goods to feed the poor .■" That depends on who the man is. Is he a man with a family who can barely earn enough to support them ? Then if giving to others is to starve his family, he ought to give little, if any- 248 PRACTICAL IDEALISM thing, to feed the poor. ■ Shall a young lawyer go into politics ? That depends on the nature of his practice and his capacities. If he is engaged in important litigation, involving great industrial interests which, if neglected or intrusted to less competent hands, would bring ruin and disaster to multitudes ; and if plenty of men can be found to do the political work fairly well, then it is his duty to stick to his profession and let politics alone. Is he merely making out papers and collecting bills, which a dozen other lawyers stand ready to do equally well, while politics are sure to fall into the hands of corrupt and incompetent men, if he fails to take his part, then it is his duty to go into politics, even at a great personal sacrifice of prac- tice. Shall the young minister go as a foreign missionary where millions have never heard of the gospel ? or shall he stay at home and minister to a few people who have been preached to all their lives ? It is impossible to say. Has this particular individual family ties which bind him to his coun- try .' Is he primarily a student, rather than a man of affairs ? Do his capacities lie in the direction of insight into the principles of social and spiritual progress, rather than in application of the rudi- ments of civilization and spirituality to primitive peoples .■" Then it is his duty to stay with the handful of cultivated Christians rather than to go to the hordes of heathen. Not unless in freedom THE WORLD OF MORALITY 249 from home ties and capacity for adaptation to novel situations and ability to be a jack at all trades, from that of farmer, carpenter, and tailor up to that of physician, editor, and teacher, and power to adjust truth to the limitations of national and racial idiosyncrasies, he is specially qualified for the work of a missionary, is it his duty to go. There is no merit whatever in self-sacrifice as an end in itself. There is no great merit in self- sacrifice for the sake of a work for which one feels no special qualification. There is need every- where. Not until we find the need which we are specially fitted to supply, have we found the duty which devolves specifically on us. To be simply one more unit in some great aggregate is scarce worth while. Not until we have found the sphere in which we can take our place as members, having some peculiar fitness of taste, tempera- ment, training, or aptitude, have we found that which is clearly and unmistakably our duty. The best thing any one has to give is himself. All other gifts derive their chief value from their relation to the self. A dollar given to the needy neighbour whose worth we appreciate, whose needs we understand, whose plans we talk over with him, whose confidence we have, is worth a hundred given in promiscuous charity. A dollar, which a man spends in attending a political convention in which he has power and influence for good, is worth 2 so PRACTICAL IDEALISM twenty which he puts into the contribution box. The question is not how much a man gives, or even what he gives to, so much as whether he gives his personal sympathy and social influence and individual power in and through what he gives, and so puts himself into the contribution. The most valuable friends of an institution like a hospital or college are not of necessity the largest contributors upon the subscription lists. They are the men of large experience and great executive ability, who give time, talents, expert knowledge, and watchful interest to the manage- ment of its affairs. The enormous amount of gratuitous service of this kind which is rendered in our day by the busiest of our professional and business men, even more than the sums of money, indicates the vital and genuine charity that ani- mates our Christian society to-day. There is no rule that governs these things. The man with a large family ; the man who is giving of his time and talent and knowledge and influence in countless committees, boards, parties, and associations might be doing himself and his family a great wrong were he to give a tenth or even a twentieth of his actual money income in benevolent and charitable contributions. On the other hand, the unmarried man or woman who is drawing a large income from invested funds, but who has scarcely any concrete relationships through THE WORLD OF MORALITY 25 1 which to serve society in direct personal ways, may be guilty of unwarrantable selfishness if he or she retains for merely private and personal uses, a half or even a quarter of the annual in- come. The giving of money is simply the type of all service. It is impossible to lay down rules binding upon all. For the duty for each in- dividual is that particular devotion of his capaci- ties and resources which will make him the most effective and vital member of that concrete social organism in which he finds himself. Abstract laws and duties treat individuals as mere atoms in an aggregate ; whereas it is the first command- ment of a discerning morality that each individual shall render that particular service which by vir- tue of his individual position and capacity is the most valuable contribution that he can make. Institutions in general, and churches in particu- lar, are apt to be arrayed against this individual aspect of duty ; and from the time of the Scribes and Pharisees even until now have been prone to impose the same tithes, the same rites, the same ceremonies, the same amusements, the same re- strictions, the same views of truth even, upon all adherents, regardless of the differences which con- stitute the essence and worth of individuals. Jesus indeed took sharp issue with this tendency, and insisted that the spirit which animates the deed, not the deed itself, is the test of spiritual 252 PRACTICAL IDEALISM worth. Uniformity, however, is easy to work, and lends itself readily to mechanical methods ; and consequently the followers of Jesus have too often fallen into the temptation which proved so fatal to the Scribes and Pharisees, and have tried to draw up rules and regulations which shall make, not merely the motive and spirit, but the details of faith and practice identical for all adherents. That is good legalism, superb Pharisaism ; but it is bad morals and recreant Christianity. While duty is thus individual, and dependent on one's particular aptitudes, and determined by one's position in the social organism, yet there are cer- tain great classes of interests which in general have the right of way against all competing claims. These fairly constant rights of persons and claims of institutions give rise to the several duties and commandments which serve as general rules for the guidance of the individual in the great ma- jority of cases. Since inclination has always leaned strongly to the side of self-indulgence, duties and laws have naturally come to represent more especially the social side of the ideal ; though, as we have seen, it is coming to be neces- sary, in the interest of certain classes of people who are caught in the whirl of modern social con- ditions, to state duty in terms of self-preservation. Duty is the affirmation of the universal interest as binding upon the individual will. Duty pre- THE WORLD OF MORALITY 253 supposes that we are aware of our relationship to the world of persons and the world of institutions, and simply demands that we act consistently with the insight which shows us that these persons are as real and these institutions as sacred as our own persons and our private affairs. The several com- mandments and moral laws are specific applica- tions of this principle. " Thou shalt not kill " is simply the demand that I shall treat my neighbour's life as I would treat my own. His life and mine are of equal reality and presumably of equal worth. To desire my own life, and not to desire his, from the point of view of impartial reason, is absurd. Only the illu- sion of selfishness could make it possible to enter- tain such a contradiction. Duty demands that the contradiction cease, and that his life be re- garded in the same light as my own. In the deep- est sense all disregard of the conditions of health and vitality of another person is murder. Murder is more common in the United States to-day than it was when the Indians, with tomahawk and scalping-knife, roamed through the wilderness. Every death that comes prematurely through de- fective sanitation, over-strain, anxiety, unkindness, sorrow, neglect, betrayal, discouragement, in so far as those conditions were removable, is practi- cally a case of murder ; and the landlord, the em- ployer, the father, the husband, the son, the mer- 254 PRACTICAL IDEALISM chant, the neighbour, who might have relieved or removed these unhealthful physical or nervous or mental or emotional conditions, and failed to do so, is a murderer. " Whosoever loveth not his brother is a murderer, and abideth in death," as St. John declares. " Thou shalt not steal " is the demand that the right of another to self-expression through property shall be as sacred in my eyes as is my own. Theft is not merely the appropriation of a thing. It is the spoliation of a person and the disorganization of the community. The duty to tell the truth rests on the same social basis. A lie is not merely a convenient escape from difficulty for ourselves. A lie is a refusal to treat another person as real ; a refusal to recognize the validity of his intelligence and his social rela- tionship to us. In attempting to thrust another outside the pale of mutual understanding, the liar banishes himself from all genuine social relation- ship. It is, as Kant says, "the abrogation of per- sonality." All duties and all laws are specifications of our obligation to treat persons as real and to respect the institutions in which the rights and interests of persons are embodied. Hence, all laws resolve themselves into the one fundamental law : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with THE WORLD OF MORALITY 25 S all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." In other words, the identification of one's self with the universal realm of personal interests and insti- tutional claims, through faithful performance of that function for which our individual position and en- dowment best fits us, is the principle from which all particular duties are derived, and on which the authority of all particular laws is based. These personal relations and institutional claims which duty represents are sensitive beyond the sensitiveness of the chemist's balances ; swift and unerring as the electric current ; resistless and inexorable and omnipotent as gravitation. These duties constitute one world. These laws are brethren. He who knowingly and unrepentingly offends the least of them, finds the whole moral universe arrayed against him, and all human re- lationships transformed fropa ministering angels into outraged furies inflicting vengeance on his soul. The representative and, when violated, the avenger of duty is conscience. Conscience is the consciousness on the part of the individual of the laws and requirements of society as bind- ing upon him. Conscience may or may not be explicitly aware of the personal interests and social, institutions of which these laws are the expression. That depends on the degree of re- flectiveness attained. Conscience may scarcely 2S6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM recognize the law as law. It may carry it im- plicitly in the form of unreflecting feeling. But in any case conscience is the reproduction in the individual of the laws and duties which express the rights of persons and the claims of the institu- tions which together constitute the social order to which the individual belongs. Conscience is more keen to detect violations of the law than to discover higher applications of it. Its function is hence largely negative : a restrain- ing rather than a compelling force. We are more aware of its presence when we do wrong than when we do right: just as the musician takes more notice of the one false note which he hap- pens to strike than he does of the many correct ones which are regarded as a matter of course. Conscience punishes our misdeeds by revealing to us our guilt and ill desert. It will not permit us to enjoy the love of one whom we have se- cretly betrayed. It will not suffer us to take pleasure in the esteem of our fellows, when we have fallen below the standards which they cher- ish. It cannot be put off or cheated or bribed. For it is inside us ; it is an aspect of ourselves : and to get away from it, or get around it, is as impossible as to get away from or around our- selves. Repentance, confession, and attempted restitution are the only offerings by which of- fended conscience can be appeased. For these THE WORLD OF MORALITY 257 are the only ways in which we can restore our right relations to the world of persons and institu- tions which conscience represents. The state of mind and heart and will which results from the habitual doing of one's duty is virtue, and the specific duties have special virtues which correspond to them. Virtue and the vir- tues, however, though affording convenient terms in which to express our appreciation of others, are not profitable subjects for moral contempla- tion in ourselves. As Hegel says, " Discourse about virtue easily passes into empty declamation, since its subject-matter is abstract and indefinite, and its reasons and declarations appeal to the individual's caprice and subjective inclination. The French are the people who talk most about virtue." ^ This abstract self-conscious moralizing, which fixes the eye of the individual on his own subjective states, is the straight road to all man- ner of morbidness, sentimentalism, and insincerity. The healthy ethical man fixes his eye on objects, persons, institutions, and in doing his duty toward these, virtue and the virtues come as a matter of course. Vice, on the other hand, or the state of mind and heart and will which corresponds to the neg- lect of duty, may occasionally be scrutinized with less risk to our mental and moral health. It is 1 " Philosophy of Rights," Section 150, 258 PRACTICAL IDEALISM well for us at times to strip from vice its thin dis- guises, and see clearly how mean and hideous it is. For men not infrequently pride themselves upon their vices, as though there were something grand and smart and large and free ahout them. As well might a man boast of a boil or bunion, a swollen limb or an inflamed joint. He is, to be sure, bigger and more alive at that particular point; but it is at the expense of depletion and disorgani- zation of all the rest of his system. If the drunk- ard, the glutton, the libertine, were simply the particular appetites he indulges, and nothing more, then he would be the bigger man he boasts of be- ing, in consequence of his indulgences. But he is something more, and that something more con- demns him. Vice is the gratification of a part of one's nature at the expense of the whole, and frequently takes the form of the indulgence of a sensual appetite of the individual at the expense of the welfare of his fellows. And that is where the meanness of it lies. And when we see the dulled sensibilities, the hardened heart, vice brings to the man himself ; when we see the betrayed affections, the blasted hopes, the bleeding hearts the vicious man inflicts qu his victim, his family, his friends, then we see the other side of vice, and can measure the terrible cost to himself and to others at which his petty indulgence has been bought. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 259 As our definition of the moral ideal or the good has been in somewhat general terms, it may profit- ably be supplemented by a consideration of moral evil, or vice, in some of its specific forms. The problem presents three distinct aspects : Whence comes moral evil ? Why does it captivate us ? and, How can we overcome it ? First, Whence comes moral evil ? At what stage of evolution does it enter? Inanimate nature knows it not. The stars, the mountains, the streams, are innocent. Why .' Because they have no self-consciousness ; no adjustments to make to persons and things about them. Having no prob- lems to solve, no choices to make, they fall into no vices and commit no sins. It is the sighing for this lost sinlessness of nature that gives its melancholy charm to Matthew Arnold's verse. He is never weary of adoring the self-dependence and self-containedness and self-sufficiency of sea and sky and air : " Unaffrighted by the silence 'round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. And with joy the stars perform their shining. And the sea its long moon silvered roll ; For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul. Bounded by themselves, and unregardful In what state God's other works may be. 26o PliACnCAL IDEALISM In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see." From the strife and turmoil and anguish of humanity, he appeals to " The heavens, whose pure, dark regions have no sign Of languor, though so calm, and though so great Are yet untroubled and unpassionate." Now all this is beautiful poetry, but impossible philosophy. Whether we like it or not, we have come to self -consciousness. We are compelled to recognize persons and things around us, and we must adjust ourselves to them. Out of the garden of this primitive, unconscious, self-sufficient inno- cence of nature our evolving souls have driven us. The flaming sword of the necessity of conscious adjustment of our environment, and responsibility therefor, turns every way to guard its gates ; and neither the watchword of the Stoic philosophy nor the charm of pessimistic poetry can pass the modern man back by that stern sentinel. Not by a return to a condition in which evil was impossible, not by Stoic conformity to unconscious nature, shall we conquer the evil in our conscious breasts. Does moral evil then enter with the animal ? Shall we find in animalism an answer to our problem ? The animal is a relatively independent THE WORLD OF MORALITY 26 1 centre. The animal has life, and the problem of life ; which, in Mr. Spencer's phrase, is " the ad- justment of inner to outer relations." Yet, so perfectly is the animal under the domain of in- stinct, and so oblivious is the animal of the inter- ests of others, as a rule, that it practically never raises the question whether its actions are in- jurious to others or not. The consciousness of mal-adjustment, responsibility for wrong choice, therefore, never enters the mind or disturbs the equanimity of the average, normal, uncontaminated animal. Training, the hope of reward and the fear of punishment, may induce in the higher animals anticipations of these things ; but speaking broadly of animals as a class, it holds true that they are innocent of moral evil. And their innocence is due to the absence of that keen and vivid realiza- tion of the interests of others, without which the sense of having violated those interests is obviously impossible. Hence there have not been wanting men who have sought to solve the problem of evil by a return to animalism. This doctrine is drawn out at tedious length in a certain class of nauseat- ing novels ; but it is presented in most concen- trated and quotable form by Walt Whitman : and his reasons for faith in his gospel of animalism bear a very close resemblance to the reasons which Matthew Arnold gives in support of his gospel of the inanimate. Here again it is their placidity. 262 PRACTICAL IDEALISM self-sufficiency, self-containedness, with which he contrasts the yearnings and aspirations of men : "I think I could turn and live with animals; they are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thou- sands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth." When we pass from Arnold to Whitman, from the gospel of the inanimate to the gospel of ani- malism, we get poorer poetry and no better philoso- phy. The one position is as impossible for the modern man as the other, for we have long since outgrown them both. Epicureanism is no better password than Stoicism to the garden of freedom from self-consciousness from which the race was banished long ago. Midway between the animal and the mature man stands the child. In him we begin to see the foreshadowing of moral evil. The child is neither virtuous nor wicked. He does things which, if done by a mature man, would be intoler- able rudeness, unpardonable wickedness. Yet it is not wickedness in him. He does not first imagine how his conduct will annoy you and then deliber- THE WORLD OF MORALITY 263 ately go on and do it with that end in view. The child simply acts out his impulses without the slightest thought of how his actions will affect you. The child fails to consider your interests, and so he falls short of righteousness. We recognize this negative character of the child's conduct in the name we give to it. We call it, not wicked- ness, but naughtiness. To be sure we chide and punish him for this naughtiness. Yet even then, if we are wise, our punishment is not so much retribution for past wickedness as an incentive for future thoughtfulness. Man does not pass from naughtiness to wickedness until he realizes the in- terests of others and then deliberately violates them for the sake of preferred claims of his own. Moral evil enters when man, in conscious presence of simultaneous alternatives, deliberately prefers the lesser to the greater good ; because the lesser good appeals to his little self, while the greater good does not. The real root of moral evil is in the smallness of the soul of the immoral man. The bad man is the man of limited vision and con- tracted sympathy. Meanness and vice are synony- mous terms. Show me any form of vice that is not mean, and I will show you a straight line that is not the shortest distance between two points. Vice, however, is a very abstract term. Let us take a few concrete cases, — cowardice, avarice, drunkenness, licentiousness, and see wherein the 264 PRACTICAL IDEALISM evil of them lies. What is the evil of cowardice ? Obviously the coward's readiness to sacrifice large and sacred interests at any moment in order to save his skin. His friend may be insulted, and he dares not protest. The truth may be denied in his presence, and he dares not affirm it. Corrup- tion may plunder the public treasury, and he dares make no remonstrance. His country's fate may be depending on the issue of the battle, and he will run away. The coward is one of the most contemptible types of evil, because the range of human interests to which he is false and faithless is so vast. Avarice again is evil on the same grounds. His neighbour may be suffering in sickness, or starving from lack of employment. That is noth- ing to the avaricious man. He will not take him food or help to find him work. The tenant in his unsanitary houses may be dying with fever. He will appropriate no fraction of his exorbitant rent to provide him the air and light and water and cleanliness he needs. His community needs better schools, extended sewers, better roads, stronger bridges; but this man votes blindly and obstinately against everything that will draw by taxation an extra penny from his hoard. Avarice is evil ; the avaricious man is mean, simply be- cause the range of interest he cares' for is so small and circumscribed. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 265 Intemperance is evil for precisely the same rea- son. It unfits a man for his work ; but what does the man intent on drink care whether he works or loafs ? It brings sorrow and shame to father and mother, ruin and wretchedness to wife and child ; but what does the drunkard at the moment of indulgence care for father or mother, wife or child. It is the most poverty-wasting, criminal- breeding, politics-corrupting, home-embittering, soul-destroying curse that society suffers from to-day ; and yet, what is the security of property, the peace of society, the purity of politics, the happiness of homes, the dignity of self-respect to this man, in comparison to the temporary titilla- tion of his palate and the transient sensation that all is well inside his individual stomach .-' The smallness to which the soul of the intemperate man has shrunk measures the evil of intemperance. So likewise with licentiousness. The founda- tion of all stable and political institutions and all enduring social order is the family. The family requires sexual purity as the indispensable condition of its happiness and peace. Yet the licentious man brings alienation and strife and bitterness into his own home ; carries deceit and fraud and hatred into the homes of others ; con- signs unhappy women to short-lived shame ; brings into life children from whom their birthright is withheld, and undermines the very foundations of 266 PRACTICAL IDEALISM domestic happiness and social welfare. And inas- much as the ties he ruthlessly destroys are the most tender, the affections which he wantonly cor- rupts the most sweet, the aspect of life he pollutes and betrays the most sacred and sensitive, there- fore, among the mean and cruel and despicable vices, licentiousness stands out as the most mean and despicable of them all. It would be easy to show that every form of vice bears this common mark of smallness and mean- ness. These four examples, however, must sufifice. We have the answer to our first question. Whence comes moral evil .-' Moral evil comes from our power to appreciate large spheres of human inter- est and welfare ; and, in spite of such appreciation, to choose the selfish, the petty, and the mean at the sacrifice of the generous and glorious and grand. With this first question answered, the second almost answers itself. Wherein lies the power of evil ? Why does it captivate our wills ? Evil is the choice of a less good rather than a greater. The power of evil lies, then, in that little good. If evil were merely negative and destructive, it could not exist. The reason why evil persists is the same as the reason why iron ships float. It is not the iron itself which floats the ship. If the ship were solid iron, it would go down at once. The iron holds a mass of timber and air of suf- ficient bulk to render the combined weight of iron THE WORLD OF MORALITY 267 and timber and air less than the weight of the water it displaces. It is the lighter wood and air which really float the iron ship. So it is not the evil, as evil, but the partial good that the shell or hull of evil holds within it which makes persistence in evil possible. A brief review of our concrete cases will make this clear. The coward does not run away because he wishes to betray his country. He simply follows the instinct of self-preservation which in itself is good. If it were not for the good which he thus thinks to secure for himself, the most craven coward that ever lived would not desert his post. The avaricious man is not stingy because he wants to see his sick neighbour languish, and his community given over to stagnation. If he could have his neighbours happy and his community prosperous at no cost to himself, the meanest miser would favour liberal charities and gener- ous appropriations. The trouble with him is that he cares more for his own little good than for these great ends. The desire for property which moves him is itself a good, and only becomes bad by its collision with these higher ends. The drunkard is by no means the morose and intentionally cruel man he is so often charged with being. He is simply a good fellow who likes to have a good time with a set of other good fellows, and finds that drink helps on the good-fellowship. 268 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Now in itself this good-fellowship is an excellent thing. It is generally the best fellows who are ruined by drink. The drinking only becomes bad when it conflicts with the more permanent forms of this same good-fellowship which are represented by home and family and industry and society. Even licentiousness has a core of good wrapped up in the unsightly mass of indecency and treachery which are its outward marks. It seizes and per- verts one of the most fundamental and beneficent instincts of our nature. The sexual nature has nothing bad in itself. It is the sweet fountain, whence the joys of family life are drawn, and at which the race is perennially renewed. And here, as everywhere, it is the sweetness and beauty and excellence of the permanent family and social rela- tions that are perverted and destroyed, not any inher- ent evil or degradation in the fact or function of sex itself which constitutes the evil of licentiousness. Here, as everywhere, it is by what is good, not by what is inherently bad, that men are captivated and led astray. Though here, more than anywhere else in the world, the good sought is insignificant, and beyond all expression contemptible, " The expense of spirit, in a waste of shame," as Shakespeare says, in comparison with the good trampled on and defiled. In all the forms of moral evil of which these THE WORLD OF MORALITY 269 four may serve as types, our law holds true. Every appetite and passion of our nature is useful and honourable and beneficent and praiseworthy in normal and natural relation to its appropriate end. The gratification of these appetites and pas- sions becomes bad only when it collides with a greater good with which this gratification is in- consistent. Were there not this kernel of natural good wrapped up within these things which we call evil, they could not exist. Now we are ready for the third question. How can evil be overcome .' If the strength of evil is in the little good it holds and its weakness is in the littleness of that good, then the way to overcome it is to bring in more good. By asceti- cism, by laws and enactments, by pains and penal- ties, you may repress the outward manifestations of evil ; but nothing short of bringing a larger good will overcome the evil principle itself. Treat evil as the great, strong, positive fact ; and then bring your threats and terrors as negative devices for checking and thwarting these positive forces of evil, and you are sure to be overcome. The bad man will feel that there is more of good wrapped up in his indulgences and selfish satisfac- tions than there is within your hollow asceticism with its formal laws and arbitrary penalties. Your only chance of conquering him is to admit frankly whatever of good there is in his evil way and 2/0 PRACTICAL IDEALISM then show him what a poor, miserable pittance of good it is in comparison to the rich and glorious good which he might have in place of it. Let us apply this principle to the cases we have been considering. The coward is doing a good thing in preserv- ing his own skin from harm. As compared with the reckless fellow who throws his life away, he is a prudent man. What the coward needs to lift him up and make a man of him, is to recognize that the lives of others and the preservation of his country have a worth as well as his own little self. So with the miser. You will not cure him of his miserliness by telling him that his hard-earned wealth is trash. It isn't trash. It is the symbol of the products of human toil ; and, therefore, one of the most sacred and valuable things in all the earth. To lift him out of his miserliness you must make his gold more precious to him rather than less. Let him come to feel what this money of his means in food to the hungry, in clothes for the naked, in care and comfort for the sick ; in education to the promising young man ; in parks and libraries and good government for the com- munity ; and by this deeper and broader apprecia- tion of its real worth he will be lifted out of his littleness and miserliness and meanness, into generous and public-spirited citizenship. THE WORLD OF MORALITY 27 1 The drunkard must be saved, if he is saved at all, not by less good-fellowship, but by vastly more. He must be lifted to an appreciation of the higher, holier, sweeter, more enduring fellow- ship which consists in honouring the parents who have reared him, in loving and cherishing and supporting the wife and children to whom he is bound by every tie of natural and moral obliga- tion and affection ; in taking a self-respecting and honourable part in the maintenance and promo- tion of those institutions and relations by which the intellectual and political and social and spirit- ual interests of mankind are perpetuated and preserved. And the licentious man — his salvation lies not in less love for woman, which would be impossi- ble, but in awakening for the first time within his coarse and hardened heart a real love for her. Let the libertine once realize the wretchedness and despair his cruel conduct brings to the homes he destroys and the lives he ruins, and then let him realize that these women whose hopes he has blasted, whose self-respect he has stolen or purchased for a paltry price, and whom he has ruthlessly condemned to life-long shame and deg- radation, are even such as was the mother or the sister of his own sweet childhood days ; let him once realize that they are persons whose purity is as sacred as that of his own mother or 272 PRACTICAL IDEALISM sister or wife, and whose happiness and welfare should be to him even more precious than his own, and it will become to him forever impossible to tolerate such wanton cruelty, such contemptible meanness, such more than brutal selfishness in himself, or to speak lightly of such outrages and enormities when committed by others. Whether it destroys the family, as in adultery, or sacrifices the individual, as in seduction, or dooms a whole class to short-lived degradation and hopeless misery and shame, as in prostitution, licentious- ness is the mark of a low, mean, cruel creature not yet emerged from the beastliness and brutality of his animal heredity. What he needs first of all is the scorn and contempt of all decent folk to shock his dull and deadened sensibilities into susceptibility for the shame and self-disgust he ought to feel ; and second, such a development of his dwarfed and stunted human faculties as will enable him to realize that persons are not things, and that their heart's affections are not to be trampled on as swine trample pearls in the mire, but are the holiest and noblest gift of God to men, and as such are to be respected, pro- tected, cherished, and reverenced by every man who claims to have risen above the level of the brute. It is high time that we cease to regard respect for women as merely an arbitrary precept of con- THE WORLD OF MORALITY 2/3 ventional morality, whose violation by young men may be lightly excused ; and that we see it in its true light as the very essence of that chivalry and generosity and recognition of the rights and inter- ests of other persons, which marks the difference between the man and the brute, between the gentle- man we all admire and honour, and the villain whom we despise and scorn. When the man is found in civilized society who can honestly say that he would willingly be the son, the husband, the father, the brother of an impure woman ; then for the first time shall we see a man who does not know that he is as mean as a thief and as cruel as a murderer every time he violates the purity of woman in the person of the mother, daughter, wife, or sister of another, and who after doing so dastardly a deed is not in his inmost heart ashamed of the inhuman beast he has permitted himself to be. Here as everywhere it is the in- coming of a higher humanity, a larger life, a truer love, that must cast out the brutal, the selfish, and the base. Not until you fill a man's heart with a genuine love for woman, can you lift him above the temptation of its cruel and beastly counterfeit. In every case moral evil is the perversion of a natural good. Our temptations do not come to us in the form of things wholly bad. The vice for which some more or less respectable excuse can- 274 PRACTICAL IDEALISM not be offered, and of which fools will not find occasion for boasting as something which makes them big and smart, does not exist. The wise man watches the other side of the account, and weighs the worth of the better things this petty, perverted good destroys. The things that tempted Jesus are the types of the things that tempt us all. Food, fame, and power are not bad in themselves : they were bad for Jesus then, there, and in that particular form ; because under the circumstances they were incon- sistent with higher duties and possibilities. For us to-day riches, popularity, ambition, are not bad in themselves ; but are far better than the seclu- sion, sloth, and squalor of a hermit's cell. To place riches before righteousness, popularity before sincerity, ambition before service — that is bad ; that is the temptation of every man in public life to-day. And we must overcome these temptations of ours as Jesus overcame the temptations that came to him at the opening of his ministry, not by despising these things as evil in themselves, which they are- not ; but by overcoming the partial good there is in them through clear vision and firm grasp of the higher duty and the greater good with which these lesser natural goods conflict. Such is the origin of moral evil, the secret of its fascination, and the nature of the remedy. Yet while the original spring and inciting power of THE WORLD OF MORALITY 275 moral evil lies in the little good it seizes and per- verts, we must recognize that persistence in evil so hardens and perverts the heart that the origi- nal natural good from which it took its rise be- comes almost forgotten, and the cold, hard shell of malignant, defiant self-assertion is left stand- ing almost alone as an end in itself. Evil thus encrusted over with pride and rebelliousness toward God, and hate ' and bitterness toward one's fellow-men, is the deeper disease of sin. Such a man we call a hardened sinner. While the ulti- mate problem for him, as for all men, is to get a clear vision and a strong grasp of the higher life and the larger good, yet in order to bring him to this point of view and this attitude of will, something more than a description of the moral ideal or a treatise on scientific ethics is required. The sinner is not merely at strife with his natu- ral environment, like the man of thoughtless vice or passionate wrongdoing. He is at war with himself, in insurrection against the moral order, implicitly if not consciously arrayed in rebellion against his Maker and his God. Morality, indeed, can give a diagnosis of his case, and indicate in general terms the remedy. But the worst trouble is that the patient does not care to be cured, and refuses- to take the medicine morality prescribes. Morality shows a man what he must do and be. 276 PRACTICAL IDEALISM provided he wishes to do what he ought to do, and become the best he is capable of being. If, however, the man cares for none of- these things ; if he has ceased to care much what becomes of himself, then morality offers its unwelcome diag- nosis and its distasteful medicine in vain. The sin- ner must be shown that others care for him, even if he does not care for himself ; that he has a worth in the eyes of others, even if he has none in his own. The dead self must be quickened into life by the love of those who have life and love to im- part. And this gratuitous giving of life to those who lack it, this free bestowal of love on those who have no claim on others and have lost their respect for themselves — this takes us beyond the formal precincts of ethics into the vital realm of religion. Morality, with its stern laws and rigid formulas, its lofty aim and seemingly unapproachable ideal, must be supplemented by the warm heart and tender appeal of religion, before it can bring the wilful sinner under its beneficent control. CHAPTER VIII the' world of religion To grasp the world as a whole is the goal of all thought ; to find our place in the whole is the way to be free ; to be true to the whole is what it means to be holy ; to rest in the whole is the secret of peace ; to work with the whole is the motive of power. This wholeness of view, this wholesomeness of feeling, this holiness of charac- ter, is the still unachieved end toward which our progress from lower to higher worlds has tended. Sense-perception ties a few bits of sensation to- gether into things with constant qualities. Asso- ciation arranges these things and events in larger groups. Science binds them together in the strong bonds of the identity of common concepts, and the relation of parts to each other which the whole involves. Art moulds matter into the form of its ideal, and makes force tributary to its designs. Human life and love, and literature which is human life and love writ large, introduce new elements of caprice and waywardness. These in turn are reduced to harmony and order through 277 278 PRACTICAL IDEALISM social institutions. Into this Eden of institutional conventionality there crawls the serpent of con- scious and deliberate selfishness with its loathsome trail of avarice and lust and cruelty and crime ; and the resulting break between man and his social environment produces strife and ^iscord without, guilt and remorse within. Morality next tries to patch up these breaks and lesions at the particular points where they occur. But between hedonism on the one hand and legalism on the other it gets entangled in the toils of a cold, self-centred sub- jectivity; and even if it embraces the deeper ideal of concrete self-realization through natural and social relations, the process is an endless one, and it is inadequate to cope with indifferent folly and deliberate sin. To stop at this point is to leave our world uncompleted, our minds unsatisfied, our hearts unfilled, our wills unfree. It is the reluctance of the mind and heart to accept this lame and impo- tent conclusion ; the refusal of the will to withdraw from the field at this stage of the contest, that drives man with the eagerness of an infinite passion on into the sphere of religion. Religion alone offers a complete and ultimate unification of life; in it alone man finds perfect freedom and complete realization. Religion gathers up the partial and relative unities of these several lower worlds into the all-inclusive unity of a single THE WORLD OF RELIGION 279 system of relations, and bids man find his peace and blessedness in harmony with this one Absolute Thought and Universal Love. This ultimate unity of all thought and being, this interrelation of all things and all persons in one comprehensive rational system has been implied in each of the lower stages we have been considering. We found that there could be no such thing as an isolated fact ; but that all facts have reality through their inherence in a world of connected actual or pos- sible experience. Even fancy must take its rise from facts, and make some sort of connection with the world of common experience, or it evaporates in subjective hallucination and capricious sug- gestion. The inferences and laws of science presuppose the self-consistency of one rational all-inclusive experience as the major premise on which their ultimate validity depends. Art can widen nature and enrich experience only by abso- lute fidelity to those universal principles which are immanent in nature and experience to begin with, and merely come to more explicit conscious- ness in the artist than in other men. Friendship is the recognition, and literature the expression, of a community of nature between individuals which reveals a single spiritual principle as its source. Social institutions are the product and embodiment of a necessary rational relation of persons to each other which is deeper than th^ 28o PRACTICAL IDEALISM individual consciousness, yet capable of progres- sive reproduction in it. Moral laws, duties, and virtues are the fragmentary expressions of an ideal of man's conscious unity with his total envi- ronment : an ideal which he can neither entirely banish nor yet completely realize. Now religion is the explicit and conscious recog- nition of this underlying, over-ruling, all-including, rational and spiritual unity which we have found to be latent and implied in each and every special aspect of the world which we have been consider- ing. The world of religion is not a world apart from these special worlds of sense and science, art and humanity, institutions and morals. It is rather the larger, deeper unity in which all these special aspects inhere, to which they all stand related, from which they derive their meaning and rationality. The world of religion is the world of the Absolute Reason, the Eternal Love, that in- cludes all finite reality, and embraces all finite persons. The object of religion is God. Is God, thus conceived as the rational and moral unity of all things, all thinkers, and all thought, a person .' That depends on what we mean by per- son. If we identify personality with physical feat- ures and physical form, obviously God is not a person in that sense. But everybody sees that this is a very unworthy and inadequate notion of person- ality. The true personality of man is that unity of THE WORLD OF RELIGION 28 1 self-consciousness and self-determination which re- duces to a consistent rational whole and conforms to a worthy end the multiplicity of sensations and conceptions, appetites and desires which present themselves to him. But this rational and spiritual comprehension of diversity in unity is precisely what our study of the special aspects of the world has been forcing upon our attention all the time. We have reached our conception of God along the line of that rational unification of diverse particu- lars, which is the very essence of what we mean by personality in ourselves. Undoubtedly the Infinite Mind which holds "all thinking things, all objects of thought " together in the unity of absolute self- consciousness, is profound and vast and constant and calm beyond anything that our petty, shallow, fickle, and perturbed experience can suggest. This, however, ought not to surprise us. We ought not to withhold from God the attribute, if we may call what is essential an attribute, of personality, be- cause he is infinitely more of a person than we. We havSi discovered in the world a rational unity and a spiritual purpose, pervading and determining, comprehending and harmonizing all differences. The only category under which we can subsume such rational and moral unity is that of personality or self-consciousness as we know it in ourselves. Finding, therefore, that the world without, viewed as a whole, reveals a characteristic which we find 282 PRACTICAL IDEALISM nowhere else save in the ideal of self-conscious personality, we cannot refuse to recognize that the world without and the mind within are expressions of a single Spiritual Principle, common to both, and endowed with the highest mode of existence that is revealed in either. Having found expressed in the world without what is the essential charac- teristic of our own personality, we can no more refuse to recognize the personality of the World- Spirit, than the drop could refuse to recognize the aqueousness of the ocean, or the finger refuse to ascribe life to the body of which it is a living member. The God whom the rational unity of the world reveals is a person, because that rational and spiritual unity through and in which he is revealed is the very essence of personality as we know it in ourselves. The idea of God is latent in all finite conscious- ness. From first to last our finite consciousness is a relating of given particulars to a permanent and universal background of thought and ideas. In science this background becomes explicit in the abstract form of laws. In morality it becomes ex- plicit in duty and the voice of conscience. Neither an isolated fact nor an isolated person is conceivable. And the rational bonds which bind facts together in science, and persons to each other in ethical institutions and moral requirements, are simply the manifestations of the One Reason and Righteous- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 283 ness of whose being all special forms of truth and duty are expressions and declarations. The Infinite is surer than any finite fact. The finite presupposes the Infinite. As the inch pre- supposes the foot, the foot the yard, the yard the rod, the rod the mile, and each and all presuppose infinite space of which these finite spaces are but the markings and determinations, so the particu- lar facts which are the elements of our mental life presuppose a whole of which they are fragmentary aspects. As science and art alike presuppose a rational and constant determination of this whole, according to precise laws and definite ideals; as persons demand institutions as the condition of their social coherence ; as institutions demand morality as their safeguard and support, so all alike demand the higher and more comprehensive unity of religion as their centre and source. God is the Being from whom proceed and in whom in- here the laws of science and of morals ; the ideals of art and the ends of social evolution. As the whole is partially revealed in its several parts, so God is progressively revealing himself to man in the con- quests of science, the creations of art, the develop- ment of institutions, and the perfection of humanity. God is the One Spirit of whom the intellectual and aesthetic and social and moral development of man is the progressive revelation. He is the infinite circle of which these developments are fragmen- 284 PRACTICAL IDEALISM tary, yet truly constituent arcs. He is the cen- tral authority of whose righteous will all moral requirements are partial expressions; the final Judge at whose bar the might of right shall be vindicated, and the weakness and meanness of wrong exposed. Apart from these concrete ex- pressions of himself in nature and humanity, there is no proof possible of the being of God. In these he stands revealed, or rather through these his revelation is in constant process before our eyes. He that sees these finite aspects of nature and humanity in their relations and implications therein beholds the Infinite. As Jesus is repre- sented as saying in the Gospel of John, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest thou then, ' Show us the Father ? ' " It is this Gospel of a concrete universal, this doctrine of incarnation, which saves Christianity from the fate of pantheistic and agnostic systems. Were we to stop at the conception of God, which we reach by following the philosophic desire for unity to its source in the Infinite, we should indeed find there a certain satisfaction for the mind ; but no concrete object to win the heart's affection ; no definite authority to claim the allegiance of the will. A God who is infinite in the sense of not becom- ing finite, who is universal to the exclusion of all particulars ; or in theological language, a Father who has begotten no Son and sent forth no Spirit THE WORLD OF RELIGION 285 into the world, is to all intents and purposes no God at all. The abstract universal and nonentity are synonymous terms. " Unity ejects content when identity comes in." ^ Pantheism leads either to atheism or polytheism the moment it seeks con- crete expression. To worship and serve a God whose only approach is through the impalpable ether of philosophical abstraction, or along the dusty road of historical and scientific generalization, is not a permanent possibility for practical and earnest men. Unless the abstract can become con- crete, unless the universal is revealed in the partic- ular, unless the divine is human, unless the eternal is historical, unless the ideal is social, it may amuse the agnostic philosopher and occupy the pious mystic : but it does not afford the basis of a religion into which children can be trained ; by which men and women will regulate their conduct ; to which they will devote their energies ; for which, if need be, they will lay down their lives. If religion is to be that real guide and inspiration to life which all men need and which it purports to be, its concep- tion of God must not be left in the pale abstract- ness of a scientific term or philosophical specula- tion. It must be clothed in the flesh and blood of concrete reality. We may not return to the crude representation of God in images, or again identify his presence with sacred places, his pleasure with 1 Wenley, "Contemporary Theology and Theism,'' page 170. 286 PRACTICAL IDEALISM sacred ceremonies, his will with sacred rites and sacred institutions. Yet if the thought of Him is not to vanish into thin air, and the worship of Him fade out into an empty sentiment, a concrete and individual expression of Himself is a necessity. Such a concrete and definite point of contact between God and man, Christianity presents in Jesus Christ. In the person of a man, who, in the concrete relations of human life, sought ever to speak the absolute truth and do the universal will, we have an incarnation of God. We have the essential element of divinity, the universal truth and the absolute love ; and at the same time we have the flesh, and blood, the kinship and sympathy which appeal to the heart of our common humanity. More adequate symbol, or more perfect embodi- ment, or more complete expression of the absolute and infinite God, it is impossible to have. Chris- tianity is the ultimate and absolute form of re- ligion, because it presents the most spiritual expression of the divine nature which is consistent with that definiteness and individuality which alone can afford a concrete and real object for our love and reverence. Still the particular, merely as particular, cannot adequately represent the universal. Even Christ, so long as he is known "after the flesh," is an incomplete revelation of the fulness of the Infinite THE WORLD OF RELIGION 287 God. The attempt to exalt him, regarded merely as a particular historical individual, or, to use his own words, as he was "of mine own self," in which capacity he confessed that he " could do nothing," into the ultimate and exclusive object of worship would lead to a narrowing and hardening of the re- ligious spirit. The attempt to go " back to Jesus " and find in the imitation of the precise manner of his simple life the law for a complex modern civili- zation, is a Tnisconception of the true significance of Christianity. It misses the meaning of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is not Jesus as an individual; but rather the Spirit of love that was poured out without measure upon him, and came forth from him, whereby the Infinite God is revealed to men. And this Spirit is not con- fined to Jesus, but flows forth freely and gladly into the hearts and lives of as many as are willing to receive it as the principle of a new life of love and service in themselves. It is not Jesus in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago, but Christ in us in America to-day that is our hope of glory. It is because it does not ask man to stand forever gazing up into the clouds of philosophical abstraction or historical marvel, but infuses into his daily life and ordi- nary duties an infinite Ideal and a divine Spirit, that Christianity accomplishes the reconciliation of man with his total and ultimate environment. 288 PRACTICAL IDEALISM The man who does his daily duty, and meets his common tasks in the Spirit which in its fulness Christ revealed : he becomes thereby a son of God, he hath everlasting life. While we no longer regard times or places, rites or ceremonies, as sacred in themselves, or as the peculiar residence of an extra-mundane deity, still the indwelling Spirit of God is not confined to the breast of the individual as his sole habita- tion. The Spirit finds appropriate" expression first of all in speech and action ; and so the words and deeds of Jesus, and of the disciples who caught the Spirit directly from him, became the basis of a sacred literature, or Holy Scriptures. The Spirit manifested in these writings, however, was not entirely new to the world. The same Spirit, in less adequate ways, had been struggling for self-expression in all the holy deeds and pious aspirations of early saints and prophets ; and in the history and literature of Israel had found its least adulterated and most characteristic embodi- ment. Accordingly, the Spirit in the new. Chris- tian community recognized both the Old and the New Testaments as historical and literary expres- sions of itself; bound them in one book, and gave us our Bible. As the expression of the Spirit of God working in the hearts of men and the life of humanity, the Bible is an inspired book. And its inspiration consists, not in a mechanical dictation, THE WORLD OF RELIGION 289 or a miraculous preservation of the writers from incidental error, but in the simple, obvious fact that in these writings the Spirit of love, which is the Spirit of God, has found expression, and through them has power to awaken and sustain the life of the Spirit in the soul of the reader. As the Bible is the expression of the Spirit of God in literature, so the church is the expression of the same Spirit in an institution. Each human relation, as we have seen, must realize itself in some form of institution, or it becomes lost in mere caprice and subjectivity. Thus sexual rela- tions produce the family ; and civil relations necessi- tate the state. Likewise that love for one another, which is the first fruit of the Spirit, prompts all who share it to assemble themselves together; to recount the story of the world's long struggle toward this new life of love, and its final coming in the person of Jesus Christ ; to confirm one another in this new faith ; to praise God, the giver of this and every perfect gift ; to confess and ask forgiveness for their sins, and to con- sider the ways of helpfulness and service through which this new life may go forth to save and bless their fellow-men. Such meeting together for wor- ship and service and mutual encouragement in- volves the setting apart of special times and places which, from these spiritual uses, derive a borrowed sanctity. It involves a definite constitution, with 290 PRACTICAL IDEALISM specific conditions of membership, established modes of procedure, formulated statements of be- lief, recognized officers and rulers. While none of these institutions or persons have any special sanc- tity, considered in themselves, yet as the regularly established vehicles and organs for the social and public expression of the life of the Spirit, they too have reflected upon them from the divine end they serve a relative sacredness of their own. Thus the Sabbath and the sanctuary, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, the creed and the confession, the rites and ceremonies of public worship, the person of priest or preacher, become clothed with a spiritual dignity and authority, akin to the dig- nity and authority which in the sphere of the family attaches to the father and mother, and in that of the state to the officers and laws.- The Spirit of God is not a disembodied ghost, though our unfortunate English version tends to produce that impression. The Spirit is the new life of mutual love and service which Christ came to impart. As such a living, vital energy it cannot remain a disembodied shade, a merely private and individual possession. It must find institutional expression. To talk of the spiritual life apart from the church and its worship and service is like talk- ing of patriotism while refusing allegiance to any country, or conjugal love while refusing to marry. There may be occasions when it is right to sepa- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 29 1 rate from family and from country. But these are rare and abnormal. So there may be circum- stances which require one to stand aloof from the church. But these are very rare and altogether abnormal. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love ; and love implies fellowship, mutual helpfulness, unity of purpose and aim. And not until we can get unity without uniting, not until we can get fellowship without association, not until we can get love without communion, can we have a permanent and vital and real religion apart from some such organized form of communion with God and with one another as the church affords. At the same time it cannot be denied that the tendency of these rites, formulas, and institutions is to lose their original significance as expressive of the indwelling Spirit, and to become mere hard repulsive crusts upon the surface of religion. All forms of ecclesiastical organization suffer from this accretion of worn-out symbolism ; and naturally the churches which are oldest, and have gone long- est without a reformation, show the worst effects of this incrustation. Thus the use of incense may linger as a mode of expressing religious feeling, long after better and more refined symbols have displaced the crude symbolism of smell in all other departments of life. And so creeds may continue to affirm contradictions in the name of religion, which science and philosophy have long since 292 PRACTICAL IDEALISM banished to the limbo of mythology and fairy-land. Crude and uncritical theories of the way in which the books of the Bible were composed and collected may survive in the teaching of the Sunday-school long after sound scholarship has ascertained and published the true account of their origin. Marvels and prodigies which were intended to point the moral of inspiring exhortation, or consoling poem, may come to be interpreted as literal fact. This exaltation of pseudo-science, pseudo-phi- losophy, and pseudo-history into identification with the infallible oracles of God is responsible for that collision between the scientific, philosophical, and historical spirit on the one side, and the supposed interests of religion on the other. Identify re- ligion with the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- teuch, the scientific accuracy of the opening chapters of Genesis, the historicity of the story of Jonah, the narrative of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of the Infancy, and kindred traditional views, and then indeed there is a serious quarrel between science and religion, or rather between criticism and credulity. But religion is not bound up in the remotest connection with these unscien- tific and unhistorical positions. Religion is love to God and man ; the life of unselfish service and generous devotion to the Infinite in all his countless forms of finite manifestation. Religion is the incoming of God into the life of man, and THE WORLD OF RELIGION 293 the outgoing of man in service to his brother. It can no more be confined to a particular in- terpretation of an ancient document, the profes- sion of a modern creed, or the performance of an ecclesiastical rite, than the sunlight can be confined in a burning-glass, or the ocean com- prehended in a bucket. Buckets and burning- glasses have their uses, and so have interpreta- tions of ancient documents, and affirmations of modern creeds, and performance of church rites. But the uses of these things consist not in narrow- ing down religion to their limited dimensions ; but in adapting the vastness of the religious realm to the finite comprehension of particular times, par- ticular communities, and individual believers. The only demand true religion makes on any of these points is that the individual shall believe what is true ; and for the apprehension of what is true in these matters, religion can offer no royal road. It must bid its followers either tread for themselves the dry and dusty road of scientific and critical detail ; or else accept the verdict of those scien- tists and critics, who in candour and sincerity have trod it for them. If philosophy is only the dim background of re- ligion, ecclesiasticism is no more than its temporary scaffolding. The ultimate expression of religion, its essential nature, is the life of love. Philosophy, with its conviction of the unity of all things and 294 PRACTICAL IDEALISM all persons in God, affords the theoretical justifica- tion of the life of love, and finds therein the only practical solution of its quest for the ultimate unity of man with his complete environment. Ecclesi- asticism keeps alive this spirit of devotion by set- ting apart persons and institutions, times and places, for its systematic cultivation. But the end, to which all speculation and all organization are merely the means, is the life of love in which the will is devoted to the service of God and one's fellows ; and in return the heart is strengthened and supported by their sympathy and love. The religious life is that which knows no unreconciled opposition, no alien limitation ; but finds all cir- cumstances friendly, all trials bearable, all persons lovable, all victory attainable. Is this ideal of religion possible for man .■• Is God the real ruler of the real world, so that the soul that clings to Him in faith and hope and love can conquer all things .' That is the religious form of the ques- tion which philosophy knows as the problem of evil. To that in conclusion we must address our- selves. To be beaten at this point is to confess all previous labour vain. Is evil then ultimate? Or is God a very present help in time of trouble .■' Is there possible for the mind and heart of man a unity with the universe, a peace with God, which neither the evil in nature, nor the wrongdoing of others, nor the evil in our own souls take away .■' THE WORLD OF RELIGION 295 The answer to this question requires clear con- ceptions of evil in its three forms : evil in nature, badness in others, and sin in ourselves. First : Natural Evil. Nature is an assemblage of forces, each of which is seeking its own appro- priate expression. Each of these forces in itself is good. The eruption of a volcano, the shock of an earthquake, the stroke of lightning, the bite of a tiger, the multiplication of bacteria, are all ex- pressions of forces which in themselves are inno- cent and right and good. It is only in relation to other things and to persons that they become evil. The devastation of a valley, the destruction of a city, the burning of a house, the devouring of a sheep, the death of a man by typhoid fever, are evils to the things and beings injured. But in no one of these cases does the evil inhere in the force or agency that does it. Natural evil therefore arises from the conflict of forces, all of which in themselves are good. If each of these beings, volcano and valley, earthquake and city, lightning and house, tiger and sheep, bacteria and man, could express itself without colliding with another, then all would be well and there would be no evil. To be sure these things do not and could not exist by themselves. A volcano with nothing to overflow, an earthquake with nothing to shake, lightning with no medium of conduction, a tiger 296 PRACTICAL IDEALISM with nothing to devour, bacteria with no organic matter to feed upon, are things which neither man can conceive, nor God could make. If these things are to exist at all, they must exist in rela- tions. And the coexistence of particular active forces, side by side in the same system of relations, involves the possibility, yes, the necessity, of com- petition, conflict, and collision. The inevitable- ness of this collision between finite forces bound together in the same universe is the root and origin of natural evil. In no other sense can any natural object be properly called bad. Each inanimate force is simply acting out its own inherent nature. Each plant, each animal, is simply intent on its own self-preservation. It is from the collision of these forces, each of which in itself is good, that evil comes to pass. A more specific consideration of one or two of these concrete cases will make this proposition clear. A volcano is not an evil in itself. It is simply an expression of the general law that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time. The contraction of the earth's crust due to cooling, consequent upon the radiation of heat into space, and the generation of gases underneath the surface, make it necessary for some of the molten matter to be thrown out from time to time. Dr. Edward Hull, in his book on "Volcanoes, Past and Pres- ent," says, "Volcanoes are safety valves for regions THE WORLD OF RELIGION 297 beyond their immediate influence, so that whatever may be the disastrous results of an eruption, they would be still more disastrous if there had been no such safety valve as that afforded by a volcanic vent." Unless we are prepared to say that the impossibiHty that two bodies should occupy the same space at the same time is evil, and unless we are prepared to propose a preferable alternative to the whole process of contraction and radiation of heat which has characterized the evolutfon of the solar system during the entire fifteen or twenty million years of its history, we cannot call the vol- cano evil in itself. To the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii in A.D. 79, and to the eighteen thousand persons reported to have perished in consequence of the eruption in 163 1, the deluge of volcanic mud and the showers of ashes and lapilli unquestionably were evils of the first magnitude. But there w^s no malice in the heart of Vesuvius. Terrific as was the scene, it was only the most faint and feeble reproduction on an infinitesimal scale of what for millions of years was the condition of the whole solar system. During these vast periods everything was blazing with an infinitely intenser heat ; yet this universe of diffused dust cloud or "fire mist" was not evil then, for there were no cities to be buried, and no life to be destroyed. The most important source of evil in the sphere 298 PRACTICAL IDEALISM of Biology is the universal presence of bacteria. Bacteria are minute vegetable organisms which, owing to the absence of chlorophyl, are depend- ent upon organic matter for their nutrition. They are of two kinds : the saprophytes, which feed on dead organic matter, and the parasites, which can- not live apart from other living organisms. The great majority of all bacteria are saprophytes, and their functions are not merely advantageous to themselves, but absolutely essential to the exist- ence of the higher forms of vegetable and animal life. Dr. A. C. Abbott, in his "Principles of Bacteriology," remarks: "The r61e played in nature by the saprophytic bacteria is a very im- portant one. Through their presence the highly complicated tissues of dead animals and vege- tables are resolved into the simpler compounds, — carbonic acid, water, and ammonia — in which form they may be taken up and appropriated as nutri- tion by the more highly organized members of the vegetable kingdom. It is through this ultimate production of carbonic acid, ammonia, and water by the bacteria, as end-products in the process of decomposition and fermentation of the ,dead ani- mal and vegetable tissues, that the demands of growing vegetation for these compounds are supplied. Were it not for the activity of' these microscopic living particles, all life upon the sur- face of the earth would undoubtedly cease. De- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 299 prive higher vegetation of the carbon and nitrogen supplied to it as a result of bacterial activity, and its development comes rapidly to an end ; rob the animal kingdom of the food-stuffs supplied to it by the vegetable world, and life is no longer possible." The parasites are injurious to the higher organ- isms in which they take up their abode. By ap- propriation of nutritive materials essential to the life of their host, and by the production of sub- stances poisonous to its tissues, they induce disease and frequently cause death. Now neither the saprophytes are consciously beneficent to the universe, nor are the parasites intentionally detrimental to the organisms which they force to be their hosts. Each is intent on living its own life in the most thrifty and economi- cal way possible. As a matter of fact bacteria on the whole are beneficial. The saprophytes, which form the vast majority of all bacteria, are essential to any life whatever; while the parasites, which constitute the minority, are detrimental to some lives. Just as we should choose the solar system as a whole in spite of its incidental manifestations in an occasional volcanic eruption, so we should choose the biological evolution as a whole in preference to universal death, even though some deaths are occasioned by parasitic bacteria. These parasitic bacteria are, like the volcanic eruptions. 300 PRACTICAL IDEALISM SO far as we can see, so intimately connected with the total process of which they are a part, that they must be judged good or bad, not in themselves, but in their relation to the whole of which they are organic members. Natural evil is, from the point of view of the in- dividual sufferer, an unmixed and total evil. The citi- zen at the foot of erupting Vesuvius ; the shepherd whose sheep are in the clutches of the wolves ; the patient who is tossing under the ravages of fever, so long as he looks at the volcano, the wolves, or the bacteria from his individual point of view, must pronounce them absolutely and unqualifiedly bad. Yet if he be enough of a scientist and philosopher to rise to the universal point of view, and see these forces as parts and functions of an organic whole, which has found these manifestations essential features of the total cosmic process ; if he sees that if there had been no cooling of molten mat- ter into a hard crust, there could have been no green earth ; if there had been no fierce wolfish self-assertion, the animal frame which supports the human soul could never have been evolved out of the keen competition of the primeval forest ; if there had been no hordes of scavengers to cleanse the system, disease and death would have been the rule, rather than the exception; then the thought of a Universal Beneficence, manifested in spite of inci- dental collision as well as through the resultant THE WORLD OF RELIGION 3OI harmony, may give him power to bear the evil, not in blind and sullen rebelliousness, but in faith and trust, that in spite of the evil which has befallen him as an individual, he is yet the offspring of a process which makes for general harmony, — the child of a Father who wills the universal good. In that faith he may not escape individual suffer- ing, or remove all evil from the world ; but he will learn to attack resolutely such ills as can be cured, and to suffer bravely such as cannot be escaped. Sharing in some slight degree the insight and pur- pose, he will attain some measure of the peace and serenity of God. This calm insight into the uni- versality, and serene acceptance of the beneficence of natural law, is the point at which the highest scientific generalization and the widest philosophic outlook passes over into the first vague outlines of a spiritual faith. Such a merging of philosophy in religion, such a spiritual significance of the univer- sality of law, such a triumph of absolute good over partial evil, is expressed in the hymn of Cleanthes, the consummate literary expression of the Stoic faith : " Thee it is lawful for all mortals to ad- dress. For we are Thy offspring, and alone of living creatures possess a voice which is the image of reason. Therefore I will forever sing to Thee and celebrate Thy power. All this universe rolling round the earth obeys Thee and follows willingly at Thy command. Such a minister hast Thou in 302 PRACTICAL IDEALISM Thy invincible hands, the two-edged, flaming, vivid thunderbolt. O King, most High, nothing is done without Thee, neither in heaven or on earth, nor in the sea, except what the wicked do in their foolishness. Thou makest order out of disorder, and what is worthless becomes precious in Thy sight ; for Thou hast fitted together good and evil into one, and hast established one law that exists forever. But the wicked fly from Thy law, unhappy ones, and though they desire to possess what is good, yet they see not, neither do they hear the universal law of God. If they would follow it with understanding, they might have a good life. But they go astray, each after his own devices — some vainly striving after reputation, others turning aside after gain excessively, others after riotous living and wantonness. Nay, but, O Zeus, Giver of all things, who dwellest in dark clouds and rulest over the thunder, deliver men from their foolish- ness. Scatter it from their souls, and grant them to obtain wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly govern all things ; that being honoured we may repay Thee with honour, singing Thy works with- out ceasing, as it is right for us to do. For there is no greater thing than this, either for mortal men or for the gods, to sing rightly the universal law." This Stoic reverence for the universal law is an important stage in the religious life; and it is a THE WORLD OF RELIGION • 303 serious mistake when Christianity, with its deeper insight and richer experience, ventures to leave this out. The stern Executor of universal and impartial law is a worthier object of religious reverence than the arbitrary and capricious Dis- penser of special favours to whom an effeminate sentimentalism is ever prone to appeal. With reference to external physical evil, resulting from the collision of forces which are not endowed with individual self-consciousness and self-deter- mination, the Stoic attitude is wise and strong and dignified ; its song of praise in spite of in- cidental evil is a nobler and braver expression of sonship to God than " lawless prayer " for special exemption from such particular natural evils as fall to our individual lot. Nevertheless this covers only a small part of the ground: the first of the three aspects of our general problem. It makes explicit exception of "What the wicked do in their foolishness," and that is the chief source of the evils we endure. In our study of the World of Morality, we have already seen how moral evil enters a'nd wherein it consists. Moral evil, like natural evil, results from the collision of finite forces, both of which in themselves, apart from the collision, would be innocent and good. The collision, however, in this case is inside of consciousness, instead of outside of it. The conflicting interests are simul- 304 ■ PRACTICAL IDEALISM taneously presented to a self capable of appreci- ating the superiority of the larger to the smaller, of the higher to the lower. That introduces a new element into the problem and changes radically our relation to it. When some vital and important interest of ours is assailed, when our property is ruined, our affections betrayed, our health impaired, our life endangered by another, and that for no adequate reason or from no rightful claim, but merely to gain some trifling compensation, some passing pleasure, some in- significant gratification for himself, — then we cry out in indignation, then we call for vengeance, then we hold our fellow-man responsible and lay the blame on him and demand his proper punish- ment. This indignation is perfectly natural; and from a natural point of view it is perfectly righteous. It is an attempt to bring home to the mind of the offender the real merits of the case, and make him see his act as we see it, and bear at least the shame and remorse, as we do the pain and injury, conse- quent upoh his deed. That vengeance and retri- bution thus have a salutary effect on the mind of a thoughtless offender, is not to be denied. It is a good thing for him to have the precise nature of his deed brought home to him in such wise that he can feel and realize the wrongness of it as keenly as his victim does. In his selfish, unkind. THE WORLD OF RELIGION 305 cruel, or unscrupulous conduct the offender was practically ignoring me and my rights and feel- ings. Punishment makes him aware of my feel- ings in the case by giving him a taste of just such feelings himself. As Hegel ^ says, " Pun- ishment is only the negation of a negation." Yet even Hegel, who is the most strenuous supporter of the lex talionis in modern times, demands^ that punishment should not be mere personal revenge, but the calm decision of society through its constituted officers. Otherwise, as is the case in primitive conditions, punishment degenerates into mere personal revenge, which is ever in danger of committing a new crime to pay off an old one, and thus leads to perpetual feuds. While there is a certain rude justice involved in retributive punishment; while for the hard hearts of uncultivated peoples it is the only form of justice available ; while even in civilized com- munities it is the only practicable way of making justice manifest in cases where the offence is of an external and impersonal nature, or where the personal relations between the offehder and the injured party are slight ; nevertheless, wherever more intimate personal relations enter, and where a developed sensitiveness of heart has been or can be induced, Christianity presents "a more excel- 1 " Philosophy of Rights," Section 97. 2 Section 102. 306 PRACTICAL IDEALISM lent way." The way of vengeance seeks to make the offender feel the suffering which his wrong act caused me. The way of forgiveness, which is the way of Christ, seeks to make me feel the blindness and short-sightedness and meanness which kept him from appreciating my claims, and so made it possible for him to do the deed. From this point of view the offender is the more to be pitied than the victim of the offence, or, as Plato put it, "to do is worse than to suffer wrong." Between the offender and the person whom he has wronged a break exists. There are these two ways of healing it. The way of vengeance begins with the offender, and tries to force him to take my point of view, or something as near like it as possible. But such a forced reconcilia- tion is very ineffectual upon the offender, and leaves the offended one untouched ; although, like the elder brother in the parable, his heart may in reality be the harder, and his nature the more in need of expansion of the two. The way of for- giveness begins with the sufferer, is freely entered upon by him, and makes its almost resistless ap- peal straight to the free will and softened heart of the offender. In this way one soul is certain to be enlarged and united in love to his brother; and since love begets love, especially when mani- fested in such trying circumstances, it is almost sure to win the other to a repentance of his THE WORLD OF RELIGION 307 wrong. Hence the precepts of Jesus : " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust"; his counsel to forgive "until seventy times seven"; his prayer for his executioners, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," — ^all point out the true solution of the problem which is forced upon us by the badness of our fellow-men. Their acts are bad, the consequences of their acts are evil ; yet when we see that badness as God sees it, when, that is, we realize that these bad acts and evil consequences are due to defective training, contracted sympathy, undeveloped imagination, unformed character, we feel at once that pity and charity and sympathy and sorrow for them is the only true attitude to take. When we see how almost inevitable badness is to a little soul, and how almost impossible it is to a great soul, we cease to rage against the wrongdoer, and begin rather to pity him and seek to deliver him from a state of mind and heart to which such meanness and baseness is possible. And since that is the true attitude toward him, since that is the way in which God regards him, it follows, as Jesus 308 PRACTICAL IDEALISM tells US, that on no other terms than pity and for- giveness for him, can we maintain our own integ- rity of nature, and continue in the favour and fellowship of God. " For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you ; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." In other words, if we do not maintain unbroken the right relation between ourselves and the per- sons who are nearest us, we are not ourselves within the circle in which right relations univer- sally prevail. The paraphrase is of course vastly inferior to Jesus' statement ; but it may serve to call attention to the fact that here, as every- where, Jesus is stating, not a capricious declara- tion of an arbitrary Ruler, but a necessary result of the moral and spiritual constitution of the uni- verse. Whoever takes towards the wrongdoing of others the attitude of Jesus, which is also the attitude of God, and forgives them, as he desires himself to be forgiven, has found the true solution of the second phase of the problem of evil. He knows how to live at peace in a world of strife; he can maintain unimpaired the wholeness of a life of love in the midst of men who are perpetually doing wrong. For he has learned to love that in men which is better than they are. The last, worst enemy of man is sin and the guilt which sin begets. Of what use is a rational con- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 309 ception of the world, of what profit is the compre- hension of the oneness of Nature and Humanity in God, if with it all comes the sad sense that we ourselves are unworthy to have part or lot in this fair dreation of the mind, if by virtue of his holi- ness and perfection God must look on us with condemnation and reproach ? To all men of depth and insight, soon or late, this searching and dis- heartening question comes. When we realize our ingratitude to the kind hearts who cared for us in childhood ; when the storm and stress of strange passions bursting upon us in our youth have driven us to deeds of cruelty and shame ; when the haste to be rich or popular or powerful has robbed our manhood of honour and self-respect; when the vision of wasted opportunities and powers haunts old age with the dread of accounts that must soon be rendered ; when God, the omniscient Judge ; conscience, the unimpeachable witness ; and so- ciety, the jury of our peers, unite in condemnation of the wrongs we have done, the duties we have neglected, the miserable part our sloth, our lust, our avarice, our envy, our ingratitude, our unkind- ness, our selfishness, our insincerity, our cowardice have made us play, then we are humbled in the dust, then we cry out for pity, pardon, deliver- ance, salvation. Where shall it be found ? There are many ways of blinding the eyes, and dulling the feelings, and 3IO PRACTICAL IDEALISM hardening the heart against the bitterness of this experience. But evasion is not deliverance. And deliverance, salvation, redemption, restoration to favour and self-respect, is what we want. To answer this deepest of practical questions we must make clear the precise meaning of our terms. Sin is the mean and selfish preference of some little good for ourselves at the expense of the injury or neglect of others, and the violation of that law of God which his love has established in the equal interest of all his children. The guilt and shame of sin lies in the consciousness of how mean and unworthy we are in our selfish independence, as contrasted with what we might be as partakers in the generous purposes of God, and promoters of the welfare of our fellows. The first step out of sin, therefore, is repentance. We must hide neither from God, our fellows, or ourselves just how mean and miserable and ashamed of ourselves we feel. We must join heartily with God and all right-minded men in condemnation of the wrong deeds we have done, and the base feel- ings and purposes we have cherished. We must put from us in loathing and abhorrence the evil, and all the pleasure and profit it has brought with it, and resolve with God's help never to be guilty of the like again. Will such genuine repentance be accepted.'' Shall we be restored to favour with God; rein- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 311 stated in the fellowship of good men, and the service of God and goodnegs in the world ? Un- questionably, yes. That is the heart and soul of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter how bad we may have been ; no matter how much mischief and havoc we may have wrought in human hearts and human happiness; if we are really sorry for it, and repudiate it, and are heartily ashamed of it, and try our best to make amends, and earnestly and sincerely devote ourselves henceforth to the larger life of loving service of God and our fellow- men, we have the repeated promises of God, the incarnate witness of Christ, the outstretched hand of all who have the Christian Spirit, welcoming us like the returning prodigal to the Father's house and the better life. Though, alas ! there are many self -constituted Christians of the elder brother type, who have never entered into the life of love which animates the Father's heart and home ; and these as of old will be found grumbling and criticising the sinner for presuming to come, and the Father for his eagerness to welcome him. These people, who think they love righteousness more than they love persons, are the greatest obstacles to the coming of the kingdom of heaven. They neither go in themselves, nor, if they could help it, would suffer others to enter. It is the difficulty of getting by this self-righteous crowd, that block all the avenues of forgiveness and obstruct all the 312 PRACTICAL IDEALISM approaches to the throne of grace, that makes bad men and fallen women despair of ever being really restored to the favour of God and the fellowship of the good and pure. It must be confessed that the number of nominal Christians who really and practically believe that a sinner can be actually saved so as to be worthy of admission to their circle of intimate acquaintance and genuine kind- liness is not large ; and until these Scribes and Pharisees can be converted into Christians, it is useless to expect great accessions from the more hopeful but less presentable classes which we commonly call vicious and criminal. To return from the elder brother, with his cold, hard heart, to the repentant prodigal — his only chance is, in spite of the hate of the elder brother, still to believe in the love of the Father ; in spite of the pitiless Scribes and Pharisees, still to have faith in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ; still to trust the Spirit of Christ as it appears in the cordial greeting of the few who possess it. Faith to believe in this proffered restoration, humility to accept it, hope to be worthy of it, loyalty to the Christ who brought it, love to the brethren who transmit it — this is the second step out of the bondage of sin and the darkness of guilt into the freedom of the Spirit and the light of the Christian life. Persons who are reared in Christian homes and THE WORLD OF RELIGION 313 trained in Christian institutions ordinarily enter the kingdom without the explicit consciousness of the steps so sharply outlined above. At this point, however, we are dealing with the problem of delib- erate sin and conscious guilt. Out of these expe- riences there is no easier or smoother way than that of repentance and faith in a humanly mediated divine forgiveness. Not until he meets the love of God in the heart of a fellow-man will the indif- ferent or deliberate sinner forsake his way and open his own heart to the life and love of God. The first impulse of one who is thus saved from the dominion of sin into the glorious liberty of the sons of God is to try to rescue his bound and per- ishing fellows. Then for the first time, although he may have heard it in words before, he begins to realize at what a cost Christ redeemed the world from sin and at what a price his own salvation was secured. Grace, or favour to the unlovely and un- deserving, is always costly. It incurs the displeasure of the proud and self-righteous. It cost Jesus his life. The Saviour has to bear first of all the sor- row which sin always brings to those who feel its guilt and shame, whether in themselves or in those they love ; and secondly, the hostility and hate of those who in the hardness of their hearts wish to treat sin in the old way of pitiless condemnation and merciless punishment. This twofold sorrow formed the cross of Christ ; and every one who 314 PRACTICAL IDEALISM manifests the grace of Christ toward concrete sin and actual sinners will have to bear his part of this twofold burden of the cross on which his Lord was crucified. On no easier or cheaper terms can we search out, and trust in, and appeal to, and thus reclaim and restore and save, those of our fellows who have gone astray. This love which seeks and wins the loathsome and depraved, the outcast and the defiled, no less than the attractive, the sweet, the gentle, and the pure, is the crowning grace of Christian character. It is the final and most difficult stage in the long process by which man makes the world without, a harmonious and triumphant expression of heart and will within. He who loves his neighbour in the Christian meaning of the term has conquered the last enemy of his soul, and planted the banner of spiritual freedom on the very ramparts of the cita- del of evil. For him there remains no thing and no event, no act and no person, no repulsiveness in others or guilt within himself, which he cannot see in the light and transfigure with the love which proceeds from the heart and radiates from the throne of God. To him the world is a spirit- ual whole. In spite of imperfection and friction and colHsion here and there, he knows that this whole is good, capable of becoming better through his efforts, and destined for the best. He has come into a direct personal relation with the per- THE WORLD OF RELIGION 315 sonal God, of whose thought all things are the expression, and of whose love all persons are the offspring : a relation which he can realize alike in the quiet communion of secret prayer or in the busy routine of social service. Whether it be his lot to " only stand and wait " in obscure drudgery and humdrum detail, or whether he be called upon to face great difficulties and responsibilities on which the welfare of multitudes depends, he has in either case the consciousness of membership in the one glorious kingdom of God and Christ and the Christian Spirit : he feels in solitude its peace within his breast and goes forth to his labour armed and protected by its power. Thus religion is the practical solution of the moral problem, as it is the theoretical solution of the intellectual problem. The union of the will of man with the universal Will gives the victory over evil in the same way that union of the mind of man with the Absolute Mind gives the victory over doubt. Science and art demand first of all the surrender of our merely private whims, ca- prices, and prejudices ; and in return for such sur- render they give back universal laws and objective ideals. In like manner ethical institutions and re- ligious life require first of all the renunciation of merely selfish satisfactions, however innocent and excellent they are in themselves, whenever they conflict with social claims or personal welfare ; 3l6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM and in return for such repentance and resignation, man receives the universal life of identification with the interests of all his fellows, and participa- tion in the gracious and blessed purposes of God. He learns the supreme secret of forgiving others, as he himself is forgiven, through participation in that universal charity which seeks the highest good of all men which their characters make possible for them. He tries to improve their characters, as he seeks to improve his own, that they and he together may thus be able more fully to enter into the kingdom of love and kindness which stands wide open day and night for all who seek admission. In the world of religion, by participation in the life and love of God, man conquers his last enemies, — the evil inherent in the inevitable clash of finite natural forces ; the evil inherent in the blindness and hardness of the hearts of other men ; and the evil inherent in the sinfulness of his own soul. The world of religion is the world in which the last opposition is reconciled ; the world in which man is at peace with nature, with his fellow-men, and with his own soul, because he has unreservedly accepted as his own the thought and love of God which includes and unifies and reconciles the ultimate diversity of thought and being, the strife of man with nature, and of man with man. THE WORLD OF RELIGION 317 The universal is not the opposite of the particu- lar. They are not mutually exclusive. Neither can exist apart from the other. The particular has its existence in the universal, and the uni- versal has its expression through the particular. Religion and the Christian life, therefore, are the emptiest abstractions that ever flitted through visionary brains, when conceived as apart from practical affairs and aloof from men. It is in the problems of science and the work of art ; in the service of our fellows and the duties of our station ; in the support of our families, and ministration to the poor and lowly, and the upbuilding of the community and nation under whose laws and in- stitutions we live, that the true Christian spirit manifests itself. Yet, as the whole is more than the sum of its parts, as the body is more than an aggregate of members, so religion is more than an accumulation of good works, or the acquisition of specific virtues and graces. Religion is the spirit of wholeness or holiness which gathers all these detached aspects of life up into the unity of a common principle, and inspires them with the enthusiasm of a personal affection. Consequently, though the words of the reli- gious man must be exactly the same as the words of the scientist on a question of knowledge, and although his deeds must be exactly the same as the deeds of a moral man in a matter of ethics, yet 3l8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM there is an infinite difference between the attitude of religion, and that of mere science and morality, toward truth and duty. It is the difference be- tween seeing the particular proposition or the specific duty as a thing in itself, or at best, as part of some small section of the world, and seeing the same proposition or duty in its relations to the rational universe and the cosmic process, to the thought and will of God. An illustration will make the difference clear to all who have been teachers. There are two sorts of scholars in every class. The first sort learn each lesson as it comes along, faith- fully, thoroughly, perhaps ; but do not care for the science or history as a whole. They are not earnestly striving in and through these successive lessons to build up within their minds a coherent and intelligible conception of the historic process or the natural kingdom with which the lessons have to do. Now, no matter how thoroughly they learn their lessons, no matter how glibly they recite, the discerning teacher knows that this sort of student will never amount to much. He cannot refuse to let them go on ; if they are naturally brilliant and fairly industrious,"he has to give them a high mark. But he knows perfectly well that when they leave school their education will be ended. They will at once be caught in the whirl of new interests, and all their learning will come to naught. An aggregate of lessons, no matter how well they are THE WORLD OF RELIGION 319 learned, will never make scholarship. So long as these lessons are not related to each other, and to the subject as a whole, within the student's mind, no amount of study will raise the student to the rank of scholar. The better sort of student is he who learns his lessons to be sure, but who through them all is striving to gain a growing apprehension of the subject of which they treat. He is always trying to see how what he learns to-day stands related to what he learned yesterday, and forecasting the nature of what will come to-morrow. This sort of student may be dull and slow, he may learn with difficulty and recite with hesitation and con- fusion ; but every wise teacher knows that when he has found a student of this temper he has got one who twenty years hence will be a master of the subject which he is studying. He learns the lesson for the sake of the subject, and therefore in due time the subject shall be his. The other type learns the lesson for its own sake ; and the day his lessons are over, his education ends. So it is with morality and religion. The man who is merely moral, and nothing more, does his duties much as the first type of student learns his lesson. And therefore they remain isolated, un- related atoms in his spiritual life. He does not grow, except in so far as the fixing of routine is 320 PRACTICAL IDEALISM a sort of growth. But the enthusiasm, the devo- tion, the loyalty to a supreme Lord, the fellowship with a divine Master, is not brought out. And as a natural result, life does not deepen and en- large and intensify as the years go on ; and when the time comes for him to leave the school of earth with its special lessons, this man does not carry forward into the world beyond that eager zest for service, that unconquerable passion for righteousness, that inextinguishable fire of love, ' which is the guaranty of a blessed immortality. He is only a school-boy who has recited some few lessons fairly well ; but the love of learning is not in him, and for the ripened scholarship of eter- nity he has acquired no taste. The religious man is like our student of the second type. He too has learned his lessons well. For religion that dispenses with morality and con- crete duty is as absurd a thing as the scholarship that dispenses with study. But in and through his daily duties he has been entering into fellow- ship with the great purpose, and communion with the holy will, and participation in the blessed love of God. Each duty is seen as related to every other ; as an element in the glorious service of the one good God. The more he does, the more he wants to do ; the more he suffers, the more he is ready to bear ; the more he loves, the more he is capable of loving. Life for him is THE WORLD OF RELIGION 32 1 a steady march forward, grander, sweeter, nobler day by day; and he knows it is too good, too strong, too precious for death to put an end to, or for God to permit to pass into nothingness. It is out of this essentially religious attitude that is born the hope and confidence that sees through death to immortality. It is the man who lives here and now this absolute and universal life, who has just and reasonable expectations of living more completely the same life hereafter. "One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. " No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer ! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive! ' cry ' Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here ! ' " Religion sees the highest privilege in the low- liest opportunity, because high and low are both parts of one divine life. God is obeyed or dis- obeyed according as we do or fail to do the hum- blest duty; Christ is confessed or denied according as we are kind or cruel to our neighbour, helpful or indifferent to the little child. Conceived as an end in itself, a special department of life here, or 322 PRACTICAL IDEALISM a mere preparation for a life hereafter, religion, because it is then the most abstract and unreal of all possible attitudes of mind, becomes the most useless of the many superfluities that cumber the crowded soil of modern society. Rightly appre- hended, as the great agency by which is cultivated and kept alive the spirit of diligence and fidelity to every task as a part of our worship of God ; loyalty and devotion to every institution as an element of our service to Christ ; gentleness and helpfulness to every fellow-man as a child of God and a brother of our own, religion will become in the future even more than in the past, the source and centre of all that is most noble and generous and sweet and pure in the conduct and character, the aspiration and endeavour of mankind. The development of a deep religious life, in the light of a sound spiritual philosophy, is the great task which awaits the American people at the opening of the twentieth century. In the midst of our unexampled natural, political, and educa- tional advantages, this is the one thing needful. All other good gifts either Nature has given us, or we are in a fair way to work out for ourselves. Mountains stored with the unspent energy of the primeval sun, and veined with smelted treasures of the slow-cooling earth ; streams which catch and confine gravitation on its way back from the heavens to the sea ; fields deep with the essential THE WORLD OF RELIGION 323 elements of the riven rocks, and rich from the decay through countless ages of myriad vegetable forms, — these are our natural advantages, fresh from the hand of God. Traditions of Puritan piety, tempered with the grace of the Cavalier and the good nature of the Dutch ; the conservatism of English institutions, spiced with the radical speculations of the French ; culture that flows limpid down from its fountain-head in Greece, through abundant colleges and secondary schools, reinforced by ample facilities for technical training and scientific research, — these are the gifts of the same God, fashioned in the workshop of history, and conveyed by the hand of man. These good gifts have not fallen into unworthy hands, nor been bestowed in vain. Our rail- roads and furnaces, our factories and farms, our universities and coiirts, indicate our enterprise and thrift. Our comfortable homes and hospitable tables and happy children are evidence of the sound morality which beats warm and vigorous in the great nation's heart. Our hospitals for the sick, our asylums for the insane, our homes for the aged, our agencies for finding homes for orphans, our charities for the poor, our settlements in the slums, our parks and libraries and galleries free to the public, show us to be generous withal. Our churches, built, maintained, and multiplied by pri- vate contributions ; our missions pushed to the 324 PRACTICAL IDEALISM farthest frontier, and prosecuted in the uttermost parts of the earth, proclaim us a very religious people. Yet in the absence of one element more funda- mental and important than all these outward gifts and graces, these very things lose half their dignity and worth, and all their sweetness and their charm. Without this deeper element our business degen- erates into a mad rush for riches ; our politics sink into a senseless scramble for privilege and place ; our education deteriorates into a feverish cram- ming of specialized information ; our charities are converted into parade grounds for bustling busy- bodies ; our social life is loaded with burdensome extravagance and foolish ostentation ; even our religion is corrupted into a hunger for multiplied activities and a thirst for thrilling sensations. " And we say that repose has fled Forever the course of the river of Time ; That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker incessanter line ; That the din will be more on its banks. Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead. That never will those on its breast See an ennobling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again." ^ This lost repose, this longed-for quiet and tran- quillity, this peace that passeth understanding, this 1 Mathew Arnold, "The Future." THE WORLD OF RELIGION 325 blessedness which the world can neither give nor take away, must come to us, if it comes at all, through the union of the philosophic insight with the religious spirit. To see life clear and to see it whole ; to feel the presence of the Infinite in its lowliest and humblest finite forms ; to do the daily duty and fulfil the homely task as the particular points where our hearts greet the Universal Love and our wills unite with the Divine ; to live one's private life, however obscure and limited, in the fellowship of the one only great society, "the noble living and the noble dead " ; so to speak and act that in and through these little lives of ours the voice of the Universal Reason shall find utterance, and the will of God shall be wrought out : this union of infinite truth with finite fact ; this embodiment of the largest purpose in the smallest things; this incarnation of the wisdom of the ages in the service of the hour ; this com- munion with Christ in our dealings with one another; this thankfulness and joy and blessed- ness in life, neither our storehouses of material goods and scientific information, nor the buzz and whirl of our physical and mental machinery can ever give. These highest blessings can only come as the fruit of the long-delayed union of a philoso- phy which sees the parts of life in their organic relation to the whole, and a religion which identifies the love of God with the service of our fellows. INDEX Abstraction a sign of decadence in art, ii6. Adler, Felix, on the value of manual training, i88. Apperception, 22, 25. Appetites, in themselves good, become evil when preferred to greater good, 222. Appreciation of personality of others essential to the preser- vation of one's own, 138, 143. Arbitration, 211. Arnold, Matthew, on human love, 151 ; on the sinlessness of nat- ure, 259. Art, compared to science, 113 ; is synthetic, 113 ; nobler than sci- ence, yet dependent on it, 114; presents characteristic wholes, 114: expresses ideals in terms of sense-perception, 114; for art's sake, 116; in relation to universal laws, 117; an im- provement upon nature, 118, 129; realism and idealism in, 119; is science reversed, 125; morality in, 127; the freedom of, 132 ; reconciling nature and man, 133. Artist, as described by Edward Caird, 118 ; inevitably expresses his personality in his work, 120 ; the individuality of each, illus- trated by John La Farge, 121. Arts, fine and practical, com- pared, 115. Association, the world of, 36 ; de- fined, 37 ; by contiguity, 37 ; by similarity, 38. Avarice, the moral evil of, 264; the good in it which gives it strength, 267; the remedy for, 270. Bacteria, an example of natural evil, 298. Baldwin, Professor, his descrip- tion of the first sensation, 16. Berkeley, Bishop, on perception of distance, 24. Bible, the expression of the Spirit of God in literature, 289. Bosanquet, on inference, 85 ; on the interdependence of phe- nomena, 87; in condemnation of the " art for art's sake " the- ory, 116; on economic social- ism, 209. Browning, Robert, on love, 152. Caird, Edward, his definition of an artist, 118; on the family, 167. Canons of investigation, the, 90. Carlyle on work, 202, Cause, defined, 86; difficult to assign specifically, 87 ; finite, 88; proximate, 88. 327 328 INDEX Children, their training in the family, 173 ; extremes of super- vision or neglect to be avoided, 173. 174- Church, the, a social institution, 289. Civil service reform, 217. Cleanthes' hymn, 301, 302. Concepts, the formation of, 76-81. Conclusion of a syllogism, 82; its truth dependent on its con- formity to the principles of the syllogism, 82. Confusion, the, of an infant's first impressions, 17; analysis thereof, 17. Conscience, 255. Consciousness imphes contrast, 18. Consciousness of kind, 150 ; the distinctively human trait, 150 ; love its expression, 150. Contiguity and similarity, the lines along which association works, 37. Cowardice, the moral evil of, 264; the good which gives it strength, 267 ; its remedy, 270. Creed, the, 290, 293. Currency, 213. D'Arcy, Charles F., his account of moral conduct, 237. Darwin's doctrine of natural se- lection, 102-105 ! ^" example of scientific reasoning, 102; the links of his proof of the doc- trine, 103 ; variations and their inheritance, 103 ; artificial selec- tion, 104 ; enormous fecundity, 104 ; the struggle for existence, 104 ; the survival of the fittest, 104; further corroboration of, 105 ; accepted as a working hy- pothesis, 105; an example of the limitations of science, 106. Darwinism, its contribution to philosophy negative only, 108 ; its alliance with materialism unwarranted, 108. Decoration the soul of art, 116, Descartes' systematic doubt, 40. Dewey, Professor, 16, 22. Dewey's definition of memory, 28. Divorce, 169. Drawing in public schools, 195. Dreams, 59; their control, 60; Emerson on their significance, 61 ; Goethe's comment, 61. Duty, defined, 251 ; attacks upon the view of it as relative, 251 ; defined again, 252 ; and again, 254; the principle from which it is derived, 255. Education, its end the interpreta- tion to the student of nature and humanity, 177 ; dangers of a formal education, 187. Education, the new, 177; its motive or ideal, 195; features essential to its success, 195; studies in its programme, 195 ; results expected firom it, 199 ; its social significance, 200, 201. Eliot, George, her definition of sympathy, 143. Emerson on dreams, 61, Ethical conceptions, 224 ; hedon- ism stated by John Stuart Mill, 227 ; Professor James' reply to the hedonists, 228, 230 ; the true moral ideal defined, 236 ; sym- pathy, 238-241; individuality, 242 ; combined with concentra- tion, 247. Evil, moral, or vice, 257, 258 ; its origin, 259; to inanimate nat- ure impossible, 259; Matthew Arnold on the sinlessness of nature, 259; animals also in- nocent of, 261; the animalism INDEX 329 ofWhitman, 262; the problem of, 294; natural evil, 295; a conflict of forces in themselves good, 29s ; examples of natural evil, 296-299, Examinations, 190. Faith, 312. *' Fall of man," the, a stage of evolution, 147. Family, the first and most funda- mental of social institutions, 163; its function according to Mackenzie, 166; its signifi- cance expressed by Edward Caird, 167; its integrity and stability the very foundation of moral and spiritual order, 169 ; undergoing a greater strain as individuals become more and more differentiated, 172; the training of children in, 173 ; relation of members of, to each other, 175. Forgiveness, 306; taught by Christ, 307, 308. Freedom, 145. Friendship, the simplest mani- festation of love, 154 ; increases the range of life, 154 ; its main- tenance the art of life, 155. Ghosts, 4S. Giddings, Professor, on the con- sciousness of kind, 150. God, the personality of, 280-282 ; the idea of, latent in all finite consciousness, 282; the Being from whom proceed the laws of science and morals, ideals of art and ends of social evo- lution, 283. Hallucinations, their sources, 48; different types of, 49, 50 ; due to hypnotism, 51. Heat and expansion, 77. Hegel, on the spiritual signifi- cance of the love which founds the family, 165; on danger of kindergarten methods of edu- cation, 181 ; on the socializing function of industry, 205. Herbart, 25. Hibben, Professor, on the validity of inference, 83; on the dif- ference between induction and deduction, 84; his definition of the basis of inference, 86. Howison, Professor, on person- ality, 138; on the spiritual man, 139- Hume and Mill on the validity of inference, 75. Hypnotism a method of inducing hallucinations, 51, 53. Hypothesis, 71. Ideal, the, its origin, 114 ; the new ideal introduced with the world of persons, 138 ; the moral, 224 ; intuitionism, stoicism, asceti- cism, 224 ; as described by Kant, 225 ; hedonism, stated by John Stuart Mill, 227 ; Pro- fessor James' reply to hedon- ism, 22S-230; the true ideal defined, 236 ; the moral, 236 ; has two elements, 237; sym- pathy, 238-241 ; individuality, 242 ; demands concentration, 243; its social side stated by Pro- fessor Royce, 239 ; defined, 247. Idealism, practical definition, 6; and realism in art, 119; ob- jective, same as so-called real- ism in art, 126. Ideas, origin of, 8 ; innate, 9. Identity, the principle of, under- lying the syllogism, 82. Illusion, treated by Descartes, 39 ; the psychological process the 330 INDEX same as in perception, 43 ; an example experienced by Pro- fessor W. R. Sorley, 43; its source, 45 ; tests of, 65. Imagination, 56; Wordsworth's sonnet on, 58 ; its field, 58 ; in dreams, 59; its scientific use, 71 ; indispensable to the ad- vancement of science, 131. Immortality, intimations of, in the social world, 158. Inadequacy of the world of sense- perceptions, 32. Incarnation, the, 286. Indifference, the sin of, 148 ; the largest factor in the production of evil, 149. Individuals, mutually exclusive, 162. Induction, distinguished from de- duction by Professor Hibben, 84 ; methods of, formulated by John Stuart Mill, 88; method of difference, 88 ; of residues, 89 ; of concomitant variations, 8g ; the joint method, 89. Industry, organized, in modern times exerting the power of a great social institution, 202, 207 ; men's interdependence on each other's work, 203; Hegel, on its socializing func- tion, 205 ; its ideal, 210. Inference, defined, 75 ; its validity, as upheld by the Empirical School, 75 ; discussed by Professor Hibben, 83 ; illustra- tions of, 91-101 ; Socrates the first to make explicit use of, 91- Innocence of primitive man not a moral quality, 146. Institutions, unite individuals in a social order, 163 ; are to per- sons what natural laws are to facts, 163 ; first among them is the family, 163 ; second, is the school, 175. Intemperance, the evil of, 265; the good in it which gives it strength, 268 ; its remedy, 271. Interdependence of all phenom- ena, 86; illustrated by Bosan- quet, 87. Interpretation of the personality of others by our own, 143. Introduction, 3. Intuitionism, 224; closely affili- ated with stoicism, asceticism, etc., 224; set forth by Kant, 225 ; also termed legalism, 235. Isolation of things or events an impossibility, 36. James, Professor, on the truth that every man builds his ovm world, 4; describing the first sensation, 16; on the forming of the concept, 81. , Jones, Henry, on love, 156. Kant, his great achievement, 14; his view of the moral ideal, 224, Kindergarten, the, its office, 178- 180 ; the dangers in its method stated by Hegel, 181. Knowledge, the factors in its production, 13, 14; its source, 15 ; of qualities precedes that of things, 19; Browning's defini- tion, of, 23 ; which should be imparted by the public schools, La Farge, his illustration of the inevitable, unconscious expres- sion of the artist's personality in his work, 121. Laissez-faire and socialism, 208; cruel and impracticable, 208. Law, empirical, 76; logical or scientific, 76 ; universal, 77, 79 ; INDEX 331 exceptions to, 80; a uniform and constant expression of our own intellectual nature, 131 ; moral, is as essential an expres- sion of human life as natural law is of physical nature, 129 ; all, resolves itself into the one, fundamental law of love, 254. Laws, of thought, 82 ; the law of identity, 82; of contradiction, 82; of excluded middle, 82; natural, compared to the bones of the skeleton, science, 112; having no life apart from the fiesh and blood of concrete facts and forces, 112; their power to control facts and forces through ideals is not science, but art, 112. Leibnitz, on truth, 10; his cor- rection of Locke's one-sided view of the senses, 12. Licentiousness, the moral evil of, 265 ; the good in it which gives it strength, 268 ; the remedy for, 271-273. Limitation, the principle of, 244, 246. Literature, the great exponent of the life of love, 158 ; the inter- pretation of life, 158 ; the im- mense spiritual significance of its power of interpretation, 159 ; and philology, 160; in school, 193. 194- Locke, 7 ; father of British ma- terialism, 9; his account of sensation, 10; his doctrine of the passivity of mind, 11 ; his one-sided view corrected by Leibnitz and Kant, 12. Logic, treatises on, by Jevons, Hibben, Bosanquet, Sigwart, Bradley, 69. Love, the practical expression of the consciousness of kind, 150 ; the creator of the social world, 157; as represented by Mat- thew Arnold, 151 ; by Robert Browning, 152 ; by Words- worth, 153 ; by Henry Jones, 156 ; by Schopenhauer, 164 ; by Hegel, 165; its manifestation in friendship, 154; its great exponent is literature, 158 ; three essential forms under which the spirit of love works to build the social world, 161. Lying, 254. Mackenzie on the family, 166. Man, his kinship to nature, 132; their relation to a common principle, 132 ; lower and higher than brute, 148. Manual training, an essential feature of the social mission of common schools, 187 ; recom- mended by Felix Adler, 188 ; its effect on the child, 188. Marriage, a blessing or a calam- ity, 169 ; growing at once better and worse, 170. Materialism, its alliance with Darwinism unwarranted, 108, Mathematical reasoning, 80. Mechanic arts and fine arts, 113. Mediation through concept, 76. Memory, described by Professor Dewey, 28; an extended and more enduring form of percep- tion, 30; its limitations, 30. Mental therapeutics, 54. Mill, John Stuart, methods of induction formulated by him, 88 ; his statement of hedonism, 227. Mind, its subconscious states and functions, 54 ; its power to form the general concept, 81. Moral evil, its first appearance as naughtiness in the child, 262, 332 INDEX 263 ; it is the deliberate choice of the lesser good, 263; all forms of, as cowardice, avarice, drunkenness, licentiousness, are the sacrifice of large inter- ests to small, 264-269 ; the source of its power, 266; it persists for the same reason that iron ships fioat, 266 ; with- out a kernel of good in, it could not exist, 269 ; the rem- edy for, 269; persistence in, 27s ; morality prescribes a remedy for, 27s; religion in- duces the taking the remedy for, 276, Morality, in art, 127 ; an essen- tial truth of, the inferior natural good becomes the morally bad, 223; D'Arcy's account of moral conduct, 237 ; unconscious con- formity to custom involves no question of, 220; the modern man cannot occupy any such neutral ground, 221 ; the neces- sity of choice between conflict- ing interests, 222 ; and religion, 275, 276. Moral law as essential an expres- sion of human life as natural law is of physical nature, 129. Moral quality, the, of an act is relative, 244. Moral socialism and economic individualism, 20S. Murder, 253 ; in its deepest sense includes everything that tends to injure health, 253. Natural selection, Darwin's doc- trine of, a good example of scientific reasoning, 102-105 i the history of the idea, 102; the links of Darwin's proof, 103; variations and their in- heritance, 103; artificial selec- tion, 104 ; enormous fecundity, 104 ; the struggle for existence, 104 ; the survival of the fittest, 104 ; its further corroboration, 103 ; and acceptance as a work- ing hypothesis, 105 ; an example also of the limitations of sci- ence, 106 ; it offers no ultimate explanation of phenomena, 106. Nature, akin to man, 132; their relation to a common principle, 132; and man, reconciled in science and art, 133. Need, the great present, 325 ; to see life as a whole, 325; to serve God in our relations to each other, 325. Observation, 70, 72. Origin of species by natural selec- tion, — the doctrine as proved by Darwin a good example of scientific reasoning, 102; the links of his proof, 103 ; varia- tions and their inheritance, 103 ; artificial selection, 104; enor- mous fecundity, 104 ; the strug- gle for existence, 104 ; the sur- vival of the fittest, 104; its further corroboration, 105; its general acceptance, 105. Patriotism, 213. Paulsen on reason in men and animals, 74. Pensions, 226. Perception, defined, 22 ; of dis- tance described, 24 ; its origin, 20 ; and growth, 21 ; its place, as defined by Professor Dewey, 22 ; discriminated from illusion, 65 ; tests for either, 65, 66. Personahty, the unconscious ex- pression of, illustrated by John La Farge, 121 ; the quality of, described by Professor Howi- INDEX 333 son, 138 ; a recognition of its right in others necessary to the proper preservation of our own, 138, 140, 141, 143; quotations from Professor Howison and Professor Royce on the sub- ject, 138, 141 ; its gradual development described by Tennyson, 140; our interpre- tation of that of others by our own, 143. Persons less tractable than things, 137- Plato's Gorgias quoted as an illustration of the process of inference, 91-101. Practical Idealism defined, 6. Primitive man, 145 ; guided by two forces only, 145; uncon- scious of good or evil, 146 ; his acts therefore not morally good or bad, 146 ; Matthew Arnold's sonnet to, 219. Principle, a, to which both Nat- ure and Man are related, 132 ; suggested by science and art, 131- Problem, the moral, 221 ; its root lies in a collision of conflicting interests, 222. Psychology, treatises on, by Bald- win, Ladd, Dewey, James, and Titchener, 16. Public Schools, their curriculum, 193-195 ; the present a critical time for, 196 ; their social mis- sion, 198 ; dangers threatening them, r96, 197 ; results expected from their instruction, 199-201 ; punishment, 305. " R's, the three," instruments, not the substance, of education, 183 ; indispensable, 184; the mere shell of learning, 186. Realism in art, a psychological impossibility, 119; every pict- ure is modified by the atten- tion of the artist, 120 ; the truth which the term is intended to express, 124. Reality, the test of, 65; sought but not found in the presenta- tions of sense-perception, 130; nor in the freer ones of fancy and illusion, 130 ; but united in science with the rationality of self, revealing the rationality of the world and the reality of our own intelligence, 131. Reason the creator of the natural world, 151, 157. Reasoning, its essence, 73 ; human and animal reasoning, 74; Paulsen's distinction between them, 74; its validity, 81. Recapitulations, 62, 120, 277. Reconstruction of wholes when only parts are given involves liability to error, 39. Religion, the ultimate unification of life, 278; its object God, 280; and science, 292; and morality, the difference be- tween, 318 ; illustration thereof, 318-3ZO. Repentance, 310. Rites and ceremonies, 288, 290; their tendency to lose spiritual significance, 291. Royce, Professor, on recognizing the personality of others, 141. Rules of conduct relative to the end and to the circumstances of the individual, 247-250. Sacraments, the, 290. Sacrifice, 313. Salvation, 313. School, the, ranks among social institutions next to the family, 17s; its function in the life of 334 INDEX the child, 176; the interpreta- tion of nature and humanity, 117; the grammar, 185; mod- ern languages and physical science in the grades of, 191; the public, 1S5; manual train- ing essential to their social mission, 187; flexible pro- grammes and frequent pro- motions also essential, 189; efScient examinations, 190 ; the ideal programme, 191. Schopenhauer on love, 164. Science, its beginning, 69; its limitations illustrated by Dar- win's doctrine of natural se- lection, 106; its testimony to the existence of precise and immutable laws, log ; an objec- tive reality akin to our intelli- gence, in; not an ultimate reality, in ; compared to a skeleton of which the natural laws are the bones, 112; deals with essential elements, 114; is analytic, 113 ; deals with essen- tial elements, 114; brings facts of sense-perception under con- cepts and laws, 114; can make no advances without the free use of the imagination, 121 ; and religion, 292. Scientific reasoning, the canons of, 90; illustration of, from Plato, 19 ; from Darwin, 102. Self-identification with the uni- versal realm of personal inter- ests and claims, through faithful performance of one's special fiinction, is the principle from which all duties are derived, on which all laws are based, 255. Self-realization man's ultimate end, 236. Sensation, number of elementary qualities of, 3; Locke's ac- count of it, 10 ; as a &ctor of knowledge, 13, 14 ; the first, 16 ; defined by Professor Baldwin, 16; described by Professor James, 16 ; confined to one moment of time, 19; its sig- nificance determined by previ- ous experience, 25 ; its reaction on the receiving power of the mind, a modern conception, 25 ; its office, 35. Sense-perception, the world of, 7; its bondage and arbitrari- ness, 32: its inadequacy, 33; its defect, as stated by Aris- totle, 72 ; the basis of empiri- cal law, 76. Service, 315. Sidgwick, Professor Henry, on telepathy, 51. Sigwart, Dr., on induction, 85. Sin in ourselves, 309, 310. Socialism, and Laissez-faire com- pared, 208 ; equally cruel and impracticable, 208 ; economic, described by Bosanquet, 209. Society, the, for Psychical Re- search, 46, 47 ; becoming in- creasingly complex, 172. Socrates the first to make ex- plicit use of the process of inference, 91. Sorley, W. R., his experience of illusion, 43. Space and time, like two strings, tie together sensations, 20, 68. Stability sought in science and its laws, 130. State, the, as the field of man's fullest realization of himself, 210, 217 ; its chief dangers, 213 ; some of the demands it makes on the patriotism of the individual, 213-217. Suggestion in hypnotism, 51 ; in mental healing, 54. INDEX 335 Syllogism.the.the principles of,82. Sympathy defined by George Eliot, 143. Taxation, 214. Telepathy, apparently genuine cases of, Ji. Temptation always takes the form of something good, 273. Theft, 254. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 139. Titchener, Professor, 3. Training, the, of children, 173. Treason against the state in modem times, 215. Truth absolute and universal, 79. Truths of science, how deter- mined, 89. Tyndall on Imagination, 71. Unity obtained by Philosophy's reduction of the manifold, 137- Vengeance, 304. Vice is meanness, the choice of the lesser good, 257, 258. Virtue, in the abstract, an un- profitable subject for discus- sion, 257 ; Hegel's comment on such discourse, 257. Vision of a man, the, elements in the experience of, 62-65. Volcanoes an example of nat- ural evil, 296, 297. War and arbitration, 211. Whitman, Walt, his gospel of animalism, 262. Wickedness of men, 303 ; arises from a conflict of interests un- equally good, and the choice of the inferior, 304. Women, in modern life, the great danger threatening them, 244 ; their vital relation to the wel- fare of the race, 245. Wordsworth on love, 153. Work, its social significance, 203 ; Carlyle on the blessedness of work, 202; Professor Harris on men's interdependence on each other's work, 203. World, of Art, the, 113; of Asso- ciation, the, 36 ; of Institutions, the, 162 ; bridges the gulf be- tween separate individualities, 163 ; of Morality, the, 219 ; of persons, the, more difficult to analyze than the world of Sci- ence or of Art, 137 ; of Religion, the, 277 ; not a world apart, 280 ; the deeper unity in which the other special aspects of the world inhere, 280 ; of Science, the, 68; of Sense-perception, the, 7 ; an organism of ration- ally related members, 90; a unity, consistent and rational, 109 ; of Science compared to a skeleton, 112; of Art compared to the living flesh and blood, 113 ; the natural, 7 ; created by reason, 157; the social, created by love, 157 ; impossible with- out individual members, 158; three essential forms through which the spirit of love does its creating work, 161 ; becom- ing increasingly complex, 171 ; the spiritual, 137. World-process, the, not fixed but fluid, 36. THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT. By HENRY VAN DYKE. BEING THE . 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