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The Philosophy of History 
 
 By S. S. HEBBERD 
 
 Revised Edition 
 
 (From the Chicago Tribune") 
 
 "How so simple a thought as this can be carried out as a law of 
 interpretation in the study of the great distinctive, historic civilization 
 as that of India, the classical, the medieval, the Reformation, the genesis 
 of science, modern art and morality, and the social revolution since the 
 reformation is what the author has attempted to show in this remarkably 
 lucid, cogent, and suggestive book." 
 
 "It is, in fact, one of the most penetrating and illuminating philo- 
 sophical-historical essays that have appeared for a long while. And its 
 style indicates, to an uncommon degree, not only strong mastery of the 
 theme, but a singularly fine self-mastery, which holds the author so 
 perfectly to his single aim. One who reads intelligently this book, 
 whether or not he accept fully the theory, will get a clew to modern 
 thought and modern history he did not have, at least so clearly, before." 
 
 (From The Reformed Church Review) 
 
 "If this book had the imprint of Berlin or Oxford upon its title-page 
 it would command immediate attention. The author himself feels that 
 it is heavily handicapped by the very grandeur of its pretensions. . . . 
 After reading a few pages one is captivated by the simlicity, the direct- 
 ness and the penetration of the author. He makes you think. Whether 
 you agree with him or not you cannot deny that you are confronted by a 
 man who has read widely, pondered his material carefully and thought 
 clearly. The work deserves far more popularity than it appears to have 
 received. 
 
 "... The reader is naturally afraid of a man who has found a 
 key, especially one that will explain all the mysteries of civilization. 
 Yet it must be conceded that the writer pleads his cause with remarkable 
 ingenuity, and with his striking antitheses and epigrammatic sentences 
 throws new light upon his subject at many points. If he does nothing 
 else he sets one thinking along the broad deep lines which are co- 
 extensive with the breadth and depth of the racial movement itself. 
 
 "... The book abounds in keen distinctions like these. They may 
 raise problems rather than solve them, but a production that does even 
 that is well worth reading." 
 
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 Brooklyn, New York) 
 
 "I am not certain yet whether I am satisfied that you have found 
 the solution of the riddle. Your solution at first strikes one as too 
 simple — but so are all the great laws simple. Anyhow, for horizon, 
 inspiration and outlook and as a compendium of learning it is a book 
 of the first rank. I am going to read it again." 
 
 " 'The Philosophy of History' is a timely work and one that will be 
 sought after by all students and lovers of history. In this work the 
 author has given to the world a book that should bring him fame as a 
 reward for a lifetime of labor spent in its preparation." — Southern Star, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 "A book into which a strong thinker has put a large part of the 
 forces of his life is not to be set aside lightly. And this book will repay 
 careful study. . . . These are the merest hints of the scheme of 
 thought which the writer of this book has developed with much wealth 
 of historical illustration and fine philosophical insight." — The Christian 
 Century. 
 
 "There is very much that is weighty as well as ingenious in your 
 speculations upon the Philosophy of Art. I have seen no better theory 
 of the beautiful than yours." — C. E. Norton, LL.D., L.H.D., Prof, of 
 Art in Harvard University. 
 
 "This book is a noble contribution to the philosophy of history. We 
 feel convinced that it will find its way to readers of every class." — 
 New York World. 
 
 "This book is abundant evidence of the high philosophical ability of 
 the author. Its characterization of artistic, industrial and moral tenden- 
 cies is capital." — Wm. D. Hyde, D.D., LL.D., Fres't Bowdoin College. 
 
 "The style is as clear as a crystal, while the ideas are singularly 
 marked by modesty, manliness and affluent suggestiveness." — Christian 
 Era. 
 
 "Your book seems to me an epoch-making book. It is the clearest, 
 most profound and most rational exposition of the science of thinking 
 that I have ever seen. I have studied Lotze, . . . and many others, 
 but I have really got a better outlook into thought and life, a firmer 
 foundation for faith and reason in your little book than from them all." 
 — Rev. John Faville, D.D., Peoria, 111. 
 
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 of the distinction between idealism and realism and apply it to the 
 various fields of human life, and especially to human history, seems to 
 me of fascinating interest. I do not know when I have read more 
 suggestive pages in the line of the philosophy of history than in your 
 book."— Pres't G. A. Gates, D.D., LL.D., Iowa College. 
 
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 I have made large use of it, especially under the subject of perception 
 and consciousness." — Ex-Pres't E. H. Merrell, D.D., Ripon College. 
 
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 Yale University. 
 
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 never come to know before one of so much ability and depth of re- 
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 suggestive and worthy of earnest attention." — Fres't R. C. Flagg, D.D., 
 Ripon College. 
 
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 sweep. I know it is the finest, freshest and most original putting that I 
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 University. 
 
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 sive account of the progress of civilization within so small a compass 
 nor one so suggestive of thought." — Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette. 
 
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 to gain the author's conception and is sure to repay the reading." — 
 Auburn Seminary Review. 
 
 " 'The Philosophy of History' is a carefully wrought essay in which 
 the attempt is made to establish a single law of thought which will 
 successfully explain the course of human development. . . . Taking 
 this fundamental law as a key, the author applies it in turn to the doors 
 of human history and makes it open them all in succession from the 
 contemplative systems of Indian thought to the industrial conflicts of the 
 nineteenth century. The book cannot be even summarized here, but it 
 may be said that its treatment of old problems is fresh, logical and in 
 many respects convincing. Especially is this true of the chapters on 
 classical and medieval art in which the fundamental law is admirably 
 illustrated." — The Dial. 
 
 izmo, 307 Pages, Cloth Bound 
 Price, Postpaid, $1.50 
 
 MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 77 Milton Street, Borough oi Queens, New York 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
 THE FUTURE 
 
 By S. S. HEBBERD 
 
 Author of " Philosophy of History," " The Secret of Christianity'* 
 "The Science of Thought," Etc. 
 
 MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 77 MILTON STREET, BOROUGH OF QUEENS, NEW YORK 
 
 1911 
 
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 *v 
 
 Copyright, 1911, 
 By S. S. HEBBERD. 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 This book has cost me more than half a century 
 of toil and the loss of most things that men chiefly 
 desire. And still it is very imperfect. How, indeed, 
 could it be otherwise, since I have had to cut my 
 way through a wilderness, aided only by the errors 
 of those who have preceded me? But, as I have 
 shown in my "Philosophy of History," we are on 
 the verge of a great transition. The Protestant age 
 of dissent and division has exhausted itself, and has 
 now little of value to offer us. And so I send forth 
 my book, hoping that despite its imperfections, it 
 may serve to foreshadow the better time that is com- 
 ing. 
 
 I am encouraged too by what Kant says in the 
 Scholia to his Prolegomena : "All transitions from a 
 tendency to its contrary pass through the stage of 
 indifference, and this moment is most dangerous for 
 an author, but the most favorable for the science. 
 For when party-spirit has died out by a total dis- 
 solution of former connections, minds are in the 
 best state to listen to several proposals for an or- 
 ganization according to a new plan." 
 
 S. S. Hebberd. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Nature of Thought ... i 
 
 II. Causality 10 
 
 III. Abstraction and Relation ... 28 
 
 IV. The New Realism 43 
 
 V. Space 69 
 
 VI. Time 80 
 
 VII. The Concept 93 
 
 VIII. Judgment 113 
 
 IX. Induction 127 
 
 X. The Existence of God .... 148 
 
 XL Freedom 166 
 
 XII. Demonstration of the Soul's Ex- 
 istence 185 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 
 
 Section i. The Fundamental Principle 
 
 The principle upon which I seek to found a new 
 philosophy is this: The sole, essential function of 
 all thinking, as contrasted with feeling, is to dis- 
 criminate between cause and effect. 
 
 It is a simple thesis ; but it will not be disparaged 
 on that account by any one who knows the history of 
 inductive science. Such an one will remember that 
 the greatest discoveries have always borne this 
 stamp of simplicity. The secrets of Nature always 
 seem open and evident when once we have found 
 them out. But it is not so easy to find them out and 
 verify them. It is far easier to plod along in the old 
 ruts of tradition and error; or to revolve, like one 
 lost in the woods, in circles of verbiage and 
 ambiguity. 
 
 But your thesis, it may be said, is nothing new. It 
 is but a revamping of Schopenhauer's reduction of 
 all the Kantian categories to that of causality. But 
 such an objection would be both shallow and false. 
 Some of the Pythagoreans anticipated dimly the 
 Copernican discovery, but they never verified their 
 vague conjectures; and the contrast between my doc- 
 trine and Schopenhauer's is much wider and deeper 
 than that, (a) For he confined his view to processes 
 of the understanding, which for him — as also for 
 
2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Kant, Hegel and the rest — was but a part of the in- 
 tellect; and a very inferior, rudimentary part, the 
 source of all error and deception, (b) Nor did 
 Schopenhauer even attempt to prove the reality of 
 causation ; he never questioned Kant's view of it as 
 but a logical necessity, an arbitrary compulsion 
 forced upon us by the deceptive understanding, (c) 
 Above all, he did not see that this universal scope 
 of the causal concept could be converted into a proof 
 that it was no mere figment of the mind ; to him it 
 was merely "subjective. " In fine, Schopenhauer 
 simply carried the Kantian philosophy one stage 
 farther on — into that pessimism which, as the his- 
 tory of India so painfully shows, is the inevitable 
 outcome of every fully developed theory of Maya or 
 illusion. 
 
 My doctrine is the exact opposite of all this. For 
 its main design is to find an ultimate, universal cri- 
 terion of truth, and thus overcome the skepticism 
 lurking in both the materialistic and idealistic modes 
 of modern thought. 
 
 Section 2. Hume's Problem 
 
 Modern philosophy is tormented by one very 
 grievous malady. Its criticism has destroyed the old 
 criteria of truth, but has never been able to put any- 
 thing else in their place ; it has torn down, but knows 
 not how to rebuild. Even through all the storm and 
 stress of the eighteenth century, the primary convic- 
 tions of mankind were conserved, at least for the 
 majority, by the doctrine of innate ideas or intuitions. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 3 
 
 But Kant completely wrecked the intuitional method 
 of defending truth. The very fact that all men were 
 somehow mysteriously compelled to accept, without 
 any proof, certain convictions concerning time, 
 space, substance, cause, etc., was made a ground for 
 discrediting these convictions. His criticism has 
 never been adequately answered. And for more 
 than a century now, our most elementary convic- 
 tions, moral as well as religious, have been hanging 
 in cloud-land, true castles in the air. Thus modern 
 philosophy, having no firm foundation, has become 
 a chaos of dispute, paradox and vain subtleties. 
 
 My contention is that philosophy can be rescued 
 from its evident state of decadence and chaos only 
 by finding some way of solving Hume's famous 
 problem of causality. In the failure of Kant and all 
 his successors down to the present day to solve that 
 problem has been the main source of trouble. Think- 
 ers have naturally tended to ignore, to shove aside 
 a principle that seemed to mock at all their efforts 
 to solve or understand it. Many of them seem to 
 have nourished a spite against it. Thus Royce says 
 solemnly: "The unhappy slavery of metaphysicians 
 of the past to the conception of causation has been 
 responsible for some of the most fatal misfortunes 
 of religion and of humanity." 1 
 
 Not having any fear of such a slavery, I propose 
 in this volume to prove inductively that the sole es- 
 sential function of all thinking is to discriminate 
 between cause and effect ; in other words, that there 
 
 1 The World and the Individual, I. p. 444. 
 
4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 is no known form of thought which is not ultimately 
 reducible into an assertion of cause and effect. If 
 I succeed, then plainly to cancel causality is to efface 
 all distinction between truth and falsehood, and thus 
 to render all thinking logically impossible. The 
 argument is in fact a reductio ad absurdum in the 
 completest form imaginable. The geometer proves 
 his theorem by showing that its denial would logi- 
 cally lead to the denial of some universally accepted 
 principle, and would therefore be absurd; I prove 
 my theorem by showing that its denial would invali- 
 date all principles, efface all distinctions, in fine 
 would involve the utter extinction of thought. 
 
 Thus we shall reach the solution of Hume's prob- 
 lem, which, according to Hoffding, 1 "Kant failed to 
 solve and is indeed insoluble." Hume argued that 
 causation was only the more or less uniform succes- 
 sion of phenomena in space and time. But I shall 
 prove that each word in this definition is in its es- 
 sence a declaration of causality. The relations sev- 
 erally indicated by each of the words used — more, 
 less, uniform, succession, phenomena, space, time, of, 
 in, and — all rest primarily upon causal relations; 
 and if the latter were eliminated, the words would 
 lose all their meaning. Thus in the very act of deny- 
 ing causality, Hume is compelled to affirm it over 
 and over again. 
 
 Section j. The Law of Knowledge 
 My fundamental theorem carries with it a very 
 
 'History of Modern Philosophy, II. p. 58. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 5 
 
 obvious corollary. If all thinking is essentially a 
 relating of cause and effect, it manifestly follows 
 that a cause cannot be known except through its ef- 
 fects, nor an effect apart from its cause. 
 
 Simple and self-evident as this corollary appears, 
 it is of the utmost value for the unraveling of those 
 entanglements in which speculation is perpetually 
 involving itself. As we proceed in our exposition 
 we shall see how many far-famed conceptions in 
 philosophy are but half thoughts, mutilated and 
 worthless because they are attempts to conceive a 
 cause apart from its effects or an effect apart from 
 its cause. Many a dispute has lasted for ages, because 
 one party was stubbornly clinging to a half-thought 
 and the other party to the complementary half, one 
 emphasizing the cause and the other the effect. 
 Take, for example, the most famous and persistent 
 of all these controversies, that between the Eleatic 
 and the Heracleitean school, the former claiming 
 that Being was one, indivisible, immutable, while 
 all appearance of change or motion was due to the 
 deceptiveness of the senses; the latter maintaining 
 that everything is in constant flux, forever trans- 
 forming itself, its nature a consuming fire. In fine, 
 one school sees the uniformity of cause or causal 
 processes, the other sees only the effects or changes. 
 And yet this dispute outlasted ancient philosophy. 
 Plato was puzzled by it, as his Parmenides plainly 
 shows. And in the Aristotlean theory of knowledge 
 it is again apparent as "a contradiction of which the 
 results run through the entire system of Aristotle." 
 
6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Turn now to Hegelianism, the most vigorous of 
 all philosophies now extant — unless, indeed, you 
 count "pragmatism" as a philosophy. Hegel begins 
 with that equation which has astonished so many, 
 Pure Being=o. And yet there is no need of aston- 
 ishment; the equation is but a bald truism. For to 
 Hegel pure being means only an effect isolated from 
 or unrelated to any cause, or as Wallace puts it: 
 "We do not mean something which is, but mere is, 
 the bare fact of Being, without any substratum. The 
 degree of condensation or development when sub- 
 stantive and attribute co-exist has not yet come. 
 The terms and forms of Being float as it were freely 
 in the air ; or to put it more correctly, one passes into 
 the other. . . . This Being is immediate, i.e., it 
 contains no reference binding it with anything be- 
 yond itself, but stands forward boldly and nakedly 
 as if alone; and if hard pressed it turns over into 
 something else." 1 Now, as a matter of course, such 
 Being as that — for example, a motion apart from 
 anything that moves — is nothing. In fine the whole 
 first book of the Logic is occupied with an inherent 
 absurdity, a mutilated half -thought, to wit, effects 
 that have no cause. And to discover therein para- 
 doxes and self-contradictions naturally becomes an 
 easy task. 
 
 To quote from Wallace again : "If the first branch 
 of Logic was the sphere of simple Being in a point 
 or series of points, the second is that of difference 
 and discordant Being broken up in itself." 2 It is 
 
 1 Logic of Hegel, Prolegomena, p. cxix. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. cxxi. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 7 
 
 enough here to note two indisputable facts. First, 
 the whole drift of the second book is to identify the 
 effect with its cause ; thus we have a series of trans- 
 formations of causes without any real effects. Sec- 
 ond, in the end all causation is discarded as self-con- 
 tradictory and unreal. 
 
 The first and second books, then, vividly illustrate 
 my Law of Knowledge, the impossibility of know- 
 ing effects apart from their causes or causes apart 
 from their effects. The third book, based upon the 
 conjecture that the universe is an organism, illus- 
 trates the straits to which a thinker is driven after 
 he has discarded the conception of causality. 
 
 Section 4. The Relativity of Knowledge 
 
 But there is a possible objection that must be con- 
 sidered. It may be said that even if I succeed in 
 proving that the sole essential function of all think- 
 ing is to affirm cause and effect, I have not escaped 
 the toils of the Kantian subjectivism. Nothing 
 would be proved except that as our minds are con- 
 stituted, it is impossible to think otherwise ; but other 
 beings with minds differently constituted may think 
 in quite a different fashion. Cause and effect may, 
 after all, have no actual reality outside our fallible 
 human minds. 
 
 But understand thoroughly the doctrine here pre- 
 sented, and your objection vanishes; this question of 
 relativity, which has stood unanswered since the 
 dawn of philosophy, is instantly answered. For my 
 doctrine sweeps aside all that swarm of chimeras — 
 
8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 such as innate ideas, intuitions, a-priori categories, 
 etc. — that heretofore have made relativity seem so 
 plausible. Dismiss, then, this tangled mass of un- 
 proved, impossible assumptions. Conceive thought 
 or reasoning just as science conceives everything 
 else — that is, functionally. For, as I propose to 
 demonstrate, the sole essential function of thought 
 or reason is to discriminate between cause and ef- 
 fect; and from this functional point of view the 
 question of relativity becomes superlatively absurd. 
 If you imagine thought or reason after the Kantian 
 style, that is, as a mere medley of innate ideas, or 
 a- priorities, flung together at random, no one knows 
 how, whence or why — having no object except to 
 engender false appearances — then indeed relativity 
 becomes highly plausible. It seems almost certain 
 that there must be somewhere some higher order of 
 beings endowed with a higher type of thought or 
 reason, less complicated and cumbersome, leading to 
 something else than universal imposture. But aban- 
 don this preposterous and immoral scheme. In- 
 terpret thought or reason as you would anything 
 else — according to its known function. Then, if I 
 prove, as I certainly shall, that the sole, essential 
 function of thinking is to discriminate between cause 
 and effect, the question about relativity becomes 
 simply ridiculous. For it is to ask whether there 
 may not be some higher order of reason which is not 
 reason and contradicts reason. It would not be a 
 whit sillier to ask whether there may not be some 
 higher kind of motion which is not motion? Or 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 9 
 
 some higher kind of a triangle that has four or forty 
 sides ? 
 
 Furthermore I cite Kant himself, the great high- 
 priest of relativity, as an unwilling witness to the 
 truth of my doctrine. For in trying to prove uni- 
 versal relativity, he is forced to make an exception 
 of causality. I do not refer merely to the well- 
 known fact that he describes the thing in itself as the 
 cause of the matter of our sensations. I refer to the 
 much broader fact that he describes the whole 
 phenomenal universe as caused mainly by the pe- 
 culiar constitution of the mind. He forgets that ac- 
 cording to his doctrine, causality is merely relative 
 and therefore can tell him nothing concerning the 
 true constitution of the mind. In fine, he uses the 
 idea of cause as real in order to prove that it is not 
 real. In the very act of denying causality, he affirms 
 it. 
 
 Note finally that we are here concerned only with 
 the alleged relativity of the causal relation. Other 
 supposed relativities will be discussed later on; and 
 they will be found to vanish, one by one, before this 
 functional view of thought or reason as a relating 
 of cause and effect. The one ruinous defect in mod- 
 ern philosophy is that it is not "a city which hath 
 foundations." It hangs in the air with nothing un- 
 derlying it but such obsolete superstitions as innate 
 ideas, intuitions, postulates, a-priori necessities of 
 thought, etc. It needs the insight which Archimedes 
 had long ago : "Give me a place to stand on, and I 
 can move the world." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CAUSALITY 
 
 Section i. Sequence 
 
 The most surprising feature in Hume's famous 
 polemic against the belief in causality is the extreme 
 tenuity and emptiness of the arguments he was 
 called upon to meet. He spoke the simple truth 
 when he declared that "every argument which has 
 been produced for the necessity of a cause is falla- 
 cious and sophistical." Take, for example, Hobbes's 
 proof, which is specially notable, because he more 
 than any contemporary writer bases his philosophy 
 upon the conception of causality. It is as follows : 
 All the points of time and place in which we can 
 suppose any object to begin to exist are in them- 
 selves equal; and unless there be some cause which 
 is peculiar to one time and one place, and which by 
 that means determines and fixes their existence, it 
 must remain in eternal suspense; and the object can 
 never begin to be for want of something to fix its 
 beginning." Hume answers to that: "But I ask is 
 there any more difficulty in supposing the time and 
 place to be fixed without a cause than to suppose the 
 existence to be determined in that manner?" 1 Then 
 Hume turns to the proofs given by other distin- 
 guished writers, and answers them with equal 
 
 1 Hume's Philosophical Works, Edinburgh, 1826, II. pp. 111- 
 112. 
 
CAUSALITY 1 1 
 
 promptitude and ease. Indeed, his task of refutation 
 seems so easy that one wonders why it had not been 
 accomplished long before. Evidently there had been 
 little serious attention given to this most crucial of 
 all philosophic questions. Hume's victory was due 
 largely to the fact that like a skillful general, he had 
 taken the enemy unawares. And even in this inat- 
 tention we may see some confirmation of my thesis ; 
 the concept of causation was so intimately bound 
 up with the whole process of thinking that no one 
 dreamed of doubting its validity. They took it for 
 granted. Hume himself, as has often been noted, 
 unconsciously took it for granted in the very at- 
 tempt to contradict it. 
 
 But many other obscuring agencies, besides inat- 
 tention, have darkened the conception of causality. 
 The most potent of these agencies perhaps, espe- 
 cially since Kant's day, has been the ethical impulse. 
 The pivot upon which the Kantian criticism turns 
 is the assumption that if causation cannot be proved 
 to be phenomenal or illusory, then ' liberty and with 
 it morality must yield to the mechanism of nature." 
 But that view will be considered in my last chapters, 
 wherein I hope to show that the demonstration of 
 freedom and morality is made possible only by the 
 principle of causality rightly understood. Deferring 
 that question then, I turn to perplexities that have 
 sprung from the development of modern science. 
 And first of all, to the degradation of causality into 
 mere sequence. 
 
 (i) There are three distinct objections to this se- 
 
12 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 quence theory, each one of which is sufficient to 
 overthrow it. First there is Reid's well-known ob- 
 jection that the invariable succession of day and 
 night does not prove that the one is the cause of the 
 other. To that, so far as I know, no serious or sat- 
 isfactory reply has ever been made. Mill shoves it 
 aside with the curious remark that the conjunction 
 of day and night "is in some sort accidental." . . . 
 "Invariable sequence is not synonymous with causa- 
 tion unless the sequence, besides being invariable, is 
 unconditional." 1 In other words, unless the succes- 
 sion is caused by something else. That obviously is 
 to surrender the very point which Mill was trying 
 to dispute. Bosanquet's reply is still more oblique 
 and obscure, a palpable "darkening of counsel" be- 
 hind a host of words and irrelevancies. 2 Adam- 
 son's answer is that increasing experience enables us 
 to discriminate between two kinds of succession. 3 
 But did the stupidest of savages ever consider day 
 to be the cause of night or night the cause of day ? 
 
 (2) Reid's objection then is unanswerable. To 
 it I add two others both my own. The first of these 
 is my proof that sequence or succession implies 
 time ; and that the conception of time is made possi- 
 ble and intelligible only through the prior conception 
 of cause. But for that proof I must refer the reader 
 to my chapter upon Time. 
 
 (3) My other objection is that the uniform se- 
 
 1 Logic, Bk. III. ch. 5, § 5. 
 
 2 Bosanquet, Logic. 
 
 'Development of Modern Philosophy, p. 320. 
 
CAUSALITY 13 
 
 quence of events does not even indicate a relation of 
 cause and effect between them. It indicates, rather, 
 that the successive events are both effects of the same 
 cause. In the revolutions of a wheel, for instance, 
 one revolution is not the cause of the succeeding one, 
 and that the cause of the next, and so on indefi- 
 nitely; but all the revolutions are successive effects 
 of a common cause unlike any one of them. In fine, 
 sequence, instead of being synonymous with, is not 
 even a sign of any relation of cause and effect be- 
 tween the sequent objects. But one error leads to 
 another. And modern philosophy having, under the 
 guidance of Hume and Kant, started out on a false 
 path — the minifying of causality — has been led from 
 error to error into a wild tangle of blunders and per- 
 plexities. Some of the chief of these errors I shall 
 consider in the next section. 
 
 Section 2. Causal Processes 
 One of the most signal of scientific triumphs has 
 been the discovery of the marvelous complexity of 
 causal processes. It has revolutionized our view of 
 Nature compared with the ancient view. In the 
 philosophy of Aristotle and of antiquity in general, 
 each effect or change is conceived as the product of 
 some single cause — either of some substantial thing 
 or else of some "occult quality," some force or power 
 hidden within that thing. If anything weighed 
 much, there was an occult quality of heaviness 
 within it ; if it weighed little, there was within it an 
 occult quality of "levity." This view prevailed far 
 down into modern times, and was one of the chief 
 
14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 stumbling blocks to scientific advance. Chemistry, 
 for example, until almost the close of the eighteenth 
 century was prevented from becoming a science by 
 the doctrine of phlogiston — a strange substance pos- 
 sessing the still stranger quality of levity or negative 
 weight. But science has finally changed all that. 
 It has learned that an effect is the product not of a 
 single, unitary cause, but of a vast complex of in- 
 teracting agencies, of a causal process with a multi- 
 tude of factors. 
 
 But the older, pre-scientific view still lingers ; for 
 it was long ago crystallized into the usages of com- 
 mon speech and grammar; insensibly it molds our 
 thought — all the more, the less we are aware of it. 
 Hence there is a constant, bewildering conflict be- 
 tween two quite disparate modes of thinking. On 
 the one side the crude primitive view of the single 
 cause; on the other, the scientific, verifiable view of 
 the causal process with its host of factors. 
 
 This conflict is largely responsible for the con- 
 fusion and bewilderment so evident in modern phi- 
 losophy. Hegel's Dialectic especially is but an artful 
 display of the countless "contradictions" that may 
 readily be evolved by passing back and forth from 
 the crude popular view of cause as single to the sci- 
 entific view of it as a causal process, an infinite com- 
 plex of interwoven factors. But in English phi- 
 losophy we find a more familiar example in the long 
 controversy concerning the plurality of causes. How 
 happens it that the same effect may issue from the 
 most dissimilar causes — death, for instance, from 
 
CAUSALITY 15 
 
 drowning, or shooting, or disease, etc. ? Very curi- 
 ous solutions have been given. Thus one recent 
 writer says : "The total effect in each case is never 
 mere death, but death in some one special shape. A 
 man who is shot and a man who is drowned are both 
 dead ; but one is dead with the special symptoms of 
 death by drowning, the other with those of death by 
 shooting." 1 But Mill long ago suggested a less fan- 
 tastic solution than that, in fact, one very near the 
 truth. "From the different causes of the same ef- 
 fect," he says, "we may be able to ascend to some 
 one cause which is the operative circumstance in 
 them all. Thus it might and perhaps will be discov- 
 ered that in the production of heat by friction, per- 
 cussion, chemical action, etc., the ultimate source 
 is one and the same." 2 
 
 Thus in a dim, tentative way, Mill had caught a 
 glimpse of the greatest of scientific revelations — the 
 principle that an effect is the product, not of a single 
 cause, but of a complex causal process combining 
 many co-operating factors. Mill lived to see his 
 prophecy concerning the theory of heat completely 
 fulfilled. But he never fully developed the principle 
 of the causal process of which he had caught a 
 glimpse. If he had developed it, he would have 
 solved that problem of the plurality of causes which 
 baffled him, and other thinkers also. He would 
 have seen that a causal process would remain uni- 
 form even if one factor was substituted for another, 
 
 1 Taylor, Metaphysics. 
 
 2 Mill, Logic, Bk. III., ch. 10, §3. 
 
1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 provided the new factor was precisely equivalent in 
 efficiency to the old. 
 
 Immanent and Trans eunt Causes. Here we 
 have another perplexity that has sorely distressed 
 logicians. Two of the greatest among modern 
 thinkers, Spinoza and Lotze, have emphatically re- 
 pudiated all but immanent causes. And some re- 
 cent writers of repute have gone still further, have 
 converted this difficulty into an excuse for extirpat- 
 ing all causality, root and branch. But let us pro- 
 ceed more rationally. Let us look at the difficulty 
 in the light of the now fully established truth that 
 cause is always presented to us in the form of a 
 causal process. Then the difficulty disappears. We 
 see that the distinction between the immanent and 
 the transeunt cause is made absolutely necessary by 
 the very nature of such a process; for any factor 
 therein in order to be a factor, must at once be acted 
 upon and also act upon the others. In fine, exclusive 
 emphasis upon either immanent or transeunt causes 
 is an error due to not distinguishing between the 
 two modes of regarding causation. If we regard it 
 in the ancient way — as Aristotle did — we shall see 
 causes as mainly immanent: if we regard it in the 
 scientific way, we shall see cause as a complex of 
 transeunt or interacting factors. 
 
 Hegel and "The Notion." From our present 
 point of view some light, I think, may be thrown 
 upon one of the darkest of the obscurities crowded 
 into Hegel's Logic — namely, the transition from re- 
 ciprocal causation to the Notion. Hegel's own ac- 
 
CAUSALITY 17 
 
 count of the transition is confessedly unintelligible 
 — a mere chaos of words without connected mean- 
 ing. Even McTaggart, who with wonderful skill 
 and patience, has devoted twenty-one years to the 
 study of Hegel, says at this point : "I must confess 
 myself unable to follow this." 1 But as I have al- 
 ready said, the strength of Hegel's dialectic lies in 
 its blind, instinctive groping along the line of a 
 great truth which he has but vaguely comprehended. 
 Especially is that true in the present case. The 
 transition from causality to the Notion can be ex- 
 plained only by means of a principle which I shall 
 demonstrate in Chapter VII — to wit, that the real 
 essence of a notion, concept or universal is the af- 
 firmation of a causal process. In the second book 
 causality is conceived in the crude, primitive, popu- 
 lar fashion ; McTaggart says that "the treatment of 
 Causality presents very grave defects." 2 But in the 
 third book Hegel passes to causality conceived as 
 the Notion, that is, as causal process. Not that 
 Hegel himself explains the transition in that way. 
 In fact, he does not explain it at all, at least intelli- 
 igibly. 
 
 Section 3. Uniformity 
 
 But the gravest of all the perplexities concerning 
 causation is the question of our belief in its uniform- 
 ity. No such problem ever troubled the crude pre- 
 scientific view of causation; for, to that view, the 
 processes of Nature were not invariable, but a wild 
 
 1 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, p. 194. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 156; also p. 172 seq. 
 
1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 mixture of uniformity and irregularity. In the 
 heavens, according to Aristotle, all was orderly and 
 uniform, except in a few cases like "the wandering' ' 
 of the planets. But on earth, events were largely 
 fortuitous, and the course of Nature very capri- 
 cious. 1 To Aristotle the natural was merely 
 that which happened "generally or for the most 
 part." 
 
 Modern thought, on the contrary, has insisted 
 upon the strict uniformity of natural causation, but 
 has never been able to offer any conclusive proof of 
 what it so loudly asserts. Mill, indeed, attempted to 
 prove it from a mere enumeration of instances, but 
 his attempt is now generally recognized to have been 
 a failure. Idealists, on the other hand, seem content 
 to take it for granted under the shelter of some such 
 high-sounding phrase as organic unity or an articu- 
 lated system. But mere assumption, however vocif- 
 erous, is not proof. Lotze, it may be added, taught 
 that belief in uniformity rested "ultimately upon the 
 faith which we repose in the universal validity of a 
 certain postulate of thought. 2 But the age of faith 
 ended long ago. 
 
 Here then we have a chasm wide and deep, at 
 the very center of modern thought. And the only 
 possible way of bridging this chasm, it seems to me, 
 is by my doctrine of the causal process. For, in the 
 first place, a process in order to be such must be uni- 
 form ; in so far as it is not uniform it ceases to be a 
 
 *De Coelo, II., ch. 5, P- I. 
 2 Lotze, Logic, p. 503. 
 
CAUSALITY 19 
 
 process. In the second place, natural processes do 
 not prevent, but through their complexity necessi- 
 tate that infinite variableness which we behold every- 
 where in Nature. This second fact is best illus- 
 trated and verified by that crowning example, that 
 most perfect type of scientific induction — Newton's 
 discovery of gravitation. In that we have on the 
 one hand a causal process of rigid, mathematical 
 uniformity at work everywhere, without variable- 
 ness or shadow of turning. And yet on the other 
 hand not a stone falls to the ground as the result of 
 that process, but what its motion varies in each in- 
 finitesimal instant both in its velocity and in its di- 
 rection as regards absolute space. And so every- 
 where in the most trivial of natural events we have 
 a miracle of uniformity in the process, and a miracle 
 of variation in the result. 
 
 Thus my doctrine of the causal process seems to 
 have a double virtue. It accounts at once for that 
 uniformity so dear to modern science and for that 
 variableness which delighted the more aesthetic 
 genius of ancient Greece. 
 
 It may be objected that Newton's induction, how- 
 ever important, is but one case among many, and 
 therefore does not fully prove my position. I an- 
 swer that it is used here more as illustration than as 
 proof. The full proof will be given in the chapter 
 upon induction, where it will be shown that the es- 
 sence — the long sought for secret of the inductive 
 method — is the discovery and verifying of a uniform 
 process of causation. 
 
20 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Section 4. Ground 
 
 Another embarrassment that must be considered 
 is the attempt of some recent logicians to submerge 
 causality under what is alleged to be the wider and 
 truer category of ground. Thus Bosanquet affirms 
 that "Cause is incomplete ground" ; and labors 
 through scores of pages to prove it. Taylor follow- 
 ing in the same path, says : "The ground is the per- 
 vading common nature of the system thought of as 
 identity pervading and determining the character of 
 the details. . . . The fundamental law of knowl- 
 edge is that whatever exists is a coherent whole." 
 
 Now the fountain-head of all these dark sayings 
 is, of course, Hegel's doctrine of the Identity of 
 Cause and Effect. And here I will quote Dr. Mc- 
 Taggart's criticism of this doctrine, since as com- 
 ing from a life-long student and defender in gen- 
 eral of Hegel, it will carry more weight than my 
 own. Hegel, he says, "gives four examples of the 
 asserted identity of Cause and Effect. The first is 
 that rain makes things wet and that the rain and 
 the wetness are the same water." The other three 
 examples I will not quote. Then McTaggart con- 
 tinues : "We must notice in the first place that Hegel 
 only gives part of the Cause. For example, the 
 rain-water by itself will make nothing wet. Unless 
 the clouds are driven over the house, unless the 
 meteorological conditions allow the rain to fall, the 
 roof will not be wet. Nor could the roof be wet if 
 the house had never been built. The wind, the air, 
 the builders of the house are all parts of the Cause, 
 
CAUSALITY 21 
 
 but they certainly are not identical with the wetness 
 of "the roof. 
 
 "In the second place, rain is not identical with the 
 wetness of the roof in the sense required here. The 
 rain is detached drops of water falling through the 
 air, the other may be a uniform thin sheet of mois- 
 ture. They are, from a scientific point of view, dif- 
 ferent forms of the same matter. But the form is 
 part of the nature of the thing, and, if two things 
 differ in form, they are not identical. 
 
 "The other examples show similar defects. And 
 so there are two fatal objections to Hegel's position. 
 He only reaches it, firstly, by taking one Cause of 
 each Effect, although every Effect has many Causes. 
 And, secondly, he only reaches it by assuming that 
 two things are identical if they are formed of the 
 same matter, or if they are of the same value, or 
 have a quantitative equality, ignoring the other as- 
 pects in which they differ from one another." 1 
 
 After some further criticism, McTaggart con- 
 cludes : "Thus we must reject Hegel's theory of the 
 Identity of Cause and Effect. It is curious that it 
 should have proved one of the most popular of his 
 doctrines. It is often maintained by writers whose 
 works show little study of the detail of other parts 
 of the dialectic." 2 
 
 This criticism is certainly impregnable so far as 
 it goes. But there is also urgent need of pricking 
 certain other bubbles that float around this doctrine 
 
 1 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, p. 177. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 179. 
 
22 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 of the primacy of ground over cause. First, it is 
 often argued that judgments of ground and conse- 
 quence — abstract and mathematical in their char- 
 acter — are convertible, while mere judgments of 
 causality are not so : and this is somehow supposed 
 to give the former a certain prestige over the latter. 
 We can, for instance, convert the proposition, Equi- 
 lateral triangles are equiangular; but not the prop- 
 osition, A causes B. But in truth it is the first prop- 
 osition that is special and subordinate ; the equiangu- 
 larity and the equilaterality are convertible because 
 they are co-existent effects of triangularity or three- 
 sidedness ; in a four-sided figure there would be no 
 such necessary co-existence of these two attributes or 
 effects. Instead, then, of something wider than 
 causality, we have here only a very narrowly limited 
 and subordinate case of a causal relation. 
 
 A second argument is that cause refers only to 
 changes in time and space; but ground — in arithme- 
 tic and geometry for example — gives us "eternal 
 truths," immutable facts that will hold good every- 
 where and forever. I answer that their immutable- 
 ness is caused by the very nature of pure space or 
 time wherein there is nothing to cause variation. So 
 here again Cause seems to be the primary, supremely 
 significant relation that makes everything else in- 
 telligible. 
 
 Lotze suggests a third distinction; causes often 
 counteract each other, grounds never do. But he 
 fails to see that the abstract or mathematical sciences 
 deal only with immutable, homogeneous objects — 
 
CAUSALITY 23. 
 
 space and time — and that these by their very nature 
 exclude counteracting or modifying agencies. And 
 so here again we find that ground thus seems to dif- 
 fer from cause, only because it is limited to one spe- 
 cial field, while causality operates everywhere. In 
 a word, ground is but one species of cause. 
 
 The doctrine of the primacy of ground over 
 cause, then must be dismissed as an idle dream. It 
 was a pardonable error two or three centuries ago, 
 when mathematics was in the first flush of its won- 
 derful development, when the greatest of mathe- 
 maticians — Descartes and Leibniz — were also the 
 greatest philosophers. But now it seems but the sur- 
 vival of a superstition. 
 
 Section 5. Reason and Cause 
 
 Here we have another distinction that has given 
 rise to endless doubt and dispute. Among all the 
 strange arguments upon this question, the strangest, 
 perhaps, is Bradley's. The last three chapters of his 
 Logic are mainly devoted to portraying the contrast, 
 or rather, the utter antagonism between cause and 
 reason. But the gist of his entire argument may be 
 exhibited by quoting one of three illustrations which 
 he uses : "Two coins are proven to have similar in- 
 scriptions because they each are similar to a third. 
 But the cause is not found in this inter-relation. The 
 cause is the origin from a common die." But surely 
 this is a foolish fallacy. Here are two effects very 
 different from each other ; the one effect is two sim- 
 ilar inscriptions caused by a common die; the other 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 effect is our knowledge of this similarity. Of course 
 two effects so different — one psychic, the other 
 physical — could not be the products of the same 
 causal process. But what Bradley fails to see is that 
 although the two processes, knowing and stamping, 
 are different, still both of them are causal processes. 
 There is then no antagonism of reason and cause. 
 Reason is but a special process of causation. 
 
 The processes of reason, then, are related to 
 causation as a species to its genus. But there is at 
 this point an error possible which must be avoided. 
 We must not identify the psychic processes of reason 
 with the mechanical processes of Nature. They are 
 different species of the same genus ; and their differ- 
 ences are any and extremely important. But it is 
 enough here to designate the one great differentia- 
 tion which to a certain degree includes all the others. 
 That difference consists in the superior freedom of 
 the psychic processes. For while the course of physi- 
 cal cause is irreversible, the course of thought is not 
 so. Thought is freer than Nature; its movement is 
 not confined to one fixed direction. It can, if it so 
 wills, follow the course of natural events and from 
 the cause go to the effects. Or it can completely re- 
 verse that movement and proceed from effects to 
 their causes. Indeed, this reversed movement is 
 thought's supreme prerogative, the source of its 
 greatest victories. Not by deduction from assumed 
 causes to their effects, but by patient scrutiny of and 
 experiment upon observed results — that is the main 
 highway of knowledge. 
 
CAUSALITY 25 
 
 This superior freedom of thought, this power of 
 reversal, is very significant : as we shall see hereafter 
 it is the key to some of the gravest problems of phi- 
 losophy. For the present, it is sufficient to see that 
 both ground and reason are species of which cause 
 is the genus. 
 
 Section 6. Cause as a Fetish 
 
 But the most effective of all objections to the be- 
 lief in causality is that given in the oft-quoted words 
 of Prof. Mach : "I hope that the science of the fu- 
 ture will discard the idea of cause and effect as being 
 formally obscure ; and in my feeling that these ideas 
 contain a strong tincture of fetishism I am certainly 
 not alone." And heretofore this objection has in- 
 deed been an insuperable one. For plainly, causa- 
 tion is imperceptible; it cannot be seen or handled 
 or heard or tasted or smelled. And to assume off- 
 hand, without even pretending to prove that the hu- 
 man mind is mysteriously compelled by some intui- 
 tion, or innate idea or a-priori necessity of thought 
 to add this idea of cause and effect to what is given, 
 does seem closely akin to the superstition of the sav- 
 age in regard to his fetish. But if I succeed in es- 
 tablishing my fundamental thesis that all thinking 
 is essentially a relating of cause and effect, then all 
 that will be changed. The belief in causality will 
 no longer be a savage superstition, a mere assump- 
 tion, a convenient postulate or an unverified hypoth- 
 esis. On the contrary, it will be the best, the most 
 strictly verified fact within the range of human ex- 
 
26 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 perience. Science now accepts without suspicion a 
 host of imperceptibles — ether, atoms, molecules, 
 forces, energy, etc. — because without them it would 
 be impossible to account for many facts that are per- 
 ceptible. But if my thesis can be proved, then to 
 cancel causality would be to invalidate all facts, 
 erase all distinctions between the true and the false 
 — in fine, make all thinking impossible. 
 
 Furthermore, causality instead of being the crea- 
 ture is the destroyer of superstition. For, the source 
 of all illusions, either among the savage or the civ- 
 ilized, is the ascribing of the given to the wrong 
 cause, and the illusion is destroyed by finding out 
 its true cause. 
 
 Finally, this revolt against causality springs from 
 an inadequate interpretation thereof. The goal of 
 science, it is declared, is not explanation, but de- 
 scription in exact equations. But the fault in that 
 statement consists in not recognizing that the equa- 
 tions of science are essentially expressions of causal- 
 ity. Ueberweg saw that truth and stated it ad- 
 mirably, as follows i 1 "In reality, the genetic and 
 causal reference is not wanting, as Schopenhauer as- 
 sumes, in mathematical necessity; if we conceive 
 numbers as arising from combination and separation 
 of unities, and geometrical figures as arising 
 through the motion of points, lines, etc., we become 
 conscious of their genesis and of the causality which 
 is objectively grounded in the nature of homogene- 
 ous plurality and spatial co-existence." Nothing 
 
 1 History of Philosophy. II. p. 259, note. 
 
CAUSALITY 27 
 
 need be added to this statement from the greatest 
 and best-balanced of recent logicians. It authenti- 
 cates my thesis at the very point — mathematical 
 equations — where the superficial thinker sees noth- 
 ing but utter contrast to causal propositions. 
 
 The quotation above also illustrates the antithesis 
 between Schopenhauer's doctrine and mine. Schop- 
 enhauer was very voluble concerning causality; but 
 all that he said tended to degrade it to mere se- 
 quence, to make it a minor and illusive phase of 
 Ground. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 
 
 Section i. The Fallacy of Resemblance 
 
 One of the main sources of error in philosophy- 
 is what may be called the fallacy of resemblance. It 
 seems universal in a double sense. First, it obtrudes 
 everywhere, in theories of perception, conception, 
 reasoning and other forms of thought; second, it 
 seems to be equally prevalent in all the rival schools 
 of philosophy. 
 
 Why, this fallacy should be so widely prevalent is 
 readily explained; it is a survival from prelogical 
 stages of existence. The brutes are just as capable 
 as man of automatically recognizing the similarities 
 of things. Indeed they are often far more capable ; 
 witness, for example, the dog tracking the foot- 
 prints of his prey. This instinctive feeling of re- 
 semblance or its opposite is prelogical ; it is anterior 
 to genuine thinking. 
 
 That these feelings of likeness and unlikeness are 
 merely instinctive or automatic is evident at a 
 glance. For the moment we try to formulate any 
 such feeling into an exact, logical proposition, it 
 shows itself to be inchoate, irremediably vague, in- 
 coherent and self -contradictory. We can affirm of 
 anything whatsoever that it is like anything else, 
 and with equal truth that it is not like it. How now 
 can this incoherence and self-contradictoriness in- 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 20, 
 
 herent in every act of association of similarities be 
 eliminated, this vague feeling of likeness and unlike- 
 ness be converted into a genuine act of thought? 
 I answer, only by developing it into a causal rela- 
 tion; in other words, by pointing out that upon 
 which the likeness^ or the unlikeness depends. Thus 
 two objects may be alike in color; that is, their like- 
 ness depends upon an optical process, the conjoint 
 action of solar influences, ether waves, nerve cur- 
 rents, etc. At the same time the two objects may be 
 unlike in other ways, their unlikenesses depending 
 on other causal processes. Thus the prelogical 
 gives way to the logical, to exactitude and definite- 
 ness. When the vague self-contradictory feeling of 
 likeness and unlikeness thus evolves into the recog- 
 nition of a causal relation, then and there only does 
 real thinking begin. 
 
 Blindness to this truth, so simple and obvious, has 
 been fraught with disaster to modern philosophy. 
 For all illusionism, whether in Ancient India or in 
 Modern Europe, has had its germ in the fallacy of 
 resemblance; it is impossible to prove that our per- 
 ceptions are true likenesses or pictures of objects 
 perceived, therefore the world is a dream. Berke- 
 ley's thesis, for example, is that external things 
 "whereof the ideas are copies or resemblances are 
 impossible' ' ; and his proof seems little more than an 
 incessant reiterating that "an idea can be like noth- 
 ing but an idea ; a color or a figure can be like noth- 
 ing but another color or figure." 1 
 
 iPrinciples of Knowledge, Open Court Ed., pp. 33, 34, 37, 
 39, 40, 41, 44, etc. 
 
30 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Kant's method was somewhat different. Berkeley 
 argues : ideas are not like external things, therefore 
 things do not exist. Kant argues : ideas are not like 
 things; therefore things are unknowable. The dif- 
 ference between the two conclusions seems hardly 
 worth discussing. 
 
 Nor did Kant's successors extricate themselves 
 from this ubiquitous fallacy of resemblance. With 
 them, on the contrary, this primal error grows even 
 more and more obtrusive, until it finally culminates 
 in Hegel's philosophy of identity and difference. It 
 is not possible here to follow all the abstruse wind- 
 ings of the Dialectic ; instead thereof let me give two 
 quotations from Hegel's eminent disciple and com- 
 mentator, Dr. McTaggart. His words will be more 
 authoritative than mine. He says first : "But every- 
 thing is, as we have seen, Unlike every other thing. 
 And it is also Like every other thing, for in any pos- 
 sible group we can, as we have seen, find a common 
 quality. Thus under this category, everything has 
 exactly the same relation to everything else. For it 
 is both Like and Unlike everything else." 1 After 
 dwelling upon objections to this view our author 
 adds : "Hegel maintains that we can only escape this 
 difficulty by finding a Likeness and Unlikeness 
 which are not indifferent to each other. Now if A 
 and B have a particular Unlikeness, which depends 
 upon their having a particular Likeness, then the 
 indifference, he holds, has broken down. A and B 
 
 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, pp. 112, 113. 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 3 1 
 
 are not simply Like and Unlike. Their Unlikeness 
 depends on their Likeness." 
 
 Now up to a certain point this view corresponds 
 closely with the one which I have presented ; it does 
 so even to the extent of vaguely suggesting that the 
 relation of like and unlike must be converted into a 
 causal relation — one of dependence. But his final 
 explanation that the unlikeness depends upon the 
 likeness is certainly sheer nonsense. A man and a 
 mouse may be alike in being black, they are unlike 
 in many other respects ; does Hegel mean to say that 
 all the many qualities in which they differ depend 
 upon or result from their both being black? 
 
 And just here, I think, we have the real "secret 
 of Hegel. ,, In repudiating the old logic and its law 
 of non-contradiction, he is supposed by his admirers 
 to have risen to something higher and better. The 
 fact is that he remains standing at a lower level than 
 the logical. His philosophy of identity and differ- 
 ence never rises above those prelogical stages of 
 mentality which are governed by mere feelings of 
 likeness and unlikeness. And in that realm of the 
 prelogical all is inevitably incoherent, ambiguous 
 and self-contradictory. That is the reason why 
 Hegel finds it so evident that "contradiction is the 
 moving spirit of the world." 
 
 Section 2. Abstraction 
 
 Another devolution in modern philosophy seems 
 to be a growing antipathy to abstraction. Such a 
 feeling, indeed, has always widely prevailed ; for, to 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 abstract is to think, and thinking is very hard work 
 for which men generally have but little love. But 
 this antipathy reaches its climax in the Speculative 
 Logic ; the universe, we are there told, dissolves into 
 a mist of self-contradiction, because we insist upon 
 abstracting or isolating its parts. For example, 
 throughout Bradley's Logic, everything appears to 
 hinge upon the singular claim that to abstract is to 
 mutilate. We are told that "all analytic judgments 
 are false." Why? Because in judgment we must 
 abstract, and in abstracting, "we have separated, di- 
 vided, abridged, dissected, we have mutilated the 
 given." 
 
 ( i ) Now upon its very surface such a statement 
 shows an error so glaring as to seem almost wilful. 
 It confounds the mental act of distinguishing with 
 the physical act of dividing or separating. Viewing 
 an apple, for instance, I note its red color. But in 
 so doing, I certainly am not cutting the apple into 
 two parts, but am merely fixing my attention upon 
 one of its many attributes. The only imaginable ex- 
 cuse for such confusion of thought is, that the ideal- 
 ist, since he effaces the contrast of thought and 
 things, cannot recognize any difference between dis- 
 tinguishing and dividing. That may explain the 
 confusion, but it does not justify it. Your denial 
 of material things is a singular reason for changing 
 the mental act of distinguishing into the dividing or 
 mutilating of things. 
 
 (2) In a later work, our author reiterates his 
 theory in another form of words. "For ideality lies 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 33 
 
 in the disjoining of qualities from being. . . . 
 The main point and essence is that some feature in 
 the 'what' of a given fact should be alienated from 
 its 'that' so as to work beyond it, or, at all events, 
 loose from it. . . . The essential nature of the 
 finite is that everywhere, as it presents itself, its 
 character should slide beyond the limits of its 
 existence." 
 
 This new form of statement serves to disclose a 
 still more fatal defect in the theory than that of 
 hypostasizing. It does not and cannot explain why 
 the human mind in all ages, in all its development 
 of language, grammar, logic and science has per- 
 sisted in this "disjoining of quality from being — 
 or more properly this differentiation of the thing 
 from its attribute. But my thesis gives a ready, 
 clear and incontrovertible answer to this question 
 of the why. It presents the abstracting act, the dis- 
 tinguishing of thing from attribute as essentially a 
 distinction of cause from effect. But as was shown 
 in the previous chapter, the thing is not the sole 
 cause, it is one factor in the process producing the 
 attribute or quality. The quality then is not dis- 
 joined, divided or cut loose from the thing; and yet 
 it is rightly distinguished from the thing by its rela- 
 tions to the other factors upon which it depends. 
 
 (3) Again, my view of abstraction as a discrim- 
 inating between cause and effect unravels another 
 enigma. We have just seen that the view explains 
 why the thing and its attribute are rightly regarded 
 as different : it explains also their unity, their insep- 
 
34 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 arableness. For, as I have already pointed out, the 
 grand peculiarity of the causal relation — one shared 
 by no other relation known to thought — is that in 
 the very act of differentiating, it also unites. If I 
 divide a thing, split a log or a stone, it remains di- 
 vided ; but if I think of A as the cause of B; in the 
 very act of thus distinguishing between them, I at 
 the same time connect them together by the closest, 
 the firmest, of all bonds. Precisely in this way, ab- 
 straction sets apart and yet unites the thing and its 
 attribute. 
 
 (4) Bradley also complains that in abstracting 
 you destroy that vital interconnection of things 
 which is their life. On the contrary, without ab- 
 straction we should have remained eternally ig- 
 norant that there was any such vital interconnection 
 of things. Every attribute abstracted and studied 
 reveals itself as the product not merely of the thing 
 qualified, but of a vast complex of cosmic forces. 
 Thus instead of being destroyed, the vista of inter- 
 connection is constantly being enlarged and il- 
 lumined. 
 
 Finally, this antipathy to abstraction is but an- 
 other phase of the same tendency we have described 
 as the fallacy of resemblance. This is clearly 
 evinced in Berkeley's well-known avowal: "I find 
 indeed I have a faculty of imagining or representing 
 to myself the ideas of those particular things I have 
 perceived and of variously compounding and divid- 
 ing them. I can imagine a man with two heads. 
 ... I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 35 
 
 each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest 
 of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imag- 
 ine it must have some particular shape or color, 
 etc." Berkeley then denies abstract qualities, solely 
 because he cannot imagine one. In other words, be- 
 cause he has never seen one; for, to imagine is to 
 recall memory-images of what we have perceived. 
 And Sir Wm. Hamilton, although claiming to be a 
 realist, here agrees precisely with Berkeley : "A con- 
 cept cannot be represented in imagination," there- 
 fore, "it cannot be realized in thought." Both phi- 
 losophers deny the reality of whatsoever cannot be 
 hypostasized into a memory-image or picture re- 
 sembling what they have actually perceived. 
 
 Section J. Relations 
 
 I must also consider Bradley's celebrated dictum 
 that all relational modes of thought give appearance 
 and not truth. For, that doctrine, if true, would 
 shatter my thesis at one stroke. Furthermore, his 
 argument, I think, has never been conclusively an- 
 swered. Nor can it be except from our present 
 point of view. 
 
 (A) Note first that Bradley argues against all re- 
 lations indiscriminately; he cuts them all down to- 
 gether with one sweep of his dialectical scythe. But I 
 have already shown that there is an immense contrast 
 between the different kinds. Relations of mere like- 
 ness or difference are prerational modes of psychic 
 activity ; they are vague, incoherent and in their very 
 
36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 nature self -contradictory. With equal truth we can 
 say of anything whatsoever, that it is like and not 
 like anything else in the universe. And since Brad- 
 ley does not distinguish between the different kinds 
 of relations possibly his argumentation applies only 
 to these weak, flimsy pseudo-relations whose very 
 essence is self-contradiction. 
 
 And precisely that proves to be the case. Of 
 course, I cannot quote here the score of pages over 
 which Bradley expands his argument. But let the 
 reader search for himself ; he will find that from first 
 to last the only relations which Bradley considers are 
 those of likeness and difference. Even when con- 
 fined to these, his argument is not valid, as we shall 
 see later. But even if it were valid of them, it is a 
 monstrous leap from these vague, self-contradictory 
 pseudo-relations to all relations. 
 
 (B) But let us go a little further. Remember 
 that in the first section already mentioned, I have 
 shown that the crude, vague, self-contradictory 
 pseudo-relations of likeness and difference can be 
 converted into genuine, definite and self-consistent 
 relations only by transforming them into causal re- 
 lations. To do this we must point out and empha- 
 size that upon which the likeness or unlikeness de- 
 pends. Thus two objects may be alike in respect to 
 color, that is, their likeness depends upon an optical 
 process; at the same time the two objects may be 
 unlike in some other respect, their unlikeness result- 
 ing from some other cause. Thus by simply stating 
 that upon which the likeness and the difference sev- 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 2)7 
 
 erally depend, the vague and self -contradictory is 
 converted into the definite and coherent. And then 
 only does real thinking begin. 
 
 Now in the light of this manifest truth let us ex- 
 amine the only argument, I think, in which Bradley 
 considers relations in general, and not merely those 
 of likeness and difference. It is borrowed from 
 Lotze by the by, and is as follows: "(a) The rela- 
 tion is not the adjective of one term only; for if so, 
 it does not relate, (b) Nor is it the adjective of 
 each term taken apart; for then again there is no 
 relation between them, (c) Nor is their relation 
 their common property; for then what keeps them 
 apart? They are not two terms because not sep- 
 arate." 1 
 
 Now the last two horns of this trilemma, (b) and 
 (c), are obviously false when applied to a causal re- 
 lation. For as to (b), the two terms are qualified 
 apart, the one as cause and the other as effect. And 
 yet they are united by being causally related. And 
 as to (c) their causal connection is the common 
 property of both terms : and yet they are two terms 
 kept apart or distinguished by this very property. 
 
 In fine Bradley's famous trilemma is through and 
 through a fallacy due to his utter failure to compre- 
 hend the real nature of a causal relation. For the 
 gist, the essence, the deepest, most significant and 
 valuable characteristic of a causal relation is just 
 this — a causal relation enables us to distinguish be- 
 tween two terms as cause and effect; and yet by this 
 
 iAppearance and Reality, p. 32, note. 
 
38 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 very distinction the two terms are united by the 
 firmest, the most enduring of all bonds. 
 
 I do not emphasize this view of causality so 
 strongly, merely to break down Bradley's paradox; 
 we shall find other flaws equally fatal in his argu- 
 ment. But this insight into the nature of causality 
 as at once differentiating and integrating is new; it 
 has been attained by no other thinker so far as 
 known to me. And we shall recur to it again as 
 solving still other problems besides the present one, 
 that have heretofore perplexed and baffled phi- 
 losophy. Hence the present emphasis upon it. 
 
 (C) But to return to Bradley; his argument is 
 ruined by still another defect. It takes account only 
 of relations supposed to subsist between qualities. 
 But the real relations of qualities are to the things 
 or processes from which they result; to each other 
 they have only the pseudo-relations of likeness or 
 difference. Thus his argument while pretending to 
 include all relations whatsoever is doubly defective; 
 it is limited to relations between qualities, and even 
 there further limited to mere relations of likeness 
 and difference. And as we have already seen, noth- 
 ing is easier than to find self-contradiction in such 
 pseudo-relations. For their very essence is self-con- 
 tradiction. 
 
 (D) And yet, strange to say, Bradley's argu- 
 ment does not accomplish even that easy task. It is 
 subtile, ingenious, and bewildering, but it proves 
 nothing. He asserts first that there is "a diversity 
 which falls inside of each quality. It has a double 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 39 
 
 character as both supporting and being made by the 
 relation." Now each quality may be loosely or fig- 
 uratively said to "support" its difference from some 
 other; but it is mere foolishness to say that it is 
 "made" by that relation. Redness is made not by 
 its difference from green, but by the optical process 
 of refraction. 
 
 But Bradley, like Hegel, knows that almost any- 
 thing will be believed if you repeat it often enough 
 and with sufficient audacity. So he adds : "It may 
 be taken as at once condition or result, and the ques- 
 tion is how to combine this variety." Now doubt- 
 less each term is a condition of their difference; if 
 the qualities did not exist there would evidently be 
 no difference between them. But it is absurd to say 
 that each quality is the "result" of its difference 
 from the other. Weight and color are quite differ- 
 ent, but neither of them results from that difference. 
 
 (E) Bradley has still another line of argument. 
 He insists that the relation being something itself 
 "must bear a relation to the terms. And thus we are 
 forced to go on finding new relations without end. 
 The links are united by a link, and this bond of 
 union is a link which also has two ends and these 
 require each a fresh link to connect them with the 
 old." It is very important, he urges, that the rela- 
 tion should be conceived as "a solid thing" ; for "if 
 you take it as a kind of medium or unsubstantial at- 
 mosphere, it is a connection no longer." All this is 
 plainly the hypostasizing of abstractions carried to 
 the climax of absurdity ; but as the critics in general 
 
40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 have recognized and ridiculed it as such, I leave it 
 to them. 
 
 (F) But in the Appendix to his second edition 
 there is a single paragraph which seems to have a 
 purport altogether alien to the general drift of his 
 book — to be in fact a strangely prophetic vision of 
 what I am striving to establish in this volume. Let 
 me quote it in full. 
 
 "The remedy might lie here. If the diversities 
 were complementary aspects of a process of connec- 
 tion and distinction, the process not being external 
 to the elements, or again a foreign compulsion of 
 the intellect, but itself the intellect's own proprius 
 motus, the case would be altered. Each aspect 
 would be of itself a transition to the other aspect, a 
 transition intrinsic and natural at once to itself and 
 the intellect. And the whole would be a self-evident 
 analysis and synthesis of the intellect itself by itself. 
 Synthesis here has to be mere synthesis and has be- 
 come self-completion, and analysis, no longer mere 
 analysis, is self-explication. And the question why 
 and how the many are one and the one is many here 
 loses its meaning. There is no how or why besides 
 the self-evident process, and towards its own differ- 
 ences the whole is at once their how and their why, 
 their being, substance and system, their reason, 
 ground and principle of diversity and unity." 1 
 
 In that paragraph my fundamental thesis is 
 roughly outlined, (i) For cause and effect are 
 complementary, not contradictory aspects : each im- 
 
 1 Appearance and Reality, p. 568. 
 
ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 4 1 
 
 plies the other. (2) They are aspects, too, of a 
 process of connection and distinction; for the gist 
 of a causal process, as we have seen, is that by the 
 same stroke it at once unites and differentiates. 
 
 (3) Nor is this principle of causality a foreign com- 
 pulsion of the intellect, but the intellect's own pro- 
 prius motus; in other words, it is the intellect's sole 
 essential function, its very nature, life or soul. 
 
 (4) Indeed Bradley himself has on page 562 ex- 
 plicitly defined this motus as the same thing as 
 ground or reason. (5) Furthermore, "each aspect 
 would of itself be a transition to the other aspect, 
 a transition intrinsic and natural." What is that but 
 the corollary to my thesis — to wit, that the cause can 
 be known only through its effects and conversely the 
 effects through their cause. (6) The next state- 
 ment concerning the blending of synthesis and 
 analysis can be verified — as I shall show — only by 
 interpreting judgment as a relating of cause and 
 effect. (7) The last two sentences give a rather 
 hazy version of the simple truth that the one is the 
 cause of the many, and the many are the effects of 
 the one. 
 
 But on the next page Bradley rejects this princi- 
 ple which he admits would solve his chief perplexi- 
 ties, and the reason he assigns is that the principle is 
 not "self-evident." That I freely admit; self-evi- 
 dence is a mere asylum for mental decrepitude. 
 No ! the principle of causality is not self-evident. 
 Nor is it given by sense; it cannot be seen, heard, 
 tasted, smelled or handled. How then can it be veri- 
 
42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 fled ? Only in one way ; if it can be proved that the 
 relating of cause and effect is the one essential func- 
 tion to which all thinking can be reduced, then to 
 cancel causality is to render all thinking impossible. 
 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 Section i. Substance 
 
 I seek now to outline roughly the new realism 
 which is surely coming, to put an end to the present 
 philosophic chaos. Let us begin by considering two 
 errors that have obscured and almost destroyed the 
 realistic conviction. The first of these is an errone- 
 ous view of substance; the second, what may be 
 fairly described as pseudo-realism. This section will 
 be devoted to the first of these hindrances. 
 
 Three of the greatest of modern thinkers, Des- 
 cartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, have based their several 
 systems of philosophy upon the conception of sub- 
 stance. All three seem to have been striving after 
 a realistic and rational conception of things; all 
 three, it is generally conceded, failed to attain their 
 end. The first named was accused by Kant of prob- 
 lematic idealism; the second, according to Hegel, 
 taught acosmism; the third landed in the vagaries 
 of pre-established harmony. And their common fail- 
 ure, I think, was due to a common cause. They all 
 had a defective and misleading conception of sub- 
 stance. They did not give it its proper place in the 
 scale of categories ; they all regarded it as the primal, 
 the supreme and all-inclusive category. But that it 
 cannot possibly be — at least if I am right in my con- 
 tention that the sole, essential function of thought 
 
44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 is to discriminate between cause and effect. Causal- 
 ity therefore is the supreme, all-embracing category : 
 all others — including substantiality — are but species 
 under this one genus, derivative forms that must al- 
 ways be subordinated to the causal principle in 
 which they are rooted. But the great thinkers just 
 named did not see this. In making Substance the 
 paramount principle they robbed causality of its 
 rightful primacy, made it secondary, minified it al- 
 most to the vanishing point. 
 
 The case of Spinoza is the most remarkable, be- 
 cause on the surface he seems to magnify and exalt 
 the idea of cause; indeed, to that seeming is due all 
 the glamour investing his system, despite its many 
 defects. But look deeper and you see that by cause he 
 means nothing but ground and consequence, or the 
 merely logical connection between premises and con- 
 clusion. Time is a delusion; all real knowledge 
 must be "under the form of eternity" ; change is a 
 dream; the only actual relations are those eternal, 
 immutable ones that interconnect mathematical 
 ideas; in fine, Spinoza has abolished the fact of 
 causality except in this its most emasculated, shad- 
 owy and dubious form. 
 
 This same minimizing of causality appears in 
 Spinoza's denial of all but immanent causes. And 
 his error here amounts to far more than merely ef- 
 facing one of the two kinds of causation; to erase 
 interaction is to blot out all immanence : for nothing 
 finite ever acts save in co-operation with other 
 
THE NEW REALISM 45 
 
 agencies. Finally, even God as conceived by- 
 Spinoza is not a cause in any proper or usual sense 
 of the term : He is merely the substratum of things, 
 the innermost substance of the universe. 
 
 Leibniz pulverizes the One Substance into an in- 
 finite host of monads; nevertheless he agrees with 
 Spinoza in belittling causality. There are, he 
 teaches, two kinds of knowledge, truths of reason 
 and truths of fact. The former are necessary and 
 ruled by the principle of identity ; the latter are con- 
 tingent and ruled by the causal principle. But these 
 latter or contingent truths are not really true; deal- 
 ing only with spatial and temporal relations, they 
 are but "confused ideas," fictions, dissolving views ; 
 they explain nothing, but merely show one fact as 
 dependent upon another, and that upon another and 
 so on in infinite regress. Leibniz's God also, like 
 Spinoza's, is no cause in any proper sense of the 
 term; He seems to be merely a name for the pre- 
 established harmony of the monads. In fine, as his 
 disciple Wolff rightly taught, Leibniz's two princi- 
 ples are not independent ; the causal one is but a pale 
 shadow, deduced from and subordinate to the prin- 
 ciple of identity. 
 
 Both these immortal thinkers, then, share a com- 
 mon defect; causality with both is depreciated, re- 
 duced to the vagueness and inefficiency of ground 
 and consequence. And that is the ultimate reason 
 why both fail. Spinoza, indeed, seems dimly con- 
 scious of this defect. For, throughout his exposi- 
 tion, there is an evident wavering between two ways 
 
46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 of regarding substance. On the one hand, he con- 
 siders it as, purely indeterminate and abstract being, 
 such as can be characterized by no positive mark; 
 any determination would infringe its absoluteness. 
 "But we can in no way pass from this pure in- 
 definiteness to the determinate activities that are 
 requisite in order that substance should be real. Ac- 
 cordingly Spinoza as frequently treats substance as 
 the sum of possible reality which cannot be ex- 
 hausted in any one attribute, and which contains all 
 possible perfection and reality. But both cannot be 
 retained and united. ... A substance or ground 
 of existence which is but the negation of all finite 
 existences, can in no way serve as their bond of 
 union." 1 
 
 In Leibniz the wavering and inconsistency are 
 equally obtrusive. He is accounted the great apos- 
 tle of Force, and yet all real connection and interac- 
 tion of things are denied. Whatever happens in the 
 windowless monad comes from it alone; it is like 
 a separate world, self-sufficient, independent of 
 every other creature, embracing the infinite, express- 
 ing the universe. From this infinite disconnected- 
 ness, there is no escape save through the strange de- 
 vice of the pre-established harmony. 
 
 Viewing these facts, we may well say with Rus- 
 sell : "It became necessary to base metaphysics upon 
 some other principle than that of substance, a task 
 not yet accomplished." 2 
 
 ^damson, Development of Modern Philosophy, pp. 65, 66. 
 2 Russell, Philosophy of Leibniz, p. 126. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 47 
 
 But from our present point of view that task does 
 not seem very far from accomplishment. We have 
 shown that Spinoza and Leibniz failed, not because 
 their principle of substance was false or empty, but 
 because they gave to it a primacy that did riot belong 
 to it; in other words, because they failed to subor- 
 dinate it to that higher and wider category of cause 
 and effect from which all other categories are de- 
 rived, and by which they are modified. To that 
 primal error can be traced back almost all the 
 other main errors in those two masterpieces — 
 the philosophy of Spinoza and that of Leibniz. 
 Here I can mention only three errors of each — 
 the three that have most influenced modern spec- 
 ulation. 
 
 (I) Beginning with Spinoza, we have first his 
 doctrine of the indeterminateness of substance. That 
 holds only if you regard substance merely as that in 
 which attributes inhere ; then, indeed, it is an empty 
 abstraction. But not so, if you regard it as a factor 
 in countless causal processes, as I have explained in 
 chapter II. 
 
 (II) The second error is the doctrine that deter- 
 mination is negation. This is so closely allied with 
 the first that we need not dwell upon it. Remember, 
 however, that it was taken over by Schelling and 
 Hegel, in fact, is the very corner-stone of the tet- 
 ter's system. 
 
 (III) The third is the doctrine of God as sub- 
 stance. That, if substance means mere inherence, is 
 crude pantheism at its worst. But if infinite sub- 
 
48 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 stance means an infinite and complete Cause, you 
 have the purest theism. 
 
 (IV) Leibniz's first error is the absolute discon- 
 nectedness of the universe. But all that is changed 
 when we put cause in the place of substance. For, 
 as I have already pointed out, the essence of causal- 
 ity consists in at once distinguishing and yet uniting 
 by the firmest of bonds. 
 
 (V) Another error of his was the negation of 
 Space. But instead of space being "a confused per- 
 ception," as Leibniz taught, it will be shown in the 
 next chapter that the real confusion lies in con- 
 founding two very distinct objects — space and the 
 spatial properties of things, related as cause and 
 effect. 
 
 (VI) The third and suicidal error is the virtual 
 effacement of substances. According to Leibniz, sub- 
 stance after all is but the sum of its attributes. The 
 diamond is but the extension or diffusion of hard- 
 ness; milk the extension of whiteness, etc. That 
 doctrine forms; the transition to the second phase of 
 modern philosophy and will be discussed here- 
 after. 
 
 Here then we have the six elemental features, or 
 errors of two renowned systems of thought. All of 
 them have been seen — or will be shown to be read- 
 ily surmountable when we subordinate substance 
 to cause as the supreme category. In other 
 words, when we think of the relation between 
 substance and attribute as causality instead of in- 
 herence. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 49 
 
 Section 2. Pseudo-Realism 
 Just now there seems to be a rising tide of revolt 
 against idealism. But there is great danger that this 
 revolt may prove to be but a reactionary movement, 
 a mere relapse into materialism. For, as we have 
 already shown in part and will more fully prove 
 hereafter, the only safeguard against so dismal a re- 
 sult lies in keeping the principle of causality para- 
 mount and supreme above all others. But, so far, 
 modern realism has never been able to break loose 
 from its enchainment to Hume's great paradox, the 
 reduction of causality to mere sequence. That is 
 notably evinced even in the case of Reid, the great- 
 est of modern realists. Reid saw very clearly that 
 Berkeley's idealism rested wholly upon the old 
 superstition that thoughts were images or pictures 
 of things perceived ; with all the skill and power of 
 genius he set to work to overthrow this pictorial phi- 
 losophy, and succeeded so well that even idealists 
 have now generally abandoned it. But this accom- 
 plished, he had nothing else to put in its place except 
 another equally empty assumption — the infallibility 
 of common sense. He had so far succumbed to 
 Hume's influence as to reject the true basis of real- 
 ism ; at least, he denied efficient causality to uncon- 
 scious things. "I perceive the walls of the room 
 where I sit," he writes, "but they are perfectly inac- 
 tive and therefore act not upon the mind." 1 Hav- 
 ing thus put out the light of causality, everything 
 becomes for him darkness and mystery. We neces- 
 1 Reid, Intellectual Powers, II. p. 219. 
 
50 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 sarily affirm the existence of external things, but 
 "by an act which cannot be defined." Or again; 
 By what rules of logic we make the inference (of 
 externality) it is impossible to show; nay, it is im- 
 possible to show how our sensations and thoughts 
 can give us the very notion either of a mind or a 
 faculty." 
 
 Or, as another would-be realist, Rosmini, has 
 said : Reid denied the intervention of any "idea" be- 
 tween the object perceived and the perceiving sub- 
 ject; so he had to answer "the formidable question — 
 How can I judge that a thing exists of which I have 
 no idea? The answer to this question would have 
 led the Scottish philosopher very far in his investi- 
 gations; but whether it was that he despaired of 
 finding it, or that he considered it of no importance 
 he did not even seek for it. He contented himself 
 with enveloping his 'original judgment' in a cloud 
 of mystery, thus, possibly, to screen it from all 
 further questionings on the part of inquisitive 
 minds." 1 
 
 But how now does Rosmini himself prove his own 
 realism? By resurrecting the long ago dead and 
 buried doctrine of innate ideas. Or rather of one 
 innate idea, that of existence or indeterminate be- 
 ing. By simply applying this idea of existence to 
 our perceptions, a controversy that has lasted more 
 than twenty centuries is suddenly ended. So, at 
 least, Rosmini imagines. 
 
 Sir Wm. Hamilton's philosophy seems another 
 
 1 Rosmini, Origin of Ideas, I. p. 86. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 5 1 
 
 conspicuous example of what realism ought not to 
 be. Its three main features are these; first, the as- 
 sumption contradicted by both physiological and 
 psychological science that we have an immediate 
 awareness of external things; second, the paradox 
 that different persons gazing at the sun will each 
 see a different sun; third, uncertainty whether a 
 thing is anything more than the sum of its qualities. 
 These three, I think, are the chief water-marks of 
 pseudo-realism. 
 
 And in more recent attempts at realistic specula- 
 tion these three water-marks become even more ob- 
 vious. Hobhouse, for instance, writes an immense 
 volume in defense of realism; but toward the end 
 openly asserts and argues through a long chapter 
 that things are but sums of abstract qualities. 1 
 
 The signs, then, for a genuine realism seem 
 hardly encouraging. But the old adage is true, I 
 hope, that it is darkest just before dawn. 
 
 Section 3. First Proof of Realism 
 
 My first proof rests upon a right understanding 
 of the relation between substance and attribute. To 
 gain such an understanding we must get rid of 
 Berkeley's doctrine that the substance is nothing but 
 a name for the sum of its attributes. 
 
 (1) It has already been shown in the preceding 
 chapter that Berkeley's speculation rests upon two 
 enormous errors — the fallacy of resemblance and the 
 cancelling of abstraction. And these two are 
 
 1 Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, p. 556, note. 
 
52 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 branches of one stem. For to expunge abstraction 
 is virtually to destroy all thinking; it is thoughts' 
 suicide. And the fallacy of resemblance — reason- 
 ing from likeness and unlikeness, identity and dif- 
 ference^ — is, as was shown, a reversion to prelogical 
 modes of apprehension. Thus genuine thought, by 
 these twin errors, is doubly annihilated. Hence 
 Berkeley's entire argument rests upon what is really 
 the extinction of thought. 
 
 (2) But interpret now the relation of substance 
 and attribute as the nature of thought demands — 
 to wit, causally. In other words, conceive the sub- 
 stance or thing as the central, the specifically de- 
 termining factor in each and all the causal processes, 
 whereby the various attributes are produced. In- 
 stantly light begins to dawn. For example, Berke- 
 ley starts from the archaic, the thoroughly false 
 view of the thing as the hidden substrate which sup- 
 ports the qualities. It becomes then easy for him to 
 show the emptiness of such a view and so to shove 
 aside the substance as an idle dream. "Now I de- 
 sire that you would explain to me what is meant by 
 Matter's supporting extension. . . . It is evident 
 'support' cannot here be taken in its usual or literal 
 sense — as when we say that pillars support a build- 
 ing; in what sense therefore must it be taken?" 1 
 That question, to him unanswerable, is the corner- 
 stone of Berkeley's renowned philosophy. 
 
 What the attributes need to make them intelligi- 
 ble is not a support but a real bond of union. But 
 
 iBerkeley, Principles of Knowledge, § 16. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 53 
 
 Berkeley, it may be urged, supplies such a bond by 
 postulating a God who produces and combines our 
 sensations. Well ! doubtless God is the cause of all. 
 But He is made known to us only through the uni- 
 form methods, the causal processes which He has 
 established for the production of natural results. 
 And Berkeley makes that knowledge impossible. 
 For, he dissolves the visible universe into a mere ag- 
 gregate of sensations, evanescent, disordered and 
 often deceptive, produced in the individual mind by 
 God's direct action upon it. All intervening 
 agencies, all things that make for the stability, the 
 order and harmony of the cosmos, are swept aside 
 as mere illusions. Nothing is real but the turmoil of 
 our private sensations. And from that chaos you 
 can no more prove the existence of God than of 
 "the man in the moon." 
 
 (3) Another great source of illusionism is its 
 complete misapprehension of the relation between 
 thought and sense. This defect is germinal in 
 Berkeley, but full-blown in Kant; and so we turn 
 to the latter's philosophy to study it. One main out- 
 come of persistent thought must evidently be the 
 detection of those deceptive agencies that hover 
 everywhere over the field of sensation. For, an il- 
 lusion is simply the ascription of an effect to the 
 wrong cause; and the essential function of thought 
 is to relate effects to their true causes. Now in 
 Kant's time, the critical, inquiring spirit of modern 
 science had already unmasked such a host of illu- 
 sions that all Nature seemed to be thronged with 
 
54 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 them. But for him this new awakening to the de- 
 ceptiveness of the senses took a curious and fatal 
 form. Apparently he did not see that the senses 
 were the source of deception, and that the grand 
 prerogative of thought was to overcome them. On 
 the contrary, the mind seemed a mere nest of 
 a-priorities that prevented man from ever knowing 
 things as they really were. Thought once deemed 
 divine, became satanic, the father of lies. And ob- 
 viously from this Kantian view, it was but a short 
 step to Hegel's theory of universal self-contradiction ; 
 for, in the long run, all liars contradict themselves. 
 
 Now what proof does Kant offer for this amazing 
 doctrine of universal, irremediable illusion ? Simply 
 this ; he claims to have found a large number of ele- 
 ments — twelve categories, two forms of sense, and 
 sundry others — which are indispensable in all right 
 thinking and knowing, and yet are not given in any 
 sensible experience; hence we must regard them as 
 innate ideas or a-priofi necessities of thought; as 
 such, they are purely subjective, merely our human 
 ways of thinking which can give no true insight into 
 the outer realm of reality. 
 
 But against these assumptions, which prove noth- 
 ing, I urge four facts that together seem to me to 
 outline the real relation of thought to sense, 
 (a) Thought does not alter experience, but simply 
 interprets it. (b) There are no innate or a-priori 
 ideas that can be verified as such, nor is there any 
 need of any. (c) To what is given by sense, 
 thought adds nothing but itself — that is, its essen- 
 
THE NEW REALISM 55 
 
 tial activity as a relating of cause and effect. 
 (d) And the goal of that activity is not, as Kant 
 supposes, to create illusions, but to discover and de- 
 stroy them. 
 
 (4) The question of universals will be fully 
 treated in Chapter VII. Here I briefly notice a spe- 
 cial phase of that question upon which the objectors 
 to realism have most relied. For this purpose I turn 
 to Bradley and begin with a passing reference to his 
 famous puzzle concerning predication. "If you 
 predicate what is different, you ascribe to the sub- 
 ject what it is not; and if you predicate what is not 
 different you say nothing at all." I answer that to 
 predicate or think is to assert a causal relation ; and, 
 as I have so often shown, the very essence of such a 
 relation is to at once differentiate and integrate. 
 Hence the subject and predicate are differenced as 
 being one the partial cause, and the other the effect; 
 and at the same time they are integrated by the 
 causal bond. Bradley's revival of the foolish 
 Megaric quirk that the copula means identity I for- 
 bear to notice. But in his account of Ideality we 
 come more directly to the question of the universal. 
 "The real has two aspects, the 'that' and the 'what' ; 
 and thought seems to consist essentially in their di- 
 vision. . . . For ideality lies in the disjoining of 
 quality from being. . . . The main point and the 
 essence is that some feature in the 'what' of a given 
 fact should be alienated from its 'that' so as to work 
 beyond it or, at all events, loose from it." 1 Similarly, 
 
 Appearance and Reality, p. 163. 
 
56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the one point around which his treatise upon 
 Logic mainly revolves is his description of uni- 
 versal as "wandering adjectives'' cut loose 
 from reality — "mutilated, dissected, torn from that 
 vital interconnection of things which is their 
 life." 
 
 In all the eccentricities of mediaeval realism there 
 is nothing so absurd as that. The schoolmen, at 
 least, understood the scope and significance of the 
 problem of universals ; and that by itself was a great 
 step forward. They say that thought expresses by 
 universals what sense gives only as particulars. But 
 what justifies thought in making so great a trans- 
 formation of the given? And how can universals 
 be a true representation of anything so different 
 from them as particulars? The whole problem of 
 the certainty and value of knowledge turns upon 
 these questions. But Bradley loftily waves them 
 aside with a metaphor and a scornful epithet. The 
 predicate, he says, has worked "loose"; it has be- 
 come a "wandering adjective." But interpret this 
 universalizing causally; conceive the predicate as an 
 effect of a causal process wherein the subject is the 
 central factor. We see then first that the predicate 
 to be known at all must be a universal — an oft-re- 
 peated effect; for an effect could not be known as 
 such, if it never appeared but once. Second, the 
 quality in being thus universalized is not, as Bradley 
 imagines, alienated, divided or torn loose from its 
 being. On the contrary, the two are brought into 
 the closest of all possible relations to each other. 
 
THE NEW REALISM S7 
 
 To say that the quality is occult or inherent on the 
 substance is a mere mumbling of words without 
 meaning. But the quality conceived as an effect is 
 most intimately related with that upon which its be- 
 ing depends. Furthermore this relation is a verifi- 
 able one, in the strictest sense of the term. Our or- 
 gans of sense form a natural laboratory wherein 
 thought is continually verifying these causal rela- 
 tionships. 
 
 Third, least of all, is the predicate "mutilated, 
 torn from that vital interconnection of things which 
 is their life." The exact opposite to that really hap- 
 pens. The predicate or quality by being universal- 
 ized has its vital interconnection illumined and 
 immensely expanded. A color, for instance, is con- 
 ceived not merely as a vague somewhat inherent in 
 the colored thing, but as in interconnection with all 
 that vast process of causation whereby color is pro- 
 duced. 
 
 We have now examined the three principal argu- 
 ments for illusionism, severally presented by Berke- 
 ley, by Kant and by the Neo-Hegelians ; and we 
 have found them all to be nugatory. We have 
 further found that when they are properly inter- 
 preted in the light of our causal principle, they turn 
 into solid arguments for the realistic theory. That 
 is my first proof of realism. 
 
 Section 4. Second Proof of Realism 
 
 My second proof consists simply in showing that 
 the denial of a real world of things leads inevitably 
 
58 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 to utter nihilism — to the complete extinction of 
 thought. 
 
 (i) For such a denial logically involves the de- 
 struction of your belief in your own existence. 
 Descartes boldly asserted that whatever else one 
 doubted he could not doubt his own existence; but 
 that was a sheer assumption made in despair of find- 
 ing any other basis for his philosophy; and for the 
 same reason it has been re-echoed by most other 
 theorists. Obviously, however, the self you believe 
 in is mainly your bodily self; in fact, the majority 
 seem now to reject the soul as a mere survival of 
 savage animism ; and certainly you would not claim 
 that your body existed, while all the rest of the 
 world did not. 
 
 (2) But the idealist will object that even if we 
 discard the soul, we cannot doubt the existence of 
 the stream or series of sensations. I answer that 
 just there our ignorance seems to culminate. For 
 no sensation has any discernible attribute of its own 
 by which it can be discriminated from any other 
 sensation. We discriminate them from each other 
 only by means of the attributes of the spatial objects 
 perceived. This is true of the grand divisions of 
 our perceptive activity. How could we distinguish 
 between sight and touch, for instance, except by ref- 
 erence to the external organs whence they issue ? 
 Still more manifest is this in regard to each particu- 
 lar sensation. The sensation produced by a round 
 object is not itself circular. The sensation of a 
 mountain is no taller than the sensation of an ant- 
 
THE NEW REALISM 59 
 
 hill. The sensation of a red object is not itself 
 painted red. 
 
 Others have noted this unknowability of the 
 sensation apart from the object perceived, although 
 apparently without recognizing its extreme signifi- 
 cance for the theory of knowledge. Thus Brentano 
 says: "We find no contrasts between presentations 
 except those of the objects to which presentations 
 refer. Only so far as warm and cold, light and 
 dark, a high note and a low one form contrasts, can 
 we speak of the corresponding sensations as con- 
 trasted; and in general, there is in any other sense 
 than this, no contrast within the entire range of 
 these conscious processes." 1 So Adamson observes : 
 "Only through the character of that which is appre- 
 hended and referred to the objective, does the sub- 
 ject, the inner life receive definiteness of meaning 
 still more explicit." 2 And Hume says : "Nature has 
 taught us the use of our limbs without giving us the 
 knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they 
 are actuated." There is nothing strange or anoma- 
 lous in the fact that we are similarly ignorant con- 
 cerning the sensations by which we attain knowl- 
 edge of the outer world. 
 
 Evidently then to abolish the outer spatial world 
 renders all knowledge impossible of the inner 
 world of thought and feeling. For, of this inner 
 world that which seems most certain, clear and 
 distinct — namely, our sensations — is utterly un- 
 
 1 Psychologie, I. p. 29. 
 
 development of Modern Philosophy, p. 291. 
 
60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 known to us apart from our knowledge of external 
 things. 
 
 But you object that Kant has overcome this diffi- 
 culty by his happy surmise of a-priofi forms which 
 objectify or spatialize our inner sensations. On the 
 contrary, Kant has merely piled two other moun- 
 tains of difficulty on the top of the first one. First, 
 we have the original difficulty, the unknowability of 
 sensations; second, Kant adds to this another and 
 greater difficulty that things are also unknowable; 
 thirdly, on top of these he places a still more stu- 
 pendous difficulty — to wit, that the mind uncon- 
 sciously, without knowing what it does and acting 
 upon things of which it knows nothing, yet some- 
 how miraculously transmutes them, giving form to 
 the formless, and permanence to that which had no 
 duration. Surely Kant is the best of witnesses to the 
 truth of my contention that denial of the spatial 
 world is the extinction of thought. 
 
 Or do you urge that this subjective idealism has 
 now been generally abandoned and absolute idealism 
 put in its place? I answer that the latter still more 
 openly testifies to the truth of my contention. For 
 Hegel's Absolute, when closely scrutinized, turns out 
 to be nothing but the "Totality" of all self-contra- 
 dictions. His philosophy is literally an apotheosis 
 of self-contradiction, "Contradiction is the moving 
 spirit of the world." If that is true, then knowledge 
 is certainly impossible. You can never attain to 
 knowledge or even to rational thought by piling up 
 self-contradictions, one on top of the other ; for the 
 
THE NEW REALISM 6 1 
 
 more you have of the latter, the less you will have of 
 the former. 
 
 But Hegel's Dialectic proves, you protest, that 
 this self-contradictoriness gradually diminishes — 
 slowly evaporates, as it were — in the successive 
 stages of mental development, until it finally disap- 
 pears altogether in the Totality or Organic Whole. 
 That, however, merely adds two more absurdities to 
 the one noticed above. First, the idea of diminish- 
 ing degrees of contradiction is a preposterous one; 
 for a self-contradictory statement destroys itself; it 
 states nothing and is nothing; and one nothing can 
 be neither greater nor less than any other nothing. 
 Second, the final evaporation of the self-contradic- 
 toriness into a self-consistent Absolute or Totality 
 is still more nonsensical. Hegel's only argument 
 here is that the Totality must be self-consistent, be- 
 cause there is outside of it no other Totality to con- 
 tradict it. But would an Alexander Selkirk with 
 his mind filled with maniacal and conflicting ideas 
 be self-consistent merely because there was nobody 
 else on his lonely island to contradict him? Hegel 
 thinks that he would. 
 
 Such then is my second proof of realism. First, 
 it shows that the cancelling of the spatial world ren- 
 ders all knowledge — even that of our own existence 
 — impossible. Second, that both forms of idealism, 
 when closely cross-examined, corroborate that con- 
 clusion. 
 
62 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Section 5. Third Proof of Realism 
 
 It would seem that I might rest content with the 
 rigor and conclusiveness of the two proofs already 
 presented. But to do so would lay my entire theory 
 open to a very serious objection. Indeed, from the 
 dawn of Greek philosophy down to the present day, 
 it has been the fate of realism to be worsted, not 
 through the weakness of its own positive proofs, but 
 by the ingenious sophistries devised against it. 
 
 Now, it may be said, that my view does not es- 
 sentially differ from the familiar doctrine of the Un- 
 knowable Cause. It is this objection which I seek 
 here to meet and to convert into a third proof of 
 realism. 
 
 Cause has often been pronounced the vaguest of 
 terms; "it appears at one time as a thing or object 
 in space; in another as a prior phenomenon; and 
 again, as a definite force identical with neither. In 
 assigning the cause of the daily tides — for instance, 
 you may name the Moon, or the rotation of the 
 earth or the gravitation of the related masses." 1 
 Thus confusion arises and endless controversy ; Sig- 
 wart insists upon the causality of substance and 
 argues strenuously against Wundt, who prefers a 
 phenomenal cause. Mill reduces causes to "perma- 
 nent possibilities"; Kant, to the unknowable thing 
 in itself. Schopenhauer makes Force supreme and 
 cause subordinate thereto. And this war of words 
 still goes on. 
 
 But the doctrine of the causal process ex- 
 
 ^artineau, Studies of Religion, I. p. 131. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 63 
 
 pounded in Chapter II puts an end to these verbal 
 contentions. It shows that neither the idea of sub- 
 stance, nor of phenomenon, nor of force is syn- 
 onymous with that of cause, that on the contrary 
 they are but co-operating factors within the causal 
 processes of Nature. Let us consider them in the 
 order named. 
 
 (1) Concerning substance I may seem to have 
 said enough in the first section of this chapter. But 
 there was one feature of that theme, and the most 
 important one, which I there omitted to mention with 
 the express purpose of using it more effectively here. 
 I proved there that the fatal flaw in the philosophies 
 of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz was that they be- 
 gan with the category of substance as the primal and 
 supreme one; whereas really it is a secondary and 
 derivative one, only to be explained as subordinate 
 to the causal category. Substantiality is causality, 
 one of its specific phases. But the difficulty I did 
 •not mention is this : Since the attributes are imma- 
 nent in the substance, what is the discernible differ- 
 ence between them that can warrant our distinguish- 
 ing them as cause and effect? This difficulty has 
 led many to deny the causality altogether. Thus the 
 writer quoted just above admits that in both cases 
 there is a relation of dependence, but adds : "on Sub- 
 ject it is a dependence of co-existence; on Cause a 
 dependence of origination. A substance manifests 
 but does not make its attributes; a cause produces 
 its effects." 1 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 194. 
 
64 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 I answer first that the relation of the attribute to 
 the substance is something more than co-existence 
 or immanence; for the substance is the principal 
 factor in the causal process that produces the attri- 
 bute. Secondly, the attribute, although immanent 
 in is yet different from the substance, since it is 
 also dependent upon the other factors in the process 
 producing it ; the weight of a body for instance de- 
 pends upon the earth's attraction; its color upon 
 the ether-waves, etc. 
 
 Let not the reader slight this as undue subtility. 
 Clear insight here is the key that unlocks some of 
 the darkest chambers in philosophy. From lack of 
 such insight Martineau refuses "to invest external 
 things as such with causality," thus virtually an- 
 nihilating them, and so falls back into an obsolete 
 occasionalism. He says that he "cannot consent to ac- 
 cept of entity as synonymous with cause." There is 
 no need that he should. No finite entity is a com- 
 plete cause ; but it is a perceptible and indispensable 
 factor in many processes of causation. 
 
 (2) It hardly seems needful to add anything to 
 the proof given in the first section of Chapter II. 
 that sequence is not causality. It may be well, how- 
 ever, to renew the caution against regarding each 
 member in a series of effects as the cause of the next 
 succeeding member. Obvious as this error is, it has 
 been a very frequent and a very disastrous one. It 
 gave rise to that chimera of Dual Causality so no- 
 ticeable in the speculation of Spinoza 1 and of Kant ; 
 
 1 Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy. Also 
 Fullerton. 
 
THE NEW REALISM 65 
 
 all three of the latter's Critiques are virtually based 
 upon this doctrine of two kinds of causality. 
 
 (3) Turn now to the third theory, Cause is 
 Force. Schopenhauer, above all others, is the 
 doughty champion of this view. He did a real ser- 
 vice to philosophy by reducing all of Kant's cate- 
 gories to that of cause; all the rest are "blind win- 
 dows." But unable to break away from the Kantian 
 illusionism, he undid all that he had done by degrad- 
 ing cause itself into something derivative and sec- 
 ondary — in fact, into virtual nothingness. Cause 
 and effect, he says, are the changes which are bound 
 to necessary succession in time. But behind them 
 is Force, always and everywhere present, ubiquitous 
 and inexhaustible, in virtue of which all causes 
 operate. It is that which gives to causes their 
 causality, that is, their ability to produce effects 
 and from which therefore they only borrow this 
 ability. 
 
 But this now widely prevalent view dissolves 
 before my principle of the causal process. Indeed, 
 Schopenhauer's own words unveil the source of his 
 error. He says: "The cause is always, like its ef- 
 fect, a single thing, a single change." But that is 
 a flat contradiction of the great maxim of all induc- 
 tive science, that no finite cause is ever single, but 
 always a complex process ; by clinging to that truth, 
 as I shall show in the chapter upon induction, she 
 has won all her wondrous triumphs. And by 
 delving somewhat deeper into this inductive princi- 
 ple of the causal process, we gain an insight into 
 
66 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 that much disputed mystery, the nature of Force. 
 We see that while extended things form the visible 
 factor in every process of natural causation, force 
 is the unseen, the imperceptible factor. Nor is our 
 knowledge limited to this negative and yet very sug- 
 gestive mark of imperceptibility. The marks men- 
 tioned by Schopenhauer — its ubiquity and inexhausti- 
 bleness — also really belong to it. And above all else 
 one feature that he did not mention, its uniformity. 
 That is what science means by her doctrine of the 
 conservation of energy — the conviction that force 
 works by methods absolutely uniform and invari- 
 able. Thus, strange to say, our knowledge of the 
 invisible factor is the very means by which we come 
 to an ever-deepening, widening knowledge of the 
 visible. 
 
 The cause, then, is neither mere substance, nor 
 phenomenon, nor a kind of force. On the contrary, 
 it is a complex of all these combined in a unitary 
 and uniform causal process. Let us see now what 
 bearing this view has upon the objection that the sub- 
 stance or thing is but a name for the Unknowable 
 Cause of its qualities. First, I repeat the compre- 
 hensive answer already given, that if the thing is 
 unknowable apart from its qualities, so are the 
 qualities apart from the thing. Second, the thing is 
 known as that which determines the specific char- 
 acter of a quality ; the other factors are general con- 
 ditions giving only general results. Third, the thing 
 is known as the one, persistent factor in each and 
 all the many causal processes whereby its qualities 
 
THE NEW REALISM 6j 
 
 are produced. Thus its known relationship with 
 other things and agencies widens out immensely, and 
 our knowledge of it is correspondingly enlarged. 
 We know the object perceived not merely through 
 its casual, superficial relations to the perceiving sub- 
 ject, but through its deep-lying, wide-spreading, es- 
 sential relations to that illimitable host of other fac- 
 tors which co-operate with it in the production of its 
 attributes. It is the climax of silliness to talk of a 
 thing thus widely and luminously known as an Un- 
 knowable Cause. 
 
 Fourth and above all else, the thing is always a 
 perceptible factor, while the other factors have to be 
 demonstrated as indispensable by the strict experi- 
 mental methods of inductive science. A causal pro- 
 cess, as a whole, then, is not seen or given by sensi- 
 ble experience. Hume was right there; and his 
 famous problem would forever remain insoluble 
 were it not for my demonstration that the cancelling 
 of causality means the extinction of thought. The 
 sole essential function of thought being thus proved 
 to be the disclosure of causality, it follows that 
 thought is fundamentally a revelation of the unseen. 
 
 Thus the new realism is lifted far above that mire 
 of materialism into which previous forms of realism 
 have sunk. It accomplishes what both subjective and 
 absolute idealism have failed to accomplish by their 
 assumption that the visible universe was an illusion. 
 Without appealing to any such nonsense, the new 
 realism demonstrates the existence of the invisible. 
 
 What seemed then a weighty objection has been 
 
68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 overcome and converted into a crowning proof of 
 realism. But there are certain perplexities concern- 
 ing space and time which have heretofore defied 
 solution ; these I hope to disentangle in the next two 
 chapters, and then our proof will be complete. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SPACE 
 
 Section II. Perceptual and Conceptual Space 
 
 All the perplexities and supposed self-contradic- 
 tions that from time immemorial have clustered 
 around the thought of space seem of late to be focal- 
 izing themselves upon the contrast between space 
 as perceived and as conceived. On the one hand, 
 conceptual space is regarded as one, homogeneous, 
 continuous infinitely extended and also infinitely di- 
 visible. On the other hand, perceptual space seems 
 somehow to be devoid of all positive characteristics ; 
 it exhausts itself in negating, pointblank, all 
 the characteristics of conceptual space. Thus per- 
 ceptive and reflective thought are made to ap- 
 pear in hopeless, irreconcilable conflict with each 
 other. 
 
 At first Kant seemed little mindful of this antag- 
 onism. Indeed in the Analytic the very pith of his 
 argument for the ideality of space is that it is neither 
 a percept nor a concept. But later on in discussing 
 the Antinomies the tangles involved in the thought 
 of space as infinitely divisible begin to trouble him : 
 he will not say that space is a whole really com- 
 pounded of an infinite number of parts, but at any 
 rate it is ideally so compounded. And in the 
 "Critique of Judgment" he tentatively suggests this 
 opposition of space perceived and conceived. At 
 
JO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 present the entire space-problem seems to hinge 
 upon this alleged discrepancy. 
 
 But for two good reasons it seems to me all a ! de- 
 lusion. First, my perfect faith in the unity of thought 
 forbids my believing in any such antithesis between 
 perception and conception. Secondly, all this ap- 
 parent antagonism vanishes instantly in the light of 
 our fundamental law that the essence of all think- 
 ing is a discriminating between cause and effect. 
 What has been erroneously regarded as a distinction 
 between conceptual and perceptual space is really 
 a distinction betzveen space and the spatial relations 
 of things. And the two, so far from being in any 
 antagonism with each other, are really related as 
 cause and effect. 
 
 For consider first the spatial relations — distances, 
 directions, length, breadth, etc. — which are certainly 
 perceptible. Mark that it is not said here that space 
 is the sole or entire cause of these spatial relations. 
 We have got beyond that great error which has 
 wrought so much confusion and darkness in phi- 
 losophy — to wit, the failure to see that an effect is 
 not the product of a single cause, but of a causal 
 process interweaving many factors. Particular 
 things are also indispensable factors in the produc- 
 tion of spatial relations, which otherwise would not 
 be perceptible. But so also is unchanging space. 
 
 Do you object that space is inactive, does nothing, 
 neither produces nor resists motion, and therefore 
 cannot be a factor in causal processes ? Lotze espe- 
 cially makes this inactivity of space one of his main 
 
SPACE 71 
 
 reasons for denying its real existence ; the essence 
 of anything, he argued, consists in its behavior, what 
 it does, and since space does nothing, it is nothing. 
 I answer that if there is no space there can be no 
 motion, hence things are non-existent, for they act 
 only by moving; furthermore thought cannot exist 
 for it neither moves nor is movable. In fine, Lotze's 
 principle is a sheer plunge into the abyss of nihilism. 
 
 There is then no reason for denying or doubting 
 the evident fact that space is a universal and indis- 
 pensable factor in all processes whence the spatial 
 properties of things result. "A medium or instru- 
 ment is not necessarily either an agent or agency. 
 It may be perfect just in proportion as it is itself 
 inert, neither increasing, nor diminishing, nor in any 
 way modifying what is transmitted or effected 
 through it." 1 I quote these words as especially valu- 
 able for my purpose, because they were written by 
 an eminent idealist without any reference, of course, 
 to the use I am here making of them. 
 
 Note now the follies and contradictions amidst 
 which famous philosophers have entangled them- 
 selves through failure to discern the real relationship 
 between space and the spatial properties of things. 
 Think of Berkeley troubled by a sort of rivalry 
 which he imagines between space and God. He re- 
 coils from "that dangerous dilemma — to wit, of 
 thinking either that Real Space is God or else that 
 there is something besides God which is eternal, un- 
 created infinite, indivisible, immutable. Both of 
 
 1 Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 240. 
 
72 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 which may justly be thought pernicious and absurd 
 notions. . . . Which doctrine, how unworthy so- 
 ever it may seem of the Divine Nature, yet I do not 
 see how we can get clear of it so long as we adhere 
 to the received opinions." 1 But look at it in the 
 light of my doctrine. When space is conceived as 
 one of the universal factors in all the physical proc- 
 esses of the universe, is it thereby made co-equal 
 with the God who devised, established and maintains 
 these processes? 
 
 Turn now to Kant. As early as the Dissertation 
 of 1770, we find him arguing that only his theory 
 of space as a form or figment of the mind will ac- 
 count for the two main difficulties of the question; 
 first, the fixation of relative positions in space; sec- 
 ond, the difference of space from the particular ma- 
 terial or spatial properties of things. But the first 
 of these is but a dim view of the fact that all spatial 
 properties of things are dependent upon and would 
 be impossible without one continuous space. The 
 second that space and spatial properties, although so 
 closely united, are yet very different ; for it is the pe- 
 culiar and supreme characteristic of every causal re- 
 lation that it at once differentiates the cause from 
 the effect and yet unites them by the firmest of all 
 bonds. 
 
 Take now a more recent case. " Empty space," 
 says Bradley — "space without some quality (visual 
 or muscular) which in itself is more than spatial — is 
 an unreal abstraction. It cannot be said to exist, 
 
 Principles of Knowledge, §117. 
 
 
space 73 
 
 for the reason that it cannot by itself have any 
 meaning. When any man realizes what he has got 
 in it he finds that he always has a quality that is 
 more than extension. But if so, how this quality is 
 to stand to the extension is an insoluble problem." 1 
 
 I answer that of course the attribute of extension- 
 is not given in isolation. As he says in another 
 place to which he refers : 2 "If visual it must be col- 
 ored." There must also be "a 'what' that is ex- 
 tended." And other differences which "clearly are 
 not merely extended." All these are interconnected 
 effects or products of various processes in all of 
 which some particular thing and continuous space are 
 the indispensable factors. In fine, Bradley's demand 
 that isolated extension be presented to sense is as 
 absurd as to demand that motion be presented apart 
 from some moving body. 
 
 In the next paragraph some dim recognition of 
 the truth seems to flit across Bradley's mind. But 
 he puts it aside with another denial — in new terms 
 — "that A (extension) exists and works naked." 
 
 Section 2. The Continuity of Space 
 
 A very great advance toward the solution of the 
 space-problem is made, it seems to me, by our view 
 of real space and the spatial properties of things as 
 very different and yet as united by a causal relation. 
 We have seen how swiftly many of the perplexities 
 
 Appearance and Reality, p. 38. 
 
 IhiA i™ TT T« 
 
 Hbid, pp. 17, 18. 
 
74 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 which have led thinkers like Berkeley, Kant and 
 Bradley into sheer illusionism, vanish before this 
 simple apprehension. Furthermore, it completely 
 disposes of a still more widely prevailing notion 
 that space is naught but the mere sum of these 
 spatial properties — extension, direction, distances, 
 etc. 
 
 But there still remains one elemental characteris- 
 tic of space unaccounted for. How do we know that 
 space is absolutely continuous? Certainly we can- 
 not perceive — see with our eyes or feel with our 
 fingers that there are no crevices or holes in it. We 
 cannot make the answer that used to be made to this 
 and a host of other difficulties — the appeal to intui- 
 tions, to universal and necessary truths. For com- 
 mon sense, although far more truthful than the aca- 
 demic conceit of wisdom which scorns it, is yet not 
 infallible. Nor does even the New Mathematics 
 seem able to give answer; it offers no proof of the 
 continuity of space except intuition or assumption. 
 
 The way then seems wide open for my answer as 
 follows. Pre-eminent among spatial properties per- 
 ceived are those of distance or the separateness of 
 things. Now what is meant by the separateness of 
 objects is that there is space between them ; if there 
 is no space between them they are not separate. 
 Therefore it is demonstrably absurd to think of 
 space itself as divisible into parts. For in order that 
 the parts should be separate, there would have to be 
 space between them, and consequently no separation 
 of the parts. In other words, the division — either 
 
space 75 
 
 actual or ideal — of space into parts is a contradic- 
 tion in terms. 
 
 Heretofore the divisibility of space has been ac- 
 cepted almost as an axiom; from it all manner of 
 antinomies and paradox have been evolved, espe- 
 cially the speculation of Kant and his successors 
 rests largely upon it : Spinoza alone suggests a con- 
 trary opinion, but in a rather vague and faltering 
 manner. And, although my demonstration of its in- 
 divisibility seemed perfect, this unanimity troubled 
 me. It was therefore comforting to find that such 
 a master-mind as Adamson had reached the same 
 conclusion. He says : "The representation of a given 
 space as made up of the fractional parts into which 
 we may divide it, overlooks the difference between 
 the actual representation thus gained and the con- 
 crete whole which is disclosed when the question is 
 asked : What then really separates the parts from one 
 another?" 1 
 
 Furthermore I think that I can explain the precise 
 origin of this virtual unanimity of error concerning 
 the divisibility of space. It has sprung from blind- 
 ness to the distinction between one infinite space and 
 the finite spatial properties of things. For while the 
 former is absolutely continuous and indivisible, the 
 latter are manifestly divisible, even infinitely so. 
 And the reason thereof is made very clear by what 
 has already been established. We have seen that 
 spatial properties are not results of space alone, but 
 of space and things together; or more definitely, 
 
 development of Modern Philosophy, p. 298. 
 
y6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 they are products of processes in which both space 
 and things are indispensable factors. And as thus 
 partially produced and limited by things, spatial 
 properties have derived from things their character- 
 istic of divisibility. But theorists have erroneously 
 transferred this divisibility to space itself, to which 
 it cannot possibly belong. Thus modern philosophy 
 from its start is infected with a fatal error. For 
 once more I affirm that the divisibility — either in- 
 finite or finite — of space is a contradiction in terms. 
 
 Section 3. The Discreteness of Space 
 
 Some attention must also be given to the puzzle 
 so much exploited by recent disciples of Hegel — the 
 alleged contradiction between the continuity and the 
 discreteness of space. For example, I have just al- 
 luded to Adamson's having caught a glimpse of the 
 real proof of space's continuity. But he did not 
 fully realize the significance of this insight. And 
 so he soon asserts a second and contradictory feature 
 in space, its discreteness, "the inexhaustibility, the 
 endless capacity for being divided of a really con- 
 tinuous whole. But it is all a chimera. The two 
 contradictory features do not belong to the same ob- 
 ject. The continuity belongs to one infinite and im- 
 mutable space. The discreteness or divisibility be- 
 longs to the countless host of finite, ever-changing 
 spatial relations of things to each other. 
 
 "But no one quite equals Bradley in this art of in- 
 venting contradictions. First, he proves that space 
 is not a relation. The mere fact that we are driven 
 
SPACE 7J 
 
 always to speak of its parts is sufficient evidence. 
 What could be the parts of a relation?" But as I 
 have shown we are driven to speak of it as not hav- 
 ing parts. 
 
 Second, he proves that it is nothing but a relation. 
 But how can that which is absolutely one be a re- 
 lation ? These are but samples of the follies that is- 
 sue from thinking of space as divided into parts. 
 And they are all set aside by the simple question: 
 If space has parts, what then separates the parts ? 
 
 Section 4. The Reality of Space 
 
 ( 1 ) Let us consider in course the four celebrated 
 arguments by which Kant is supposed to have an- 
 nihilated the reality of space. The first is : "Space is 
 not an empirical experience which has been derived 
 from external experience. . . .* No experience of 
 the external relations of sensible things could yield 
 the idea of space, because without the consciousness 
 of space there would be no external experience what- 
 ever." Now all that is a foolish truism; it says 
 nothing except that without the idea of space I could 
 not have the idea of externality. Again the doctrine 
 that space is an illusion, a mere idea inside of me 
 makes it impossible that things should be outside of 
 me or of each other. 
 
 (2) "Space is a necessary a-priori idea which is 
 presupposed in all external perception. By no effort 
 can we think space away, etc." The first proof 
 seemed absurd enough, but this far surpasses it in ab- 
 surdity. We must believe space to be real, we can- 
 critique, Pure Reason, Tran. Esthetic, § I. 
 
?8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 not think it away; therefore, it must be an il- 
 lusion ! 
 
 (3) "Space is not a general conception of the re- 
 lation of things but a pure perception. . . . It is 
 true that we speak as if there were many spaces, but 
 we really mean only parts of one and the same 
 space." That argument I have exploded by demon- 
 strating in Section 2 that space has no parts, is ab- 
 solutely continuous. 
 
 (4) Kant's final argument is very vague, almost 
 unintelligible. But both its vagueness and its falsity 
 are explained in Section 1. There I have proved 
 that the much mooted distinction between perceptual 
 and conceptual space is really a distinction between 
 space and the spatial relations of things; and that 
 the ignoring of this obvious distinction is the tap- 
 root of almost all the errors and paradoxes infesting 
 the spatial problem. 
 
 Kant's four proofs of the ideality of space are 
 amazingly feeble and empty. Dissatisfaction with 
 them soon led his successors to take another path; 
 but a retrograde one toward the theories of Berkeley 
 and Malebranche. Kant's doctrine of space as a 
 mental form leaves everything at loose ends ; the ap- 
 plication of the form does not determine whether a 
 given object shall appear as a cube or some other fig- 
 ure; the choice between the various forms is alto- 
 gether arbitrary. But plainly we have no such lib- 
 erty as that; the relations of things in our subjective 
 forms of space are quite independent of our will; 
 try our best we cannot conceive an inch as longer 
 
space 79 
 
 than a mile or a wagon-wheel as triangular. Hence 
 arose absolute idealism; the determining factor in 
 our spatial experience was not the individual mind, 
 but the divine or absolute mind. But that seems 
 only a sort of burlesque realism. What common 
 sense calls a universe of things, this new view calls 
 God or the Absolute. 
 
 There is then nothing self-contradictory in space 
 properly conceived. The alleged contradictions have 
 sprung from ignoring two obvious facts : first, that 
 space has no parts; second, that spatial relations — 
 distance, direction, figure, etc. — are effects or prod- 
 ucts of a causal process wherein both real space and 
 real things are factors. Cancel either kind of reality, 
 and you make knowledge and thought impossible. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TIME 
 
 Section i. Temporal Relations 
 
 My solution of the space problem, then, rests upon 
 the distinction between space and the spatial rela- 
 tions of things. All thinkers have recognized, more 
 or less vaguely, that distinction. Newton, especially, 
 insisted upon it most strenuously. The common 
 view, he said, wrongly supposes that sensuous time 
 and space are the true ones; they define them ac- 
 cording to their relations to common things. But 
 besides these there must be an absolute space and 
 time not determined by their relations to anything 
 external. Instead of absolute and sensuous space — 
 terms having a dogmatic and misleading ring — I 
 have put the simple facts, space and the spatial rela- 
 tions of things. Then by showing that these two 
 terms are to each other as cause to its effects, the 
 antinomies and other perplexities infesting the space 
 problem have been made to vanish. 
 
 I have now to show that the problem of time, with 
 its still darker enigmas, can likewise be solved by 
 clear insistence upon the distinction between time 
 and the temporal relations of things. 
 
 In order to outline my meaning let me first refer 
 to that famous, oft-quoted passage from one of the 
 world's greatest thinkers, St. Augustine: "What 
 then is time ? If no one asks me, I know ; if I try to 
 
TIME 
 
 81 
 
 explain it to one who asks, I do not know ; yet I say 
 with confidence that I know. But if nothing passed 
 away, there would be no past time ; if nothing were 
 to come there would be no future time; if nothing 
 were, there would be no present time. Yet those 
 two times, past and future, how can they be when 
 the past is not now, and the future is not yet ? As 
 for the present, if it were always present, and did 
 not pass over into the past, it would not be time but 
 eternity." 1 
 
 Now when Augustine says that if no one asks 
 him, he knows what time is, he means that he has a 
 clear, distinct perception of temporal relations or 
 periods of time. He fully apprehends the difference 
 between before and after, to-day and yesterday, to- 
 day and to-morrow, etc. But what he thus knows 
 so confidently is something not simple but vastly 
 complex — not time isolated and by itself, but time 
 inextricably intertwined with and obscured by a host 
 of other agencies — the revolutions of the earth in 
 its orbit or on its axis, the sand in the hour-glass, 
 and so on — all necessary for the production of that 
 composite result, a temporal relation or period, 
 which he really apprehends. With these temporal 
 relations or periods, Augustine is perfectly familiar. 
 It is of them that he is thinking when he says, if no 
 one asks me, I know. 
 
 But, he continues, if any one asks me — in other 
 words, if he becomes critical and tries to probe be- 
 neath the surface — then I know not. That, too, I 
 
 Confessions, Book XI. ch. 14. 
 
82 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 think, may be explained from our present point of 
 view. Augustine, great and wonderful thinker as 
 he was, was yet human and he fell into one of the 
 most persistent of human errors — to wit, the ani- 
 mistic tendency to conceive all objects of thought in 
 the similitude of things. In that fashion he con- 
 ceives of time as an extended thing divisible into 
 parts ; in other words, he thinks of time as the sum 
 or aggregate of all temporal relations or periods. 
 But the moment he does that he finds himself in a 
 hornet's nest of inexplicable enigmas and contra- 
 dictions. For the present has no duration ; make it 
 as short or small as you will, it is still always capa- 
 ble of being divided into a before and after, a past 
 and a future; it is but the plane which, without 
 thickness, divides the bygone from that which is to 
 come. The present, then, so far as duration is con- 
 cerned, is zero ; but the past has ceased to exist, and 
 the future 1 is not yet. Time, therefore, according to 
 this definition, is the sum or aggregate of three zeros 
 or non-existents. 
 
 I have given here but the gist of the difficulty 
 which can easily be amplified into many minor rid- 
 dles and contradictions. No writer heretofore has 
 been able to surmount them. Let us see, then, what 
 the doctrine of this volume will accomplish. 
 
 (I) I begin with the declaration that Time is 
 one and indivisible. The proof thereof, like the 
 proof of the indivisibility of space, lies in the simple 
 question : If time can be divided into parts, what is 
 it that separates or stands between the divided 
 
TIME 83 
 
 parts ? The force of that question is even more con- 
 clusive in the case of time than of space. It seems 
 in some sort an excusable error to mistake the divi- 
 sion of things for a division of the space they oc- 
 cupy; at least, most philosophers have made that 
 mistake. But it is a gratuitous, a wholly unpardon- 
 able blunder to think of time as thus divided. What 
 could possibly separate the divided parts ? Certainly 
 it could not be either space or things. Imagine two 
 parts of time, one on the one side and the other on 
 the other side of a spatial point or of an extended 
 line ! Nor could the divider be another part of time ; 
 for then there would be no separation, but continu- 
 ous, undivided time. 
 
 (II) But you ask, if time is indivisible, how can 
 there be a multiplicity of temporal relations or pe- 
 riods? The answer lies in the principle I have al- 
 ready announced that time is the partial cause or 
 predominant factor in the process producing the 
 many periods. And surely a cause in order to pro- 
 duce many separate effects, need not itself be di- 
 vided. On the contrary, the very nature of a cause 
 is to produce an indefinite multiplicity of effects. 
 One man may take many steps, one wheel make 
 many revolutions ; but the sum of all his steps is not 
 the man, nor is the sum of all its revolutions the 
 wheel. There is no contradiction, then, between the 
 indivisibility of time and the countless multiplicity 
 of temporal relations or periods. 
 
 Let me add that one of the acutest and most em- 
 inent of English thinkers — Adamson — has also rec- 
 
84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ognized this indivisibility of time. He says : "But 
 just as little as space is made up of unextended 
 points, so little is time made up of unchanging pres- 
 ent moments." 1 But, unfortunately, while he has 
 divined the truth, he has mistaken the ground on 
 which that truth is based. He indeed rejects the 
 Kantian doctrine that time is wholly subjective, but 
 adds : "We may certainly allow that our representa- 
 tion of a changing reality, in the form of this intui- 
 tion of time, has features that depend solely on the 
 position of the subject in the sum-total of reality, 
 and that, therefore, it is to that extent subjective in 
 character." 2 But this admission of a partial subjec- 
 tivity is fatal; logically it must end in a thorough 
 Hindu illusionism. But this gulf of subjectivity my 
 exposition has at every point avoided. Both time 
 and temporal relations, in their existence, working 
 and character, are altogether objective. What 
 Adamson mistakes for a subjective element is but 
 the shadow of those other factors — things, space, 
 motion — which must combine with time in one 
 causal process in order that temporal relations or 
 periods may be produced. 
 
 III. Another fact which the denier of time en- 
 tirely overlooks is that not all changes are motions. 
 A change of feeling does not mean that feeling has 
 really moved from one position to another, say from 
 pleasure to pain or from sorrow to joy. A change 
 in thinking — for instance, from thinking of a lamp- 
 
 development of Modern Philosophy, p. 313. 
 2 Ibid., p. 314. 
 
TIME 85 
 
 post to thinking of the stars — does not mean that 
 our mental state has actually traversed the immense 
 distance between those objects. But the idealist 
 takes it for granted that change must be motion. 
 Thus a distinguished American thinker says : "If we 
 say that time as a whole stands we deny the time- 
 idea. Past, present and future co-exist, and there 
 is no assignable reason for the change from the fu- 
 ture to the past. It is equally impossible to find in 
 a standing time any ground for change. But we 
 fare no better with the notion of a flowing time. If 
 we say that time flows we must ask whence and 
 whither. From the future to the past or from the 
 past to the future? But both past and future are 
 dimensions of time, and it seems absurd to speak of 
 time as flowing into or out of itself. Such a view is 
 as impossible as the thought of a moving space. 
 . . . And finally when we say that time as a whole 
 flows we need another time for it to flow in. . . . 
 Both views involve not merely mystery, but incon- 
 sistency and contradiction." 1 
 
 Undoubtedly they do. For neither standing nor 
 flowing — that is, rest or motion are terms that can 
 be rationally applied to time. You might as well 
 ask whether love is triangular or not? For, only 
 things move; and time is not an extended thing hav- 
 ing a position in space. In fine, the inconsistency 
 and contradiction which our author laments, are but 
 the evil fruitage of the animistic or hypostasizing 
 
 x Bowne, Metaphysics, pp. 169, 170. 
 
86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tendency — the most persistent and fatal disease of 
 human thought. 
 
 (IV) But there is still another objection possible. 
 Does not your account of time as the cause of tem- 
 poral relations or periods leave it vague and indef- 
 inite, a sort of unknowable cause after the style of 
 Kant's thing in itself? I answer by once more re- 
 calling the corollary to my fundamental thesis : the 
 cause is known only through its effects, and con- 
 versely the effects through their cause. In that light 
 time becomes the best known, the most luminous of 
 all objects. For it is thus causally connected with a 
 vaster and more various range of results than any 
 other. Space cannot begin to compare with it in 
 this respect. For space enters only into our experi- 
 ence of the outer world ; but time enters everywhere, 
 into our experience of the inner as well as the outer 
 world. And the many diversities between these two 
 realms adds still more to the fullness and richness of 
 our conceptions of time. In a word, there is noth- 
 ing known to man which does not cast a reflected 
 light upon his knowledge of time. 
 
 (V) The infinitude of time, although it has been 
 in current philosophy a theme for endless quibbling 
 and dispute, may here be treated very concisely. 
 For almost any reader can see that the proof of the 
 infinitude of space from its continuity may readily 
 be transferred to the continuity of time. But to 
 make assurance doubly sure, let me put the argu- 
 ment in another form. If time is finite or limited, 
 it must be limited by something. But a something 
 
TIME 87 
 
 — whether personal or impersonal — cannot exist 
 without time to exist in, and therefore in putting an 
 end to time it would put an end to itself; and so 
 there would be no limit. 
 
 (VI) Another objection, much favored by ideal- 
 istic theists, is that the reality of space and time 
 would lead to a hopeless plurality of first principles. 
 Besides God there would then be two other infini- 
 tudes independent of Him. But that trouble is 
 quelled by my exposition. For, neither time nor 
 space is by itself a complete cause, but simply a 
 factor in the causal processes of the universe. God 
 alone is the complete cause who plans, creates and 
 maintains those processes. 
 
 (VII) Thus we have reached a theory of space 
 and time which seems to answer conclusively all the 
 objections ordinarily urged against their reality. 
 And I now add as a decisive confirmation of this 
 theory the fact that there is really no other theory. 
 For, the idealism which simply denies the existence 
 of space and time can hardly be accounted, in any 
 strict sense of the term, a theory of space and time. 
 And on the other hand, realism, in so far as it at- 
 tempts to cope with the real difficulties of the subject, 
 seems to end in a hopeless tangle of contradictions 
 rather than in a consistent, systematic theory. A 
 very vivid — not to say glaring — example of this is 
 presented in the speculations of Prof. Fullerton, a 
 distinguished American philosopher. Through 
 some seventy closely printed pages he labors long 
 and hard with the difficulties involved in his peculiar 
 
88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 conception of space and time. His conception I will 
 not attempt to describe, as it seems to me utterly 
 fantastical and unintelligible. It is enough to give 
 in his own words the final upshot of the whole mat- 
 ter. 
 
 "It may be objected again," he says, "that exten- 
 sion can never be built up out of the non-extended 
 — that if one element of a given kind has, taken 
 alone, no extension at all, two or more such ele- 
 ments together cannot have any either. I answer 
 that a straight line has no angularity at all, and yet 
 two straight lines may obviously make an angle; 
 that one man is not in the least a crowd, but that 
 one hundred men may be; that no single tree is a 
 forest, but that many trees together do make a for- 
 est; that a uniform expanse of color is in no sense 
 a variegated surface, but that several such together 
 do make a variegated surface." 1 And in the next 
 chapter he solves the problem of time in the same 
 preposterous manner — by affirming "that we can 
 manufacture time by simply putting together ele- 
 ments which have no duration at all." 2 
 
 Two or more zeros may make a unit! Surely 
 when modern philosophers of good repute are driven 
 to such silliness as that, there is urgent need of a 
 new philosophy. 
 
 Section 3. The Indivisibility of Time 
 In addition to the general theory of time given 
 
 System of Metaphysics, pp. 192, 193. 
 2 Ibid., p. 208. 
 
TIME 89 
 
 in the preceding section, I wish here to specially em- 
 phasize a principle, never noticed in any philosophic 
 system, and yet of supreme importance — one of the 
 keys to the solution of that problem of time which 
 philosophy has despaired of solving. That principle 
 is simply this : Every attempt to conceive time as di- 
 visible destroys it. 
 
 Consider the familiar argument disproving time's 
 existence, which has stood unanswered for centuries. 
 The present has no duration and is not time at all. 
 It is but the plane which without thickness divides 
 past and future. Time then is not made up of past, 
 present and future, but of past and future only. But 
 neither the past nor the future now exists ; therefore 
 time does not exist. 
 
 That argument, as I said, has never been an- 
 swered. Many have accepted it as proving time's 
 unreality, others have merely ignored it. And yet 
 all that it really proves is, not time's non-existence, 
 but its indivisibility. Time, as I have shown, has 
 no parts. The past, the present, and the future are 
 not the components of time; on the contrary, they 
 are the products of time in its correlation with 
 things. In fine, when you conceive time as divisible 
 into parts you destroy it. 
 
 But let no one understand me as claiming that no 
 previous thinkers have recognized that time has no 
 parts. Both the Eleatic and the Heracleitean 
 schools recognized that truth. Diodorus of the 
 Megaric school did so still more explicitly. 1 Even 
 ^rote, Plato, I. p. 21, and IV. p. 228, note. 
 
90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Aristotle held that the present was not a part of 
 time, but a mere boundary between past and future. 
 So in later times did Hobbes, Locke and many- 
 others. But for all these thinkers it was a truth but 
 half-seen, therefore, full of mystery and paradox. 
 How paradoxical it was, for instance, to affirm — as 
 they all did — that the present did not exist, while 
 the past and the future did. But all such absurdi- 
 ties vanish before my discovery of the crucial dis- 
 tinction between time and the temporal relations of 
 things. A temporal relation or period is the joint 
 product of time and some changing things; there- 
 fore, it derives something of its character from both. 
 The present year, for instance, exists and will exist 
 until the earth completes its present revolution 
 around the sun. Past and future years do not now 
 exist, because all other revolutions are either ended 
 or have not yet begun. 
 
 Finally, let me refer to Bergson's philosophy, 
 which just now is attracting much applause, as a 
 signal proof of my contention. ( i ) The very basis 
 of this philosophy is the sharp antithesis between 
 two kinds of time ; the one kind, pure duration ; the 
 other, a fictitious time that is merely spatial. That 
 evidently is but a dim, distorted glimpse of my dis- 
 tinction between time and the temporal relations of 
 things. (2) Duration, Bergson conceives as a suc- 
 cession of mental states; but these states are never 
 so distinct from each other that they can be counted ; 
 as he never tires of repeating, they "melt into and 
 
TIME 91 
 
 permeate each other. 1 . . . We must distinguish 
 between the multiplicity of juxtaposition and of in- 
 terpenetration." 2 That, too, is a vague vision of 
 the great truth that time has no parts. But like Her- 
 bart in a similar case, Bergson fails to see that in- 
 terpenetration presupposes extension or space, that 
 only things can melt into and permeate each other. 
 (3) Another point argued at great length is, that 
 duration not being extended in space is immeasur- 
 able. When I try to measure time by watching the 
 hands of a clock, "I do not measure duration as 
 seems to be thought. I merely count simultaneities, 
 which is very different." 3 The fallacy there lies in 
 failing to see that space in itself is just as immeasur- 
 able as time in itself. We know them both only 
 through their effects, that is, through the spatial and 
 temporal relations of things. In the one case we 
 measure not pure space, but the distance and dimen- 
 sions of things ; in the other case, not pure duration, 
 but temporal periods — hours, days, years, etc. — are 
 measured by the motions of things. (4) But this 
 theory of time as a double-headed monster grows 
 still more absurd when it tries to account for mo- 
 tion. It claims that motion has two elements, the 
 space traversed and the act of traversing it ; of these 
 elements the first is divisible and the second indivisi- 
 ble. In both cases the exact opposite is the truth. 
 Space, as I have demonstrated, is continuous or in- 
 
 J Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 104, 164, 231, 237, etc. 
 'Ibid., p. 75, note. 
 'Ibid., p. 108. 
 
92 PHILOSOHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 divisible. The act of traversing it is divisible into 
 as many steps as we choose. 
 
 By means of such fallacies Bergson pretends to 
 prove human freedom; but of this more hereafter. 
 Here I seek only to show that the contradictions in- 
 festing the time-concept are due to a false conception 
 of time — mainly to a confusing of time with the 
 temporal relations of things. In the previous chap- 
 ters the space concept was similarly explained. 
 These contradictions thus eliminated, the proof of 
 realism given in Chapter IV. is perfected. The 
 denial of the world in space and time is tantamount 
 to utter nihilism; it involves the complete collapse 
 and extinction of thought. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CONCEPT 
 
 Section i. Plato's View 
 
 Few events in history are more memorable than 
 the discovery begun by Socrates and completed by 
 Plato that concepts essentially signify the unchang- 
 ing and the causal. It was not only a great truth, 
 but also a deep-hidden one. It was a truth contra- 
 dicted by all appearances. In the first place the 
 double import of the concept — its intension and ex- 
 tension — imparted to it an air of ambiguity and in- 
 coherence which the thought of twenty-three cen- 
 turies has not been able to dispel: philosophy ever 
 since Plato's day has been little more than an endless 
 dispute between Realists, Conceptualists and Nom- 
 inalists concerning this complex mystery of the con- 
 cept. And the second feature of the concept has 
 been a still greater embarrassment. For, it seems 
 a flat contradiction of the first feature. If the con- 
 cept is static, immutable, eternally quiescent, how 
 can it be an active cause ? And yet there it stands — 
 the definition given by Xenocrates of the Platonic 
 concept — "a cause serving as the unchanging type 
 of all natural things." It was an immortal discov- 
 ery. Nor is it in any wise a blot upon Plato's 
 genius that his insight was not altogether clear 
 and perfect. For in the then state of knowledge, 
 as I shall show, it was impossible for any finite 
 
94 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 intellect to fully and finally interpret this Platonic 
 vision. 
 
 But what was then impossible the progress of 
 science has now rendered perfectly feasible. What 
 barred Plato from fully comprehending his splendid 
 vision was the crude pre-scientific view of the rela- 
 tion of the attributes to the thing as one of mere 
 "inherence" — "occult qualities" within the thing. It 
 was this view which Aristotle, that grand master of 
 compromise, so shrewdly elaborated in his doctrine 
 of universals in rem, opposing it to the Platonic 
 doctrine of universals ante rem. I have already 
 shown that this inherence theory renders any true 
 knowledge either of the thing or its attributes im- 
 possible, and leads straight to illusionism. Still 
 truer is this in regard to the more complicated case 
 of the concept or kind. For there is an evident con- 
 nection of some sort between the qualities and the 
 object qualified; to deny that would be sheer idiocy. 
 But there is no such obvious connection between the 
 sets of attributes belonging severally to different in- 
 dividuals of the same kind or class. Hence theorists, 
 whatever their school, have failed to find any unify- 
 ing bond between these sets of attributes, except that 
 of mere resemblance or similarity. And this feeling 
 of resemblance, as I have repeatedly shown, is 
 strictly no relation at all ; taken solely by itself, it is 
 but the embryo — still-born — of a relation. It is the 
 very type of all incoherence and self-contradiction; 
 everything is at once like and not like everything 
 else. And precisely here is the secret of that endless, 
 
THE CONCEPT 95 
 
 triangular controversy between realists, nominalists 
 and concepticalists. No one of them has ever been 
 able to explain the specific or generic relationship 
 between the individuals forming a class, except by 
 the utterly absurd and unintelligible dictum that 
 there was somehow "a common element" in them. 
 All have fallen back upon the Fallacy of Resem- 
 blance, and that is self-contradiction incarnate. 
 
 All schools, I say, without exception. The Scot- 
 tish philosophy of "common sense," with its short 
 and easy method of "intuitions," the French and 
 English empiricism, the Teutonic illusionism in all 
 its varied phases of paradox — all are mired in this 
 fallacy of resemblance, this nonsense of a common 
 element in different things. Listen first to an able and 
 eminent intuitionalist : "Herein lies the difference 
 between the act of the brute and the act of a man in 
 perceiving objects that are alike. In one sense the 
 brute may perceive what is similar as readily as a 
 man ; in some cases even more quickly, for his senses 
 may be more keen. . . . But the brute does not 
 attend and analyze as does a man. Hence he can- 
 not discriminate, so as to abstract; or, at best, the 
 degree and range of such efforts must be very lim- 
 ited. His power to compare and discern the like and 
 the unlike would for this reason be lame and feeble, 
 if no other could be suggested. Should it be granted 
 that the brute can discern similar attributes, it has 
 no power at all to conceive or think the similar as 
 the same." 1 
 
 1 Porter, Intellectual Science, p. 331. 
 
g6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 If that is the case, then the brutes are more ra- 
 tional than man. For the similar is not the same. 
 
 The theory of the concept then, I think, has made 
 no real progress, but rather retrograded since the 
 days of Plato. The medieval schoolmen in the main 
 adopted the Platonic view, modified, however, by 
 Aristotle's supremacy. But in those pre-scientific 
 times it was impossible to fully comprehend the real 
 nature, the complexity, the vastness, and the minute, 
 unchanging exactitude of Nature's processes of 
 causation. Therefore they could not develop further 
 what Plato had left in the germ. And modern phi- 
 losophy, forgetting its Plato, despising the Middle 
 Ages, is still mumbling senilities about the common 
 element in things. 
 
 I seek, therefore, to develop this germ of a great 
 truth enfolded in the Platonic view of the concept 
 as invariable and as a cause. 
 
 Section 2. The Extension of Concepts 
 
 There is a three-fold difficulty infesting the con- 
 ceptual problem. The first is the question whether 
 the concept has any objective counterpart in the 
 outer world. The other two pertain to the double 
 import, the two meanings of a concept, its extension 
 and its intension. These three difficulties intertan- 
 gle into a knot so hard that no one has as yet been 
 able to untie it. 
 
 Hegel sought to cut the knot by abolishing the 
 outer world as mere "schein." But most real think- 
 
THE CONCEPT 97 
 
 ers have now grown weary of this easy way of evad- 
 ing difficulties; and I shall waste no time upon it. 
 
 Hegel, however, deserves credit for his doctrine 
 of the concrete universal ; it is not true, but there is 
 a glimpse of verity in it. He saw that in the ortho- 
 dox realism of the Middle Ages there was an ele- 
 ment of truth that modern enlightenment had over- 
 looked. He saw that the true universal was some- 
 thing more than an abstract vacuity; nor was it 
 merely an imaginary collection of resembling indi- 
 viduals. In one passage, at least, he says that the 
 true universal is not merely some common ele- 
 ment in all of that kind; it is their Ground, their 
 Substance. It is something pervading and deter- 
 mining all the characteristics of each one and bind- 
 ing together its qualities. Therein Hegel is draw- 
 ing close to my theory of the concept as meaning, 
 radically, a causal process. But he soon flies away 
 into the inane, upon the wings of his celebrated 
 metaphor about the "organic whole." 
 
 And that metaphor is doubly impotent. In the 
 first place the only whole which has real parts must 
 be an extended thing; and so in abolishing the world 
 of things, Hegel has abolished the very category 
 upon which his scheme rested. In fine, he has sawed 
 off the limb on which he was sitting. 
 
 In the second place, nothing is gained by insist- 
 ing, as he does, that the whole must be an organic 
 whole. It is idle to repeat Aristotle's threadbare 
 conceit about the hand severed from the body ceas- 
 ing to be a hand. For that is no characteristic of 
 
98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the organic as such ; throughout the plant-world, and 
 in a large part of the animal world, this dissevering 
 of the organism is the very means used, not for de- 
 stroying, but for multiplying life. 
 
 But turn now to another logician less addicted to 
 metaphor and paradox — the staid, sober-minded, 
 cautious Sigwart. And yet he seems equally certain 
 that our concepts can have no objective counterpart. 
 He says: "The peculiarity of thought is that its 
 processes are incongruent with the existent to which 
 they refer. There is nothing existent which agrees 
 with the predicate idea in the same sense in which 
 there is something which agrees with the subject 
 idea." And he concludes, that "there can be no 
 really objective truth so long as the universal as such 
 has its existence only in our minds, and only the 
 particular in reality." 1 
 
 But in all that there is a great and grievous fal- 
 lacy which from our present vantage ground can be 
 shattered in a moment. It consists in misconstru- 
 ing the universal as merely an imaginary collection 
 of similar objects which thought sets before itself 
 when it thinks the universal. But thought does 
 nothing of the kind. When you think of redness, 
 for instance, do you think of some vast aggregate of 
 all the patches of red color in existence? Certainly 
 not. You think rather of the particular patch of 
 redness before you as one product or result of an 
 optical process which is going on throughout the 
 universe. In fine, sense gives the product the par- 
 x Logic, I. p. 83, note. 
 
THE CONCEPT 99 
 
 ticular red before my eyes ; thought reveals the proc- 
 ess of causation whence that product results. Is 
 there then any such incongruence, as Sigwart as- 
 serts, between sense and thought ? On the contrary, 
 they are not merely congruent, but indispensable to 
 each other. Without sense there would be no 
 thought ; and without thought we should be like ani- 
 mals, beholding only a minute fraction of what we 
 now behold. 
 
 Furthermore there is not even that numerical 
 antithesis between sense and thought which Sigwart 
 imagines. The universal, that is, the process of pro- 
 duction, is even more individual than the product 
 perceived. For the particular perceived, redness, for 
 instance, is fleeting, vanishes at night or the closing 
 of our eyes. But the process of production is not 
 only one, but changeless, will persist so long as the 
 cosmos lasts. Thus Plato's pre-scientific vision is 
 wondrously vindicated by modern science. 
 
 Or take another example. Bradley says sarcasti- 
 cally: "I see the little packs of dogs and the cats 
 all sitting together, and rats and rabbits, etc." 1 
 What is really ludicrous here is Bradley's view of a 
 universal as a mere collection. The true essence of 
 every natural kind is the process of production 
 whence the individuals result. What tests the spe- 
 cies of an animal is its power of reproducing indi- 
 viduals of that species. What distinguishes the 
 specific attributes of an object from its accidents fs 
 that the former result from the specific process, and 
 ^ogic, p. 160. 
 
IOO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the latter from external, modifying agencies. But 
 of this more in the last section of this chapter and 
 in the chapter upon Induction. 
 
 Section 3. The Intension of Concepts 
 In the introduction to his Logic, Lotze announces 
 that the peculiarity of thought which will govern 
 the whole of his subsequent exposition is this: "It 
 always consists in adding to the reproduction or sev- 
 erance of a connection of ideas the accessory notion 
 of a ground for their coherence or non-coherence.' ' 
 Now that seems an anticipation of my own view, but 
 it is not. At best it is but a dim glimpse of the truth, 
 vitiated by fatal defects. 
 
 In the first place it is but the old theory of the 
 concept as a mere bundle of attributes mysteriously 
 tied together. The attributes do not inhere in 
 things, but they cohere, they stick together. The 
 outcome is, of course, a thorough illusionism. At 
 the end of the Logic we are told emphatically that 
 concepts have no real existence. "Thus we find our- 
 selves confirmed in our conviction that the Reality 
 which we desire to recognize in the general notions 
 which are created by our thought is a reality which 
 is wholly dissimilar to Existence, and can only con- 
 sist in Validity or being predicable of the Existent. " 1 
 Thus we have the Kantian self-contradictoriness put 
 in its baldest terms. Universals are valid, but non- 
 existent; we are all forced to think them real, al- 
 though we know that they are not real. Plato failed 
 
 iLogic, §342. 
 
THE CONCEPT IOI 
 
 according to Lotze, because the Greek language had 
 no word for this absurd idea of validity. 
 
 On the contrary, the concept, instead of being 
 non-existent, stands for the very highest type of 
 finite existence. We never actually perceive absolute 
 individualities, but always vast complexes, made up 
 of innumerable individuals. The material universe 
 is such a complex. So is our little globe wherein 
 countless things are interwoven together. So is each 
 of what we call visible things, a complex of interact- 
 ing molecules and atoms. And each of these atoms, 
 according to the latest science, is made up of ions, 
 electrons, vortex-rings — we know not what. But 
 what stands forth sure, immutable, solid in this il- 
 limitable maze are the processes — concentric rings of 
 causation, so to speak — beginning with the Infinite 
 Cause of all and ending with the infinitesimal. And 
 these processes are what universals express. Surely, 
 it is rash to declare them non-existent. 
 
 But Lotze is not content with this paradox; he 
 adds another and a still greater one. Concepts are 
 not merely non-existent, but we cannot even form an 
 idea of them. "The universal cannot claim to be 
 called an idea. Words, like color or tone, are in 
 truth only short expressions of logical problems 
 whose solution cannot be compressed into the form 
 of an idea. They are injunctions to our conscious- 
 ness, to present to itself and to compare the idea of 
 individual tones and colors, but in the act of so com- 
 paring them to grasp the common element which 
 our sensation testifies them to contain, but which 
 
102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 cannot by any effort of thought be really detached 
 from their differences, and made the material of 
 a new and equally perceptible idea." 1 
 
 But that bubble I have already pricked. I have 
 shown that there is no such common element inside 
 of things requiring to be detached, etc.; such a 
 phrase is upon its face a contradiction in terms. 
 What experience really testifies to is the existence of 
 a causal process, absolutely uniform, by which un- 
 der varying circumstances the different colors are 
 produced. 
 
 At times, however, Lotze becomes a witness for 
 my doctrine. He breaks loose from the superstition 
 of the common element and turns to the truth. For 
 example, he says : "Color as the common element of 
 various colors is not a scientific idea or concept. 
 . . . Discovery of a process (my italics) of light- 
 waves, whose various rates constitute the various 
 colors of the spectrum, gives the concept." 2 That is 
 a clear, precise assertion of my principle that the es- 
 sential meaning of the concept is a causal process. 
 
 But Lotze is inconsistent, oscillates from one view 
 to the other. And his wavering is manifestly due 
 to his having thrust causality into the background 
 and put into its place the vague idea of ground. For 
 that he gave the usual excuse of his school. A cause 
 may have its effect frustrated by some other cause; 
 but a ground cannot be thus counteracted ; therefore, 
 the latter has a wider range and a higher value than 
 
 i-Ibid. p. 24. 
 
 'Metaphysics, II. p. 88. 
 
THE CONCEPT IO3 
 
 the former. But the exact opposite is the truth. 
 The mathematical ground is never frustrated, be- 
 cause it is confined to abstractions concerning empty 
 space where all counteracting agencies are, of 
 course, excluded. But cause widens out over the 
 whole realm of existence and deals with every pos- 
 sible object of thought; ground is but one of its 
 species. Bosanquet concurs with Lotze, in virtu- 
 ally discarding causality, but assigns another rea- 
 son. Its gist is this: "What is merely essential to 
 the effect is always something less than any com- 
 bination of real things which will produce the effect, 
 because every real thing has many properties ir- 
 relevant to this particular effect. So if the cause 
 means something real as a material cause is real, it 
 cannot be invariable and essential." 1 
 
 I answer that the properties of a thing are differ- 
 ent effects, produced severally by its entering as cen- 
 tral factor into different processes. Its heat, for in- 
 stance, is produced by one combination or process; 
 its weight by another. But Bosanquet claims that 
 the causation is not invariable and essential, because 
 the same combination or process does not produce all 
 these different effects. Is not that superlatively 
 absurd ? 
 
 Section 4. Nominalism 
 
 Considering this chaos of conflicting opinions 
 about the concept, it is not surprising that many 
 should wish to abolish it altogether. Thus Mill pro- 
 essentials of Logic, p. 165. 
 
104 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 nounces it "nothing less than a misfortune that the 
 words Concept, General Notion . . . should ever 
 have been invented." Sir Wm. Hamilton declares 
 that the concept cannot be realized in thought at 
 all. His words are too well known to need quoting ; 
 so I give but the first sentence: " Concepts express 
 only a relation.'' For just there we have the root of 
 the whole Nominalistic fallacy. Hamilton did not 
 see that relations are of different kinds and different 
 values. And it is because he has selected the most 
 vague, self-contradictory and worthless of all rela- 
 tions — to wit, the relation of likeness — as the one ex- 
 pressed in concepts, that he scouts at concepts as 
 worthless, unthinkable fictions. They cannot be 
 represented in imagination, hence cannot be applied 
 to any objects, and therefore cannot be realized in 
 thought at all. 
 
 I answer that conception is never a mere picturing 
 process. Even the crudest thinking does not speak 
 of one thing as like another, without some hint of 
 that upon which the likeness depends. And the 
 more exact, scientific and truthful our thinking be- 
 comes, the more we insist upon tracing these vague 
 resemblances back to the causal processes whence 
 they result. But instead of repeating what already 
 I have proved, let me call up both Mill and Hamil- 
 ton as witnesses to the truth of my doctrine. For 
 Hamilton says: "Though it is only by experience 
 that we come to attribute an external unity to aught 
 continuously extended, that is, consider it as a sys- 
 tem or constitutive whole, still in so far as we do 
 
THE CONCEPT IO5 
 
 thus consider it, we think, the parts as held together 
 by a certain force; and the whole, therefore, as en- 
 dowed with a power of resisting their distraction — 
 only if it resists distraction do we view it as more 
 than a fortuitous aggregation of many bodies. " 
 And Mill endorses this as "one of the best and pro- 
 foundest passages in all Sir Wm. Hamilton's writ- 
 ings." 1 
 
 The two leaders, then, of the rival schools of Eng- 
 lish thought agree, in their wiser moments, that a 
 concept is, after all, not a mere blurred picture of 
 many objects, that in its deepest meaning it points 
 to some power or process that binds together the 
 bundle of attributes and resists their distraction. 
 Even Hobbes has a passage to the same effect : "Ab- 
 stract is that which in any subject denotes the cause 
 of the concrete name. . . . And these causes of 
 names are the same with the causes of our concep- 
 tions, namely, some power of action or affection of 
 the thing conceived." 2 Thus all three of these 
 famous thinkers show themselves in their deeper 
 thinking as dissatisfied with their Nominalism, as 
 vaguely recognizing that concepts, after all, are not 
 fictitious unities, mean something more than their in- 
 tension or extension or both these together — are, in 
 fine, attempts to comprehend those causal processes 
 of Nature, the full discovery of which is the goal of 
 human thinking and knowing. 
 
 At the risk of some repetition, let me comment 
 
 Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, II. p. 67, note. 
 'Mill, Logic, Bk. L, ch. 5, § 3. 
 
!06 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 briefly upon another grave error concerning the con- 
 cept just now very much in vogue. It consists in 
 claiming that conception is essentially divisive in its 
 tendency. Thus Seth Pringle-Patterson says: 
 ' 'Conception deals wholly with abstracta, with iso- 
 lated aspects or points of view. It can never, there- 
 fore, express the facts of experience as they exist." 1 
 Still more strenuously Bergson and his school em- 
 phasize this isolating or divisive tendency. We are 
 even told that concepts "make the whole notion of a 
 causal influence between finite things incompre- 
 hensible. No real activities and indeed no real con- 
 nection of any kind can obtain, if we follow the con- 
 ceptual logic." 2 That statement — fantastic upon 
 its very face — evidently has its origin in the old 
 view of the conceptual world as purely static, eter- 
 nal, changeless. But that view I have made no 
 longer tenable. The causal processes that concepts 
 seek to express are, indeed, absolutely uniform and 
 continuous ; but that does not by any means 1 necessi- 
 tate the invariability of the results or effects. On 
 the contrary, as I have shown, it is this very con- 
 tinuity of the process which causes infinite variation 
 in the results. For example, it is the continuous ac- 
 tion of gravity which causes the velocity of the fall- 
 ing stone to vary in each infinitesimal instant. Other 
 processes may also modify or counteract the results 
 of any given process. In fine, concepts mean 
 uniform processes, but their uniformity by no 
 
 ^an's Place in the Cosmos, p. 147. 
 2 James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 246. 
 
THE CONCEPT IO7 
 
 means necessitates a static, changeless, paralyzed 
 world. 
 
 Another grave error in the statements is their ut- 
 ter one-sidedness. It is true in a sense that concep- 
 tion is divisive or isolating. Thought to be of any 
 value must distinguish precisely. But Bergson and 
 the others forget that right thinking distinguishes 
 only in order that it may more truly unite. The 
 Neo-Hegelians deserve credit for having insisted 
 that every judgment is at once analysis and syn- 
 thesis ; but their doctrine has a bizarre and paradoxi- 
 cal aspect unless we can show how it is possible that 
 the same act should at once divide and unite. That 
 I have done. For I have proved, first, that every 
 concept in its deepest, truest meaning signifies a 
 causal process ; and second, that the peculiarity of a 
 relation of cause and effect is, that it alone among 
 all relations, at once distinguishes, and yet unites 
 its terms by the firmest of bonds. 
 
 It seems then a strange mistake to affirm that con- 
 ceptual thinking merely excludes or isolates, that it 
 renders connection impossible. One might as well 
 say that the revolution of the earth on its axis ren- 
 ders day and night impossible. 
 
 Section 5. The Origin of Concepts 
 
 We have now examined the three main theories 
 of the concept and we have found them all ending 
 in insufferable paradoxes or self-contradictions; we 
 have further found that all these perplexities disap- 
 pear before the light of the simple theory advocated 
 
108 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 in these pages. So far then as metaphysical or psy- 
 chological evidence is concerned, our demonstration 
 seems complete. But I shall not rest here with this 
 abstract, metaphysical discussion. For this question 
 concerning the essential meaning of the concept is 
 of supreme importance. If the essence of all con- 
 cepts can be proved to be an affirmation of a causal 
 process, it would be enough by itself to demonstrate 
 my fundamental thesis that all thinking is a relating 
 of cause and effect ; for, no act of thinking is possi- 
 ble save through the medium of concepts. And so to 
 make assurance doubly sure, I add to the metaphysi- 
 cal demonstration another drawn from history. I 
 shall show that from the very first, the human mind 
 has dimly realized that a concept was the symbol 
 of a causal relation. And, furthermore, that to this 
 consciousness the origin of both language and sci- 
 ence is due. 
 
 (A) First consider the origin of language. It is 
 now a well-established principle in philology that 
 the majority of verbal roots express acts, and 
 mostly acts which in a primitive state of society men 
 are called upon to perform — such as digging, plait- 
 ing, weaving, striping, throwing, binding, etc. 
 Furthermore, they are generally acts performed in 
 common; for only thus would they become well 
 known, and only thus could the merely accidental 
 elements be eliminated. And most important of all, 
 we are told by Miiller 1 that the mere consciousness 
 of the acts of digging, binding, etc., is not enough ; 
 
 x Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Thought, p. 30. 
 
THE CONCEPT IO9 
 
 only when the processes are such that their results 
 remain perceptible — for example, in the hole dug, 
 in the tree struck down, in the reeds tied together 
 as a mat — do men reach conceptual thoughts in 
 language. 
 
 Every verbal root in language, then, stands 
 forth an enduring witness to the fact that concepts 
 mean causal processes. Or as another eminent 
 philologist, Noire, has said: "The conception of 
 causality subsisting betzveen things. Verily this 
 constitutes such a simple, plain, and at the same time 
 obvious and convincing means of distinguishing the 
 logos, human reason from animal intelligence, that 
 it seems inconceivable that this manifest and clear 
 boundary line should not long ago have been noted 
 and established as such." 1 
 
 From this unimpeachable proof presented by the 
 origin of language we turn now to evidence of an- 
 other kind, later, but equally conclusive. It is the 
 testimony offered by man's prolonged effort to 
 rightly classify natural things. Logicians still cling 
 with a sad tenacity to the superstition that classify- 
 ing consists in noting the mere resemblance of 
 things. But I have shown that mere feelings are 
 vague, misleading, self-contradictory and therefore 
 of little scientific value. What then is the principle 
 governing true classification? 
 
 We find that at a quite early period men, even the 
 half-civilized and the savage, had succeeded in clas- 
 sifying living things, so far as they were known, 
 
 iNoire, Origin of Language, p. 47. 
 
110 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 into their species or lowest kinds. The reason of 
 this success is evident. They had constantly before 
 their eyes the processes of production whence these 
 relationships sprang ; therefore it was easy to deter- 
 mine the species. 
 
 But concerning inorganic things there was no 
 such knowledge; then processes of production were 
 hidden in a darkness which the most enlightened 
 could not penetrate. Hence we find that every ef- 
 fort to classify inorganic things ended in complete, 
 ignominious failure. Even so great a genius as that 
 of Aristotle could invent no better scheme for classi- 
 fying the inorganic than these four kinds, "the hot 
 and dry, the hot and wet, the cold and dry and the 
 cold and wet." 
 
 Note further that ancient classification, even of 
 organic things, was confined to species. For thou- 
 sands of years learned men — Theophrastus, for ex- 
 ample, whom Aristotle selected to be his successor 
 — had been studying botany; and yet until three 
 centuries ago, they had not advanced beyond the 
 crude division of the plant world into "trees, shrubs 
 and herbs." But light dawned at last when Gessner 
 discovered that true genera could be formed by not- 
 ing characteristics drawn from the process of fructifi- 
 cation. Since then, naturalists in their long search 
 for a true or natural system of classification — as 
 Darwin expressly affirms — "have always been un- 
 consciously guided, not by mere resemblances, but 
 by the principle of inheritance." 1 But the principle 
 
 1 Origin of Species, Ch. 14. 
 
THE CONCEPT III 
 
 of inheritance is but another phrase for process of 
 production. What more perfect demonstration 
 than this could be given of my doctrine that mere 
 feelings of resemblance are of slight value until 
 transformed into causal relations? In other words, 
 a concept means something more than an imaginary 
 collection of resembling things, or an impossible 
 bundle of attributes or both of these together. In its 
 deepest, most essential meaning it symbolizes the 
 causal process which produces both the individuals 
 and their attributes. 
 
 And under the guidance of this same principle, 
 Darwin himself was led to that sublime discovery 
 which has revolutionized modern thought. 
 
 Thus we have unravelled those two inter tangled 
 perplexities that for thousands of years have made 
 the concept a subject of constant dispute and uncer- 
 tainty. The first perplexity was the double import 
 of the concept. Some logicians, like Sigwart, Brad- 
 ley, etc., have placed exclusive stress upon the ex- 
 tension. Others like Mill insist that "the extension 
 is not anything intrinsic to the concept. . . . But 
 the comprehension is the concept itself." 1 Or as Sir 
 Wm. Hamilton puts it : "A notion or concept is the 
 fictitious whole or unity made up of a plurality of 
 attributes." 2 Thus each party sees but one side of 
 the shield. We have shown both sides, and what is 
 
 Examination, Hamilton's Philosophy, I. p. 79. 
 2 Lectures, II. p. 171. 
 
112 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 far more important, the bond of union between 
 them. Both are simply results of the process of pro- 
 duction which the concept represents. 
 
 Second, that process of production is no mere fig- 
 ment of the mind. It is a reality in part perceptible 
 by the senses and always verifiable by inductive ob- 
 servation. Furthermore, this view explains the sub- 
 ordination of concepts as due to the inclusion of one 
 causal process within another wider one. Thus we 
 need not be puzzled, as Lotze was, by the fact that 
 one object can be at once an animal, a vertebrate, a 
 mammal and a cow. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 JUDGMENT 
 
 Section I. The Unity of Judgment and Inference 
 
 One of the most eminent of living psychologists, 
 in the closing pages of a recent work, makes the fol- 
 lowing declaration : "I wish that I could offer some 
 positive contribution to the psychology of judgment; 
 but the insuperable difficulty there is that we do not 
 yet know what judgment is. It is an anomalous 
 position. We are committed to a psychology of 
 judgment; we can no longer say with Rehmke that 
 the phrase is contradictory in itself, or with Marbe 
 that there is no psychological criterion of judgment; 
 and yet no one, psychologist or logician, can furnish 
 a definition that finds general acceptance." 1 And he 
 adds that this is not a matter simply of different 
 points of view; there is actual uncertainty regard- 
 ing the nature and limits of the process to be de- 
 fined. 
 
 Another eminent psychologist lays stress upon 
 the uncertainty in regard to the limits of judgment. 
 He speaks of "the undue proportion of reasoning 
 that recent logical theory has brought under the 
 head of judgment, and the little that is left to the 
 more practical operation of judgment. Superficially 
 regarded this seems to indicate that the recent writ- 
 ers have failed to find any sharp line of distinction 
 
 iTitchener, Psychology of the Thought Process, 188. 
 
114 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 between what they call judgment and what they call 
 inference." 1 
 
 But here, too, my fundamental thesis will dispel 
 the double darkness. It will enable us to precisely 
 define the nature of judgment and to draw a sharp 
 line of distinction between judgment and inference. 
 To do this let me recall a view already suggested — 
 namely, the superior freedom of thought or reason 
 compared with Nature. The course of Nature is 
 from cause to effect; its past is irrevocable. But 
 thought or reason is endowed with the grand pre- 
 rogative of moving at will in either direction. It 
 can follow the course of nature by passing from 
 cause to effect ; or it can reverse that movement and 
 pass freely from observed effects to a knowledge of 
 their causes. This reverse movement is, indeed, 
 more difficult than the other; but it is by far the 
 higher, nobler function — the method of all scientific 
 advance, the secret of all human progress. 
 
 Now the proposition I expect to prove is this: 
 Judgment is the movement of thought from causes 
 to their effects; inference is the reverse movement 
 from effects to their causes. Thus we draw a sharp 
 line of distinction beween judgment and inference; 
 and yet reveal their underlying unity. 
 
 The truth of this view, so far as judgment is con- 
 cerned, is evident at a glance. Human knowledge 
 begins with the recognition of things as causes. The 
 most benighted savage can abstract; he can distin- 
 guish between the thing perceived and the activities 
 
 iPillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning, pp. 170- 171. 
 
JUDGMENT 115 
 
 it puts forth or the changes it undergoes. Thus 
 there develops some crude idea of substantial causes 
 and of their qualities as dependent upon them. 
 
 But there are objections that must be met. Let us 
 turn, then, to Lotze's criticism of the judgment, he 
 being the inventor of most of the puzzles and para- 
 doxes rehearsed by Bradley and others. 
 
 Lotze begins his criticism by referring to the so- 
 called impersonal judgments, it rains, it lightens, 
 etc. But really they form a signal proof of my 
 thesis. That little word "it" is a most significant one. 
 The essential function of thought, for the savage 
 as for us, is to relate cause and effect. But primi- 
 tive man did not know the cause of rain or lightning, 
 and so he inserted the neutral word, it, as the sym- 
 bol of an unknown cause. And we still retain the 
 word, because we are almost as ignorant as the cave- 
 man was. Who fully knows why rain-drops fall or 
 what electricity means ? 
 
 Lotze's main attack, however, is on the categorical 
 judgment against which he makes three charges. 
 
 (a) The first is that the relation between the real 
 thing and its properties cannot be transferred to the 
 relation of subjects to their predicates. "In regard to 
 the latter relation we find no corresponding account 
 of the way in which one inheres in the other." 1 How 
 much of this metaphysical relation will survive, he 
 asks, if the thing be replaced by something which is 
 not a thing, and the property by something which is 
 not a property? I answer that all this hinges upon 
 
 1 Logic, § 53. 
 
1 16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the misleading and preposterous relation of inher- 
 ence. But I have shown that the true relation of sub- 
 stance and attribute is a causal one. And obviously 
 that relation can be transferred to any subject and 
 predicate, no matter whether the subject be a thing 
 or not, so long as it is a cause or causal factor. 
 
 (b) Lotze's second criticism of the categorical 
 judgment is that it cannot be explained by saying 
 that one term is predicated of the other. His argu- 
 ment here is very misty and prolix, but the gist of it 
 is given in the final sentence: "It still remains a 
 further question: What constitutes this peculiar re- 
 lation ?" I answer that it is the relation of the sub- 
 ject as partial cause or factor in a process to the 
 effect produced by that process. 
 
 (c) Lotze's third and final objection is that such 
 judgments are indefensible against the principle of 
 identity. My answer can be given in his own words 
 — not chance words dropped in a careless moment, 
 but an ultimate principle set forth at the close of his 
 Logic. He there maintains that equations — the only 
 real identities 2 — "express the fact that certain opera- 
 tions, different in form, applied in a prescribed order 
 to any given quantities within defined limits will 
 give identical results." That is quite true, but it 
 ruins Lotze's third criticism of the judgment. For 
 it affirms that equations, the class of judgments that 
 are the most abstract, the farthest removed from 
 any appearance of causal activity, are, after all, in 
 
 mid., pp. 54, Si- 
 2 Ibid., p. 486. 
 
JUDGMENT 117 
 
 their essence, in the deepest core of their meaning, 
 judgments of causality. For example, the judg- 
 ment 7+5=12 means that the addition of 5 units 
 to 7 units will result in 12 units. And as already 
 said, that is no casual, unguarded admission, but 
 Lotze's ultimate, reasoned account of equations. 
 
 We have thus examined Lotze's keen indictment 
 of the judging process. And we have found that 
 when the judgment is viewed aright — namely, as 
 thought's movement from cause to effect — all his 
 charges fall to the ground. The puzzles, anomalies 
 and discrepancies which he finds are due to his fail- 
 ure to see the true, intrinsic nature of judgment. 
 
 Section 2. Brentano and Watt 
 
 Brentano was one of the first thinkers to em- 
 phasize the view, now so widely accepted, that the 
 judgment is a unitary process. The motive inspir- 
 ing such a view is an admirable one ; it is that long- 
 ing for unity of thought which has ever character- 
 ized the scientific spirit. But very few, probably, 
 would now insist that Brentano' s theory accom- 
 plishes its purpose ; and from our present position we 
 can readily see the cause of its failure. 
 
 For the great peril attending all such endeavors 
 is that they may mistake mere confusion for genuine 
 unity. You cannot attain real unity of thought by 
 simply flinging everything into one melting-pot. 
 But Brentano, and many others after him, have tried 
 to present the judgment as a unitary process by 
 merely effacing that normal, elementary distinction 
 
Il8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 between the two terms — subject and predicate — 
 which have always been recognized as forming the 
 very essence of the judgment. In place of this 
 familiar, clear distinction he would substitute the 
 mystifying duality of perceptive act and content. 
 The result is not real unity, but confusion and vague- 
 ness. 
 
 For example, he identifies judgment with belief. 
 But as another has said: "Brentano positively de- 
 clines to state in what the process of belief consists, 
 or to give it any conditions. He argues strenuously 
 that it is an unanalyzable process. We believe, and 
 that is all that can be said. This can mean only that 
 the process has not yet been analyzed, or that 
 Brentano does not care to undertake the process." 1 
 
 That certainly is an anomalous position. Judg- 
 ment is belief ; and belief is an unanalyzable process ! 
 According to Kant, the mind has no assured knowl- 
 edge of the outer world ; according to Brentano, the 
 mind has no knowledge of its own most elementary 
 and constant operations; so simple an act as a judg- 
 ment is an unanalyzable and therefore unintelligible 
 process. Between the two, the mind seems reduced 
 very near to a state of idiocy. 
 
 But now look at the matter from my causal point 
 of view. The predicate is related to the subject, not 
 by some fantastic inherence therein, but by being 
 an effect whereof the subject is the partial cause. 
 There you have the judgment presented as a unitary 
 process without any slurring or effacing of those 
 
 1 Pillsbury, Psychology of Reasoning, p. 28. 
 
JUDGMENT 119 
 
 indispensable distinctions that form the essence of a 
 judgment. Nay, more than that, both the unity and 
 the distinctions are emphasized to the utmost. 
 Nothing so clearly distinguishes two terms as a re- 
 lation of cause and effect; and nothing binds them 
 together by firmer bonds. 
 
 It may be objected that in Chapter IV. I accept 
 Brentano's view of sensations as by themselves in- 
 distinguishable from each other, and that here I am 
 contraverting it. But that would not be true. Sen- 
 sations are indistinguishable from each other only 
 when isolated from the causal processes — or the ex- 
 ternal and internal factors thereof — producing them. 
 So my two references to Brentano's view cor- 
 roborate, instead of contradicting, each other. 
 
 But let us turn now to a recent discovery that is 
 being welcomed as opening a new epoch in experi- 
 mental psychology — Watt's disclosure of the Auf- 
 gabe, the task or problem as the one sole psychologi- 
 cal criterion of thought. That chimes perfectly with 
 the doctrine I am here advocating. True, Watt finds 
 many such tasks, instead of the one ultimate, all-em- 
 bracing task of relating cause and effect. But Titch- 
 ener explains that: "We may say in general that 
 many of the problems which give direction to hu- 
 man activity have this character of the obvious and 
 in so far of the unconscious, and that philosophical 
 reflection and self-examination are needed to raise 
 them into the clear light of consciousness. . . . 
 
120 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Just because this predisposition is altogether ac- 
 customed and obvious, it will not of itself and un- 
 aided come to consciousness as what it is. . . . 
 This relief of consciousness, this gradual mechaniz- 
 ing by practice of processes that at first demanded 
 effort of attention and consideration from various 
 points of view, is one of the most firmly established 
 results of psychology." 
 
 I am demonstrating in this volume that the ele- 
 mental, all-inclusive task or function of thought is to 
 differentiate the existent into cause and effect. But 
 as said in the above quotation, a task or function 
 thus universal and familiar tends to fall into the 
 background of the mechanical, the instinctive and 
 unconscious. Its place in consciousness is taken by 
 a crowd of minor, special problems which, being un- 
 familiar and therefore difficult, demand all our ef- 
 forts of attention and absorb all our mental energies. 
 Philosophic reflection ought to recall to conscious- 
 ness what has been thus obscured. But modern phi- 
 losophy not merely ignores, but denies the very ex- 
 istence of that causation which it is the supreme task 
 or function of thought to reveal. 
 
 Section J. Meaning 
 
 There is a theory of judgment much favored by 
 modern logicians which describes it as the ascription 
 of meaning to the given. But of this I shall say but 
 little. For it is nothing but the fallacy of resem- 
 blance come to the front again under a new name. 
 The universal is conceived as a type or standard rep- 
 
JUDGMENT 121 
 
 resenting a great mass of particulars ; in fine, it is a 
 vague resemblance, at once like and not like its par- 
 ticulars. As one writer says : "When we think, the 
 type or standard is in consciousness, and nothing 
 else. In perception as well, we are conscious of 
 nothing but the type, of nothing but the meaning." 
 
 Now undoubtedly there is in mental life such a 
 process as that of noting mere resemblances or types. 
 It is but a reflex activity, an automatic response to 
 stimuli, shared by all animals down — so far as I 
 know — even to the Amceba. But this brute asso- 
 ciation of similarities is not thought. It differs from 
 thought as night from day. 
 
 For first, when you attempt to express your 
 "types" in definite terms, you reach nothing but a 
 self-contradiction — like and not-like — and that is the 
 paralysis, the destruction of thought. 
 
 Second. This association of types may suffice for 
 merely animal needs; but it gives no capacity for 
 continuous advance in knowledge, the crowning 
 glory of thought. 
 
 Third. Even the advocates of the type-theory 
 admit that it does not satisfactorily explain large 
 groups of judgments. True, the writer just quoted 
 would account for this failure as due to defects in 
 human speech, rather than in his theory: "The du- 
 plicity in this whole group of judgments is linguistic 
 only; the mental operation is single." But it seems 
 incredible that all languages, high and low, should 
 have thus conspired to say exactly the opposite of 
 what they ought to say. It looks as if psychological 
 
122 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 introspection rather than universal language must 
 have gone astray. 
 
 Fourth, the lack of any real proof of this doctrine 
 is shown by the revival, in its behalf, of the very 
 old and foolish quibble about the copula. Bradley 
 makes that quibble the corner-stone of his entire phi- 
 losophy. Even the staid Sigwart asks forlornly : 
 "But how does it happen that the verb to be, which 
 is the expression of actual existence, assumes a for- 
 mal function in the copula, whereby it loses its 
 meaning — nay even seems to contradict it?" 1 
 
 I answer that in the copula, being or existence 
 neither loses nor contradicts, but rather reveals its 
 true and deepest meaning. For, to be or to exist 
 means to be in causal connection with other existents. 
 And that is precisely its meaning in the copula; it 
 asserts a causal connection between the subject and 
 the predicate. 
 
 The copula is thus wondrously well adapted to ex- 
 press the exact relation of the two terms of a judg- 
 ment. For, remember, the subject is not the cause 
 of its predicate, but simply a factor in the causal 
 process producing the attribute. "The house is red" 
 does not mean that the house was the sole cause of 
 its redness, but the painter, the owner, the paints 
 were likewise factors in the process. Thus always 
 the copula expresses a causal connection, no more, 
 no less. In fine, the creators of language seem to 
 have had far more prescience than the creators of 
 "modern" logic. 
 x Logic, II. p. ioo. 
 
JUDGMENT 123 
 
 Section 4. Judgments of Relation 
 
 There is a class of judgments that demand special 
 attention because they are at once very obscure and 
 very important — judgments of relation or compari- 
 son. Lotze's treatment of them best exemplifies their 
 obscurity, and so from it we will start. What looms 
 up most in his view is the perplexity involved in the 
 idea of "betzveen." He asks, "What are we to make 
 of this idea of a self-existent distinction between 
 a and b? And what objective relation can corre- 
 spond to this "between," to which we only attach 
 a meaning so long as it suggests to us the distance 
 in space which we, in comparing a with b, interpo- 
 lated by way of metaphor for the purpose of holding 
 the two apart, and' at the same time as a connecting 
 path on which our mind might be able to travel from 
 one to the other?" 1 
 
 Is not the above quotation a signal proof of my 
 fundamental thesis? I have said that since the sole 
 essential function of thought is to relate cause and 
 effort, therefore whoever discards this only genuine 
 mode of thinking has but one possible resort : he is 
 inevitably driven, despite himself, to a sort of quasi- 
 thinking by means of metaphor or hypostasis. Is 
 not that precisely what Lotze does in the present 
 case? He is trying, as the context shows, to inter- 
 pret the difference between the idea of red and that 
 of yellow. And his only resort is to imagine these 
 two ideas set out in space with a third thing, the 
 idea of difference put between them to keep them 
 1 Lotze, Logic, § 338. 
 
124 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 apart. Could anything be more preposterous ? But 
 turn now to the only genuine way of thinking — by 
 causal interpretation. You then recognize red and 
 yellow, not as two objects set apart like two stumps 
 with another object — their difference — squatted "be- 
 tween" them; but as two cognate products of one 
 uniform optical process, with a certain definite differ- 
 ence due to varying degrees of refrangibility. Your 
 metaphor, your puzzle and paradox have all de- 
 parted. 
 
 Yet Lotze insists that what cannot be a relation 
 between 1 things "cannot be a relation in the ordinary 
 sense of the term at all." And Bradley elaborates 
 this hint into his celebrated philosophy of the Abso- 
 lute. Another eminent thinker bases his religion 
 upon the same silly metaphor. He says: "It is all 
 in the 'between' ; betweenness in its very nature 
 cannot exist in any point of space. . . . Apart from 
 mind there can be no relatedness, apart from rela- 
 tions no space, apart from space no matter. It fol- 
 lows that apart from mind there can be no matter." 2 
 That is his proof of God's existence. 
 
 And this metaphorical or hypostasizing malady 
 seems equally epidemic in recent realism. In Rus- 
 sell's philosophy, for instance, mere adjectives, 
 qualities, colors, kinds — even "difference" itself — are 
 hypostasised into eternal, immutable entities. 3 
 "Change in the metaphysical sense" is rejected.* 
 
 mid., p. 338. 
 
 2 Rashdall, Philosophy and Religion, II. 
 3 Principles of Mathematics, p. 471. 
 mid., p. 486. 
 
JUDGMENT 125 
 
 Russell, like Hegel, repudiates induction as "mere 
 guesswork." 1 Causalty also he discards; "on the 
 whole it is not worth while preserving the word 
 cause." 2 And as an inevitable sequel the judgment 
 loses all real validity. "The whole doctrine of sub- 
 ject and predicate is radically false and must be 
 abandoned." 3 
 
 To show the main source of error in this kind of 
 realism let us turn to the puzzle which Leibniz found 
 in the judgment, "L is greater than M" ; and over 
 which Russell labors long and in vain. Now that 
 is plainly a judgment about the magnitude of L. 4 
 But this magnitude is a property of L, an effect 
 produced by a causal process wherein L is the chief 
 visible factor. And the change to the comparative 
 degree, "greater than M" changes the judgment 
 nowise except to make it more exact. Therefore the 
 comparative judgment, so puzzling to Leibniz and 
 Russell, is simply a more exact expression of the 
 causal relation expressed in the simpler judgment, 
 "L has magnitude." 
 
 Evidently here and throughout Russell's philos- 
 ophy the fatal flaw is his conviction that "it is not 
 worth while preserving the word cause." 
 
 Thus the problem set before us by the two eminent 
 psychologists quoted at the beginning of the chapter 
 — namely, to dispel the uncertainty enveloping both 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 11. 
 
 mid., P . 486. 
 
 3 Ibid., p 466 Cf. Hegel's Logic, §§ 31, 172. 
 *Ibid., p. 222. 
 
126 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the nature and the limits of judgment — seems to be 
 solved. First, the nature of the judgment consists 
 in affirming a causal relation; we have scrutinized 
 the leading theories of judgment and found them 
 honeycombed with defects and contradictions due to 
 ignoring this essential nature of judgment. Second, 
 the limit of judgment as distinguished from infer- 
 ence is that the former is thought's movement from 
 the substantial cause to its effects or attributes ; the 
 latter is thought's movement from observed effects 
 to their causes. But the full proof of this distinction 
 between judgment and inference must be reserved 
 for the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 INDUCTION 
 
 Section I. The Great Enigma 
 
 Among all the scandals clouding modern phi- 
 losophy, none seems quite so disgraceful as its failure 
 to give a clear and consistent theory of the inductive 
 method. For more than three centuries now the use 
 of that method has been achieving marvels that have 
 revolutionized the life of mankind ; and yet the exact 
 nature of that method remains almost as much a 
 secret for modern philosophy as it was for Aristotle. 
 Furthermore, this inductive problem is not only in 
 itself one of such supreme importance, but it is also 
 one upon which all philosophic development hinges. 
 This latter fact is signally proved by the Kantian 
 system, of which all succeeding systems seem little 
 more than cheaper editions. For Ueberweg is cer- 
 tainly right when he speaks of Kant as "assuming 
 (what he does not prove, but simply posits as self- 
 evident, although his whole system depends upon it) 
 that necessity and strict universality are derivable 
 from no combination of experiences, but only inde- 
 pendently of all experiences." 1 According to Kant, 
 "Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that 
 it must necessarily be so and not otherwise; hence 
 she gives us no true universality." 
 
 Kant, then, was fully alive to the immense sig- 
 
 1 History of Philosophy, II. p. 161. 
 
128 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 nificance of the problem, although he gave to it a 
 wrong solution. Hegel, on the other hand, with 
 characteristic audacity, simply ignores it. Unable 
 to explain induction in his Logic, he shoves it 
 aside with a few contemptuous lines. It is nothing 
 more than a mere enumeration of similar instances. 1 
 "In no induction can we ever exhaust the individuals. 
 . . . Every induction is consequently imperfect. 
 ... By this defect of induction we are led on to 
 analogy/' 2 And this analogy, of which induction 
 is but a defective form, is a mere instinct, an arguing 
 from faith ! And the whole nineteenth century, re- 
 splendent with the victories of inductive science, 
 has taught nothing beyond that to Hegelians. Bo- 
 sanquet, for example, affirms that "scientific induc- 
 tion is, indeed, something of a contradiction in 
 terms. 3 . . . It is not an inference, but a transient 
 and external characteristic of inference." 4 No won- 
 der that so zealous a devotee of Hegelism as Joachim 
 exclaims mournfully : "The coherence notion of truth 
 may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very 
 entrance of the harbor/' 5 
 
 Nor does modern realism seem anywise more com- 
 petent than its rival to reach a rational interpreta- 
 tion of the inductive method. Mill, indeed, should 
 be highly honored for the courage and skill with 
 which he attacked this deep and difficult problem; 
 nevertheless he did not solve it. In fact, Mill's ex- 
 
 1 Hegel, Logic, p. 427, note. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 190, note. 
 
 3 Bosanquet, Logic, II. p. 118. 
 
 *Ibid. II., p. 176. 
 
 'Joachim, Nature of Truth, p. 170. 
 
INDUCTION 129 
 
 position of the inductive method is in many respects 
 very deceptive. Out of these many respects I can 
 here summarize only the two leading, most compre- 
 hensive ones. First, Mill is as much entangled as 
 Hegel in the Fallacy of Resemblance. Their phrase- 
 ology is different, but both fall into the same abyss 
 of error. Hegel is absorbed in "identity and differ- 
 ence"; for Mill "the universal type of the reasoning 
 process" is : "Certain individuals have a given attri- 
 bute, an individual or individuals resemble the for- 
 mer in certain other attributes; therefore they re- 
 semble them also in the given attribute." 1 Both fail 
 to see that mere feelings of resemblance, of likeness 
 and unlikeness, instead of being the universal type 
 of the reasoning process, are but irrational, pre- 
 logical modes of the psychical, which of themselves 
 lead nowhere but to incoherence, self-contradiction 
 and the consequent extinction of thought. Secondly, 
 Mill, like Hegel, degrades induction ultimately into 
 a mere enumeration of particulars. He expressly 
 affirms that the principle of nature's uniformity 
 "must be considered as our warrant for all the others 
 in this sense, that if it were not true, all other in- 
 ductions would be fallacious." 2 All induction, then, 
 is ultimately reducible to an illicit process ; all reason- 
 ing is fundamentally irrational. The sophistries by 
 which Mill tries to evade this conclusion have been 
 too often exposed by others to need a tedious recital 
 here. 
 
 "Logic, Bk. II. ch. 3, § 7- 
 'Ibid., Bk. III. ch. 3, § 1. 
 
130 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 But no other logician has ever been able to ex- 
 tricate himself from these two errors any more than 
 Hegel or Mill were. True, some of them have 
 striven hard to escape from the second error — in- 
 duction viewed as an illicit and palpably impossible 
 process. But they have not succeeded. The most 
 plausible attempt was that of Jevons, by describing 
 induction as but reversed deduction, or as Sigwart 
 prefers to phrase it, reduction. But that is circular 
 reasoning in its most obvious form. Deduction is 
 reasoning from universal affirmations; but how do 
 you justify these universals from which you proceed 
 to reason? The answer is, by reverse deduction. 
 You are bound upon the revolving wheel of error, 
 and you will not escape by merely reversing the 
 revolutions. 
 
 Of the first-named error, the fallacy of resem- 
 blance, there has not been not even recognition, much 
 less any serious attempt to escape therefrom. With 
 surprising uniformity all logicians degrade induction 
 into a mere bundling together of similarities. Even 
 Jevons, Mill's chief antagonist, agrees with him that 
 "the fundamental process of reasoning consists in 
 inferring of anything what we know of similar ob- 
 jects." 1 But James outstrips all rivals in his zeal 
 for similarity; in his opinion the most elementary 
 single difference between the human mind and that 
 of brutes lies in the deficiency on the brute's part 
 to associate ideas by similarity. The mere feeling 
 of likeness, he thinks, is the crowning trait of human 
 
 ^obhouse, Theory of Knowledge, p. 285. 
 
INDUCTION 131 
 
 genius at its loftiest; even Newton's immortal dis- 
 covery was due to a sudden outburst, "a flash of 
 similarity" between an apple and the moon. 1 But I 
 doggedly insist upon the familiar fact that brutes 
 have a surer scent for similarity than man has ; and 
 that, according to James' theory of reasoning, the 
 brutes and not a Newton ought to have produced the 
 Principia. 
 
 The theory of induction, then, seems enigmatic 
 enough ; reasoning appears somehow to present itself 
 from start to finish as inexplicably unreasonable. 
 And from the historical point of view still another 
 enigma emerges to deepen the mystery. The scien- 
 tific discoveries made in ancient times were due 
 mainly to the Hindus and the Alexandrian Greeks f 
 they were few in number and comparatively trivial. 
 Why, then, after so many thousand years of stag- 
 nation and sterility, did this strange inductive 
 method — this highest type of the reasoning process 
 — suddenly in the last two or three centuries bloom 
 forth into all the splendors of modern science ? That 
 problem certainly has never been solved. It has 
 hardly been seriously propounded. 
 
 Both from the theoretic and the historic point of 
 view we are justified in entitling induction the great 
 enigma. And no better test of a genuine philosophy 
 can be conceived than its ability to solve a problem 
 so important and one that has heretofore defied all 
 attempts at its solution. 
 
 1 James, Psychology, II. p. 360. 
 
 *Cf. my Philosophy of History, pp. 60-65, 126-134, 189-197. 
 
132 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Section 2, Deduction 
 
 My solution of this long unsolved and yet su- 
 premely important problem is briefly as follows : All 
 reasoning or inference is primarily induction. De- 
 duction is but a branch of the inductive method, a 
 subsidiary phase thereof, applicable to special sub- 
 jects. No other view except this can safeguard the 
 unity of all reasoning and ultimately of all thought. 
 
 To clear my view from all appearances of paradox 
 let us consider first the mathematical sciences, since 
 they have always been accounted pre-eminently de- 
 ductive. Beginning with arithmetic, we find it every- 
 where based upon the mental creation of unchanging 
 units. In counting, however much the objects 
 counted may vary, the units substituted for them by 
 thought remain absolutely invariable and equivalent 
 to each other. The arithmetician mentally excludes 
 all differentiating or modifying agencies as rigidly 
 as the physicist physically excludes them from his 
 experiments. Mark further that this is not merely 
 a basal principle underlying arithmetic; more than 
 that, it is a method that must be used at every single 
 step of an arithmetical process. Every such minute 
 step is an induction, a discerning of the universal 
 in the particular. Savages do not clearly distinguish 
 between numbers and things numbered, nor even did 
 the Greeks, apparently. 
 
 This essentially inductive character is also evinced 
 in geometry. A geometric demonstration is the link- 
 ing together of many inferences, each so simple that 
 we recognize its universal validity at a glance. Mod- 
 
INDUCTION 133 
 
 ifying agencies are excluded by the homogeneity of 
 space. When, for instance, a straight line is drawn 
 to a point upon another line, you see that the angles 
 thus formed will be equal to two right angles, not 
 only in this particular case, but universally, because 
 in pure space there is nothing which could cause 
 a difference. In fine, it is this swift, almost un- 
 conscious but never failing transition from the par- 
 ticular to the universal, at each successive step in 
 the reasoning that forms the essence, the very soul 
 and life of a geometric demonstration. The rest is 
 a mere task of construction, an ingenious fitting 
 together of many inductions, until you attain the 
 desired result. But without this incessant transfor- 
 mation of each particular inference into a universal 
 one, as you proceed, your proof would be valid only 
 for the one little figure given in the diagram. 
 
 It would seem, then, that what is usually called 
 mathematical deduction is, in its most characteristic 
 and fundamental features, really induction. Espe- 
 cially the final theorems in geometry, dependent as 
 they are for their proof upon the preceding ones, are 
 made up of hundreds of minute inductions as a living 
 body is made up of living cells. 
 
 Furthermore, those deductions which are not 
 mathematical or quantitative, but simply syllogistic, 
 are still more obviously of an essentially inductive 
 character. A syllogism is the union of two premises, 
 both of which are of inductive origin. All the 
 really difficult and valuable work of reasoning lies 
 in the formation and verifying of those premises; 
 the putting of them together in the form of a syllo- 
 
134 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 gism was almost as much a mechanical task as the 
 nailing together of two boards. Indeed, syllogistic 
 machines have been invented which seem to perform 
 this task quite as well as the average man. 
 
 Nevertheless, this theory of reasoning, so obvious 
 and irrefragable, so accordant with the whole history 
 and spirit of science, is exactly opposite to that of 
 most modern logicians. They still worship at the 
 shrine of syllogism. They agree with Hegel, appa- 
 rently, that everything, the whole universe and its 
 contents, "is a syllogism.'' Bosanquet shoves induc- 
 tion aside as a transient and external characteristic 
 of inference. The name Scientific Induction, he 
 declares, "is something of a contradiction in terms." 
 Lotze likewise is "certain that inductive methods 
 rest entirely upon the results of the deductive logic." 1 
 For Sigwart and Jevons induction is but deduction 
 inverted, turned upside down. Even Mill, generally 
 regarded as the creator of inductive logic, in the 
 long run reduces induction — as we shall soon see — 
 to a feeble and forlorn auxiliary to deduction. 
 
 But I am not at all dismayed by this array against 
 me. For I know its origin and its futility. It orig- 
 inates in that passion for innate ideas and a-priorities 
 which has so long cursed modern philosophy. Theo- 
 rists, unable to understand induction, have in sheer 
 despair invented a crowd of innate ideas, postulates, 
 a-priorities, etc., to furnish a basis and starting-point 
 for knowledge. All these arbitrary, unverifiable and 
 futile assumptions I sweep aside contemptuously. If 
 
 x Lotze, Logic, § 288. 
 
INDUCTION 135 
 
 philosophy can find no better basis than that, it is 
 bound to end in dull, stupid skepticism. 
 
 Section 5. The True Theory of Induction 
 
 Induction, as we have seen, is the mind's passage 
 from observed results to the causal processes pro- 
 ducing them. In the pre-scientific age of thought 
 what was called induction was merely the observa- 
 tion of particulars, their resemblances and sequences ; 
 like things it was assumed must produce like effects ; 
 an event that often preceded another event must be 
 its cause. But any such mere enumeration of par- 
 ticulars can never give a genuine induction, a legiti- 
 mate ascent from particulars to universals. It may 
 answer some of the practical purposes of life, but is 
 loaded down with liabilities to error. In fine, it is 
 not induction at all, but simply judgment. And I 
 may add that this explains why so great a genius 
 as Aristotle should have given such a sorry account 
 of induction ; he lived in the pre-scientific age. 
 
 For modern science has added to the mere obser- 
 vation or enumeration of particulars another, a 
 higher and supreme method, that of experiment. 
 And by that sign she has conquered. Of course, 
 man has always been, in some crude, bungling 
 fashion, more or less of an experimenter. But 
 science alone has given to experiment its supremacy, 
 systematized it, invented for its use a wonderful 
 array of instruments. 
 
 But modern logicians have been strangely blind to 
 the depth and width of meaning enfolded in that 
 
I36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 familiar word, experiment. Above all, they have not 
 seen that scientific experiment is of two kinds, two 
 hemispheres of one globe. The one kind is physical 
 experiment, whereby some supposed factor in a 
 causal process is actually isolated from modifying 
 agencies. In the other kind, the experimentation is 
 abstract or mathematical; the supposed factor or 
 force is mentally isolated, reduced to so simple a form 
 that its results can be calculated and compared with 
 the actually observed results. This distinction be- 
 tween two kinds of experiment I expect to show is 
 the key to that problem of the inductive method 
 which modern logic heretofore has so dismally failed 
 to solve. 
 
 My theory, then, briefly outlined is this : Induction 
 is the discovery of causal processes by means of the 
 two methods just described, physical and mental ex- 
 periment. 
 
 Furthermore, in proving my thesis I shall not fol- 
 low the usual course of logicians who in treating of 
 induction arbitrarily select out of the immense mass 
 of scientific discoveries and experiments a few special 
 instances that happen to suit their theories. That is 
 sophistry naked and unashamed. On the contrary, 
 my proof will be drawn not from selected fragments, 
 but from the whole — the entire course of scientific 
 development. The sciences will be taken up one by 
 one, and of each it will be shown that its long delay 
 and its final success in becoming a true science — a 
 verified body of knowledge — can be explained only 
 by the principle here enunciated. 
 
INDUCTION 137 
 
 (a) Concerning the abstract or mathematical 
 sciences the proof has already been given in the pre- 
 ceding section. A necklace of pearls is something 
 different from the individual pearls of which it is 
 composed; nevertheless the individual pearls do not 
 change their nature by being thus strung together. 
 In that sense, and in that alone, we may speak of a 
 geometric demonstration as being a deduction ; that 
 is, a composite of many minute inductions skillfully 
 strung together. Each of these simple inductions 
 is an experiment; that is, a mental exclusion of all 
 influences that might modify the result. Each 
 thereby translates the particular seen in the diagram 
 into a universal. But it is unnecessary to repeat 
 what was said only three or four pages before this 
 one. 
 
 The abstract sciences, then, are manifestly experi- 
 mental and inductive — at least for any one with 
 brains enough to comprehend the essential unity of 
 physical and mental experiment. 
 
 (b) We come then to mechanics, the first of the 
 concrete sciences. Let me begin by quoting what 
 Lotze has well said : "The entire period of antiquity 
 passed away without the conception of motion — the 
 central point in mechanics — having been educed in a 
 simple form enough to be immediately apprehended 
 by the mind in its abstract character. . . . The mind 
 of antiquity never succeeded in separating the simple 
 process in which all motion consists — continuous 
 change of place — from the conflicting peculiarities 
 of those different classes of instances in which it 
 
I38 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 occurs." 1 All that is manifestly true; and it vaguely 
 anticipates my doctrine that mechanics began to be 
 a true science only by means of a long, difficult course 
 of mental experiment, which gradually excluded all: 
 that was adventitious and irrelevant in the ancient 
 view of motion, and thus set forth that concept 
 in its purest, simplest form. For example, even so 
 imperial a genius as that of Kepler wasted twenty 
 years of severe but unavailing toil, mainly because 
 he clung to the old Greek error that the only perfect 
 motion was circular motion. When it finally dawned 
 upon him that both elliptic and circular motions were 
 but variously modified forms of one simple motion 
 or continuous change of place his problem was vir- 
 tually solved. 
 
 Again, Galileo's discovery of the first law of 
 motion is a double proof of my contention. For, 
 first, he arrives at his law by observing that changes 
 in the velocity of a moving body are due to some 
 external agency counteracting or modifying it ; hence 
 he concludes that such agencies being excluded, the 
 motion would persist uniformly forever. Second, 
 it is a most significant although little known fact 
 that Galileo's insight into this law was a very de- 
 fective one. 2 He imagines that motion in a circle, 
 if freed from all foreign influences, would be as 
 eternally persistent as motion in a straight line ! So 
 slow, gradual, difficult is this process of mental ex- 
 periment that even the sublimest of discoverers rarely 
 
 'Logic, § 360. 
 
 2 H6ffding, Hist. Mod. Philosophy, I. p. 180. 
 
INDUCTION 139 
 
 grasps the full import of his discoveries ; his results 
 have to be rectified by others. 
 
 (c) Turning now to astronomy, we find there the 
 crowning proof of the principle that induction is the 
 discovery of a causal process by means either of 
 physical or mental experiment. The first named 
 means there was not the faintest possibility of using. 
 For gravitation is not only the most universal and 
 wonderful but also the most deeply hidden of all 
 natural processes. No sense gave a hint of it; no 
 dreamer had so much as imagined it ; nothing was 
 perceptible but its results. But one day, according 
 to tradition, the supposition flashed into Newton's 
 mind that the same process which caused an apple 
 to fall to the ground might also produce the celestial 
 motions; and after laboring for years with the 
 most consummate skill, he finally demonstrated the 
 fact. And since then his conclusion has been cor- 
 roborated in a myriad of ways, and never once con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 But this, you object, was nothing but deduction 
 inverted; Newton's reasoning started from a pre- 
 supposition. I answer that no physical experiment 
 was ever rationally made that did not start from 
 some supposition that was to be tested. But you 
 further insist that the proof is deduced from the 
 hypothesis or supposition. I answer that on the con- 
 trary the proof consists in the exact correspondence 
 of the calculated results with the actually observed 
 results. Or, third, you say that the conclusion is 
 merely probable. I answer that modern calculus has 
 
I40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 attained such exactitude that the slightest error 
 would show a discrepancy between calculated and 
 observed results. The chance of error, then, is to 
 the chance of truth as one to millions or billions. 
 With that degree of certainty any sane mortal ought 
 to be content. Fourth and finally, I fall back upon 
 what I have proved and what common sense has 
 always believed, namely, that induction precedes de- 
 duction. To call it, then, inverse deduction is like 
 saying that the pyramids were first built upon their 
 apices and then inverted. 
 
 (d) The creation of optical science is another 
 proof. Here the paramount factor, refraction, had 
 long been known in a vague, general way. But it 
 was known only as a curiosity, an illusion, a strange 
 freak of nature whereby the straight was made to 
 appear bent. As far back as the Alexandrian age 
 some languid efforts had been made to find law and 
 order in these very refractory phenomena, but with- 
 out avail. Fifteen centuries later even the genius of 
 Kepler was baffled in the same attempt. But at last, 
 in 1622, Snell discovered the law of refraction; the 
 ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and of 
 refraction are constant for the same medium. And 
 that discovery gave birth to the science of optics. 
 From Snell's formula Descartes explained, in part 
 at least, the splendid mystery of the rainbow. Then 
 came Newton with his explanation of colors as due 
 to different degrees of refrangibility. Since then 
 new optical secrets have come flowing forth like 
 water from an unsealed fountain. 
 
INDUCTION 141 
 
 Here again we have a crucial test of my conten- 
 tion. Induction is the discovery of the essential 
 factors in a causal process. In the present case the 
 chief factor had been known for untold centuries, 
 but known only as an illusion, a freak of nature, a 
 plaything of idle curiosity. But as soon as this 
 factor becomes really known, so precisely that its 
 changing phases can be calculated and compared 
 with one another, then a new science springs into 
 being. 
 
 Mark, too, the primacy here of mental experiment. 
 Without that all the countless physical experiments 
 since made would have been impossible. 
 
 (e) The science of acoustics had a similar origin. 
 Aristotle and the Greeks in general recognized 
 vaguely that sound was not a substance traveling here 
 and there, but was somehow the resultant of the air's 
 motions. And Vitruvius even likened these motions 
 to the waves caused by dropping a stone into still 
 water. Here, too, as in optics, there was a dim 
 glimpse of the truth, a crude view of sound as an un- 
 dulatory process. But it was sterile — a mere conjec- 
 ture, indefinite and therefore unverifiable. And thus 
 it remained for near twenty centuries until Newton 
 began his researches. With consummate skill he 
 analyzed this undulatory process into its factors, 
 and thus was enabled to calculate what apparently 
 ought to have been the velocity of sound. But there 
 was a fatal flaw in his induction; the calculation 
 was 174 feet per second, less than the observed re- 
 sult. And thus acoustics still lingered on an unveri- 
 
142 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 fied conjecture for more than a century. 1 But at last 
 La Place showed that there was in this undulatory 
 process a neglected factor. By the sudden com- 
 pression of the air, heat was generated, and thus 
 the wave-motion greatly accelerated. Due allow- 
 ance being made for this, the calculated and observed 
 velocities exactly corresponded, and acoustics became 
 an inductive science. 
 
 (/) We have seen that the creation of the two 
 sciences last considered was long delayed, the one 
 by an inexact, unverifiable conception of the under- 
 lying causal process, the other by neglect of an impor- 
 tant factor in the causal process. Chemistry, although 
 studied far more zealously, was delayed equally long 
 by a combination of these two causes. In the first 
 place, the neglected factor was, strangely enough, 
 the most potent and widely diffused of all agents in 
 chemical processes, to wit, the atmosphere. Even 
 in the Middle Ages many skillful experiments came 
 to naught and many brilliant discoveries were nipped 
 in the bud by the failure to take account of the 
 atmosphere or its chief constituent. Even in modern 
 times, after oxygen had been actually discovered, very 
 little attention was paid to it for more than a cen- 
 tury ; the absurd fiction of phlogiston, with its "neg- 
 ative weight," had taken its place. Secondly, the 
 doctrine of affinity was announced far back in the 
 Middle Ages by Albertus Magnus; but it never 
 gained precise, quantitative expression until barely 
 a century ago, through the labors of Dalton. Then, 
 
 "Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, II. pp. 34-36. 
 
INDUCTION 143 
 
 both obstacles being removed, chemistry became a 
 true science. And ever since it has been the wonder- 
 ful key unlocking untold treasures for mankind. 
 
 (g) In the science of biology precisely the same 
 law of evolution has been evinced as in the inorganic 
 sciences. More than 230 years ago Leuwenhock 
 with his simple magnifying glasses made animalculse 
 visible. Thus the very units of life were laid bare 
 to human inspection. They were not, as mathe- 
 matical units are, mere abstractions which the mind 
 has to laboriously create for itself by reflective im- 
 agination. Nature and human genius had combined 
 to place them directly before the eyes of all those who 
 wished to study and understand the mystery of life. 
 And yet for almost two centuries but slight atten- 
 tion was given to this new revelation, and little 
 issued from it but some semi-poetic dreams. But a 
 few years ago Pasteur, by patient study of these 
 living units, established the vital theory of fermen- 
 tation. And from that sprang immediately the germ 
 theory of disease, which has transformed medicine 
 from an empirical art into a true inductive science. 
 And biology itself has entered upon a new stage of 
 existence. One of the most eminent of biologists 
 tells us that the real development of his science has 
 hinged mainly upon this visible disclosure of the 
 physiological process reduced to its simplest units. 
 Only as inquiry, he says, has turned from the highest 
 organisms to study in the lowest the process of life 
 in the concrete, has biology in theory and practice 
 made much progress. 
 
144 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 In the above statement we have clearly set before 
 us the two phases of induction. In the inorganic 
 sciences we are dealing with hidden processes whose 
 existence, therefore, can be verified only by the exact 
 correspondence of calculated with observed results. 
 Biology, on the other hand, deals with processes that 
 are partially perceptible and which in the unicellular 
 organisms are presented in their simplest forms — 
 true units of life verifiable by the senses. The two 
 methods, however, differ only superficially, not fun- 
 damentally. The only difference between them is 
 the merely formal one between mental and physical 
 experiment. 
 
 Such, then, is my theory of induction — the analy- 
 sis of a causal process into factors verifiable by either 
 physical or mental experiment. And as was prom- 
 ised, the theory has been proved, not by the arbitrary 
 selection of a few favorable instances, but by a sur- 
 vey of the whole course of scientific development, 
 showing that the long delay and final success in the 
 establishment of each science can be accounted for 
 only by the principle here enunciated. 
 
 Section 4. Other Theories 
 
 Not for the sake of further proof — for there is no 
 need of it — but for clearer elucidation, let us con- 
 sider some other theories now widely accepted. 
 
 Take first the Hegelian theory, which claims to 
 explain the evolution of science by simply asserting 
 that the universe is an organic whole ; that is, either 
 a plant or an animal. Its war cry is that "the whole 
 
INDUCTION 145 
 
 is the truth"; the parts are self-contradictory and 
 false. Now even if these astounding statements were 
 demonstrably true, instead of being sheer assump- 
 tions for which no particle of proof is proffered, 
 still they would be wholly irrelevant to the question 
 of human knowledge. For knowledge of the whole 
 is plainly something far beyond the capacity of the 
 finite human mind. Even the simplest, the most 
 familiar of nature's processes, man knows only in 
 part; every one of them contains inscrutable ele- 
 ments which defy finite comprehension. Therefore, 
 if the whole only is the truth, all human knowledge 
 is but an idle dream. 
 
 It may be urged, however, that Hegel's view is 
 now simmered down by his disciples to the saner 
 proposition that we must "assume as a basis of the 
 whole inductive process some postulate which has 
 real universal significance . . . that is understood 
 even if it is not expressed, such as the uniformity of 
 nature." 1 But in Chapter II. I have shown that 
 both uniformity and variability are given together in 
 nature ; and that science has reconciled their seeming 
 conflict by interpreting the one as cause, the other as 
 effect. Gravitation, for example, is a rigidly uniform 
 process ; but every motion resulting therefrom varies 
 constantly both in velocity and direction. Nature's 
 uniformity, then, is simply one aspect of the causal 
 principle ; and that principle is no assumption, noth- 
 ing a-priori, but the first, the widest, the source of 
 all other inductions. 
 
 ^ibben, Logic Deductive and Inductive, p. 173. 
 
I46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 In speaking of Mill's theory of induction, I shall 
 pass over certain evident defects of which the 
 reader can find mention in almost any recent treatise 
 upon logic — such as the attempt to prove nature's 
 uniformity by a mere enumeration of instances or 
 the demand in the Second Canon that "every circum- 
 stance save one" shall be in common. I shall confine 
 myself to pointing out the one really fatal flaw in 
 his theory, the one that gives rise to the other defects, 
 and yet the one which seems to have been overlooked 
 by his critics. That flaw is that he does not regard 
 the highest stages of the inductive method as real 
 induction at all. He avers explicitly that the two 
 methods of observation and experiment described in 
 his five Canons "for the study of phenomena result- 
 ing from the composition of many causes, being from 
 the very nature of the case inefficient and illusory, 
 there remains only the third, that which- considers 
 the causes separately and computes the effect from 
 the balance of the different tendencies which produce 
 it; in short, the deductive or a-priori'method." 1 But 
 modern science has made it manifest that every 
 effect, motion or change perceptible on this planet 
 is of complex origin, the resultant irom a compo- 
 sition of — not, indeed, causes, but of factors in a 
 causal process. Therefore, according to Mill's own 
 statement just quoted, all his famous Canons are 
 inefficient and illusory. In other words, induction 
 is an illicit method, an irrational leap from "some" 
 to "all" ; deduction alone is of any real, logical value. 
 
 'Logic, Book III. ch. 10, § 8. 
 
INDUCTION 147 
 
 Thus Mill virtually concedes everything that 
 Jevons, Sigwart, etc., have urged against his doc- 
 trine ; their view really differs from his only in being 
 somewhat less inconsistent. Further, their view 
 differs from the Neo-Hegelian one only in that it 
 does not speak of induction quite so contemptuously 
 as do Bosanquet and Bradley. That all three views 
 so closely concur shows the instinctive antipathy of 
 all illusionist theories to both science and common 
 sense. 
 
 Finally, the view here presented achieves an aim 
 for which logic has long striven in vain. It estab- 
 lishes the unity of all forms of thinking without 
 effacing the evident distinctions between them. 
 Thus in the preceding chapter judgment and infer- 
 ence were both seen to be affirmations of causal ty ; 
 but the one moved from cause to effect, the other 
 from effects to causes. So in this chapter all infer- 
 ence has been proved to be essentially inductive ; and 
 yet deduction still maintains its peculiar scope and 
 value as a linkage of many simple inductions. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 
 
 Section i. The Ontological Argument 
 
 In Kant's criticism of the proof of God's exist- 
 ence there is one point wherein his insight seems to 
 me perfect. He saw that all the other proofs rested 
 ultimately upon the ontological argument; if that 
 went down, the other proofs must go down with it. 
 His reasoning upon this point is too prolix and 
 obscure to be quoted here, but it is conclusive. 
 
 Nevertheless Kant denied the validity of the onto- 
 logical argument. So did the most of the medieval 
 theologians. St. Thomas rejected Anselm's reason- 
 ing as unduly passing from the ideal to the real 
 order; anticipated, in fact, all of Kant's famous 
 refutation of it. And we are told that "Neo-Scho- 
 lastics to-day regard the ontological proof as worth- 
 less." 1 Among philosophers since Descartes' day, 
 Hegel has been its chief defender; but for Hegel 
 God is merely the "Totality" of the existent; so that 
 his ontological argument seems only to be the sense- 
 less tautology that whatever exists, exists. 
 
 It may seem, then, foolhardy on my part to seek 
 for what such masters of thought as Anselm, Des- 
 cartes and Hegel have sought in vain, and which 
 for a century now has been generally abandoned as 
 a hopeless task. But all our studies in the preceding 
 
 Terrier, Revival of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 127. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD I49 
 
 chapters have been a preparation for this work. We 
 have restored to its supremacy that principle of cau- 
 sality which ever since Hume's day has been either 
 discarded or minimized to the utmost. We have 
 found by a close scrutiny of all the forms of thinking 
 — abstracting, relating, conception, judgment, de- 
 duction and induction — that the sole essential func- 
 tion of thought is to discriminate between cause 
 and effect. Therefore to cancel causation is to cancel 
 all thinking, involves the extinction of thought. 
 From this vantage ground my present task of 
 demonstrating the existence of God becomes a com- 
 paratively simple one. I have only to show that the 
 conception of a sufficient cause, fully understood, is 
 identical with the theistic conception of God. 
 
 The bare statement of this proposition serves to 
 show the inherent weakness of the ontological argu- 
 ment as it was presented by either Descartes or 
 Anselm. Descartes' argument rests ultimately on 
 the concept of substance, but that, as we have seen 
 in Chapter IV, is a subordinate category dependent 
 upon and unintelligible without the causal concept. 
 Secondly, it is an ambiguous concept; Descartes 
 owns that it has different meanings according as it 
 is applied to the finite or the Infinite. Thirdly, he 
 lays his proof wide open to the destructive criticism 
 of Hobbes and Gassendi, that we have no positive 
 knowledge of substance, but only of attributes. 1 No 
 wonder that his ontological argument with all these 
 defects failed to convince. 
 
 ^offding, Hist. Mod. Philosophy, I. p. 225. 
 
150 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 The case seems still worse with Anselm. His 
 proof is stated thus: "We possess the idea of a 
 being so great that we cannot conceive a greater. 
 But the idea necessarily implies the existence of that 
 Being ; for existence, being a perfection, must apply 
 to the greatest conceivable Being." 1 But that does 
 not prove even that something greater exists. For 
 all we know, all things in the last analysis may prove 
 to be of the same dimensions. Above all, it does 
 not tell whether this something greater is God, devil 
 or a lump of matter. 
 
 But my argument is the antipodes to both of these. 
 As we have seen, thought cannot deny the existence 
 of cause without destroying itself. And the ultimate 
 cause must be a sufficient one; otherwise it is no 
 cause at all. The only question before us is, then, 
 simply this : What characteristics are necessarily in- 
 volved in this idea of a sufficient cause? 
 
 And I expect to demonstrate that there are at least 
 four such characteristics — namely, Unity, Infinitude, 
 Freedom and Love. 
 
 The first essential feature of a sufficient cause is, 
 then, Unity. In proof of that I need only appeal to 
 the fact, which already I have so often verified, that 
 the gist, the soul of a causal relation is that it at 
 once integrates and differentiates. Through the 
 whole chaos of the existent it draws the sharp line 
 of distinction between cause and effect : and the very 
 aim of all this distinguishing is that whatever is thus 
 divided may be united by the firmest and most endur- 
 
 x De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, p. 164. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 151 
 
 ing of bonds. No other relation has this function 
 of unifying without effacing distinctions. It is the 
 peculiar and exclusive prerogative of causality. 
 
 Therefore, a complete and sufficient cause must be 
 one. We perceive in Nature a vast variety of causal 
 processes, each containing many partial causes or 
 factors ; but the greater the multiplicity of these co- 
 operating factors, these partial and insufficient 
 causes, the greater the demand for some sufficient 
 cause binding them all in one process, and binding 
 all processes in one cosmic system. From the earli- 
 est ages all unspoiled intelligence has recognized that 
 truth. Many thousands of years ago, the Egyptians 
 expressed it in their hymn to Amon Ra : "The One, 
 Maker of all that is; the One, the only One, the 
 Maker of existence." 
 
 The second elemental feature of a sufficient cause 
 is its infinitude. The proof of that is so simple that 
 it may be given in a line or two. Whatever is finite 
 is limited by something else, and therefore must, to 
 that extent, be an effect ; it may also be a partial 
 cause or factor, but never a complete, self-sufficient 
 cause. 
 
 But here, too, we must guard against the all-per- 
 vading fog of modern metaphysics. For it may be 
 objected that in thus declaring the Infinite to be the 
 only sufficient cause, we annihilate all finite things by 
 depriving them of all the activities and potencies 
 that constitute their real existence. On the contrary, 
 instead of thus yielding to the most fatal of Spino- 
 zistic errors, we build a strong, an insurmountable 
 
152 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 barrier against it. For, Spinoza's error here — as al- 
 most everywhere else — is due to his minimizing, his 
 virtual abolition of all causality. He rejects tran- 
 seunt causes altogether, and admits of immanent 
 causes only in the emasculated sense whereby they 
 are deprived of all real activity and reduced to 
 merely static or mathematical relations. But here 
 we conceive the affirmation of causality in that wide, 
 full sense belonging to it as the sole essential func- 
 tion of all thought. And in this comprehensive view, 
 we find ample room for both infinite and finite causa- 
 tion. Our view, then, does not destroy things or 
 take away the activities and potencies which consti- 
 tute their reality. What thought finds in the world 
 is a vast complex of causal processes wherein per- 
 ceptible things are factors. Things perform their 
 several functions : they act and are acted upon. They 
 may have, as some scientists still believe, "resident 
 forces" secreted within them; or the forces may be 
 but expressions for the uniform modes of action or 
 movement characterizing the things. "It all comes 
 to the same in the end." No perceptible thing is a 
 complete or sufficient cause ; yet things exist and act. 
 Thus we seem to have the solution of another 
 problem that has long troubled philosophy and re- 
 ligion. The Cartesian occasionalism still has a 
 strong hold upon many of the most sincere and pro- 
 found among theistic thinkers. But let us call a 
 metaphor to our aid. A manufacturer is rightly re- 
 garded as the maker of the fabrics he sends forth, 
 although he makes use of hundreds of other agencies 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 53 
 
 to attain his ends. In a far deeper and truer sense 
 than that, God is the only sufficient cause of all ; and 
 yet each atom or electron plays its part in the cosmic 
 mechanism. 
 
 The third characteristic of a sufficient cause is 
 freedom. Whatever is necessitated to act cannot be 
 the complete, sufficient cause of that act ; that which 
 necessitates it is the real and ultimate cause. 
 
 Here we have another of those truths, simple, as 
 obvious as an axiom, and yet befogged by human 
 perverseness. Has not the renowned Kant proved 
 that a free cause is utter nonsense ? That it contra- 
 dicts the very law of causation itself? But look a 
 little closer and you will see that this Kantian law 
 of causation is a mere trick, an underhanded denial 
 of all true causality. Kant had succumbed to Hume, 
 given up causation, substituted for it mere sequence 
 — a series or procession of events wherein each event 
 is cunningly called the cause of the next event in 
 the procession. Now it is true that such a series can 
 be used for purposes of calculation : knowing the di- 
 ameter of a car-wheel and the rate of its revolutions 
 I can compute the distance traversed in a given time, 
 even if I have no knowledge of the cause producing 
 those revolutions. But that gives no warrant for 
 denying a cause or for pretending, as Kant does, that 
 each revolution is the cause of the next. 
 
 Hegel rightly asserts that all of Kant's antinomies 
 are "sham demonstrations." But this third an- 
 tinomy, with its spurious law of causation and its 
 underhanded denial of all true causality, is the most 
 
154 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 palpable sham of all. As Hoffding says, Kant failed 
 to solve Hume's problem; in my opinion, he ought 
 to have owned the fact instead of hiding behind this 
 pitiful evasion. 
 
 So skilled a reasoner as Kant, then, could find no 
 argument against a free cause, except by virtually 
 denying all real causality. But such a denial I have 
 proved to be equivalent to the extinction of thought. 
 Despite Kant, then, it remains obviously true that a 
 sufficient cause must be a free cause. If it is necessi- 
 tated to act then what necessitates it is the true and 
 ultimate cause. 
 
 Unity, infinitude and freedom, therefore, are dem- 
 onstrably three essential characteristics of a sufficient 
 cause. There remains now to be proved only the 
 fourth characteristic ; but that is of such transcendent 
 importance that we give to it a special section. 
 
 Section 2. Ontological Proof of God's Love 
 To many my doctrine here will seem pure non- 
 sense. But let them rise above the prevailing ten- 
 dency to minimize, degrade, even deny causality ; let 
 them see the full import of that revelation which it 
 is the essential function of thought to make known 
 — then they will see that the supreme characteristic 
 of an ultimate, sufficient cause is love, action not for 
 one's own sake, but for the sake of others. And 
 here, too, the proofs are simple and obvious. First, 
 whatever acts only to supply some lack or want of 
 its own cannot be a complete or sufficient cause ; for 
 what was wanting or lacking would be an alien ele- 
 ment and the real cause of the action. Any one can 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 55 
 
 see the force of this who can rise above the idea of 
 cause as mere senseless mechanism. 
 
 (2) Again, an infinite being lacks nothing that 
 it needs : and therefore if it acts at all — causes any 
 change or effect — it must act for the sake of others. 
 Perhaps we may even extend this rule to finite be- 
 ings, so far as to say that all selfish activity is re- 
 flex, automatic, that there is no real freedom save in 
 self-sacrificing activity. 
 
 ( 3 ) My argument can be further fortified by turn- 
 ing from what is involved in the thought of cause 
 to consider what is involved in the thought of love. 
 And here let me recall that new interpretation of the 
 passions recently made by Mr. Shand and widely ac- 
 cepted by those best fitted to judge. In his sense of 
 the term passion — an organized system of emotions 
 — there are but two passions, love and hate. And of 
 these two love is the fundamental, the universal, and 
 above all the only creative one. We grow into love 
 naturally ; but we are driven into hate by a kind of 
 inversion of our natural life. From the child to the 
 old man love multiplies and branches into new direc- 
 tions, reorganizing the same old emotions in new 
 objects; but hate is an ugly episode from which we 
 are in a hurry to escape unless our nature be pe- 
 culiarly evil. Hence hate is often a barren passion 
 which by destruction of its object destroys itself and 
 branches into no new system. 1 
 
 The truth of that and its value for my argument 
 are evident. Hate — and, in a measure, indifference 
 
 ^ind, October, 1902, p. 493. 
 
I56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 also — are destructive. Love is creative. But a com- 
 plete cause is essentially creative ; therefore its main, 
 its supreme characteristic is love. McTaggart also, 
 in his studies of Hegel, reaches the same conclusion 
 in regard to the Absolute, more, however, from sound 
 intuition rather than any cogency in his "dialectic." 2 
 
 Here, then, we have three strong lines of proof in- 
 terwoven into one argument — incontrovertible, at 
 least theoretically — showing that the supreme char- 
 acteristic of a complete Cause must be self-sacrificing 
 love. But from the practical point of view there 
 come two weighty objections that must be consid- 
 ered. The first and strongest of these is The Prob- 
 lem of Evil. 
 
 And I begin by drawing aid from an unexpected 
 source — from Hume, who, arch-skeptic as he was, 
 had yet a wonderful insight into the depths of 
 things. From his Dialogues on Natural Religion I 
 quote the following: " Supposing that this person 
 (a visitor from another sphere) were brought into 
 this world assured on apriori grounds that it was 
 the workmanship of such a sublime and benevolent 
 Being, he might be surprised at the disappointment, 
 but would never retract his former belief if founded 
 on any solid argument; since such a limited intelli- 
 gence must be sensible of its own blindness and ig- 
 norance, and must therefore allow that there may be 
 many solutions of these phenomena which will for- 
 ever escape his apprehension. But supposing, which 
 
 2 Hegelian Cosmology, § 285. Also Commentary on Hegel's 
 Logic, §295. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 57 
 
 is the real case with regard to man, that this intelli- 
 gent creature is not antecedently convinced of a Su- 
 preme Being benevolent and powerful, but is left to 
 gather such a belief solely from the appearance of 
 things, this entirely alters the case; nor will he ever 
 find any reason for such a conclusion. He may be 
 fully convinced of the narrow limits of his own un- 
 derstanding, but this will not in those circumstances 
 help him to infer the goodness of the omnipotent 
 Power, since he must form his inference from the 
 facts he knows, not from what he is ignorant of." 
 
 I answer that Hume's first supposition slightly 
 modified is the correct one. It needs modifying only 
 to the extent of dropping that false suggestion of 
 innate ideas or Kantian a-priorities which it contains. 
 Man does come into the world equipped, not with in- 
 tuitions, but with the means of attaining to an as- 
 sured knowledge of the world as the workmanship 
 of an infinite and benevolent Being. For he comes 
 endowed with the prerogative of thought; but to 
 think is to affirm causality; and as my ontological 
 argument shows, we cannot conceive of a complete 
 or sufficient cause except as free, one, infinite and 
 benevolent. Man having thus attained to a demon- 
 strable belief in God might behold many appearances 
 that seemed to conflict with it; but, just as Hume 
 says, he would never retract it. Or rather he never 
 could retract it, except by refusing to think. 
 
 Hume's only error, then, consists in assuming that 
 we have no means of gaining a knowledge of God 
 save through the appearance of things — a method 
 
158 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 obviously precarious, varying immensely in its re- 
 sults according to the moods and disposition of the 
 observer. But that grave error we have now effectu- 
 ally eliminated. Our ontological argument has dis- 
 closed another method of reaching such knowledge, 
 a method so simple and certain that it can be chal- 
 lenged only by denying the causal principle, and that 
 denial is equivalent to the extinction of thought. 
 And now we have the confession of the greatest of 
 all skeptics that such an assurance would stand secure 
 against all judgments drawn from the appearance of 
 things. In fine, it is our belief or disbelief concern- 
 ing God which determines our estimate of the good 
 and evil in the world ; and not conversely. 
 
 But there is a second objection to be considered. 
 If the knowledge of God is thus deeply rooted in the 
 very nature of all thinking,- how happens its genesis 
 to have remained so long hidden? Why has this 
 pure and lofty conception of the Deity so rarely pre- 
 vailed in history? Why has it so often been de- 
 graded into grotesque or even demonic forms? I 
 answer that there are many irrational and evil ten- 
 dencies, many diseases of the soul that contend 
 against it mightily. 
 
 Take the case of India, for example. The farther 
 we go back in her history, the purer and the more 
 exalted her religion appears. In the earlier Vedic 
 hymns there are no evil divinities ; there is a persist- 
 ent impulse to regard all the gods as but so many 
 different names for One God. Above all, Vedic re- 
 ligion was pervaded through and through by what 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 59 
 
 has been aptly called the apotheosis of sacrifice. Sac- 
 rifice was the first principle of morals ; nay, more it 
 was the condition upon which the cosmic order de- 
 pended. If there should be no sacred offerings, the 
 course of the seasons, the succession of days and 
 nights, the steadfastness of the firmament would 
 cease. 1 "In the beginning of time, the Supreme Be- 
 ing created all things by the sacrifice of himself." 2 
 In one famous hymn it is said: 3 "So the gods 
 through sacrifice gained the right to sacrifice." You 
 deride all this as priest-craft, or call it, as Oldenberg 
 does, "empty mummery, a disease of Vedic poetry." 
 Nevertheless, this poetry preserves the primitive view 
 of creation as an act of self-sacrifice on the part of 
 the Creator. In the Scandinavian Edda, for instance, 
 a similar account of creation is given. In the Zen- 
 davesta, Ahura Mazda offers sacrifices to the lower 
 divinities whom he has created. 
 
 And Hindu philosophy clearly maps out the road 
 which led to the decay of this primitive universal be- 
 lief in an Infinite Being creative and self-sacrificing. 
 Thus the Sankhya philosophy denies all creation for 
 the following reason: "Every intelligent being acts 
 from self-interest or beneficence ... a creator 
 who has all that he can desire has no interest in cre- 
 ating anything. . . . The demi-urge would be un- 
 just and cruel." Sankhara, head of the rival school, 
 concurs; so we have unanimity on this point. Un- 
 happy conditions described in my Philosophy of His- 
 
 'Manu, III. p. 76. 
 
 2 Brhaddevata, Harvard Oriental Series, II. p. 369. 
 
 s Rig Veda, X., pp. 90, 16. 
 
l60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tory had sapped the primitive belief; evil-gods had 
 arisen ; sacrifice was a priestly farce ; the world was 
 so bad and false that its creation would be an unjust 
 and cruel act. 
 
 Hindu philosophy thus unveils the process — one 
 that went on more unconsciously among less intelli- 
 gent races — which undermined the primitive faith. 
 Still this primeval conviction was too fundamental, 
 too deeply rooted in the very nature of thought, to 
 perish utterly. It lives in some of the noblest utter- 
 ances of Indian poetry. Listen, for example, to 
 Krishna : "Look at me, Arjuna! If I stop from work 
 for one moment the whole universe will die. Yet 
 I have nothing to gain from the universe. I am one 
 Lord. I have nothing to gain from the universe, but 
 why do I work? Because I love the world." 
 
 Section 4. The Cosmological Argument 
 The ontological proof, then, stands by itself ; it is 
 the basis of all other proofs, but needs the support 
 of none. The chief value of the cosmological argu- 
 ment is, therefore, to ward off misconceptions that 
 might imperil theistic belief just as pessimistic views 
 and fears of cosmic phenomena undermined the 
 faith of India. Let us consider the chief of these er- 
 rors in so far as they have assumed philosophic form 
 in modern thought. For this purpose, I begin with 
 Malebranche, in whom Cartesian orthodoxy cul- 
 minated, and from whom there is a direct line of 
 genealogy through Berkeley, Hume and Kant to the 
 pantheistic monism of the present day. 
 
 (1) Malebranche's primal error — one shared by 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD l6l 
 
 the entire Cartesian school from its founder to 
 Spinoza — is that of the Divine Egoism. "God Him- 
 self is the single purpose of all divine activities ; what 
 He creates He creates for Himself ; He alone is the 
 cause and the end of all His creatures." 1 That doc- 
 trine dominated the age in so far as it remained 
 Christian. It is the core of Augustinian and Cal- 
 vinistic theology. According to St. Augustine, the 
 expression "mercy" had only a figurative meaning 
 when applied to God, because it implies suffering 
 through the suffering of others. Spinoza, too, rapt 
 "in the intellectual love of God," dreamed of no love 
 in return. Jonathan Edwards also, America's one 
 philosopher, tempered his exile among the savages 
 by ecstatic visions of "God's Infinite Love for Him- 
 self." 2 This greatest of American thinkers has been 
 well described as "a sort of Spinoza — Mather." 3 
 But how strangely this doctrine of the Divine Ego- 
 ism contrasts with Krishna's cry as given by the 
 Hindu poet : "I have nothing to gain from the uni- 
 verse, but why do I work? Because I love the world." 
 (2) Malebranche's second great error was his de- 
 nial that things could in any proper sense be regarded 
 as causes. "To conceive them as secondary or relative 
 causes is the most dangerous of all the errors in the 
 philosophy of the ancients." It is pure paganism; 
 it converts inert things into "little deities." For to 
 exist a power of causality is to produce, to create. 
 To be a cause is to be God. "If God is to be re- 
 
 'Rech. de la Verite, liv. III. part II. ch. 6. 
 2 Riley, American Philosophy, I. pp. 180-184. 
 3 Leslie Stephens, Hours in a Library, I. p. 329. 
 
102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 garded as the absolute, highest and first cause, while 
 things are lower, relative and secondary causes, God 
 and the world would then differ only in degree; 
 things would be causes, only with less power." 
 
 But I have invalidated that plea fully and finally. 
 The difference between the causality of God and that 
 of things as factors in causal processes is not merely 
 quantitative — in degrees of power. There is also an 
 infinite difference in the kind or nature of the power. 
 For first, Infinite cause is free, nothing compels him 
 to create ; but things are not free, their action is ne- 
 cessitated. Secondly, the activity of things is lim- 
 ited to the production of motion: the Divine activity 
 reaches far beyond that narrow range. Third, things 
 are unconscious, know naught of the processes 
 wherein they function : God is conscious, planned the 
 processes and maintains them for the sake of His 
 creatures. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, dwell so long upon the 
 vagaries of an almost forgotten thinker, instead of 
 going on to later and more advanced thought? I 
 answer that in philosophy there has been no such ad- 
 vance, but rather retrogression. For modern phil- 
 osophic thought has been steadily moving in the 
 wrong direction; and therefore the greater the 
 genius, the toil, the marvelous ingenuity of the 
 thinkers, the farther away they have been carried 
 from the goal. To what was bad in Cartesian specu- 
 lation — its illusionism — Hume and Kant and Hegel 
 cling; what was good in it, its firm belief in God, 
 they fling aside. Kant surrenders all claim to any 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 163 
 
 reasoned knowledge of God's existence, "in order to 
 make room for faith." As for Hegel, even his ad- 
 mirers now seem to hardly dispute that his Absolute 
 Idea is naught but a travesty upon the theistic con- 
 ception of God. McTaggart admits it openly and 
 apparently rejoices in it. Professor Calkins more re- 
 luctantly says: "But though Hegel over and over 
 again asserts, or implies that ultimate reality is an In- 
 dividual, and not merely a system of co-ordinated 
 parts or an organism, it must be admitted that he no- 
 where explicitly outlines the argument for this highly 
 significant conclusion. To the present writer, this 
 neglect seems the greatest and most inexplicable de- 
 fect of Hegel's Logic." 1 
 
 But no one should be condemned for neglecting a 
 task that is obviously impossible. And there was 
 never a more obvious impossibility than that of con- 
 verting Hegel's Idea — a mere "tissue of logical re- 
 lations," as Eucken calls it — into the conception of 
 God. 
 
 Section 5. The Argument from Design 
 
 Kant undoubtedly succeeded in showing that the 
 ordinary argument from design does not fully sus- 
 tain the theistic conviction. To make the argument 
 adequate and conclusive we must vastly widen its 
 scope and tenor. And from our present point of 
 view that expansion is readily attained. We do not 
 need to go groping here and there for some stray 
 indications of contrivance in Nature that seem to 
 have some dim analogy to human efforts which, af- 
 x Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy, p. 380. 
 
164 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ter many trials and errors, finally find some means 
 of realizing their ends. On the contrary, we must 
 look out upon the countless causal processes of Na- 
 ture as inductive science has revealed them to us, 
 with all their infinite complexity, even in what seem 
 their simplest phases, with all their intricate inter- 
 locking of one into another, and of all into the 
 scheme of cosmic evolution; and we shall thus find 
 going on everywhere around us the constant revela- 
 tion of infinite wisdom and love. Thus we shall get 
 rid of that imaginary conflict between science and 
 religion that has wrought such havoc in the spiritual 
 life of Christendom. When the simple difference 
 between the Sufficient Cause and causal processes is 
 clearly recognized, the old antithesis between 
 mechanism and theism will be numbered with the 
 superstitions of the past. The more that science dis- 
 closes concerning the marvels of nature's mechan- 
 ism, the greater will be our knowledge of the Infinite 
 Cause that planned, established and maintains it all. 
 (1) From this point of view let us consider 
 Kant's criticism of the argument from design. 
 First, he argues the proof from design can, at most, 
 demonstrate only the existence of an architect of the 
 world whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of 
 the material with which he works, but not of a cre- 
 ator of the world to whom all things are subject. I 
 answer, that instead of being limited by an in- 
 tractable material, God is the author and maintainer 
 of those causal processes without which the very ex- 
 istence of the material would be impossible. The 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 65 
 
 matter which enters into no process has no qualities 
 or properties, and therefore is — nothing. Hegel 
 spoke the truth there. 
 
 (2) Kant further objects that no one will be bold 
 enough to declare that he has a perfect insight into 
 the relations which the magnitude of the world 
 . . . bears to omnipotence, etc. I answer that such 
 a requirement is preposterous. It implies, so far as 
 Kant's obscure statement can be understood, that to 
 know God as infinite we must know Him as Creator 
 of an infinite universe. But of the true God, infinite 
 wisdom must be predicated as well as infinite power. 
 And it would be the acme of unwisdom to create a 
 universe that would thus transcend all possible needs. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 Section i. Deterministic Arguments 
 
 (i) Bradley says: "Free- Will is a mere linger- 
 ing chimera. Certainly no writer who respects him- 
 self can be called upon to treat it seriously." 
 That style of argument, which unhappily is not 
 confined to Bradley, I certainly shall not treat 
 seriously. 
 
 (2) A more convincing argument is that pre- 
 sented by Sir Wm. Hamilton : "A determination by 
 motives cannot to our understanding escape from 
 necessitation. Nay, were we even to admit as true 
 what we cannot think as possible, still the doctrine 
 of a motiveless volition would be only casualism; 
 and the free acts of an indifferent are morally and 
 rationally as worthless as the preordered passions of 
 a determined will." 
 
 The stronghold of determinism is in the last clause 
 quoted. Indubitably, volitions which have no mo- 
 tive are morally and rationally worthless. But the 
 fallacy lies in assuming that motives necessitate, 
 compel in the same mechanical way that the impact 
 of one moving thing impels another to'move. Be- 
 lievers in freedom have long protested against this 
 assumption as altogether arbitrary, an empty asser- 
 tion for which no particle of proof is offered. But, 
 from our present point of view, we may go much 
 
FREEDOM 167 
 
 farther ; we can show this assumption to be not only 
 unverifiable, but as in the highest degree improbable, 
 irrational and even absurd. It springs from an ob-» 
 vious confusion of thought, a crass materialistic 
 identifying of the psychic and the physical. Motives 
 are thoughts and feelings : they are not things that 
 flung into some imaginary balance would act as iron 
 weights act. Furthermore, we have the plainest evi- 
 dence that mental activities produce their results in 
 altogether a different manner and under different 
 laws from those that govern the action of things. 
 Long ago Lotze pointed out something of this con- 
 trast between mechanism and thought. He says: 
 "Two impressions, such as the ideas of red and blue, 
 do not fuse mechanically ; they do not mix with one 
 another, disappear and so form a third — the idea 
 violet. But the mind holds them together and yet 
 apart, and the idea of their likeness and difference 
 arises. ... So given two impressions a and a, 
 that which arises from them is not a third impres- 
 sion = 2a, but instead there arises the idea of iden- 
 tity. Wundt has developed Lotze's view still farther. 
 In the realm of the corporeal, he says, a and b are 
 units in a common resultant c, including in part a 
 new movement, in part transformation into heat, but 
 always in such a way that c = a + b. But take 
 three musical notes and call their sensation values 
 respectively x, y and s: the result will be not 
 *" + y ~\-z, but harmony, a greater and qualitatively 
 different result. So in motives, let m be a motive 
 for, and n a motive against some volition, the result 
 
1 68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 will be not m-n, but may be a double or three-fold 
 m or n. 
 
 What Lotze and Wundt began I have developed 
 still further. Their outlook shows an evident differ- 
 ence between the methods of mechanism and those 
 of thought. But the difference might prove to be 
 only a superficial one which concealed an underlying 
 identity. But I have conclusively shown that this 
 difference is not merely on the surface or incidental, 
 but fundamental and all-inclusive. I have proved it 
 to be the primary and unfailing prerogative of our 
 mentality that it is always able to reverse in thought 
 the actual movement of physical processes. The 
 course of nature is irreversible from cause to effect ; 
 but reason is not thus bound; it moves at will in 
 either direction from cause to effects or from effects 
 to causes. Moreover, this reverse movement is the 
 paramount one, the source of the mind's highest ac- 
 tivities and most sublime achievements. As we have 
 seen in Chapter, IX, this passage, from observed re- 
 sults to their causes, universals or laws, is the secret 
 of Induction — and therefore the source of that mod- 
 ern science which is lifting mankind to such won- 
 drous summits of knowledge and power. 
 
 Finally this double movement of the mind is the 
 evident revelation of moral freedom. It makes it 
 not only perfectly comprehensible, but also inevitable 
 that two alternatives should forever hover over hu- 
 man existence. Man has thus always to choose 
 whether he shall be moved by momentary impulse, 
 as other animals are, or whether he will be guided 
 
FREEDOM 169 
 
 by his insight into the universal, the infinite, the 
 eternal. 
 
 (3) It is, perhaps, some dim glimpse of this 
 greatest of all truths, or at least some recoil from 
 the absurdity of supposing that human wills were 
 moved by impact like billiard-balls, that has led 
 many determinists to deny causality altogether in 
 any proper sense of the term. Necessitation, they 
 urge, is a mere fiction ; it means nothing but invari- 
 able sequence and predictibility. Thus Mill says : 
 "If necessity means more than this abstract possi- 
 bility of being foreseen, if it means any mysterious 
 compulsion apart from simple invariability of se- 
 quence, I deny it as strenuously as any one." 1 And 
 in his Logic he is still more explicit : "We are certain 
 that in the case of our volitions there is not this mys- 
 terious constraint. We know that we are not com- 
 pelled as by a magical spell to obey any particular 
 motive. ... It would be humiliating to our pride 
 and paralyzing to our desire for excellence, if we 
 thought otherwise." 2 But surely that is a pitiful 
 evasion, an effort to escape by raising a cloud of 
 verbal dust, (a) For it has been proved in Chapter 
 VI. that sequence, like any other temporal relation, 
 implies causality or necessitation ; without that, suc- 
 cession would be utterly meaningless and unintelli- 
 gible. (&) Again necessitation is implied in the 
 qualifying term, "invariable" ; for what is invariable 
 is necessitated to remain what it is. (c) Confronted 
 
 'Mill, Examination, Hamilton's Philosophy, II. p. 300. 
 'Logic, Book VI. ch. 2, § 2. 
 
170 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 by Reid's objection that day is not the cause of night, 
 although it is invariably succeeded by night, Mill 
 adds another proviso — namely, that the sequence 
 must be unconditional. In other words, night is not 
 caused by day, because it is caused by something 
 else. That seems a curious way of disproving 
 causality or necessitation. 
 
 All this serves to show how closely the denial of 
 freedom is bound up with the denial of causality. 
 
 (4) Another evasion very much in vogue among 
 determinists is an appeal to what they describe as 
 "the law of causation." Hoffding, for instance, as- 
 sails freedom with an argument the gist of which is 
 as follows : "Determinism asserts the continuity of 
 the development of consciousness; it asserts the 
 causal connection in the department of the will. In- 
 determinism, which teaches the existence of cause- 
 less acts of the will, absolutely destroys the inner 
 connection and the inner continuity of conscious 
 life." 1 To this I have three distinct answers to make, 
 each final and inappellable. 
 
 (a) Firstly, free volitions are not causeless. 
 Hoffding, like most determinists, has simply abol- 
 ished all real causation and substituted for it the 
 idea of uniform sequence. He says expressly that 
 the law of causation is merely derivative, an off- 
 shoot from the law of continuity 2 or identity. In 
 other words, he abstracts from everything but an 
 endless series of motions, each one transformed into 
 
 hoffding, Psychology, p. 346. 
 
 2 H6ffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 
 
FREEDOM 171 
 
 the next and that into the next, and so on forever. 
 Each motion in the series is assumed to be the cause 
 of the next succeeding one. And just so he also as- 
 sumes that each volition is caused by some preced- 
 ing volition, desire or event. One might as well as- 
 sert that one revolution of a wagon-wheel was 
 caused by the preceding revolution, and not by the 
 horse that pulled the wagon and caused all the 
 revolutions. 
 
 But if you deny this fantastic scheme, if you in- 
 sist that your present volition was caused not by 
 some prior volition, but by yourself as a free agent, 
 you are accused of teaching that volitions are cause- 
 less ! Could anything be sillier than that ? 
 
 (b) The principle upon which Holding's plea 
 against freedom is based — namely, the identity of 
 cause and effect — is flagrantly false. It is one of 
 Hegel's most absurd contentions. And here fortu- 
 nately Hegel's reasoning has so little of its usual 
 obscurity, that a school-boy might see its emptiness. 
 First, he treats of what he designates as Formal 
 Causality, that is, the relation of substance and acci- 
 dent. The substance and accident are so closely con- 
 nected that the accident is implicitly the substance. 
 "The house is white" means that the whiteness is the 
 house. Surely, as even McTaggart says, "this is 
 invalid." 1 Secondly, Hegel turns to his so-called De- 
 termined Causation, and here he gives four exam- 
 ples. The first of these is that rain makes things 
 wet, and that the rain and the wetness are the same 
 
 McTaggart, Commentary on Hegel's Logic, § 170. 
 
1^2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 water. Hardly any one could fail to see the folly 
 of that ; and the other three are no whit better. As 
 McTaggart says, there are two fatal objections to 
 Hegel's position, and he adds : "Thus we must reject 
 Hegel's theory of the identity of Cause and Effect." 1 
 
 But the vogue of this identity doctrine is not en- 
 tirely due to Hegel's influence. It is an evident off- 
 shoot of the tendency to reduce causality to a mere 
 sequence of effects. If, to use my illustration again, 
 you regard one revolution of the wagon-wheel as 
 the cause of the next revolution, then cause and effect 
 do seem almost identical. But if you regard them 
 both as effects caused by the horse, the identity 
 seems very dubious. 
 
 (c) Hoffding further avers that indeterminism 
 destroys the inner connection and continuity of con- 
 scious life. And there he does strike a heavy blow 
 at a very weak spot in the ordinary defense of t free- 
 dom. For heretofore the defenders of free-will have 
 at this point oscillated between two mistakes, both 
 fatal. On the one hand they have tried to pick flaws 
 in that supreme principle of science, the uniformity 
 of causation. And, on the other hand, they have 
 argued that human volitions formed an exception 
 to the great law of uniformity. Both of these posi- 
 tions seem to me grievous, even suicidal errors. 
 And in their place I substitute the following princi- 
 ple as governing the moral life of mankind : 
 
 In the free activity of man, uniformity is not so 
 completely realised as in the activities of Nature; 
 
 x Ibid. } p. 174. 
 
FREEDOM 173 
 
 but this defect is more than counter-balanced by the 
 far higher and nobler character of the former uni- 
 formity compared with the latter. 
 
 And the gist of that is that freedom alone makes 
 individual development possible: and without such 
 free development there is no virtue. We must see 
 our defects, and believe in our ability to correct them 
 if we would climb higher. Determinism bars all de- 
 velopment by teaching that our conduct is necessi- 
 tated by our characters, by what we have been. On 
 the contrary, it is our free action which determines 
 our character, checking the evil, developing the 
 good. Even deterministic moralists unconsciously 
 concede this. Thus Leslie Stephen says : "Virtue im- 
 plies a certain organization of the instincts." 1 And 
 Bradley utters the same truth in his wild Hegelian 
 phraseology: "Be an infinite whole." 2 Mill, too, 
 makes the famous concession that "our character is 
 in part amenable to our will." In fine, moral prog- 
 ress or development is absolutely inconceivable, if 
 human life is but a succession of events of which 
 each determines the next following, and so on in an 
 endless series. Freedom, then, instead of destroy- 
 ing, as Hoffding asserts, alone makes possible any 
 real connection or continuity of development in 
 man's conscious life. 
 
 (5) But the argument invented by Hume seems 
 to be the favorite one among recent determinists ; 
 on this account I quote it more fully than its intrinsic 
 
 1 Science of Ethics, p. 302. 
 'Ethical Studies, Essay II. 
 
1/4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 importance would otherwise deserve. Hume says: 
 "According to the doctrine of liberty or chance this 
 connection is reduced to nothing, nor are men more 
 accountable for their actions which are designed and 
 premeditated than for such as are most casual and 
 accidental. ... As the action proceeds from noth- 
 ing in him that is durable or constant and leaves 
 nothing of that nature behind it, 'tis impossible that 
 he can of its account become the object of either pun- 
 ishment or vengeance. According to the hypothesis 
 of liberty, therefore, a man is as pure and untainted 
 after having committed the most horrid crimes as at 
 the first moment of his birth. . . . 'Tis only from 
 the principle of necessity that a person acquires any 
 merit or demerit from his actions, however much 
 the common opinion may incline to the contrary." 1 
 
 Remember now that Hume denied all reality, out- 
 ward or inward, except that of a series of impres- 
 sions and ideas. For such absolute skepticism, free- 
 dom is of course inconceivable. Nothing exists but 
 the succession of thoughts ; and even between them 
 there is no real relation except that they succeed one 
 another. 
 
 Nevertheless, eminent philosophers, like McTag- 
 gart, Bain, Fullerton — even so eager a realist as 
 Hobhouse — are still rehearsing, almost word for 
 word, Hume's argument as an irrefragable proof of 
 determinism. As Mill said of Hamilton : it is 
 enough to make one despair of the human intellect. 
 
 ^Hume, Philosophical Works (Edinburgh, 1826), II. pp. 164, 
 165. 
 
FREEDOM 175 
 
 Section 2. The Proof of Freedom 
 
 Determinism, then, seems throughout fallacious 
 and sophistical. But is there any positive proof of 
 freedom? Or are we left in ignorance concerning 
 the whole matter of dispute? I answer that there 
 are four impregnable proofs. 
 
 ( 1 ) The first starts from the truth demonstrated 
 in the preceding chapter that a perfect cause must 
 be free. Man, however, as a finite being, can be only 
 a limited, partial cause. But this limitation is in no 
 wise incompatible with moral freedom ; for he might 
 still be a free cause within a limited sphere. And 
 no sane man would claim absolute freedom; he 
 knows that in most respects he is as much under the 
 bonds of mechanism as a brute, a plant, a stone. 
 
 But mark now that these very bonds give to him 
 the assurance of his moral freedom. For through- 
 out his life, he has had constant experience both of 
 the bonds and the freedom, and has thus been quali- 
 fied, in the best of all schools, to distinguish between 
 them. 
 
 Therein we have the answer to Spinoza's famous 
 plea for fatalism — that "the idea men have of their 
 liberty arises from this, that they do not know the 
 causes of their actions." On the contrary, the whole 
 course of life is a prolonged teaching of the differ- 
 ence between the bond and the free. Furthermore, 
 Spinoza doubly errs, in that he assumes that man 
 cannot discern differences unless he knows the causes 
 producing them. Men distinguished red from green 
 
176 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 long before they knew the causes producing that di- 
 versity of color. 
 
 (2) Again, to be free is to be responsible. And 
 man's responsibility is proved by the simple fact that 
 he is a conscious being knowing the nature of his act 
 and the trend of its results. No matter how much he 
 may be influenced by his environment, by heredity, 
 acquired habits or character, he is at least a con- 
 scious factor, an accomplice in the evil act. Nothing 
 can acquit him of moral responsibility, except posi- 
 tive, full proof that he was compelled to so act, could 
 not act otherwise. But the determinist has not the 
 shred of any such strict proof ; as I have shown, his 
 theory rests upon sheer assumptions. Therefore, de- 
 terminism is an effort to shuffle the responsibility for 
 an evil act upon some one else ; and we are all agreed 
 that such an effort adds a new element of unspeak- 
 able baseness to wrong-doing, unless we can clearly 
 prove our non-responsibility. Indeed, it is this which 
 turns misconduct into sin. For, according to deter- 
 minism, the responsible party is not the evil-doer 
 but the God who made him. 
 
 (3) Another proof is that cardinal fact of the re- 
 versibility of thought to which I have already al- 
 luded. Martineau has done well in recognizing that 
 the relation of the thing to its properties is precisely 
 inverted in the relation of the self to its character- 
 istics. 1 But the defect of his view is that it does not 
 explain why this is so. It leaves this inversion as a 
 mere brute fact, a mysterious exception, an entire 
 
 l Types of Ethical Theory, II. p. 39, seq. 
 
FREEDOM I J? 
 
 antithesis to the entire course of events throughout 
 the rest of the universe. Now the modern scientific 
 spirit, with its profound passion for unity and 
 continuity of development, is revolted by the bare 
 suggestion of any such impassable chasm yawning 
 at the very center of things. And it is this feeling, 
 apparently, which has led so many otherwise able 
 scientists into their wild attacks upon the doctrine of 
 moral freedom. 
 
 But from our present point of view this difficulty 
 is readily overcome. For this law of reversal or in- 
 version is not confined to the field of morals alone; 
 on the contrary, it extends over the whole realm of 
 human thought. It was, in fact, in the field of purely 
 intellectual phenomena that I first discovered it. In 
 Nature the course of cause and effect is irreversible, 
 but human thought knows how to exactly reverse 
 this course and thus passes as readily from observed 
 effects to their causes as from causes to their effects. 
 In fact, as was proved in the chapter upon Induction, 
 it is this former movement, that, from observed ef- 
 fects to their causes, which forms the real gist, the 
 very essence of all acts of reasoning whatsoever ; even 
 in the mathematical sciences what are called deduc- 
 tions are but ingenious complexes of many induc- 
 tions, in each of which a particular fact observed in 
 the diagram is transformed into a universal. 
 
 If we turn now from the intellectual to the moral 
 realm we find the same supreme law of reversal at 
 work. The mere animal is governed solely by its 
 antecedents — its inherited character, acquired habits, 
 
I78 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 environment, etc. Man being also an animal is in 
 large degree governed in the same way, that is, by 
 his preformed character. But along with this there 
 goes the recognition of right and wrong; the man 
 sees that his character is bad, or at least stands in 
 much need of improvement; he resolves to be the 
 master, not the slave of his character, the habits and 
 impulses of the past. Thus a complete reversal takes 
 place. The man was fatalistically determined by 
 his character; henceforth he determines his char- 
 acter, within limits modifies and transforms it at 
 will. 
 
 There is then in moral freedom nothing excep- 
 tional, nothing repugnant to either the teaching or 
 spirit of science. On the contrary, the movement of 
 the will in moral action precisely corresponds to the 
 movement of thought in scientific induction. The 
 same law of reversal rules in both hemispheres of 
 the mental world. 
 
 (4) That all ethical notions, such as right and 
 wrong, duty, merit, desert, remorse, repentance, guilt, 
 etc. — in fine, that the entire system of ethics in- 
 stantly collapses when the conviction of liberty is 
 withdrawn is evident at a glance. There is neverthe- 
 less in this argument as a whole, despite its truth in 
 details, a fatal flaw ; and I shall confine myself here 
 to the pointing out and removal of this great defect. 
 
 The flaw is that the argument, as a whole, is mere 
 reasoning in a circle. All acute moralists have been 
 more or less aware of this; Kant was especially so. 
 He says : "It must be frankly admitted that there is 
 
FREEDOM 179 
 
 here a sort of circle from which it seems impossible 
 to escape. We assume that, as efficient causes, we 
 are free, in order to explain how in the kingdom of 
 ends we can be under moral laws ; and then we think 
 of ourselves as subject to moral laws because we 
 have ascribed to ourselves freedom of will. Free- 
 dom of will and self-legislation of will are both au- 
 tonomy, and, therefore, they are conceptions which 
 imply each other; but for that very reason, the one 
 cannot be employed to explain or to account for the 
 other. 1 Hence, freedom is only an idea of reason, 
 and therefore its objective reality is doubtful. . . . 
 The conception of an intelligible world is therefore 
 merely a point of view beyond the world of sense, 
 at which reason sees itself compelled to take its 
 stand, in order to think itself as practical. . . . 
 Reason would therefore completely transcend its 
 proper limits, if it should undertake to explain how 
 pure reason, or, what is the same thing, to explain 
 how freedom is possible.' ' Kant then admits that 
 freedom is incomprehensible, his utmost claim is that 
 "we can comprehend its incomprehensibility." 
 
 Nor has any other defender of freedom, so far as 
 known to me, ever been able to escape from this cir- 
 cle. To Fichte, for instance, freedom is a mere mat- 
 ter of faith in a still more irrational form than with 
 Kant. "I will be independent, hence I resolve to 
 consider myself independent. . . . Hence our phi- 
 losophy starts from a faith and knows it." 2 Hegel 
 
 Metaphysics of Morality. 
 2 Fichte, Science of Ethics. 
 
l8o PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 gave up freedom utterly; it never means for him 
 anything more than absence of external restraint; 1 
 to attack the ethics of Kant and Fichte "was a temp- 
 tation which he was never able to resist." 2 
 
 But my doctrine does provide a simple and yet 
 sure way of escape from this circle. To conceive 
 causality aright we must interpret it not from its im- 
 perfect inadequate types in finite existence, but in its 
 highest, most perfected form accessible to our knowl- 
 edge. Neglect of this second truth was Descartes' 
 fundamental error: starting from a dubious con- 
 templation of his own self or ego, he is never able to 
 rise from that low level to any really logical certitude 
 concerning the existence of God, of the world or 
 even of himself: everything becomes problematic. 
 And philosophy ever since has been infected with 
 the same pale and sickly subjectivity. But the 
 worthlessness of all these attempts to explain the 
 universe from the analogy of the human spirit is 
 evinced by two considerations. First, the method 
 is an intrinsically fallacious one ; mere analogies can 
 give no true induction. Second, this very self, by 
 analogy with which everything else was to be in- 
 terpreted, has constantly been fading more and more 
 into an object of doubt and dispute. But we have 
 now found a more secure basis for ethical philosophy 
 than that — namely, the knowledge of God as the 
 one, infinite, free, self-sacrificing and all-sufficier<t 
 Cause. To discredit that conception is impossible; 
 
 ^cTaggart, Commentary Hegel's Logic, § 185. 
 2 Ibid., § 30. 
 
FREEDOM l8l 
 
 for its cancellation logically involves the extinction 
 of thought. 
 
 Thus we avoid the rock on which the Kantian 
 ethics and all similar systems are wrecked. We do 
 not try to prove freedom by assuming the reality of 
 the moral law, and then to prove the moral law by 
 assuming the reality of freedom. But we recognize 
 them both as cognate facts, presented in all human 
 experience, verified and explained as resultants from 
 an Infinite Cause acting for the sake of others. Thus 
 we avoid that reasoning in a circle which Kant con- 
 fesses to be inevitable in his ethical system. Thus 
 the ordinary argument from morality to freedom is 
 freed from that fatal flaw of which I spoke. It be- 
 comes a sound, a strong convincing proof of freedom 
 to argue that if determinism is true, morality is a 
 silly superstition. 
 
 Section J. The Moral Order of the World 
 
 The closing words of Sidgwick's great work upon 
 the Methods of Ethics are these: "Hence the whole 
 system of our beliefs in the intrinsic reasonableness 
 of conduct must fall without an hypothesis, unverifi- 
 able by experience reconciling the Individual with 
 the Universal Reason, without a belief in some form 
 or other that the moral order which we see imper- 
 fectly realized in the actual world is yet actually per- 
 fect. . . . Reject this belief and the Cosmos of Duty 
 is reduced to a Chaos and the prolonged effort of the 
 human intellect to frame a perfect ideal of rational 
 conduct is seen to have been foredoomed to failure.' ' 
 
1 82 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 But this belief in the moral order of the world is 
 by no means a mere "hypothesis unverifiable by ex- 
 perience." Such a belief cannot, indeed, be estab- 
 lished by generalization from the chequered, con- 
 flicting experiences of life; for our estimate of life 
 changes with our ever-changing modes ; in one mood 
 all is brightness, in the next all is dark and evil. But 
 I have now established this belief on solid founda- 
 tions by showing it to be logically derived from the 
 conception of an Infinite Cause whose activity is for 
 the sake of others. To cancel that conception is to 
 cancel all causality, and that means the extinction 
 of thought. 
 
 You urge, however, that the injustice and inequali- 
 ties so evident in life prove that Nature is unmoral, 
 indifferent to right and wrong. But Jesus, whose in- 
 sight into morals has revolutionized the world, did 
 not think so. He takes this seeming indifference, 
 this unswerving uniformity of Nature as the very 
 symbol and proof of God's love. "He maketh His 
 sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth 
 rain on the just and the unjust." And we can read- 
 ily see the verity and splendor of this unexpected 
 view. Nature veils reward and punishment in order 
 that true freedom and virtue may be developed. God 
 is no slave-driver standing behind us with a lash 
 ready for every evil act, and a bribe for every good 
 one. If His judgments were "speedily executed," we 
 should be as moral as pigs are when they run to the 
 trough at the call of the swine-herd. But through 
 darkness, suffering and unrequited toil man gains 
 
FREEDOM 183 
 
 access to all that is sublime and really divine in 
 life. 
 
 The belief in the moral order of the world, then, 
 must start from our demonstrated knowledge of 
 God; not conversely, as Kant supposed. But when 
 this belief is thus firmly fixed in the mind, it is con- 
 firmed and deepened even by the very facts of ex- 
 perience that had seemed to contradict it: and that 
 is always one chief test of a genuine scientific dis- 
 covery. 
 
 Furthermore, if morality is to endure, it must 
 henceforth be' founded upon the solid rock. In a 
 more credulous age faith sufficed to keep truth alive. 
 But the chief characteristic of modern science is its 
 insistence upon the strict verifying of its belief. But 
 this insistence upon exactitude and proof, which has 
 wrought such wonders in the creation of physical 
 science, has had a deadening effect upon the moral 
 and spiritual vigor of the age. In the field of ethics 
 and religion the increasing demand for definiteness 
 and demonstration has gone unsatisfied. The only 
 proof offered has been an appeal to "intuitions," 
 "ethical postulates," "value- judgments" and other 
 empty phrases. 
 
 Thus the very basis of morality is being gradu- 
 ally undermined. A secret, almost unconscious but 
 deadly doubt, has been diffused even among the com- 
 mon people. For they, too, in these days, read and 
 reflect. They, too, distrust declamation, assump- 
 tions, poetic metaphors, and are demanding proof. 
 Hence ethical doubt is spreading among the so-called 
 
184 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 lower classes. Who indeed have so many seemingly 
 good grounds as they for doubting the moral order 
 of the world ? 
 
 But against this advancing skepticism we have 
 now presented an impregnable defense. First we 
 have shown that the deterministic arguments all 
 spring from a sophistical denial of causality, by re- 
 ducing it to mere sequence. Second, that the four 
 positive proofs of freedom all depend upon and de- 
 rive their cogency from a proper interpretation of 
 the causal principle. It follows that if the now 
 widely prevailing mystification concerning this prin- 
 ciple were dispelled, doubt of freedom would be- 
 come impossible. In other words, we should be as 
 immediately conscious of freedom as we are of pain 
 or pleasure. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUl/s EXISTENCE 
 
 Section I. Revelation of the Unseen 
 
 "Souls have worn out both themselves and their 
 welcome, that is the plain truth. . . . Like the 
 word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop- 
 gap — it marks a place and claims it for a future ex- 
 planation to occupy." So wrote Professor James; 
 and as an after thought, "Some day, indeed, souls 
 may get their innings again in philosophy." 1 
 
 Whether it was an intuition or an accident that 
 led him thus to link the two terms, cause and soul, I 
 do not know. At any rate, it is for me a happy 
 augury. As the two ideas fell together, so they will 
 rise together; the restoration of the one will be the 
 restoration of the other. 
 
 Following, then, the line of thought thus indicated, 
 I seek now to prove the existence of the soul. My 
 first step is to point out that we have now gained a 
 sure, solid, indestructible basis for such a proof. For 
 I have proved inductively that thinking, in all its 
 forms, is essentially an affirming of causality ; hence 
 the denial of the latter involves the extinction of 
 thought. But as Hume insisted, no one has ever 
 seen, or touched, or otherwise sensed a causal nexus. 
 It is a reality imperceptible to the senses, and yet one 
 in the presence of which we stand every moment of 
 *A Pluralistic Universe, p. 210. 
 
1 86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 our lives. Thus all thinking has for its very essence 
 its supreme purpose and function, the revelation of 
 the unseen. 
 
 Mark further the strict scientific method by which 
 this insight has been gained. We have made no ap- 
 peal to innate ideas, intuitions, a-priori necessities of 
 thought — assumptions at once illicit and futile, re- 
 sorted to only in sheer despair of finding any real 
 proof of what one desires to believe. Instead of that 
 I have simply shown that denial here is to abandon 
 all thinking whatsoever. 
 
 Again, the only attempts to prove the existence of 
 the imperceptible which have made much impression 
 upon the modern mind have come from the idealistic 
 school. Ingenious fallacies have been devised seek- 
 ing to set aside the visible world in order to make 
 room for an invisible one. But all such attempts 
 have tended to undermine and break down belief in 
 the spiritual rather than to build it up. Materialism 
 has been greatly strengthened by the absurdity of 
 the arguments directed against it. But no such re- 
 proach can be urged against my doctrine. It does 
 not try to tear down the given world in order to 
 construct another out of the ruins. 
 
 This then is one element in our proof. It is not 
 by itself decisive; but it is pretty near half the bat- 
 tle. He who clearly comprehends what is involved 
 in this demonstrated truth that every act of true 
 thinking is a revelation of the unseen — that this 
 truth is not a casual inference from one phase of 
 thought that possibly may be contradicted by other 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 187 
 
 phases — that the one supreme mission of thought 
 is to reveal causation and, therefore, the unseen 
 — will never surrender his conviction of the soul's 
 existence. 
 
 Section 2. The Fundamental Law of Knowledge 
 My second proof I will introduce by referring to 
 a grave defect even in the rigid orthodoxy of the 
 Scottish philosophy of common sense and natural 
 realism. There seems throughout a certain dubiety 
 concerning any real, verifiable knowledge of the soul 
 as such; the stream or series of states is manifest; 
 but the soul, at best, is merely suggested. Reid, for 
 instance, says : "Our sensations and thoughts do also 
 suggest the notion of a mind and the belief of its 
 existence and of its relations to our thoughts." 1 Sim- 
 ilarly, Dugald Stewart : "We are conscious of sensa- 
 tions, thought, desire, volition, but we are not con- 
 scious of the existence of mind itself. This is made 
 known to us by a suggestion of the understanding, 
 etc." 2 So Sir Wm. Hamilton : "There exists no in- 
 tuitive or immediate knowledge of self as the ab- 
 solute subject of thought, feeling and desire, but, on 
 the contrary, there is only possible a deduced, rela- 
 tive and secondary knowledge of self as the perma- 
 nent basis of these transient modifications of which 
 we are directly conscious." Dr. Wayland is still more 
 explicit : "Of the essence of mind we know nothing. 
 All that we are able to affirm of it is something 
 which perceives, reflects and wills; but what that 
 
 inquiry, ch. 2, % 7. 
 
 2 Porter, Intellectual Science, pp. 69, 70. 
 
l88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 something is which exerts these energies, we know 
 not." 1 
 
 It seems a rather doleful outlook. Here we have 
 an array of what are generally regarded as the most 
 eminent defenders of the soul's reality. And at the 
 critical point they all fail us entirely. They virtually 
 surrender everything by conceding that we have no 
 direct, definite knowledge, but only a mere sugges- 
 tion, a relative, secondary apprehension of the self 
 as fading away into the unknowable cause of our 
 psychic states. To all intents and purposes these 
 champions of the soul's existence seem to concur 
 with Mill's view that the mind is but a series of feel- 
 ings "with a background of possibilities of feeling." 
 
 Their virtual surrender of selfhood arose, I think, 
 from lack of any definite view of the nature of 
 knowledge. Under the leadership of Reid they had 
 dealt heavy blows upon the old doctrine that knowl- 
 edge was a sort of picturing process ; but the snake 
 had been scotched not killed ; they had formulated no 
 other theory of knowledge to put in the place of the 
 one overthrown. And as always happens in such 
 cases, the old error still lingered on, vague, obscure, 
 but all the more potent for evil because unrecog- 
 nized. This, I may note in passing, is the explana- 
 tion of the fact noted by Hamilton that Reid, after 
 having triumphantly refuted the representation the- 
 ory, so frequently relapses into the very error he had 
 repudiated. Hamilton, in view of these inconsist- 
 encies, is inclined to doubt whether Reid was a Nat- 
 
 'James, Psychology, I. pp. 347, 348. 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 1 89 
 
 ural Realist at all. But that is unjust. Reid's tem- 
 porary defections simply exemplify the truth at- 
 tested by all experience that mere negation avails 
 little or nothing. To really exterminate an ancient 
 error, you must put something better in its place. 
 That Reid failed to do in regard to the theory of 
 knowledge ; hence, his unconscious relapses. 
 
 The same defect pervades the would-be spiritual- 
 ism of the Scottish school, reducing it to an attenu- 
 ated, merely verbal form that does not essentially 
 differ from the doctrine of Hume, Mill, Bain and 
 other theorists, that the self is nothing but the sum, 
 series or stream of mental activities. To show that, 
 we have only to recall what has been demonstrated 
 in these pages to be the true theory of knowledge. 
 That theory is based upon my now verified thesis 
 that all thinking is a relating of cause and effect; 
 from this there is derived as an evident corollary the 
 fundamental law of knowledge — namely, that we can 
 really know causes only through their effects, and 
 conversely only effects through their causes. Now 
 the writers just quoted ignore the second half of this 
 fundamental law. To say as they do that we know 
 the soul only through its activities — perception, rea- 
 soning, volition — is not an altogether false assertion. 
 But it is only a half-truth, and therefore a fatally 
 one-sided, mutilated and misleading view. For it 
 keeps out of sight the other half, the complementary 
 truth that we can have no real knowledge of our 
 mental activities except by relating them to their 
 cause, the agent that acts. To neglect this double 
 
190 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 demand is the most insidious of all errors; for no 
 other falsehoods are quite so deceptive as those that 
 contrive to tell one-half the truth and omit to tell 
 the other half. You may say, then, that we know 
 the self only through its activities, provided you add 
 that we know the activities only through their rela- 
 tions to the unitary, abiding self. Then only do you 
 tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 
 
 Note further the illimitable sweep of this law of 
 knowledge. It spreads over both worlds. Already 
 I have shown that neglect of it is the source of that 
 illusionism that has blighted modern philosophy : the 
 thing by itself is indeed unknowable, just as Kant 
 said, but so also is the attribute or quality by itself. 
 
 But our present theme is to show the full bearing 
 of this law upon the problem of the soul's existence. 
 For that purpose let us consider the argument of 
 Kant, who is universally recognized as the chief 
 agent in the banishment of the soul from modern 
 philosophy. His claim is this : "I think is therefore 
 the only text of rational psychology, from which it 
 must develop its entire system." 1 But see how bare 
 and jejune is this Kantian conception of thinking 
 which is to settle the question of the soul's reality. 
 ( 1 ) Thinking, in Kant's sense of the term, is a mere 
 process of illusion; it reveals nothing but false ap- 
 pearances. (2) Thinking is throughout, from first to 
 last, naught but a self-contradictory process; all its 
 affirmations are figments which the human mind is 
 compelled to accept as true or valid ; and yet is com- 
 
 ^ritique of Pure Reason, p. 306. 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 191 
 
 pelled to believe them untrue or invalid. (3) Think- 
 ing, according to Kant, is the acme of all vagueness 
 and vacancy. "All judgments," he tells us, are 
 "nothing but the mode of bringing given representa- 
 tions under the objective unity of apperception." 
 That is, the one essential function of thought is to 
 unify sensations. But unity is the loosest, the most 
 indeterminate of terms. There are no two objects 
 in the universe so discrepant and contrary to each 
 other that they cannot be united in some way or 
 other by thought. (4) Again, Kant strips from 
 thought all but its lowest and meanest characteris- 
 tics. He magnifies volition immensely; but it does 
 not occur to him that right thinking involves the 
 hardest, noblest, rarest of all acts of the human will. 
 Kant's real God is the Good Will ; while thought is 
 only the clumsy tying of fictitious bundles. 
 
 "We have here before us," Kant continues, "a pre- 
 tended science raised upon the single proposition, 
 / think." But is it any wonder that such a concep- 
 tion, or rather caricature of the soul's activities, as 
 he gives, should not lead to any assurance either of 
 the soul's nature or of its existence ? 
 
 But abandon this pessimistic view; contemplate 
 the activities of the soul as they really are; recall 
 that power of reversal whereby thought passes back- 
 ward from present effects to their causes in the dis- 
 tant part, forward to foresight of what is yet to 
 come, and upward to the Infinite Cause of all ; con- 
 sider how thought has transformed the face of Na- 
 ture and unveiled her incalculable resources for the 
 
I92 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 use and enjoyment of mankind. Listen to Kepler's 
 cry, "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after 
 Thee." Look upon even the demoniac aspects of 
 thought — the sin and sorrow of the world. Remem- 
 ber, above all, my proof that the supreme mission of 
 thought is to reveal the unseen. Such knowledge of 
 the soul's activities gives knowledge of its nature 
 and its existence; and the converse is equally true. 
 
 But all that, you object, does not prove that the 
 soul exists as a substance. That I cheerfully con- 
 cede. The category of substance and attribute is a 
 subordinate, derivative one, as; I have shown in 
 Chapter IV ; if you make it the ultimate one you are 
 at once entangled in the contradictions that ruined 
 the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. 
 The one ultimate, all-inclusive category is that of 
 cause and effect. That alone does not make percepti- 
 ble things the type or standard of reality to which 
 all else must somehow conform. That alone permits 
 of different degrees, beginning with its perfect type 
 in God ; then descending to man, whose free causal- 
 ity is limited to action of the mind upon the body, 
 then to other animals, plants, inorganic things, all 
 of these being imperfect causes — that is, factors in 
 causal processes. 
 
 In fine, the apparent force of Kant's argumenta- 
 tion against the existence of the soul is wholly due 
 to the fact that he was contending against an im- 
 proper and most misleading conception of the soul 
 as substance. The word substance is so constantly 
 and familiarly applied to spatial things, that it un 7 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE I93 
 
 avoidably suggests them. But drop this misleading 
 term. Conceive the soul under the category of cause 
 — an imperfect finite cause indeed, but still as free, 
 conscious, rational, closely akin to the causality of 
 God. Then you will see that Kant's argument is but 
 a beating of the air. 
 
 Section j. Monism 
 
 But there are still other difficulties to be sur- 
 mounted. Having passed beyond Kant, we are im- 
 mediately confronted by the monism of his succes- 
 sors. Kant himself had suggested that the mysteri- 
 ous unknown concealed behind the phenomena of 
 sense might possibly be identical with the unknown 
 in ourselves. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel hastened 
 to develop this suggestion ; although their great mas- 
 ter had expressly warned them against the perils of 
 such a procedure: it was "the forbidden fruit" on 
 the tree of knowledge. Hence rose the monistic view 
 of selfhood which Hegel formulated in one brief 
 sentence : "The truth is that there is only one reason, 
 one mind, and that the mind as finite has no exist- 
 ence." 
 
 But fortunately we do not have to cope here with 
 that myriad of logical and verbal sinuosities behind 
 which this monism entrenched itself. It is enough to 
 point out the two fallacies upon which this surpris- 
 ing doctrine rests ; and they are so obvious that the 
 task is an easy one. The first is that which I have 
 already described as the fallacy of the Whole and its 
 Parts. The idealistic monist begins by dissolving 
 
194 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the spatial universe into false appearances; its esse 
 is percipi; it has no independent reality, but exists 
 only in the infinite consciousness or mind. Space 
 and all spatial relations being thus wiped out of ex- 
 istence, we are then told that the Divine Mind is an 
 infinite Whole made up of innumerable millions of 
 parts ; but how that which is unextended can be thus 
 divisible into parts, we are left to conjecture. 
 
 It may be objected that Hegel guards against this 
 absurdity by conceiving the Infinite not as a mechani- 
 cal, but an organic Whole. The totality is not, as 
 Spinoza regarded it, a mere aggregate sum; it is a 
 living whole united with its modes by an organic 
 tie. But that increases, instead of obviating the dif- 
 ficulty. For, you may pulverize an inorganic thing, 
 a rock, for instance, and leave the parts intact; but 
 to pulverize an organism is to destroy both the life 
 of the whole and that of the parts. 
 
 A false view of self-consciousness is the second 
 fallacy. Just as Hume ignored everything in con- 
 sciousness except the series of states, the Hegelian 
 ignores everything but the self in an impossible re- 
 lation to itself. The self as subject and the self as 
 object, though different, are identical. Or as Hal- 
 dane enthusiastically asserts : "The deepest and most 
 fundamental of all relationships appears to be that of 
 being object to a subject. Its discovery is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom. . . . It is the wicket-gate to the 
 pathway to Reality." For, as he further asserts, it 
 solves that dark problem : Why is the Infinite Mind, 
 the Absolute, compelled to thus finitize itself? The 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 1 95 
 
 answer given is, that it is the very nature of Mind 
 or Thought to split itself into contradictory abstrac- 
 tions or moments, and then to unify these contradic- 
 tions on a higher plane. To be self-conscious, the 
 Absolute subject must transmute itself into an ob- 
 ject, something different from and yet identical with 
 itself. 1 And so far as can be gathered from Hegel's 
 rather obscure utterances, Haldane, I think, has here 
 correctly stated the Hegelian view. 
 
 But such a view of consciousness is saturated 
 through and through with that most ruinous of all 
 errors which I have described in Chapter III. as the 
 fallacy of resemblance. That fallacy is the survival 
 in human reasoning of the animal's capacity for not- 
 ing likeness and unlikeness and of being guided 
 thereby. But judgments thus made are essentially 
 incoherent and self-contradictory; for everything is 
 like and not like everything else. Nevertheless, 
 Hegel's theory of self-consciousness — and that of 
 Schelling and Fichte also — was based upon this fal- 
 lacy of resemblance. Their minds kept revolving, 
 with an almost ludicrous solemnity, around the fact 
 that in self-consciousness the subject and the object 
 were like and not like, identical and different. Re- 
 member, too, that this is the finale of the Hegelian 
 philosophy; the long series of self-contradictions 
 ends at last with the discovery that in self-conscious- 
 ness subject and object are unmistakably the same. 
 
 But I have shown how these mere feelings of like- 
 ness and unlikeness, so indeterminate, incoherent 
 
 haldane, Pathway of Reality, I. pp. x. and 32. 
 
I96 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and self-contradictory, can be converted into true re- 
 lations, definite, precisely comparable and therefore 
 useful as material for reason to work upon. To thus 
 transform them we need only to specify that upon 
 which the likeness or unlikeness depends; in other 
 words, whence it results. And the more exact our 
 determination of the cause upon which the likeness 
 or unlikeness depends, the more exact and verifiable 
 our knowledge becomes. 
 
 Now apply this distinction between vague feelings 
 of resemblance and exact causal relations to the ques- 
 tion before us. You define self-consciousness, after 
 the monistic fashion, as the subject's contemplation 
 of itself as an object different from and yet identical 
 with itself. I answer that you have really said noth- 
 ing. Your definition does not define. On the con- 
 trary, it doubles, trebles the indefiniteness, reduces 
 consciousness to something utterly inexplicable and 
 self-contradictory. But for this definition substitute 
 a causal one. Define self-consciousness as the self's 
 knowledge of itself as the cause of its own activities. 
 Then light begins to dawn. Both the self and its 
 activities are illumined. For while this definition is 
 exact in that the precise relation between the con- 
 scious self and its object is described, yet ample room 
 is left for the diversities of causality so evident in 
 a human self. Very often this causality is at its mini- 
 mum; the mind surrenders itself to idle musing, 
 blind, automatic association, but even then it vaguely 
 recognizes itself as cause, as able to rise from mere 
 dreaming to sterner activity. And so there are quick 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 1 97 
 
 transitions from this lower level of consciousness to 
 loftier ones, to patient, persevering toil, to hard, bit- 
 ter struggle against temptation, to prolonged battle 
 with defects of character, and above all to a divine 
 self-sacrifice for the sake of others. In fine, con- 
 sciousness reveals not a causality vague and undiffer- 
 entiated, but a causality of many degrees or grades 
 as distinguishable as the heights of hills or moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Compare now this view of consciousness with one 
 of the sanest and most recent versions of the subject- 
 object hypothesis, the one given by that very able and 
 candid thinker, Professor Ward. The keynote of his 
 discussion is this : "We find not a dualism of mind 
 and matter, but a duality of subject and object in 
 the unity of experience." Note first that there is a 
 tinge of mystification in the very terms used; for 
 subject and object are words so vague as to be inter- 
 convertible. What Ward calls object, Duns Scotus, 
 Descartes and others still later called subject; even 
 Locke speaks of the object of thought as the subject 
 of thought j 1 and something of this usage, this inter- 
 change of the two terms, still lingers in ordinary 
 speech. But more important than this is Ward's 
 frank confession that he cannot define the relation 
 between these two ambiguous and confluent terms. 
 All that he can say is "that it is that relation of sub- 
 ject to object and of object to subject in virtue of 
 which they are severally subject and object." Does 
 not that seem the climax of tautology and emptiness ? 
 
 "Locke, Essay, Book II. ch. 8, § 7. 
 
I98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 And in the same mystifying strain he adds : "As the 
 absolutely ultimate relation in experience, we can 
 either say that it is inexplicable, or that it needs no 
 explanation, or we may entertain the notion of an 
 Absolute in whom the unity of experience outlasts 
 the duality." 1 
 
 In this midnight of uncertainty, one star alone 
 seems to shine forth. We are told : "But one thing, 
 I think, we must not do; we must not attempt to 
 bring this relation of subject and object under the 
 category of cause and effect. " 2 No hint of any rea- 
 son is suggested for excluding that principle of 
 causality which I have proved to be the one essential 
 function of all thinking, and which seems to throw 
 so much light upon this special question of self-con- 
 sciousness ; further, it is admitted by our author that 
 no other satisfactory explanation can be found ; and 
 yet at all costs this causal explanation must be ex- 
 cluded. Ward is certainly a strong witness for the 
 truth emphasized throughout this volume that in- 
 ability to solve Hume's problem has engendered a 
 sort of philosophic grudge against the causal princi- 
 ple, the essence of all thinking and the source of all 
 reasonable explanation. 
 
 The outcome of all such speculation is inevitable. 
 "There is not a subjective and objective before us, 
 but there is what we find to be an indivisible subjec- 
 tive-objective . . . one thing which no effort of 
 thought can construe as really two." 3 In plainer 
 
 Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 117. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 z Ibid., p. 200. 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE I99 
 
 words, consciousness is naught but an endless re- 
 hearsing of the old puzzle about identity and differ- 
 ence, likeness, and unlikeness. The world, as well 
 as consciousness, is an illusion. Space and time are 
 mental figments. "And if we allow the conception 
 of a Supreme Mind and First Cause to be valid at 
 all . . . really, fundamentally, ultimately, we 
 shall have God only and no mechanism." 1 In fine, 
 the visible universe is abolished in order to make 
 room for its Creator. 
 
 Idealistic monism, then, in all its varieties is the 
 product of two great fallacies. The first is the fal- 
 lacy of the whole and its parts. The Infinite Mind 
 is envisaged as an extended substance divisible into 
 countless parts or "momentary fragments/' as Royce 
 prefers to call them. That I think is the absurdest 
 paradox ever invented by human perverseness. It 
 sounds like a survival of the Hindu legend men- 
 tioned in Chapter X, that the Supreme Being di- 
 vided himself into parts out of which to create the 
 world; but that was meant as a poetic symbol for 
 the divine self-sacrifice ; idealistic monism appears to 
 take it literally. The second fallacy is that of like- 
 ness and unlikeness, identity and difference. That is 
 a reversion going even farther backward than to 
 Hindu legends. It reverts, as we have seen, to that 
 animal stage of life which is guided not by reason- 
 ing from cause to effects or from effects to cause, 
 but by vague association of similarities. Either 
 of these fallacies by itself would be enough to 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 274. 
 
200 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 destroy a much more plausible hypothesis than 
 monism. 
 
 The belief in the soul's existence, then, has noth- 
 ing to fear from idealistic monism. Rather it is 
 strengthened and confirmed by the manifest weak- 
 ness and folly of the arguments directed against it 
 
 Section 4. Parallelism 
 
 But the belief in the soul's existence is confronted 
 by another foe, the doctrine of parallelism. Let us 
 take as an able exponent of this doctrine Professor 
 Fullerton. Two agencies so diverse as the physical 
 and the psychic, he insists, cannot be united in one 
 causal process. "The attempt to patch up a defective 
 machine with what is immaterial is, indeed, absurd. 
 Such a patch cannot be put on, such a joint cannot 
 be inserted in any sense of the words that has a sig- 
 nificance. The machine remains defective; there is 
 an unfilled gap." 1 He re-echoes Clifford's reference 
 to the railway-train, the two parts of which were 
 linked together by ideas instead of iron couplings, 
 "the bond of union between the two parts being the 
 sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker 
 and the guard." 
 
 But this great train, weighing perhaps a thousand 
 tons, is pulled along for thousands of miles, over 
 high mountains, by a slender iron rod linking it with 
 the locomotive. And yet this iron rod is but an ag- 
 gregate of atoms, each atom entirely distinct and 
 separated from its nearest neighbor by a vast dis- 
 
 ^etaphysics, p. 522. 
 
201 
 
 tance relatively to its size. What holds this host of 
 disconnected atoms so firmly together despite the 
 immense force tending to pull them apart ? Experi- 
 ence, you say, tells us that the iron rod has this 
 power or property, and with that we must be con- 
 tent. But a still more familiar and constant experi- 
 ence assures us there is also interaction between our 
 volitions and our bodily organs. Nevertheless, you 
 flout at that as absurd; thought and things are too 
 diverse to interact. 
 
 (2) Or do you reply with the stale saying that 
 science does not pretend to explain, but merely to de- 
 scribe. That is a shallow and a futile evasion. For, 
 first, if everything is so wrapt in utter mystery that 
 science does not attempt to explain anything, then 
 you cannot deny the interaction of mind and body 
 on the ground of its inexplicability. And secondly, 
 without some explanation, description is impossible. 
 To describe any fact aright, you must analyze it into 
 its elements, convert its particulars into universals 
 and do much else that goes far toward explanation. 
 
 (3) Another significant fact is the strict limita- 
 tion of the mind's potency to action upon the body. 
 No thought, volition or sentiment of ours can di- 
 rectly cause even a leaf to stir, much less pull Clif- 
 ford's railway train over high mountains. But every 
 atom of matter seems endowed with miraculous pow- 
 ers — attraction, affinity, etc. — of acting upon all 
 other atoms. The mind in this respect seems feeble- 
 ness incarnate. Yet this limitation is an aid instead 
 of an obstacle to my argument. For if the human 
 
202 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 mind is thus devoid of potencies which even the 
 atoms possess, it certainly cannot be the Absolute 
 Mind working within us, as Hegel, Haldane, 
 Royce, etc., would have us believe. It is an indi- 
 vidual mind, potent only in a limited sphere ruling 
 only within the body. 
 
 (4) There is a great mass of rather trivial dispu- 
 tation between the friends and foes of parallelism — 
 thrusts and counter-thrusts with blunted sword- 
 points — upon which I need not dwell ; they are given 
 in almost any recent text-book. But there is one fea- 
 ture of the discussion that seems to have escaped at- 
 tention. Bain, for example, is a very staunch de- 
 fender of the parallelistic view. He says : "The only 
 tenable supposition is that mental and physical activi- 
 ties proceed together as undivided twins." 1 Thus 
 he virtually abolishes thought as anything more than 
 one "side" or "aspect" of brain motions. But that 
 carries him not one step nearer to, but rather much 
 farther away from any genuine realism. In his opin- 
 ion the brain motions are altogether illusory, mere 
 possibilities of sensation. 2 In fine, both of Bain's 
 undivided twins are pure hallucinations. He has 
 landed in utter nihilism. 
 
 Hoffding is another example. The Identity hy- 
 pothesis which he accepts "regards the mental and 
 material worlds as two manifestations of one and the 
 same being both given in experience. . . . But 
 what kind of being is this? Why has it a double 
 form of manifestation, why does not one suffice? 
 
 1 Min'd and Body, p. 132. 
 2 Mental Science, p. 198. 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 203 
 
 These are questions which lie beyond the reach of 
 our knowledge." 1 
 
 (5) But the paramount consideration is that 
 parallelism is a product of the denial of causality. 
 Fullerton naively bears witness to this. Only in 
 the physical system, he asserts, "does there obtain 
 an order which we call that of cause and effect. 
 . . . The coming into being of mental phenomena 
 is causeless." 2 Minds indeed are active, but: "The 
 notions cause and activity, effect and passivity must 
 be carefully divorced when we concern ourselves 
 with an exact description of the changes which take 
 place in the material world." 3 A long chapter is de- 
 voted to that distinction which amounts to this; 
 physical causation means uniform sequence, mental 
 activity means action governed by purpose. Thus 
 genuine causation is eliminated from both worlds; 
 mental activity is expressly declared to be causeless 
 and physical activity is but an endless series of ef- 
 fects without a cause. 
 
 Not all parallelists are so explicit as Fullerton here 
 is; but all are dominated by the same debased con- 
 ception of causality. Like Hoffding, they are en- 
 tangled in "the identity-hypothesis"; they conceive 
 cosmic phenomena as a mere flow of abstractions — 
 motions, events, etc. — each consequent being but a 
 transformation of its antecedent, which by courtesy 
 is called its cause. Indeed it is inconceivable that 
 any sane thinker should — in the face of all experi- 
 
 ^sychology, pp. 66, 67. 
 2 Metaphysics, p. 524. 
 3 Ibid., p. 234. 
 
204 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ence — deny the causal influence of our thoughts upon 
 our actions, unless he had previously abandoned be- 
 lief in all causation whatsoever. 
 
 But your disproof of parallelism, it may be said, 
 does not prove the soul's existence. True; but it 
 removes a great barrier. It shows that parallelism 
 is a mere mystification due to the temporary obscur- 
 ing of the principle of causality, the very essence of 
 all thinking. Philosophy at present is like a mariner 
 who cannot find the harbor on account of the fog. 
 Let the fog lift, and there the harbor lies in plain 
 sight before him. 
 
 Section 5. Animism 
 
 But this belief in the soul, it will be objected, is a 
 mere survival of savage animism. On the contrary, 
 it is the remedy for the animistic disease — a malady 
 prevailing far more widely than our objector dreams 
 of. For animism consists essentially in materializing 
 the spiritual, in ascribing to the invisible properties 
 and relations that can belong only to visible, extended 
 things. And that disease is just as common among 
 philosophers as among savages. Hegel's doctrine of 
 the organic Whole and its parts, for instance, is thor- 
 oughly animistic; he ascribes to the spiritual what 
 can belong only to extended things. And almost all 
 the objections urged against the soul's existence are 
 based upon some such materialistic, metaphorical 
 way of conceiving the spiritual. Take, for example, 
 the most difficult question of all : Where is the soul ? 
 Is it located, as Descartes supposed, in the pineal 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 205 
 
 gland ? Or is it diffused throughout the whole body ? 
 Or is it, as a very able Neo-Scholastic insists, no- 
 where P 1 
 
 But consider this question from our present point 
 of view. It is obviously impossible to determine the 
 spatial relations of a spirit. But we are not thus 
 driven into Kantian agnosticism. For I have proved 
 that the soul is a free cause, but limited in its action 
 to the body. And it is this causal relation which is 
 the essential, the supremely significant element in all 
 our thinking and knowing. The question of the 
 soul's location is a minor, irrelevant one; the failure 
 to answer it leaves our true knowledge of the soul 
 intact. 
 
 Nor am I disturbed by the reflection that this view 
 is akin to that of St. Thomas of Aquin. 2 For true 
 philosophy has ever been a prolonged effort to attain 
 unity of thought without effacing real distinctions. 
 Both Plato and Aristotle sought that goal, the one 
 swerving toward idealistic, the other toward mate- 
 rialistic monism. In the Middle Ages that effort 
 continued, and in the labors of St. Thomas reached 
 a degree of excellence which, considering the diffi- 
 culties which had then to be encountered, is a marvel 
 of genius. Even Hoffding says: "The greatest 
 merit of the Middle Ages lies in its absorption in the 
 inner world of the life of the soul. . . . No won- 
 der that a fine and deep sense of the inner life de- 
 veloped." 3 
 
 1 Perrier, Revival of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 123. 
 2 De Wulf, Hist. Med. Philosophy, p. 339. 
 3 Hist. Modern Philosophy, I. p. 5. 
 
206 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 But modem speculation has neglected one-half of 
 the true philosophic task. In its eagerness to unify 
 it has effaced those vital distinctions without which 
 thought becomes a mere welter in the mire of con- 
 fusion and doubt. From this sad plight there is no 
 possible escape save through the doctrine of these 
 pages. There is no other way of solving philosophy's 
 problem — to unify without effacing distinctions. 
 For causality in the only relation which at once dis- 
 tinguishes and unites: or rather, in order to unite. 
 Thus we have been enabled to preserve such price- 
 less distinctions as those of God and the world, the 
 seen and the unseen, body and soul, uniformity and 
 freedom — without loss, aye, with increase of unity. 
 My doctrine is then dualistic, in that it accepts that 
 dualism of causality that unifies everything. 
 
 And thus philosophy gains what it never has had 
 heretofore, an indestructible basis. All thinking be- 
 comes impossible, if we cancel causality; and the 
 causal conception in its fullness is identical with the 
 theistic conception of God. We have then no need 
 of innate ideas, postulates, or Kantian a-priorities. 
 As Amiel said, the one thing needful is to know 
 God. 
 
 Section 6. Immortality 
 
 I have shown that all forms of true thinking are 
 ultimately reducible to a relating of cause and effect ; 
 that is thought's sole essential function. Thus the 
 skepticism so rife in the last two centuries, is swept 
 aside. The imperfection of the senses must, of 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 20J 
 
 course, be conceded ; they do not reveal things in all 
 respects precisely as they are. But scientific thought 
 has overcome these illusions by unveiling their 
 causes. And to those followers of Kantor Hegel 
 who still exaggerate this imperfection of sense into 
 a universal illusionism, I have made the sufficient 
 answer that all such extravagance is tantamount to 
 the extinction of thought. 
 
 The first truth concerning immortality, inferrible 
 from this view, is that all animistic features must be 
 eliminated from our conception of the soul. In other 
 words, the soul must be regarded not as substance 
 but as cause. For, as was shown in Chapter IV, 
 § i, substance is a subordinate and derivative cate- 
 gory : it normally suggests material things and can 
 only metaphorically be used in a wider sense: thus 
 it misleads. Even Descartes grants that it can be 
 applied to both God and finite things only in two 
 very different senses. The Cartesian view of God 
 as substance ended necessarily in Spinozistic pan- 
 theism. In precisely the same way, the view of the 
 soul as substance ends in animism — the materializing 
 of the spiritual. 
 
 The religion of India is a glaring example of this 
 animistic decline. From its early Vedic purity, 
 which knew nothing of metempsychosis, it lapsed 
 into a conception of the soul as some strange sub- 
 stance or stuff hidden sometimes in a human 
 body, at other times in a fish, a worm, an insect, a 
 tree or a stone. And the natural reaction from this 
 animism led to the Buddhistic denial of the soul 
 
208 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 as aught but a series of evanescent thoughts and 
 feelings. 
 
 But animism has by no means been confined to 
 savage races or to India. Kant's whole argument 
 against any theoretic proof of the soul's existence 
 hinges expressly upon this substance-view thereof; 
 recall for instance his famous ''elastic ball" conten- 
 tion, and Hegel's theory of the human mind as a 
 fragment, a sort of single cell in the Absolute organ- 
 ism, is explicit animism through and through. 
 
 We must then put aside this bewildering animism 
 and interpret the soul causally, that is, as the cause 
 of the psychic activities, thought and volition. 
 
 The second truth to be emphasized is that what- 
 ever is a true cause — that is, irreducible and unitary 
 — is imperishable. 
 
 All modern science proclaims that truth. The 
 things we see, even the "everlasting hills," are com- 
 plexes that change incessantly, decay and vanish. 
 But the true unitary causes of these changing com- 
 binations, the elements which by their mutual attrac- 
 tions and repulsions produce and destroy these un- 
 stable complexes — these abide indestructible. If 
 then the self is a unitary cause even to the same 
 extent that the physical elements are causes, it is 
 imperishable. 
 
 But a three-fold proof has already been given that 
 the soul has such causality in a far higher degree 
 than any mere thing. First, it has been shown in 
 these pages that the knowledge of causality is a reve- 
 lation of the unseen, an enlargement of power im- 
 
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 200, 
 
 possible to any material object. Second, thought 
 has a double movement whereby induction becomes 
 possible and thus Nature's hidden processes are laid 
 open for human use. Third, the soul has been 
 proved free and thus in closest kinship with the 
 Infinite Cause. Surely then it is stupid to deny to 
 such a cause as the soul an imperishableness we con- 
 cede to unconscious things. 
 
 And I now add still another proof, simpler and 
 final. Of nothing has the mind so intimate a knowl- 
 edge as of its own thoughts and volition ; indeed, ac- 
 cording to idealism, it knows nothing else. But uni- 
 versally the mind has discriminated between itself 
 and its transitory states, as one cause and many 
 effects. Therefore if this discrimination is uncertain 
 or false, much more so must be its discriminations 
 between other things far less intimately known. It 
 follows that the mind has no power of truly dis- 
 criminating between cause and effect. Thus you 
 have again made all thinking impossible. Your 
 creed must be nihilism and the extinction of thought. 
 
 In this proof of immortality, so long sought in 
 vain, we have another instance showing the illimit- 
 able scope and value of our fundamental principle. 
 It has been demonstrated that all thinking has one 
 essential function, that of causal conviction. It fol- 
 lows as an evident corollary therefrom that the 
 whole realm of true thought and knowledge, despite 
 its superficial diversities, must have so firm a unity, 
 so perfect a solidarity that to cut away one part is 
 to destroy the whole. And what was thus inferrible 
 
2IO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 as a corollary, we have in this volume verified as a 
 fact. 
 
 Furthermore this new view partially justifies those 
 frantic appeals to faith which many thinkers are now 
 making. Their faith is not a mere blind, foolish 
 credulity ; it is a dim, unreasoned insight into such a 
 unity and interdependence of all truth that the ruin 
 of one part is the ruin of the whole. Kant, for ex- 
 ample, believes in the moral law, and thus manages 
 "to make room for faith" everywhere else. So the 
 Neo-Hegelian rests every thing upon faith in "an 
 articulated system" or "Totality," without being 
 able or even seriously attempting to prove its reality ; 
 it hangs in the air like Kant's system of a-priorities 
 or Leibniz' pre-established harmony. 
 
 But this great gap is now closed. The perfect 
 unity and solidarity of truth throughout the whole 
 realm of knowledge is an inevitable corollary from 
 the now demonstrated principle that the sole essential 
 function of thought is to relate cause and effect. 
 
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