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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: HODDER, ALFRED TITLE: ADVERSARIES OF THE SCEPTIC ... PLACE: LONDON DA TE: 1901 Restrictions on Use; COLUMBIA UNIVERSITr' LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRA PHIC MICROFORM TARHFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 110 H66 Hodder, Alfred. I?6S-I907 ./■ Adversaries of the Sceptic-, or. T^e species present, a new Lac^iry into h^a^an Icnowledge. Lonioa 1901. d. 339 p. i4H7';;i TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA IB JIB REDUCTION RATIO: /i^ FILM SIZE: 1^ D2_"--- IMAGE PLACEMENT:' "^lA jTa' DATE FILMED: '^\:2:.''IrJj^'3 INITIALS -^/^ ^ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBijCATIONS. INC WOODBRTDGErCT r" i r~~ Ulllil for Information and Imago Managomont 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 im Mil Inches Hi liiiiliiiiliiiil mum i I 2 8 ! ^li»9i«i«W*(^«W*«li»*^6W»IWW*a 1.0 I.I 1.25 i 3 10 I i 1h |2.8 2.5 K 1^ 163 ■ JO •- .. biku. 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 11 ! 12 13 14 15 mm i 5 TT TT \^ MflNUFfiCTURED TO fillM STRNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMPGE, INC. It K\ Heel C hull In ;i M ii i n e r s i t y ill tlic Ct til of IXtm llmii h Special Fmut 1 9 O O (Gim-ii anomjinousTn ^ M iilL ADVERSARIES OF THE SCEPTIC f'. \ i» E'. . it ill 5^ THE An\i:k6ARIES OF -^ r I I I -*■ t i I . 1 i i^ blhlM !L \ OR THE SPECIOUS PRESENT A m:w inquiry into human knowledge BY ALFRED HODDER, Ph.D. k >> « .f Xonbon SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LTD New York : The Macmillan Company 1901. Prct; iCC k^ r "^ This book aims at controverting certain current, or rather dominant, theories in regard lo re- latioris, judgment, reasoning, percept iik and the unit rt I thics, and to substitute others in their ^reau. Mueli ot it i^ de:>triicti\'e. hut in no case has destruction been attemiHei except as a necessary preliminary to reconstruction. It is in some measure to be regretted that the men, whose doctrines the follow! p,i; pages directly oppose, are thubc to whom in matters philosophical I owe the greatest delt. If any word in the book can be found to imply a oersonal or professional disrespect, I hec hefbre- land to withdraw it and to substitute . ord entirely colourless. To Professor R \ce. m particular, i ain mdehted f3r the t^ert tornial instruction in Metaphysics that I have re ceived : his bcrnaiairy un. Kant, at [larvard in the year i 891-2, has reoiaintri in the niern-rv ot the men who attended it as a model en w iuit a scirv!nar\- shouhi be. To Mr. Bradlev's books ! am rnnre deeply mdehted than rc^ those ui anv liviii'j^ author in Great Fkatann Upon the intere-t ot t!ie beginner in phih,)- sophy the !a k has in so far a claim, that the problem^ wath which it deals are the central problems of Metaphysics, Logic and Ethics 313650 PREFACE It in ! • ■• 1 i i in at the present time. It is upon the student's decision in regard to these problems th u his decision in regard to current systems oi \h ta- physics, Logic and Ethics depends, ft lu uld be added that the statement- of doctiiiic ulti- niattiv contestcii uui rejected were elabonucd ahiic t without exception at a time when to me those doctrines seemed convincing, and those statements in all likelihood unanswerable. The problem.s in Ethics here dealt \ itii, ^■'^1 1h:^ rit^teil, are for the most |,>art problems Met uhysics also. The minuter problems iaiiiCS may widi more advanta^-e he treated connection with the prol)!erns of Politics and of ^Esthetics. The theory here set forth in regard to the esse of relations was published in the review of Mr. Bradley's '' X; [>earance and Reahty " in the "New York Xation " ; the theory ofjudgmcnt and rea^-oninp: was putaiislied \\\ in article in the Philosophneal Re \ iew Vol. v., No. I ; the substance en' rhi iiiaotor o\\ ^'The MoraHty that Ought lo He appeared Hi the l^hilosophical Review Vol. iii.. No. 4 ; and ^^The Substance of The \i ahtv That Is" and of "The Unit o\ luhics " appeared in articles in the International Journal di Iithics ^ ^d. \-i.. Xo. 3 aiiii \ iH, ill., Mo. I ; the first ^^"•^' • ii y . rs of the book ab it stands and a porn on of the sixth were accepted b) die Faeultv of Ihirvard College as a thesis for the degree >i Doctor or Philosophy. Alfred Hodder. f'"^ !'"") [■EN 1 S PART FIRST MRTAPflVbiCS OF THF ^PRnoUS V\{VUi,aa...,c of his chamber and letuJing ahvtiys his own w ciy. But a philistinism really honourable is loyal to its debt ; and metaphysics, which is the last word of a dispassionate passion kr intahcctual completeness, may well be said to be, if not itself sceptical, tha a,pi)tlieosis, the transfiguratioia of a single-minded rt,_,.;ara !=.r certitude that is in its essence oiia with djiuia,.-- with the habit of putting every item s)f -ut Ijchafs^ without exce|nion, sternh' a-i^a as sista;i.,:aasai. ^-^" kS. .-^^^.^-^!«ar -" 12 T//E DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM And that too without dialectic hocus-pocus and sleight-of-hand, without substitution of "postu- lates " and " demands " for reasonings and proofs, and of hypotheses framed to bulisfy "oiir wlule nature " (whatever that may be) for an unswerving appeal to our sense of logic. " I admit, or rather I would assert," Mr. Bradley says, lending the authority of his name to a bad tnidition, "that a result, if it fails to satisfy our whole nature, comes short of perfection. And I could not rest tran- quilly in a truth if i were compelled to regard it as hateful. While unable, that is, to deny it, I should, righdy or wrongly, insist that the inquiry was not yet closed, and that the result wms but partial. And if metaphysics is to stand, it must, I think, take account of all sides of our being. I do not mean that every one of our desires must be met by the promise of a particular satisfaction ; for that would be absurd and utterly impossible. But if the main tendencies of our being do not reach consummation in the Absolute, we cannot believe that we have attained to perfection and truth." Mr. Bradley proposes, that is, deliber- ately and perhaps wrongly, ("righdy or wrongly"— the words are his), to assume that the universe is such and such, and then to " think u|^ t* it ; and Professor Royce dignifies this assumption (iK.t with especial referencr to Mr. I)ra(i!i;y, but geru,Ta]i\-) With the decnratu'c eiiithet " couraeeoiis. " The appetite for truth, it is a.r-iied, is bunply a (leinaiul THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 13 like another ; we have an appetite also for good- ness, and an appetite for beauty ; and it seems to be supposed by virtue of some celestial illot^ic 10 follows ih:it what satisfies our appetite lor one of these must by a pre-established harmoiiv satisfy our a|)|)et!tes for the others. But the afspetite for truth is a demand, if a demand at all, oreciseiv uiihke any other, and the conditions which minister to it are markedly distinct from these which minister to our appetites for goodness mid beauty ; as reasonably might it be alleged that if a cloak can keep us warm it must by a pre- established harmony avail to still our hui^L^-er. — - with the farther argument, to clinch the matter, that imappeabcd hunger, even within the shelter of a cloak, is ''hateful." The specific demand of the intelligence is for matter of fact ui all its ovil and in all its ugliness, and for logic in its sheer implacabilitys An assumption is a flaw in a roundf.si ne/Oinlivsics, and to call its introduetiiai there a mark of courage, — openly and placidly, almost gaily, to carry the thino* off, when one in fact has been at one's wits' ends to no'oid assuming anything — is a stratagem that would be admirable onh' '\i metaphysics were a game of bluff aaid ehe universe a card-table. If it is deeply significant in metaphysics that wo who have a craxsin^" lor i^'ocsd- ness and beauty should assume, |)erhaps against the wui'dit of evidence, tliat the tmiverse is beautiful and e'^-^sd. it cssn hcusliv hi: less siirniticmt ^ — »*— --i.^--r^ i 14 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM in metaphysics, the sceptic well may say, that people's ideas of beauty and goodness differ, and that either the same universe must be assumed to be both beautiful and ugly, good and bad, as many times over as there are conflicts of taste and opinion amongst the persons judging, or there must be assumed to be as many universes as there are intelligences. And if once we set our foot on the path of assumption, it is gratuitous self-abnegation to stop short of "particular gratifications"; Mr. Bradley's remark that not to stop short of particular gratifications would be absurd is. except for pur- poses of rhetoric, poindess simply ; in the general abeyance of reason, one assumption is as absurd and as litde absurd as another ; shyness in positing, wh(!n the sole purpose in positing is to take for granted whatever is needed for our comfort, is as little commendable as shyness in wishing — is indeed but another name for the same thing. There is as much and as little ground to posit that the universe is champagne or opium or cigarettes, if you chance to like champagne or opium or cigarettes, as there is to posil that it is loveliness and virtue ; loveliness and virtue beyond doubt are present in the universe — and so are other things. To the intellect it is plain thai there is falsehood in the world, and ugliness^ and moral evil ; nay, even the supposed concomitance of the true, the beautiful, and the morally good* is intellectually — is it not ? — a violence, a freak of THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 15 self-will simply. So far as we possess upon the subject any knowledge at all sufficient, there are facts that are evil ; and actions that are righteous but unbeautiful ; and beauties in the ''imitative arts " to be achieved only by departure from the lines of what is or has been or even may be ; and beauties in arts not imitative at all and insus- ceptible even metaphorically of the attribute of falsity or truth. Our appetites are not always satisfied nor always all satisfied together ; to the intellect what is odious notwithstanding is ; to be odious is to be. " If metaphysics is to stand, it must, I think." Mr. Bradley says. *'take account of all sides of our being ; ** but it cannot for aji instant stand, it cannot for an instant be regarded as satisfactorily taking account of the especial facet of our being with which it is primarily con- cerned, so long as it holds itself in readiness to exclude from its results, to shuffle out of sight, every item that it finds "hateful/* **You mix things up, chire madamc'' the actress says in the novel, "and I have it on my heart to tell you so. I believe it is rather the case with you other English, and I have never been able to learn that either your morality or your talent is the gainer by it." To insist on our metaphysics being beautiful, and on our art being virtuous, and on our conduct being true, (whatever lliat may mean — though indeed it is no more in need of the trans- formin<> wand of metaphor than its predecessors), i6 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM is to aim at satisfying ** our nature as a whole " by mortifying it successively in every part. 2. But, the sceptic is certain to be told, we must consent to make assumptions somewhere. The least exigent of demonstrators must be granted his point of view, the least exigent of theorists must beg his final premises. ** Thinking," Mr. Bradley declares, '*is the attempt to satisfy a special impulse, and the attempt implies an aRsnaipLion about reality. You may avoid the assumption so far as you decline to think, but, if you sit down t ) the game, there is but one way of playing. In order to think at all you must subject yourself to a standard, a standard which implies an absolute knowledge of reality ; and while you doubt this you accept it, and obey while you rebel. "^ Tout le nionde y passe, the argument seems to be ; science in especial is founded on assi!mf)tions; why not also metaphysics? "You are placed in a world of confusion," Professor Royce says, pressing this same point again t the moralist who hesitates to say that he believes what he finds pleasant to believe; "and you isstri that in its ultimate and eternal nature it answers to your moral needs. That seems pre- sumptuoub. You did iira make that world. I ! w ' Appearance and Reality^ p. 153. •Is I THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 17 do you know whether it cares for your moral ideals? Very well, then, be impartiil, \()u are placed in a world of confusion, and you assert that it answers to your intellectual needs, namelv that it is a world of order, whose facts could be reduced to some rational and intelligible unity. What business have you to do that? In both cases you transcend experience. Nature. gives you in experience partial evil that you cannot in all cases perceive to be universal good. Nature also gives you in experience partial chaos that you cannot in all cases perceive to be universal order. But unwaveringly you insist that nature is orderly, that the chaos is an illusion ; and still you do not feel ready to insist," — on the principle, apparently, that one might as well be hanged kr a sheep as for a lamb, — "that the partial e\ii is universal good."^ Nay, it seems that in mattirs of science we not only in the past have done in secret and inadvertently this wicked thing, but are in some sort in reason bound — perhaps by way of penance — unwaveringly to continue doing it. in open shame. Science, we are tokl, is louncJed on assumptions ; and by these same theorists u e ire pcriietuallx" warned, (the warning is set down always with an accent of finality), that to distrust assumptions is to call in question the certainty ot science. There is an alternative, however, alike in 1 T/ie Religious Aspect of Philosophy^ pp. 294-295. \% i8 T/fE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 19 science and in ethics and in metaphysics, to setting out from an assumption. There are such things as intuitions, as immediate knowledge, as " thr Specious Present" — we may set out (if set out we can) from them. And \i we cannot, — even li we find ourselves deprived of that point of departure, — there will always be the better part, the sceptic urges, of not setting out at all. Nay, even supposing us to be constrained by some malign impulse to frame an orderly system of the world in the absence of the indispensable materials — even supposing us to be coerced into deluding our intelligence with postulates and fated to believe in our achievement of the miracle of creating something out of nothing, it still fails to appear that the postulates can be a matter of mere choice or liking — in especial if we take counsel with science. There is in logic a trenchant dis- tinction between accepting principles that such knowledge as we possess in a manner points toward though it cannot from the nature of the case demonstrate beyond possibility of error, and accepting principles that such knowledge as we possess points quite away from, though it cannot from the nature of the case refute beyond possi- bility of error. The former is the practice of science. It affords no precedent for the latter. And even if it did, metaphysics could take no advantage of that precedent. For metaphysics is logically above science in authority, not be;uv\ ii nor on a level with it, and is held tn a stricter discipline. Metaphysics is tiie st uce, the cnlicisiii. nf fmai premises: it is precisel\" because met i| in is is at hand, specifically charged with the ihit)^ ^'f subjecting pre-supposiiions to a merci- less examination, that science can pruceeci from them so irresponsibly. The credentials uf science are in metaphysics one of the matters in question; science is one of the prisoners in the dock - presumptively an ''old offender ;" it is the business of metaphysics on the bench to sit worthily in judgment on her and not appeal to her in its own behalf for a ''character." Nay, so fastidious ex officio is metaphysics, so far from the relative complaisance even of science, to say nothing of caprice, so far from indulging a natural kindness for mere probabilities and possibilities, that actual inevitabilities of human thought can find small favour \\\ its sight. For science does not pretend to logical suffici- ency, it accepts the human faculties ; the basis ot science in the last resort is not logical but psycho- logical : that is the very point of divergence, the split, the rife f>etween science and meiuqKhysics. Metaphysics mur.t be logically sound, science need not. Metaphysics cannot say, " Men think this and that it is the very nature of their faculties lu assume this and that, therefore this and that shall be unquestioned because de facto unquestion- able." All other branches of knowledge may do 20 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 21 thus ; it is the distinction of metaphysics to do otherwise, to be more thorough, to be most thorough, to be logical or nothing, to demand not what is psychologically de facto but what is logically de jure unquestionable. " Tn order to think at all you must subject yourself to a standard," Mr. Bradley says in the passage quoted above, — '*a standard which implies an absolute knowledge of reality ; and while you doubt this, you accept it, and obey, while you rebel." But to be forced to make an assumption is one thing, and to be logically justified in making it is another, and it is at justification in logic that metaphysics is bound to aim. The fact that one accepts a thing while one doubts it and obeys while one rebels, may be the best reason in the world for pushing doubt and rebellion to an extreme — even to the extreme of declining, in matter of pure speculation, seriously to think at all. To point out that one has presupposed a thing is not always conclusive even as an argumentum ad hominem ; it is never conclusive as anything else ; and the supposition that it is so is of iiuerest mamly for all that it ignores. Mr. Bradley in his Appearance and Reality affords us a faultless example of the contradu tions to w! irh such arguments may lead. " J C think," he says, 'Ms to judge, and to judge is to criticise, an i t.. criiicise is to use a criterion of reality. A 1 surely to doubt this would be mere blindness ur confused self-deception. But, if so, it is clear thai, in rejecting the inconsistent as appearance, we are applying a positive knowledge of the ultimate nature of things. Ultimate reality is J- such thai it does not contradict itself: iiere is an absolute criterion. And it is proved absolute by the fact that, either in endeavouring to deny it, or even in attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity."^ We are forced, that is, to assume that reality is consistent. But we are forced also, Mr. Bradley holds, to accept experi- ence as reality ; and it is shown us (if his argument be accepted as correct) in a hundred and thirty- odd pages of trenchant dialectic that experience is self-contradictory. '' What can be more irrational,*^ Mr. Bradle) with subtle irony demands, **than to try to prove that a principle is doubtful, when the proof through every step rests on its unconditional truth?" There you liave the logical method of presupposition in complete vacuit) . This has been assumed first to last, so runs the argument ; it cannot be given up ; it must be true ; for — -it has proved its own inipos>i})!lity. It is by this same method of demonstration thai the adversaries of scepticism have from time immemorial stood ready to coiifiite tlie sceptic. ** You Li') Lu bliuw," they say to hmi. *'that the human intellect is incapable of knowledge, and ^ Appearance and Reality^ p. 1 36. 1 o •f\\X THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 23 '! employ the human intellect in the endeavour ; but to employ it is to presuppose its competency ; and it is irrational to call in question what you have presupposed If the human intellect is incapable ofknowledo-e your endeavour rannnt by its own terms succeed, and if your endeavour has succeeded the human uitellect is not incapable of kiow- iedge." There is the " little dilemma " presented to the sceptic : scepticism stultifies itself, it has been said, in three words. The fewer the better, the sceptic may however answer — or perhaps the worse. The notion that scepticism is in so obvious a sense an impossibility, is a bad joke : what the dilemma in question really proves when urged against the sceptic is on the part of him who urges it a certain failure 10 comprehend. There is a distinction to be marked between electing either horn of that dilemma, and declining to elect at all : it seems always to be taken for granted that the sceptic is obliged to elect— to maintain his negative ; ^ but the sceptic properly so called will do nothing of the kind— he would on the instant cease to be a sceptic if he did. The sceptic is not unacquainted with the nature of hypothetical conclusions. The sceptic need the sceptic be at pains to say it? — does not niciintain that we kn<>w nothing: he no more gives in his assent tu the negative than in the positive proposition in regard to knowledge : he stands perplexed. It is his adversary only who is obliged to elect, who does elect, and 1 Iv that act within the terms of the sceptical dilemma. Mr. HradJey seems to think diai it in some wav affects the logic of the case, it rue is. or is not, 7vi!lini^ tn accept the result. "It wcHjld of course not be irrational to take one's stand en this criterion (of consistency), to use it to produce a conclusion hostile to itself, and to urge that therefore our whole knowledge is self-destructive, since it essentially drives us to what ve cannot accept. But this is not the result which our supposed objector has in view, or would \vt Iconie. . . . And he is not prepared to give up his own psychological knowledge, which knowledge plainly is ruined if the criterion is not absolute."^ Mr. Bradley, that is to say, deals frankly in ar- gumeufum ad hon?iiiefn — in argumenium ad hommem, on this occasion, bad of its own bad kind, iL^noring as it does the difference in the roles of science and of metaphysics. That there is no opening for argumentum ad hominem in the case, needs hardly to be said : if one's knowledge really is in logic bankrupt, it will not become in logic sound liocause one sliiits one's eyes. Least of all — Mr. Bradley, one is glad to nuie, himself implies it — can any arg7i7ne}iiitni ad ^e.g, see Lotzc, Logik, sec. 302 : But cf. sec. 310. ^ Appearance and Reality^ p. 1 37. 24 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 25 hominem be addressed in the circumstances to the sceptic. It is not the sceptic that has contradicted himself; it is not the sceptic that has committed suicide (he is often dismissed as if he had !) ; it is intellio-ence that has contradicted itself; it is intelligence that has committed suicide that the sceptic may be born. It is not the sceptic that proposes to trust the witness that has lied ; it is the friend and lover of '' knowledore " who avers that the witness is as good as ever if you will but quite steadily ignore the fact that he has been caught. Mr. Bradley's doctrine and Professor Royce's amount to the assertion that from the point of view of the intelligence there is no difference in trustworthiness, or untrustworthiness, between postulates ; that the field lies clear for those philosophers who claim the right to choose their postulates at will. The distinction between assumptions which all the evidence in uur pos- session points toward and assumptions which all the evidence in our possession points away from, those philosophers may urge, would be a telling one, if only it were exemplified by the case before us, but it is not : the postulates of science are not postulates toward which the evidence in our pos- session points. It cannot for an instant be pre- tended, in the matter, for example, of causation, that the so-called ''external" world presents itself to i!k: individual " man as orderly. The |iarii- cular instances in which the individual 11 as ihe slightest reason to believe that he has at first hand known the cause of an effect, or the efiect of a cause, are preposterously fewer than those in which, interpretation apart, he has kiiown events at once uncausing and uncaused ; and preposter- ously fewer they must always re iiiaiii. The individual lives really and must always live, so far as mere ''observation" is concerned, m an utter chaos; and the very questionable 'Tact,' that in every instance in which he or one of his fellows has subjected an event to "adequate " examination that event has been found to be both causing and caused, possesses, on the present h\ pothesis, no significance whatever. In the lirsi place, the adjective "adequate" obviously begs the question at issue : no examination would pass for "adequate" that failed to disclose the prefigured order. And in the second place, except on the absolute assumption of the very supposition the exaniiiaitir)n is intended to suppora a leirticular instance is a particular instance simply, aral the whole very inconsiderable number of instances "adequately" examined cannot be regarded as more than counterbalancing ati equal number of the numberless host of tlie " inadequaLelv )> xamiiied. An induction by simple enumeration t6 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 27 « ii - 1 can never establish a general principle ; and when it purports to do so by an examination not of all, nor even of the majority, but simply of a minimum of the particular instances concerned, it borrows all its seeming force from some unavowed, un- avowable, major premise — from the uniformity, in the case in question, of the course of nature. The law of causation, and the principles of science generally, are so far from being supported by all the evidence at our disposal, (all the evidence that is to say a posteriori), that something very like the precise opposite is true. The postulates of science outface a greater portion of what for want of a fitter designation we must call the " facts," — they subject the "facts" to greater violence,— than any postulate whatever of ethics or aesthetics. And as for metaphysics, so these philoso- phers may press their point — the notion that it has among its special functions that of jus- tifying in all the strict punctilio of logic the ways of science to man, might legitimately have been brought forward only if metaphysics had been competent to achieve its utmost aim. But it is competent to nothing of the kind, and the effort to hold it to its beautiful unattainable ideal serves no other purpose than to divert attention from a quibble. The only atteiiij t deserving serious consideration ever made by metaphysics to supply the foundations of knowledge with a stable base, is the attempt — the futile attempt — begun by Kant. 1 he essentials of the Kantian contention are, that we do possess universal synthetic judgments of objective validity ; that these cannot be derived from experience ; that therefore (there is no alternative) the under- standing must impose laws of its own on the ''objective" world — must supply, nay manifestly upon analysis does supply, the conditions which alone make experience, and in especial experience in the '' pregnant " sense, possible. That fabulous monster, the understanding, is then somewhat, that it can impose laws ? It has ceased inacces- sibly to bombinare in its native void ? No museum of metaphysical entities should be without one ! Granted that we do possess universal synthetic judgments a priori, and that they are "objectively'* valid : the universality lies in the judgments,^ and it should, if it is to lend any honest comfort to the sciences, lie in the "objective" validity. Granted that every event we cognize, or at least cognize "satisfactorily," we cognize, for example, as causing caused ; and w^e do not and cannot cognize every event: granted that every event we examine, or at least examine "adequately," we find to ha\ t: been causing and caused ; we do not and cannot examine, far less examine "adequately," every event There is an uneliminated ineliminable empirical element in the orthodox Kantian argument. It is vain to show that under such and such conditions alone ^ Cf. Sigwart, Logik, sec. 3-2. 38 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM experience, or experience in tlie " pregnant " sense, is possible, unless it can be shown also that experience in that sense (whatever sense is chosen) is real ; and that experience, in whatever sense is chosen, is real, can be shown only empirically, and shown empirically with any certainty only of the present, and, in the case of experience in the *' pregnant" sense, of but a portion — the portion satisfactorily cognized, adequately examined — of that. That experience in the pregnant or in any other sense existed in the past, we are warranted in believing only on the tarnished word of memory, and even that discredited witness bears testimony to the existence in the past not of a world in which the reign of cause and effect was known to be universal, but of a world in which, for every event known as caused, there were a thousand not so known that to all appearance were nothing of the kind ; and as for the future, the less said of certainty about that the better. The miserable induction in question proves, if it proves anything, (which happily it does not), that in the world in which we live instances of cause and effect exist sporadically for the further confusion of aa uihcr- wise uniformly chaotic chaos, and that our vision of an orderly universe is simply an ubbiinate illusion. The reign of cause and effect may indeed be universal, but then again it iii;i\ not , the univer5_. t i t C THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 29 validity/' but at least it has not been proved to possess it. Even the ** objectively " insignificant sense of subjective necessity itself with which the judgment is credited, may be as va|)id and deceptive as our nai\ e sense of the freedoiFi ^-A the will. ''It is evident ' says Lotze, "that in the case nt II iiths which are to l)c: recognized immedi- ately as universally valid, the sole credentials must be the clearness and strength with which they force themselves upon consciousness and at once claim recognition without constraining it by any process of proof; and anv man is perfectly it liberty to allow this claim or to resist it ; it is open to everv one in all honestv to distrust the self- evidence with which this or ihit oliject cA know- ledge presents itself to his consciousness." Irue, Lotze is at pains to hint that such distrust is sophistical, and adds, in dismissal of the possible sceptic in the case, that '*by resorting to such sophistry as that one may contest the validity of any [rocess of proof whatever and of one's own contention together with the rest."^ But the untenability of the positions thus left open for the sceptic to assail is not diminisfied hx the uncer- tainty of his success. If his success vvi re assured, that position would be indiibitiibh) untenable : \i his failure were assured, iliai |)(,;sitHm wiujJd ije tenable or la t as other consideration:^ rnight affect it ; but vv ith his success uncertain, the tena- '^ Logik, sec. 356. 30 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 3» bility of that position is uncertain ; and for him qua sceptic uncertainty is success, and for those who assert its tenability uncertainty is sheer surrender. At whose door the charge of sophistry justly lies, is plain. Moreover, these philosophers may well continue, in the eyes of a discriminating logic, statements about the ''nature "of the "understanding," the *' structure" of the ''mind," are recognizable as simple unedifying generalizations of the uniform fact masquerading as a reason for itself, as a condition precedent of its own existence. If it indeed be true that one always does conceive an event as causing and caused, when one takes the trouble to think of it at all ; and if it be further true that one has a sense of subjective necessity in this conception — feels oneself, however un- justly or illusively, unable to conceive an event as uncausing and uncaused; it adds nothing to the logical stature, to the metaphysical dignii) , of those two facts, to say that such is the "m.ake" and "structure" of the "mind" that an event must be conceived in that way or not ai ill Nay, more : even if this metaphysical monster, this ancestral ens ^a/^(?«?5 paradoxically beo-ot it ii uii its own offspring, does at present make it impossible to conceive an event except as causing and caused, there is no ground to believe dial it has done so in the pasrt excepting such as is supplied and for purposes of logical certiintx vitiated by the memory ; and no ground whatso- ever to believe that it will continue to do so in the future ; and with its past insecure and its future unsecured, it is ridiculous to pretend in the interests of science to make much of tlie ''structure " of the mind. Nor can it be urged, as Fichte might have urged, that the ' structure" of the mind, the " nature " of the understandmg, is transcendental, and as such not subject to change, which is phenomenal ; for in the fir-t j)laa:e *' transcendental" is one of those abstract ternis which are des ombres qui cachent des vides : ajid in the second place, no change has been attributed to the structure of the mind itself, but only to its determinations, in the exercise of its inscrutable freedom, in time and space. " The universal presuppositions which form the outline of an ideal of science are not so much laws which the understanding prescribes to nature, or rather to our sense-perceptions, as laws which the tnider standing lays down h^x its own regulation in its investigation and consideration of nature. They are a priori because no experience is sufficient to reveal or confirm them in unconditional uni- versality , but they are a priori not in the sense of self-evident truths, but only in trie :^ense of presuppositions without which we should work withi no hope of success and merely at randuni, and which therefore we must believe if we are in earnest in our endeavour after knowledge. They i2 THE DILEMMA OF SCFPTICISM THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM qq *'jt are all postulates, and are akin to the ethical principles by which we are wont to determine and to guide our free conscious activities."^ Elaborate as are these arguments, the sceptic answers, they may be summarily disposed of. As against the thoroughgoing rationalist of the Kantian type, they are perhaps nui wholly witliout effectiveness ; the thoroughgoing rationalist of the Kantian type perhaps does somewhat blindly ignore these difficulties ; but he is at least not guilty of ignoring difficulties still more fundamental and of bidding for our approbation on the score precisely of having cut the knot he has not had the deftness to untie. There can be no case in a le out for the permissibility in metaphysics of choosing postulates at will. H n has been the fault of metaphysics in the past to leave the will too much out of account, it is too often the fault of metaphysics in the present that it takes account of nothing else. The specific demand of the intelligence, it cannot be too often said, is for matter of fact, and for sheer logic ; an offer to maintain the ultimate presuppositions of kw^xx- ledge by sheer pluck— by courage— is on a i ir in its significance for metaphysics with an offer lu 1 Sigwart, Logik, sec. 62, 4. maintain them by pistols. Nay, by this very energy oi will these ultimate presuppositions stand condemned. In ethics indeed, which is concerned with conduct, the introduction of fixed- bayonets at a certain stage oi the discussion is not without its profound significance ; In metaphysics it is merely a confession of defeat. The distinction between assumptions which the evidence at our disposal points toward, and assumptions which the evidence at our disposal points away from, is as pertinent as could be wished, and can in the case in question be neither disproved nor successfully yet ignored, but at the utmost rununized. The evidence at the base of the principles of science may be shown tn \f \ ( ry possibly psychological only, doubtfully logical ; but it cannot be shown to be unquestionably illogical, or rather non-existent. '' It is silh evident," said Lotze, ''that in the case of iruths which are to be recognized as immediately and universal! V valid, the sole credentials niuht la: the clearness and strength with which they force them selves upon consciousness ; " such truths impuse themselves, that is to say, upon the understanding ; and the distinction bciw eenwhiai imposes itself upon the understanding and what does not is immistak- able. The mark of such truths is elsewhere hy Lotze said to be the inconcei\;e Htv <:d" the ■T 1 1 J opposite — the inability of the will to rui trie understaiidaia" of them eveti tor a moment : and 34 THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM Hulced the test of uh it assumptions find favour with tlie intellect is to be sought for— but by contraries — in the power of the will. The distinction between assumptions of which the understanding cannot rid itself even with the aid of the will, and assumptions of which the under- standing cannot get or keep possession except by the aid of the will, is in this connection fundamental : there are assumptions that we entertain because we will to entertain them, there are assumptions that we entertain without or even against our will. The attempt in the interest of certain cherished dogmas to ignore the difference, to regard these two antagonistic kinds of assumptions as in the same sense postulates, bears its character upon its face. It may well appeal to pistols in its support — it could not be expected to appeal to reason. And if metaphysics be indeed in- competent to supply what science demands, does It follow with faultless cogency that metaphysics may offer in its stead what science does not demand.? it cannot supply logic, it will therefore give courage ; it cannot tell a story, it will sing a Luiiiic song. A stubborn preconception of what the ultimate deliverances of metaphysics must be — an unbending determination that they shall satisfy that fictitious aggregate, our ''whole nature " — betrays its adherents to strange issues. The scepticism that consists in distrust of reason where reason has discredited itself, is at once less THE DILEMMA OF SCEPTICISM 35 shallow and less unfathomable than the scepticism that consists in disregard of reason \n the interests oi di parti pris. ''Thinking up to a lorei^one conclusion is not necessarily intellect uril insincerit), but it is quite as contemptuous of the best interests of reason as if it were, and is destined to be punished (logic laughs last here below!), as contempt of reason ultimately always is. There are people who care for processes and people wh«j care only for results : it is the wisdom o\ the ceiuuries that to those who care for processes, results shall be added, and that from those wlio care for results only shall be taken even that which they have. Th^ sceptic cares for iirocesses, not lor results : the sceptic distinguishes between postulates, though he distrusts all postulates ; the sceptic takes for sole safe starting-point ur standing-ground the Specious Present. THE SPECIOUS PRESENT J/ \ CHAPTER ii. THE SPECIOUS PRESENT I. The Specious Present then, cry the adversaries of the sceptic ;— so small a kitten in the abyss of this star-spangled universal bag! And really, they urge, if he trust his scepticism to the end, still less — neither kitten nor bottomless bag. For the paradox of the Specious Present is that it be- longs wholly to the future and the past. The ouiy present element which it contains is the mathematical line of cleavage between the no- longer and the not-yet ; the point of contact be- tween an infinite non-existent ante and an in- finite non-existent/^^/ — a non-entity between two nothings. The instant one touches the Specious Present it vanishes like a soap-bubble ; it is a whole made up of negative parts, the summation of a row of ciphers, an illusion, a mirage, a cheat. And even if it were not, one never knows a mental state as present except by means of a subse- quent mental state, and by that time the fir a is present no longer — if it ever was present , by the time one says to one's self, " I am conscious at present of ^," what one is really conscious of is a consciousness (and a fallacious one) that one is at present conscious of A. Not only so, but one can know a thing at all only as distinguislK d In m something else ; one can know the present only as distinguished from the future and the past ; if one can know the present only, one cannot know the present at all. And the present that one imagines one knows is so inextricably overlaid and inter- woven with elements not present — so wholly de- rives its significance and even its verv complexion and character from elements not present, that but for them it would be something totally different from what it is : if one takes it in isolation, one falsifies it ; if one does not falsify it, one accepts along V, kh 't much more than itself And rne could not take it in isolation if one would ; and even if one could, time would still be needed to analyse it out, and when at last one got it, it would not be present. And all this is lu be ignored, we are assured, after the manner of presumptuous empiricism, in the name of logic and ultra-scrupu- losity ! As if immediate knowledge also afford its special mystery ! Examine any f - 1 QIC] n ot I Jit of inmiediate knowledge and it resoh^es itself nito relations, and relations, and e\-er tresii relations, to the end of the search. But rekuions without terms related are an absurdity. Or it it b< ill' |i 38 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT THE SPECIOUS PRESENT 39 sisted in the face of the facts that the terms re- lated mtist be discoverable, the relations are at least prior in time — it is only through a know- ledge of their relations that the terms are brought to consciousness, are brought, that is, into existence; but the terms of a relation are prior in logic to the relation itself; it is an absurdity for the relation to exist before the terms related. It is surely one of the bad commonplaces of philosophy that in- tuition is impeccable. It is so by conclusive pre- sumption of metaphysics, — the king can do no wrong. If the universal validity of the law of causation and of the axioms of mathematics is to be regarded as doubtful, it can hardly be too much to say (mistakes and errors in introspection being notorious) that the invalidity of particular in- stances of intuition is certain. The plain fact, so say the adversaries of the sceptic, is that the present moment inevitably im- plies much beyond itself — inevitably is obliged to transcend itself My present belief, for example, in the future is either true or false — there is no third possibility. If my present belief in the future is true, then my present thought resembles the lutur : ; and resemblance is a relation; and the esse of a relation, as also of the related terms, is percipi : and perjipience implies a perceiving mind. If my present bc'' f in the future is false, then my present thought fails to resemble the future ; but unlikeness also is a relation, and the implication is the same. Whether my preseiii belief m the future is true or false, it demonstrates by necess- ary implication the existence of a mind other than my nwn that is at this present instant in pos- session of my thought, and of the future (the object of my thought), and of the relation of likeness or difference between the two. *' The essence of the related terms is earned beyond their proper selves by means of tiieir relations," as is said by Mr. Bradley ' ; or, as Profefsor Royce argues, since error is actual, the conditions which alone can make error possible must exist. "■ Either there is no such thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contradiction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is present all possible truth. For suppose that there is error. Then there must be an infinite mass of errors possible. If error is possible at all, then as many errors are possible as you please, since, to every truth, an indefinite mass of error may be opposed. Nor is this mere possibility enough. An error is possible for us when we are able to make a false judgment. But in order that the judgment should be false when made, it must have been false before it was made. An error is possible only when the judgment in which the error is to be expressed always was false. Error if possible then is et m ■ t al. Each error as possible implies a judgment whose ijitendeil ^ Appearance a?jd Reality y p. 142. »i 40 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT hi object is beyond itself and is also the object of the corresponding true judgment ... so that every error implies a thought that includes it and the corresponding truth in the unity of one thought with the object of both of them."i 2. The answer to all this which first rises to the lips ot the defender of the Specious Present, is simply that its whole apparent force depends on our knowing beforehand which side of the argu- ment the speaker wishes to support. In itself it is as ambiguous as an oracle ; apart from its setting, a reflective listener might mistake it for a plea in favour of the very doctrine which it is urged to controvert. If (he might infer) the Specious Present is not very simply ac- cepted in its presented length and breadth, if one yields to the temptation to cavil unseasonably for the sole reason that cavilling is not impossible, one commits one's self to the conception of the present as a mathematical line of cleavage between the no-longer and the not-yet ; but the no-longer is non-existent, and the not-yet is non-existent, and a mathematical line of cleavage between two nothings is simply not a line of cleavage, is a com- panion nothing to the two non-entities it is vapidly affirmed to bound ; and to conceive the present ^ The Religious Aspect of Philosophy^ pp. 424-425. 4 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT as nothing, as non-existent, is in the first place impossible ; and would in the second place, if it were possible, be to make liie content of one's conception deny the fact of one's conception — a dialectic achievement whicii w(>i.il(l ha\a:: the sujireiiie distinction of refuting itseif If the atuiiii*^ parts oi unie are nut temporal, if thty possess severally no duration, if they are mathe- matical points simply, then either time is some- thing distinct and separate from its parts, and in that case they are not its parts, which is a contra- diction ; or time itself is not temporal (which looks very much like another contradiction), and in the general absence of duration one thing is as lasting as another, or rather nothing lasts at all, which is absurd. If one never knows a mental state as I ^resent nxeepi oy means of a subsequent mental state, one never knows a mental state at all except as something which at the time ii is not ; but if such were really the case, we could by hypothesis never discover it, and wc have, it seems, discovered it ; and as the essence of a mental state is to be perceived, to perceive it as being what it is not is 1 contradiction in terms ; and a m.ental state that is past is a mental state no longer, imA to be un- able I',) kii^ni- it a^ v)resent until it I-, past is to be unable to know it until it is non-existent and is as such beyond being kauwii at all, which amounts to saying that no such thing as a mental state can exist, not even the one those very words record. 3 li 42 THE SPECIO US PRESENT THE SPECIOUS PRESENT 43 liji If one can know a thing at all only as distinguished from something else, then the present can be known only as distinguished from the future or the past or both ; but to know two things as dis- tinguished is to be acquainted with them both in the respects in which they are distinct ; to know the present as distinguished from the future or the past necessitates one's knowing the future gua future and the past qua past, and that too at the instant when one is knowing the present gua present ; but the past, if one has known it really at all, one has at least never known gua past but only gua present ; and the future, if one ever really is to know it at all, one will never kuDw gua future but only gua present ; and one in any event does not know them respectively gua past and future at this present moment when alone such knowledge would avail, because at this present moment they are nothing and to know them would be not to know : so that one not only never can know the present gua present, never has known the past gua present, never will know the future gua present, but cannot even form the notions of a present, a past, and a future, to de- clare one's self unacquainted with : which miracle notwithstanding one may claim in company with the rest of human kind inadvertently to have per- formed. If the present is so overlaid and inter- woven with elements not present that but for them it would be something different from what it is, then either the elements by definition not present are present in fact, which is a contradic- tion ; or else the elements by definition not-pre- sent are not present, and to be interwoven and overlaid with them is at present to be overlaid and interwoven not at all, and to be disguised by a negative overlaying and interweaving is not to be disguised ; and the present is as frankly its un- altered self as the argument is transparently sophistical. If the only knowledge that is pos- sible is knowledge of relations, and if knowledge of relation is impossible apart from a knowledge of related terms, then no knowledge is possible, not even this — the knowledge of the impossibility of knowledge, and agroping scepticism is to our crepus- cular intelligence the meridian of truth. And if immediate knowledge is not impeccable, then con- sciousness presents itself as being what it is not; but consciousness is precisely nothing but what it pre- sents itself as being, and to present itself as being what it is not, is not to present itself, and not to present itself is not to be, and negation among the qualities of its defects may vindicate a claim to im- peccability, such as the present charge against im- mediate knowledge cannot emulate. Immediate knowledge and universal synthetic judgments a priori or a posteriori are separated by the bottom- less gulf between what asserts itself and nothing more, and what asserts itself and infinitely more ; between what presents itself for what it is, and what 44 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT THE SPECIO US PRESENT 45 I ■ 1 \ I ' h presents itself as a guarantee for something that it is not ; between intellectual minted gold and simple unsecured promises at some future date to pay. If the esse of a relation \'s> percipiy and if my present belief in the future really does necessarily imply a relation between itself and the future, then there must be a mind that knows at once the relation and both the related terms ; but one of the related terms is not yet in existence, and therefore the relation is not yet in existence ; and when that term shall come to be in existence, then the term at present in existence will exist no longer, and therefore the relation will not exist ; or if the future is in existence it is present, and that is to say it is not future, which is a self-con- tradiction. And even if none of this were true, the mind in question must be either my present con- sciousness or some consciousness other than that ; but it could not be my present consciousness, be- cause my present consciousness does not contain the relation in question nor the second related term ; and it could not be a consciousness other than my present consciousness, for if it were it must know my present consciousness either from without or from within ; but to know it from with- out would mean that there was a relation between that consciousness and mine, for the support of which a third consciousness would have to be supposed ; and for another consciousness, even if in the interests of confusion it be called '* another moment " or a *' larger whole " of the ** same " con- sciousness, to know my present consciousness from within is a contradiction in terms, for pre- cisely and solely what constitutes it *' another" is its being '"ejective" to my present consciousness. Nor does it lessen the difficulty to '* declare," as Professo Royce suggests, **time once for all pre- sent in all its moments to an universal all-inclusive thought," ^ — except indeed as it would lessen every difficulty whatsoever to abandon all notion of self- consistency : for, not to insist on the logical im- possibility of the hypothetical universal all-inclu- sive thought's knowing any other consciousness than its own, (and the impossibility cannot be too often nor too stubbornly insisted on), if time in all its moments is eternally present to an universal all-inclusive thought, then either the content of each of the moments is in a state of continual fluctuation, or it is not. If it is, then, no matter how swift the change may be, if it is conscious at all, and that is to say if it is real, there will be an appreciable period during which the earlier or the later determinations of the fluctuating content are non-existent, an appreciable period, that is to say, during which the universal all-inclusive thought is not universal norall-inclusive ; so that, underpenalty of self-contradiction, no part of the content of any moment whatsoever can be in a state of fluctuation. But this present, passing moment s pettifogging, ^ The Religious Aspect of Philosophy^ p. 423. k:..^^ 46 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT THE SPECIOUS PRESENT 47 t \* 1 teasing-, hair-splitting consciousness that con- stitutes my present questioning me must be at least some part of some moment of a thought really universal and all-inclusive, and even with- in its narrow limits this present consciousness feels itself to be and therefore is unstable — fluc- tuating — as a swirling pool. If the universal all- inclusive thought knows this moment in frozen im- mobility, it knows it as it is not ; if the universal all- inclusive thought does not include this moment's evanescence, itisnot trulyuniversalnorall-inclusive ; if the universal all-inclusive thought does include its evanescence, it is not truly universal nor all-inclu- sive ; in either case the difficulty which Professor Royce hoped to avoid is simply shifted from the form to the content of the successive moments of time. Or, to put the same difficulty in another way : if to be possible a thing must have been eternally real, to be at all a thing must always have been ; but if so, my present consciousness (jua present must have existed in the past, and that is either to say that it must have existed gita present before it was present, which is a contra- diction in terms, or to ignore all distinctions of time whatever, and among them the very uncs the speaker in this instance is immediately ac- quainted with. If error, as Professor Royce, follow- ing the best tradition of contemporary philosophy, defines it, is really possible only on the hypothesis above stated, ii would seem necessary tu iiokl that error is not in that sense possible at all, and to reform one's /definition. *' In effect," the assailants of the Specious Present answer, *'an antinomy — on your side and on ours antinomies." And antinomies, in the i taste of the passing hour, are so high in favour — a philosophy unprovided with, them looks so un- deniably of an outworn mode, — that the defender of the Specious Present might well for fashion's sake accept with satisfaction that version of affairs. Nor, considering the mere imitations that the Kants and Hegels, the reigning prnices in philosophy, consent sometimes to put forth as genuine, can it be fairly urged that men's conscience in such matters is exorbitantly strict. But the alleged antinomies here in question are nut even imitations. One set of the contrasted propositions is |)erfectly plain in its undimmed self-evidence ; the other is penumbral vague — attracts the eye like some flitting shadow, only that its insubstan- may be placed l.>cvond dispute. 'llie cious Present burns before one in its ilushecJ intt use, aggressive, palpitating actuality ; and dialectic subdeties demonstrating its nothingness, its dependence, its eternal apologetic reference, droop ill its fierce flame like night-flies about some flarin- torch. Tu find an objection urged V, Ir '^ iitv 48 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT against a position that is manifestly safe against attack, and to point out that the objection is self- defeating, is not to demonstrate an antinomy ; it is in so far to remove the possibility of demon- strating one : and in this case the secret ol ihe seeming force of the objection is easily discerned. To say that the Specious Present belongs wholly to the future and the past, is a vivaciously mis- leading way of stating that within the ample bulk of the Specious Present distinctions in duration may be made, and that the knife-edge of every such distinction cleaves the Specious Present iiito an after and a before ; but they are an after and a before only secMndion quid, in reference to it — to the distinction in question, an infinitesimal portion of the present consciousness ; the fallacy consists in tacitly assuming them to be an after and a before secundum aliud, in reference to the present consciousness itself — to the whole, that is, of which they and the distinction are the parts. In the present consciousness indeed, (the appeal is always to immediate knowledge), there present themselves a number of streams of time with varying rhythms and atomic parts o{ different lengths, the length of a given rhythm or atom being both absolute — its **felt" length, — ;iri<] rela- tive, as estimated in the terms of the rhythm and atoms of a different stream. To say ! a one never knows a mental state as present, except by means of a subsequent mental state, is a somewhat THE SPECIOUS PRESENT 49 less vivacious and more misleading way of re- ferring to the fact that within the ample bulk of the Specious Present distinctions in duration are not the only ones that may be made ; al)strac nons, distinctions in aspect, in quality, are also possible ; and each such distinction appearing temporally somewhere within the Specious Present, and being therefore cushioned between its outlying extremes, one may with accuracy say, when the distinction in question is that of the " presentness " of the present, that it is subsequent to the aspect i tinguishes — it is subsequent, that is, to an a| L 'Ki\--i- '[■^■' 'eci able part of that aspect ; but it is itself an appreci- able part of that aspect, and is indisputably con- temporaneous with itself ; and to another appreci- able part of the aspect, it is itself antecedent. It might with as much truth to fact be said, that one never knows a mental state as present, except by means of another present mental state, and so on in infinitum; or else by means of a preceding mental state, and so on n trogressively without end, as that one never knows a mental state as present except by means of a subsequent mental state. i he only ground whatever for affirming that one can know a thing at all only as dis- linguishecj frrmi something else, lies in the tact that if one know a thing at all one always may, and socHK r or later almost always does, know it as distinguished from something else. The fallacy is an instance of a judgment true secundum 50 THE SPECIOUS PRESENT quid tacitly interpreted as true simpliciter. To say that the present is so inextricably overlaid and interwoven with elements not present — so wholly derives its significance, and even its very complexion and character from elements not present, that but for them it would be something totally different from what it is, is in the first place violently to abstract from the Specious Present everything but its scanty framework of sensations, and in the second place, to put a naive trust in the memories, expectations, scientific theories of perception, and so forth, with which that frame- work is upholstered. But the validity of scientific theories, and of the pretentions of memories and ex- pectations, is precisely one of the points at issue ; and the Specious Present does not consist r thought: if the affirmation or ilcnial is true, the judgment agrees with its object : if t>ie affirmation or denial is false, the judgment fails to agree with its object : in either case the judgment must be one thniu; and its object another, the thought and the object of that thought cannot be one. But if we know the specious Present only through the mediation of somethini^ eb;e, then to sav tliat we know nothing but tbe Specious Present is to say that we know nothing, not even the Specious b*resent, nor even our ignorance of the Specious I'resenit. And if our thought of the Specious Present is one thing, and the Specious Present itself as the object of that thought is another, and if we know immediately, [nasenta- tively, only the thought ; then, either the object of that thought exists in another consciousness than tile moment that knows the thougbit, or it does not exist at all. It' it does not exist at all, then the judgments that know ' it can be neither true nor false , we can neither n^ru rut nor fail to represent with precision unqualified nothnig ; truth and error are rlike impossible, even in this very assertion of their i,rnpossibility--which is a, direct self-contradicti(ui ; if it does exist, we ectations, in question — can be neither true nor false, which is once more sufficiently absurd. But to say that they do lie within the compass of some other moment or moments of consciousness, is to admit that the Specious Present necessarily implies other moments of consciousness beyond itself, and moments, too, in fundamenul unity with itself. For to constitute a judgment true or false, it is not enough that it correctly or inoorrecdy represent merely some object— a«y object whatsoever ; it is absolutely essential that it correctly or incorrectly represent the one specific object or set of objects to which alone it refers, or intends, or is intended, to refer. '' Common sense will admit." Professor Royce says, '' that, unless a man is thinking of the object of which 1 suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely falling to agree with the object that I have in mind. If the knights in the fable judge each other to be wrong, that is because each knight takes the other's shield to be identical with the >M 62 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE shield as he himself has it in his mind. In fact IK ither of them is in error, unless his assertion is false for the shield as he intended to make it his object."! And ** everything intended," he argues further, '*is something known. The object ev< n of an erroneous judgment is something intended. . . . The object even of an error is something known." ^ To intend correctly to represent a thing nnplies a choice and hence an identification — -a knowledge — of the thing to be represented, and implies it in the same consciousness with the intention. And the judgment and its intention are in the Specious Present, and the object intended is not, and (unquestionably in the case of error, of memories and expectations,) cannot be, in the Specious iVesent. The Specious Present must, therefore, be an undivided element, simply, in a wider consciousness that includes the Specious Present and the objects of the thoughts in which in part the Specious Present consists. 2, The argument looks formidable ; and consider- ing the extent and depth to which its premises are intrenched in curn iit philosophical literature, the sceptical defender of the Specious Present may well find it to the full as formidable .is it looks. ^ Religious Aspect of Philosophy^ p. 398. ' /^/^. vv- 398-399. SELF' TRANSCENDENCE (j% S .- ' ^ 6, I . I i I ^ Jt * * »- * " ■-■ , iri t !us embarrassment needs must lie : {\i\ . A devising a form of ^scTcis at once sufficientlv u:-u.-a.urod to conv.;y his own sense of the unfathomable hoilowness of every part of it, and sufficiently reserved t . do anything .it nil approaching justice t. tl. natural deference la 1 ^A. „ frtU *r\x- in] - li'T^ . 'thit^. make a false judgment. But in order that the judgment should be false when made, it mubt have been false before it was made. An error h. pos- sible only when the judgment in which the error is to be expressed always was false. Error, li possible, i ^ ihcii eternally actual.^' And what holds of error in this connection holds also of truth. But eacli unit la the infinite series that must be exhausted Ictoro the Specious Present can be known is the object of thought, and ibtrtfure I h '.' t 70 SELF- TRA NSCENDENCB logically prior in time to the unit, so to speak, above it. Now, — not to take advantage of IVofessor Royce s always and eternally, which seem to be of questionable inevitability in the sentences in which they occur, — either the increments of time which separate the units in the series of thoughts and obiect^ of thought are sever.uK smaller than any assignable fraction, or they are not. Or again, either they decrease in a diminishing ratio as the series mounts, or they do not. !f in either case the affirmative is true, then, since to exist a thing must first be known, each of the units in each of the infinite series depends for its existence on a iinii that is logically subsequent to it by however infinitesimal a fraction of time, and that is to say its existence is impossible ; and if in both cases the negative is true, then each of the units in each of the infinite series depends for its existence on a unit that is logically subsequent to it by an infinite time, and its existence is quite as impossible as before. And even if in the latter case its existence were not logically impossible, it would be practically so ; for beginning at no matter what unit m the series it would take (a) an infinite future time to follow it in the ascending series — the series of thous^hts, and (<5) an infinite past time to follow it in ilu de- scending series — the series of objects of thought ; so tliii beginning at no ni itttr what unit we never shall know anything and never have known iny- thing. Not only so. If judgment is by definition SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 71 mental aihmiation or denial concerning something else, then either we have independent knr wledge, other ihui that contained in the judgment itself of the objects of judgment, or xve have not. ii we have, then all knowledge does not consist in judg- ment : if w^ iiave not, then either we never judge, or at least we never can be sure we judge-^nnr persua- sion that we are affirniing and denying about .miie- thing else may v..^\ be an illusion. But if we never judge, we can never be in error or the opposite ; and if we never know with certainty whether we judge or not, then possibly we c:in never be in error or the opposite ; in either case the argument from the possibility of error and the argument from thepossibility of truth lose theircom- pelling cogency. If truth is the specific virtue, and falsity'' the specific vice, of a representative, a copy, (should this seem a ra.tiocinative tautology— a repe- tition in synonvmous phrase of an argument already given the faJlt the sceptic needs must feel, here as in other cases lies with the aflirniative to which his arguments are but replies), tlien m anv given instance either we know the orignial or know of an original or we do not. If we do, then tne oricj"inai and tiaa cop\ cire l.ui..l..>m-aii> consciousness, and ti^at is an end .:,t the matter ; if we do not, the-t n.either Jo wc know wncther the so called - on,v " is a copy or not. and tniU is an cn>l 0I the matter. If everything nitenaeci is something known to the consciousness that intends, n SELF- TRANSCENDENCE SELF' TRANSCENDENCE 73 and if the object of every judgment, even of an erroneous judgment, is something intended, then the object of every judgment, even of an erron- eous judgment, is something known to the con- sciousness that judges ; but thr- object of an erroneous judgment cannot to the consciousness th.it judges be anything known — if it were so the erroneous judgment could not be made; therefore either some things are intended that are not known, or the objects of judgment are not in- tended. To say that the thought of the Specious Present is, in some respects at least, often false, is to say that one often knows the Specious Present as it is not ; but the Specious Present precisely is, and is only, what it is known to be, and to know it as it is not, is not to know it, simply — is a con- tradiction In terms. When per impossibile the thought of the Specious Present is false, then either we know it to be false or we do not. If we do know it to be false, then the Specious Present as the object of the thought of the Specious Present is present to our consciousness ; and if we do not know it to be false, we have no reason to infer a consciousness beyond it iliat knows buih it and its failure to agree with its intended object. To affirm that the thought of the Specious Present i> often false, is to affirm that one often knows in the same moment of consciousness the thought of the Specious Present, and the Specious Present itself as the object of that thought, and the dis- i % agreement between the two ; but the whole force of the contention that if the thought of the Specious Present is ever false then the Specious Present nut be in one consciousness aii(l the thought of the Specious Present \i\ another, lies in the proposition that a false thought of the Specious Present and the Specious Present itself as the object of that thought never could be known in the same consciousness, since if so the falsity could never escape detection — in especial if knowledge of relations be accepted as precisely what constitutes the unity of a moment of con- sciousness. What slippery dialectic is all this, the sceptic well may cry, that^ like a mediaeval incantation to raise the fiend, is as potent back- wards as forwards ! The argument from the possibility of error is in effect an argMmentum adhominem addressed to the sceptic, and that too to the inept sceptic, the sceptic that does not know his business, the sceptic that does not doubt, the sceptic that denies and needs therefore by the terms of his own statement no answer whatever. And that too only on con- dition tl at the inept sceptic is doubly inept and accepts certain current definitions. If (so runs the argument) you affirm that error exists, and if you admit that error is a judgment which does T) m 74 SELF-TRANSCENDENCE not agree with its intended object, then such and such are the deductions. That the argument should for an instant seem to amount to more than this, that it should seem to appeal not only to the inept sceptic but to the doubting sceptic, is due to an unconscious play on the word *' pos- sibility." The admission of the possibility of error may be in intention an admission of either of two things: {a) something less— anything less— on the thinker's part than absolute certainty— an inability on the thinker's part to demonstrate that he is not in error ; {b) the existence in the uni- verse of all the conditions siyie quibus non, (if such conditions there be!), of error, excepting only such conditions as depend on the thinker himself It is in the first of these senses that the doubting sceptic is ready to adinii iluLt error is possible — it is possible for anything he knows to the contrary ; it is in the second sense that the doubting sceptic must admit it possible (fancy him doing so!) before he comes within effective range of the aro-ument. And those who are not sceptics but inquirers of common caution simply, wishing before they make an admission to know what justifies their making it ire in this matter in the meanwhile the allies of the doubting sceptic. And even if the doubting sceptic did admit \\\ this second sense the possibility of error, and even wore his allies so ill-advised a. to fVilIow his cxciiiiplc, the argument from tliir^ \^^k^-'\\'^\\x nf SELF-TRANSCENDENCE 75 \ 1" error would still be nothing more than argumentum ad hominem — almost of the same kind with the stock argument, almost the stock jc:.i, against '' phenomenism," that the word phenomenon im- plies a somewhat not phenomenal that appears. The word phenomenon is an inappropriate word, simply, for what is meant ; the supposed admission of the possibility of error would contain a word not much less misleading; and it is to be recollected that men may commit themselves to a false statement in words without thereby committing themselves to a false judgment. There is a suggestion of litigious- nessin taking the implications of language so seri- ously : it might be supposed that lafamosa discordia, as Leopardi calls it, tra i detti e i fatti had not yet reached the ears of metaphysicians : when Caesar, l^ur Abracadabra!), lost the battle of I'imbuctoo in AD. 1900 — fancy the implications o! tiiat! Error must be shown to be really possible, and not merely confessedly possible, if any argument worthy of attention is to be based on it ; and error can be shown to be really possible, as it happens, only by being shown to be actual. And that, too, actual in a certain narrowly defined sense. F\- 01 the inept sceptic, handicapped by his preliminary admission, is impregnable against tlie argument trorn ilie possibility of error, and impregnable against it even as mere argumentum ad hominem-, until it has been shown that error sense the failure of a iude- in that \"ery sp<..:Cial 76 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE ment to agree with its intended object — is possible ; and that is not soon shown. Certainly no direct appeal to introspection can demonstrate it. Uur memories are present mental facts ; we cannot go behind them ; to the best of our know- ledge there is nothing behind them to go to. Our expectations are present mental facts ; we cannot go in front of them ; to the best of our knowledge there is nothing in front of them to go to. And as for the Specious Present itself and its alleged failure to represent the actual present, all that can be said upon the topic of the many errors in introspection to which the history of psychology bears witness, amounts simply to this, that the Specious Present is fluctuating, palpitating, un- stable, ununiform, so]]short a time the same that it is difficult to find words for what it presents itself as being before it presents itself as being some- thing else and leaves us nothing but the content of a memory, if even that, to work upon ; and the futility of work on that we know. Nor can the nrc'ument from the possibility of error make up its deficiencies by allying itself with the argument from the possibility of truth. Every judgment must be either true or false — if the in iker of the axiom so insists ; you may define a judgment absolutely as you please — as a chimaera, as a minotaur, as a dryad, as a sylph, as a square circle, as a circular square, or as a mental affirma- tion or denial about something else ; but before SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 77 you can draw from that definition and its i in plica- tions consequences other than hypothetical merely, you must show that something answering- to your definition exists. ''Judgment" is, of course, a word in common use, and the things which it denotes are well known ; but before ''judgment," the word in common use, and "judgment " as above specially defined, can be taken as similar in anything but sound, it must be shown that the thing denoted by the former possesses the attributes connoted by the latter ; and the difficulty in making that showing is the difficulty already encountered in regard to error — the difficulty of going behind memory and in front of expectation and beyond intuition: whatever "behind," "in front of," and "beyond," may here mean, if they mean any- thing. Nor does the fact that memories and expectations — judgments generally, logicians say, — " purport " to refer to something beyond them- selves possess the slightest metaphysical signi- ficance. It might seem that to puriirL to re- present is distinctly either to represent or to tail to represent ; but there is a tliird possibility. "One can neither represent," it has been said, "nor fail to represent, unqualified nothing:" unqualified nothing is precisely what, in the total absence of information on that head, iiinst nearly corresponds to the blankness of the mind on the subject of what lies behind memory and in front of expectation and beyond intuition ; the 78 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE dilemma is not a closed one until this third possibility has been excluded, and it cannot be excluded ; the exclusion would involve in another form precisely the difficulty it was designed to do away with. Or if it be alleged, as it may not un- reasonably be alleged, that the assertion of the im- possibility of representing unqualified nothing is ridiculous simply, — that one may as fairly re- present or fail to represent unqualified nothing as qualified something,— that if one believes that there there lies nothing behind memory, wherever that may be, and nothing does lie there, ones belief is true, and that if one believes that there lies something behind memory and nothing lies there one's belief is false : then the reply is that the assertion was necessary to the argument from the possibility of truth and error, that upon the abandonment of that assertion the dilemma, though closed, is harmless utierly, that among the qualities of its defects unqualified noihing may at leiist vindicate a claim to self-Rubsistencc, that it at least does not demand the support of a know^'ng mind, or rather, (since to be known is to be some- thing), that it expressly excludes the possibility of a knowing mind, and that therefore ihose jinlg- ments which purport to represent something beyond themselves may l>e as false as you will, without necessarily involving a conscio*isncss that knows them and knows their objects and the relations between the two. The notion that a SELF-TRANSCENDENCE 79 mental state, merely by proclaiming itself a copy, can, if only it shout loud enough, somehow force the void to bring forth an original, possesses all the essentials of incredibility. Nor can any con- firmation for the theory be deduced from the fact of recognition : recognition is simply a psychological phenomenon like another, and as such is not uncritically to be relied upon in metaphysics. It is a feeling, if you will, of having meant just ^Aal — a psychic " I told you so ! " but the feeling that one meant just /&a^ is one thing and the fact of having meant just that is another, and the fact is no more absolutely to be inferred from the feeling in the case of the psychic than in the case of the verbal — "I told you so!'* Illusions of memory and expectation are supposed to be not infrequent. Nor even if the fact that judgments pur|>ort to refer to something beyond themselves did possess a metaphysical significance, would that significance be quite what alone oin be of service to the argument from the possibility of truth and error. " Common sense will admit,** Professor Royce says, "that unless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind." Common .sense will admit also, it seems likely, that one's memory of words supposed to have been spoken yesterday is true or false, even though the words themselves are no longer in 8o SELF- TRANSCENDENCE existence ; and that one's expectation of hearing- certain words spoken to-morrow is true or false, even though the words in question are not in existence yet. Even if a judgment can, by crying out very vehemently that it is a copy, mysteriously impregnate the void with an original, there is no reason to believe that it can force the void to bring fordi that original before its time. *' But in order that the judgment should be false when made," Professor Royce says, " it must have been false before it was made. An error is possible only when the judgment in which the error is to be expressed always was false. Error, if possible, is then eternally actual." To the sceptic and his allies it is difficult to conceive how this follows, unless indeed on the doctrine that the esse of relations x"^ percipi, (it is a prodigious price to pay for so brief a proposition) ; and that doctrine has been found itself far too infirm to be relied upon. Though indeed, if that doctrine were in other respects quite sound, it might well give way beneath the burden of an infinite mass of error eternally actual ; and it could not in any case support the whole of it. Before a judgment is made it does not exist ; that it should be false or anything else before it exists, may well fill the cautious enquirer with bewilderment ; and to add that it not only can be but must be so ! If truth and falsi tv are relations, then, before the judgment exists, one at least of the related terms is wanting ; SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 8i It does not appear that the relation can subsist in its absence, nor that the other related term must liave been from all eternity sitting in wait, as Avho should say, with gloves and bonnet on. If before a thing can be possible it must eternally liave been actual, then, since actuality excludes possibility, nothing ever can be possible — which contradicts the proposition it was invoked to explain. Nor is a judgment, say the sceptic and his allies, really a mental affirmation or denial about some- thing else. That the notion of its being so should liave gained currency, was natural at a time when a judgment was all but universally supposed to consist in a proposition in words, and when the .account given of such propositions by the scholastic logic was regarded as sufficient. A proposition in Avords is a mental affirmation or denial about something else ; and he who insists on finding a psychological analogue for the proposition in words may with a certain readiness discover the object sought for. He who approaches logic from the point of view of psychology might be expected to find this task of identification more difficult. '* It is one of the most valuable of the discoveries of recent years in matters logical and psychologi- cal, iJi, Heinrich Rickert says, ''that wlierever truth or falsity is m question something more than "% — 82 SELF' TRANSCENDENCE SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 85 a mere relation, or union, or connection, between ideas is involved— that over and above the ideas or the association of ideas there must be, to con- stitute a judgment, another element added, ^^ hich can in no sense be regarded as ' vorstellung^smas- siges '—as in any manner due to the ideas them- selves or to the relation between them."^ And following Brentano' Dr. Rickert finds this dis- tinctive element in a psychic Bejahiing oder Verneinung—^ mental affirmation or denial ; and he argues that affirmation and denial belong essentially to the volitional aspect of the mind, and are controlled as such by a certain perception of values : we affirm or deny in obedience to a sense that in the given instance we ought to affirm or deny ; so that not only in the sphere of morals, but also in the sphere of the intelligence, the cateo-ory Sollen is more fundamental than the category Sein. And Mr. Bradley declares : '' Judg- ment, in the strict sense, does not exist where there exists no knowledge {sic !) of truth and false- hood ; and, since truth and falsehood depend on the relation of our ideas to reality, you cannot have judgment proper without ideas. And perhaps this much is obvious. But the point I in going on to is not obvious. Not only are we unable to judge before we use ideas, but, strictly speaking, we cannot judge till we use them as ideas. V. e * Der Gegenstand der Erkentniss, § 49. "^ Psychologic vom empirischen Standpunkte, § 266, et seq. V I must have become aware that they are not realities,, that they are mere ideas, signs of an existence other than themselves. Ideas are not ideas until they are symbols, and, before we use symbols, we cannot judge." ^ And after rebuking those vvha live too excli^.sively, he feels, n\ the psychological attitude, — *' We have as good," he continues, **as forgotten the way in which logic uses ideas. We have not seen that in judgment no fact ever is first that which It meanSy or can mean what it is ;, and we have not learnt that, wherever we have truth or falsehood, it is the signification we use and not the existence. We never assert the fact in our heads, but something else which that fact stands for. And if an idea were treated as a psychical reality, if it were taken by itself as an actual phenomenon, then ii would not represent either truth or falsehood. When we use it in judgment it must be referred away from itself. If it is not the idea of some existence, then, despite its own emphatic actuality, its content remains but * a mere idea.* " ^ The idea employed in judgment is, in effect, a universal ; and, having spoken of it as such and referred with just surprise to those ] s who might suppose hirn V"^ ^)e unaware o! so obvious a fact as that every single idea is particu- lar, — '* When I talk of an idea which is the same amid change," Mr. Bradley adds, " I ('^^o not speak. ^ The Principles of Logic, p. 2. ^ The Principles of Logic, pp. 2-3. ■« ^ SELF-TRANSCENDENCE of that psychical event which is in ceaseless flux, but of one portion of the content which the mind lias fixed, and which is not in any sense an event in time. I am talking of the meaning, not the series of symbols ; the gold, so to speak, not the fleeting series of transitory notes. The belief in universal ideas does not involve the conviction that abstrac- tions exist, even as facts in my head. The mental evont is unique and particular, but the meaning in its use is cut off from the existence, and iroin the rest of the fluctuating content. It loses its relation to the particular symbol ; it stands as an adjective, to be referred to some subject, but in- different in itself to every special subject." ^ But, as Brentano, following John Stuart Mill, has himself urged withmucheffectagainst the theory of belief presented by Bain : when one looks about the room, when one lets one's eyes travel out the window across the meadows to the line where the meadows meet the sky, when one lets one's mind travel out beyond the limits imposed on one's eyes, the details in one's more or less incomplete Weltbild which one regards as '' real," as genuine, as true, — the details in brief in which one believes, cannot be distinguished from the details in which one does not believe— the details which one regards as fanciful simply, as imaginary, as contributed by the mind itself,— by the mere fact that we are willing to act on the details of the former 1 Ibid. p. 7. SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 85 class, t ) trust them, and are not willing to act on the details of the latter ; because, as Brentano says, Die besonderen Folgen wiirden nicht sein, wenn nicht ein besonderer Grund dafiir in der Be- schaffenheit des Denkens gegeben ware, ^ Or, as Mill puts it : ''The theory as stated distinguishes two antecedents, by a difference not between themselves, but between their consequents. But when the consequents differ, the antecedents can- not be the same." 2 We should not be willincr to act on the one set of details, and utterly averse to acting on the other, unless we perceived some difference between them — we should not be un- willing to dive into an imaginary pool of water,, and willing to dive into a "real " pool, if we had not antecedently distinguished the imaginary from the real. And Bejakung diVid Verneinung, afifirm- ing and denying, are as active as diving or refusing to dive — are as plainly subsequent to a perception of some difference in the things respectively affirmed and denied as diving and refusing to dive are to a perception of some difference in the respectively ''real" and imaginary pools. It is ridiculously false to introspection to suppose tli it before one takes one's matutinal plunge one affirms that such and such is water and is wet. One is perfectly ready to afifirm it no doubt, if it should be sincerely questioned ; but in the absence of ^ Psychologie vom E^npirischen Siandpunkte^ § 268. ^J. S. Mill's edition cf James Mill's Analysis^ vol. i, p. 403. «6 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE Sincere question nothing at all approaching affirma- tion comes into one's head. Fancy one's not believing a thing until one has affirmed it ! — by the very meaning of the phrase one affirms some- thing already pre-existing : to affirm a belief is only one way among others of acting on that belief. Nor is this true only of verbal affirmation ; mentally to affirm a belief as frankly presupposes a belief to be affirmed as verbally to affirm one does. Or do you mean by mental affirmation, what no doubt is most often meant, that tacit, -smooth, unreflective, involuntary assent, or rather perception, that the pool is water and is wet ? do you mean by mental denial that tacit, smooth, un- reflective, unconscious and therefore non-existent refusal to believe that the pool is not water and not wet ? Then affirmation and denial are nothing active, and do not belong to the volitional aspect of the mind, and zx^ not as such performed in obedi- ence to a sense that in the given instance we ought to affirm or deny, and the argument for the priority of Sollen to Sein is without foundation. Nor is this less true because of the distinction between reflective and unreflective belief— the distinction secured in Mr. Bradley's guarded state ment by the word strictly, when he says : '* Not only are we unable to judge before we use ideas, but, strictly speaking, we cannot judge till we use them as ideas." That distinction, elsewhere fundamentally significant, is in this connection SELF- TRANSCENDENCE By misplaced and frivolous. When one does not reflect, a certain vision of the pool, as water and as wet, tacitly, smoothly, without motion of one's will, takes shape in one's Weltbild — takes its place as a detail in one's wider vision for the moment of the world ; and that is all. One believes it, one trusts it, one takes one plunge in utter confidence. When one reflects, a certain vision of the pool, as water and as wet, tacitly, smoothly, without motion of one's will, takes shape as a detail in one's wider vision for the moment of the world, precisely as in the first instance ; and then, only then, one philosophically collects one's thoughts, one calls to mind the inferential elements in per- ception and the opportunities they afford for error, and — acquiesces in one's tacit, smooth, involuntary vision of the pool as before ! Seriously, when one deliberates whether one's naive belief, thai the pool is water and is wet, is true, the utmost that one does is simply, in Mr. Bradley's phrase, to ** offer" one's vision of the pool, instead of its wetness and wateriness, certain incompatible attributes — dryness, inkiness, glassiness, what you will ; and that vision remains unaff'ected by our offer. Bui It that vision is a judgment after the offer is made, and has remained unaffectedly what it was, it was a judgment before. ** Ah, but as the result of its having withstood the offered attributes, the mind affirms it ! " On the contrary ; the result of its having withstood the offered attributes ^1 88 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 89 is, if anything, a lessened positiveness, a sense of insecurity — one takes one's plunge in diminished confidence. There is a touch of burlesque in calling this (if anything) enfeebled, hesitating, doubtful acquiescence distinctively an affirmation. But, it may be explained by "Mr Bradley and those who agree with him, in saying the mind affirms there is no reference made to the degree of confidence which it reposes in what it affirms ; the meaning is, that in the naive belief it does not occur to one that one is not dealing immediately w ith the reality — the wateriness and wetness of the pool are inadvertently regarded as being immedi- ately given ; whereas in the reflective belief one knows that what one really has immediate posses- sion of is an idea of wateriness and wetness, and the affirmation consists in asserting that those ideas correspond to something in the ''real" world — that if one takes one's plunge one will discover the real wateriness and wetness which those ideas symbolize. This is what is meant by employing ideas as ideas, by regarding them as signs of an existence other than themselves, by referring them away from themselves ; and it is not the ideas themselves that are predicated of reality, but their signification — it is an absurd account of one's judgment of the pool to say that it consists in one's idea of water and of wet ; and the ideas are universals because a part only of their content is employed — the wetness of which one has an idea may be the specific wetness of alcohol, and is in any event an indefinite, fluctu- ating, mental somewhat, as a whole very unlike what is believed of the *'real" pool. What a darkening of counsel ! Almost one feels as if one were being made the butt of some good-natured jest, some sly dialectic mystification. There is, it may be safely asserted, no proposition in the range o^ common-sense so plain that it may not be made absurd by interpreting half of 11 on the theory of crude realism and half on the theory of subjective idealism. What on the theory of crude realism are the wateriness and wetness of the pool one is contemplating, are on reflection found to be unknown to one except as ideas in one's head ; but in like manner the "real" wateriness and wetness to be discovered by taking one'c plunge are on reflection found to be unknown to one except as sensations in one's head ; and as an ultimate suicidal flourish (if the landscape is ideal the head cannot be less so) one's head itself is on reflection found to be unknown to one except as sensations in one's head along with those sen- sations and ideas : the little fish has swallowed the big fish whole, and the ocean in which it floats, and justly to complete the miracle has swallowed at !ast itself, and occupies in the hollow void of its own interior the same face to face relation of externality to the big fish that it occupied before. It is, among others, this particular mystery of the 6 / 90 SELF-TRANSCENDENCE faith that has made so many men IdeaHsts ; it has done so to small account if the little fish is begin once more to open its engulfing jaws. One sees no limit to the number of supererogatory stomachs it may have in reserve. Objective idealists of a certain sort seem not to have seized the full import of the idealist argument; one passage, in pursuance of a fallacious theory of perception, down the microcosmos' gorge has not sufficed for them ; they are preparing to affront the psychic irony of a second. '' Sudden at this crisis, and in pity at distress," writes Mr. Bradley in one of his most poetic passages, '' there leaves the heaven with rapid wing a goddess — Primitive Credulity.i Mr. Bradley has not concealed a marked aversion to this particular divinity, and tiiere would therefore be discourtesy in saying that the account given by him, and by those with whom he in effect agrees, of the nature and function of ideas in judgment, was conceived under her inspiration ; but it might have been. As a com- mon-sense criticism on the shortcomings of the scholastic logic Mr. Bradley's account might pass ; as a iiietaphysical or psychological finality it is too high-handed in its violence to facts; scarcely (an 11 be conceived tliat anybody should accept it who has ever looked st^^n i K u wlitt it means. When one analyses ones //c ////;/. when one observes what parts of it are given and what parts 1 Principles of Logic, p. 299. SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 91 "found," whni parts are sensation and what idea, no sudden transformation — is there really need to say so? — takes place in one's vision of the world ; neither the whole nor even the ideal portions of one's Weltbild advance upon one and take up their station behind one's face — inside one's skuil ; one does not even for an instant deal with those ideal portions as maps or pictures or representa- tives ; one is as far from referring them away fr ni themselves as one is from leaping out of one's skin, When one stares at the pool in one's crudely realist mood one recognizes that the pool is given as before one's face ; when in one's idealist mood one reflects that the reality of the pool is psychic one does not cease to recognise the pool as given before one's face. The realist landscape is no more aggressively external to the realist head than the idealist land- scape is to the idealist head ; the realist head is a detail in the realist vision of the world ; the idealist head is a detail in the idealist vision of the world. When one stares at the pool in one's crudely realist mood, one has a sense of dealing in utter rnnnediacy with the reality ; when one reflects that that reality is psychic, one's sense of dealing with it in utter immediacy justly remains unchanged, (hit sees the pool wet in the first instance as one sees it coloured, and when one analyses out the colours as given in sensation and the wet as given in idea — when one notices a specific difference, not, so to speak, of pattern only, but of mode of existence, 'n fi 92 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE between the colour and the wet — one of three things (in the experience at least of some among us) happens ; and none of them lends itself to Mr. Bradley's account, (i.) The percept remains un- changed except that its elements are distinguished — idea and sensation present themselves as such, as if in a sort of interpenetration and consubstan- tiality, like the '* attributes " in a ''natural kind." II is is notably apt to be the case with spatial ideas. (2.) The percept itself remains unchanged as before, but the ideas send off ghostly doubles of themselves that hover undecidedly about the margin of the percept and tend, as the analytic attention wanes, once more to merge into it. If they desert the immediate outlines of the percept itself they take refuge not in the skull but in the periphery — in the particular sense organ to which they specially belong. (3.) The ideas dissipate go off in spiritual vapour, become extinct, leave the sensations bare ; and once more, as the analytic impulse wanes, tend rapidly to reform. This re-merger or re-formation of the ideas is apparently the nearest approach, in the process of reflective as distinguished from unreflective judgment, to anything analogous to ** affirmation " or to the ''reference of an idea away from itself; "and the indeterminateness of the ideas as compared with the delicate finish shown by the sensations is the sole excuse for regarding them as universals. But the affirmation in this case is, of course, not voluntary^ SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 93 It is distinctively involuntary — the involuntary re- formation of a vision of the world that an act of volition has dissipated or disordered ; and the ideas themselves and not their meaning (whatever that may be! Mr. Brarlley elsewhere has done his best to tell us) are us d, and used in all their particularity — their indeterminateness is at the ut- most comparative only; it is "mythological'' to say that the idea of wetness which one analyses out of one's percept of the pool before one may be of the specific wetness of alcohol ; it is of the specific wetness of \\\iter, and in a niimf:)er of dis- tinctive respects always of none but this water. "When 1 talk of an idea," we have found Mr. Bradley saying, " which is the same amid change, I do not speak of that psychical event which is in ceaseless flux, but of one portion of the coiiient which the mind has fixed, and which is not in any sense an event in time." And again, he says : " But an idea, if we use idea of the meaning, is neither given nor presented but is taken. It can- not as such exist. It cannot ever be an event, with a place in the series of time or space. It can be a fact no more inside our heads than, it can nut- side them." 1 The statement is heroic, but it reads singularly like a euphemistic paraphrase for a confession of failure. Really wheni a doctrine in the hands of so accomplished an apologist as Mr. Bradley begins to perform such antics as that ! ^ Princijfles of Logic ^ p. 8. 94 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE When according to the legend the Goddess of Primitive Credulity once more shook her wings and abandoned the earth, she flew '* to the stars, where " Mr. Bradley opines, '' there are no philosophers."! Philosophers, no doubt, had overtaxed her powers. A ''mind" ''fixing" a " portion of the content " of a succession of similars that are not identical from moment to moment with one another nor with themselves ; a portion of an event in time which is not itself " in any sense " an event in time ; a somewhat psychic that cannot as such exist — may well have filled her with dis- may. Either a "meaning" is a psychic some- what or it is not ; if it is not a psychic somewhat, !t is nothing ; if it is a psychic somewhat, it can never be twice the same (the principle is one that Mr. Bradley is practised in remembering on occasions awkward for his adversaries) ; it can at most be twice similar — similar as may be the i)ariicular ideas, a portion of the content of which, in any given case, it by definition is ; and to speak of it as unchanging in the midst of the mind's perpetual flux, as identical at different times, is to permit one's self a laxity of speech that assuredly Mr. Bradley, least of all men, would allow i ) pass unchallenged in anybody else.2 When one considers attentively one's Weltbili, one finds, it may safely be declared, that the 1 Principles, of Logic p. 299. « Cf. post, pp. 114 et seq. SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 95 details one accepts as "real," the details in which one believes, are those simply that one has no consciousness of having one's self In sheer \ oli- tion introduced. When one deliberately, pur- posely, bv a mental effort, conceives the pool before one as of alcohol or of ink, one holds the resulting alteration in one's Welibild to be fanciful or imaginary ; one does not believe in it ; one believes in the image which it has required force to dissipate, and which, the instant that force has been withdrawn, re-forms. The vision of the world that spontaneously takes shape in one's mind is one's " real " vision of the world — is one's vision of the " real " world ; every detail that is 7iot added and maintained by sheer volition, is believed in — constitutes in its unprocured connec- tion with the remainder of one's vision of the world, a belief; every detail that is added and maintained by sheer volition, is unbelieved in — constitutes by the very fact of the procurement, the artificiality, of its connection with the re- mainder of one's vision of the world, a fancy, a product of the imagination. Mere togetherness in the mind of the ideas concerned cannot Mr. Bradley says, constitute a belief— togetherness in tiu mmd is found also in the products of the im- agination '} and Mr. Bradley is no doubt in so far right; I'Ui die iwij tocrethernesses are not the same — one is spontaneous, the other is forced. ^So also Brentano, op. cit. S. 269-270. 96 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 97 \\ II When one wakes in the middle of the night, the vision of one's bed-room and of one's position in it that involuntarily, unreflectively, takes shape in one's mind, constitutes one's belief on the sub- ject of where one is and how one is lying. When that vision is involuntarily displaced by another — by the vision perhaps of a less familiar room or of one's self lying with one's head toward an un- accustomed point of the compass — that second vision constitutes, as the first had constituted, one's belief on the subject of where one is and how one is lying. If the two begin to alternate, one is by that very fact in doubt : doubt is just that instability, that vacillation, in the com- position of some detail in one's unforced vision of the world. If to set one's mind (as the saying is) at rest, one ultimately strikes a match, one of the alternative visions is forthwith established ; the one that is not established is thereupon recognized as an illusion — and is still so recognised if, when the light has been extinguished, it reasserts itself, re- gains its ascendency from time to time for a fraction of a second, as one is relapsing into abstraction, and disappears always as one reawakes : an illusion is just that — an unstable image that is apt to establish itself in one's Weltbild the instant one is off one's guard, but that gives place on reflection. One's unforced vision of the world stretches out Tint only in space but in lime ; the vision oi ihe past and of the future that spontaneously takes shape in one*s mind is one*s ** real " vision of the past and future — is one's vision of the ' real " past and ''real " future; and among the facts of one's past (supposing always that one has had a past) are the things one has imagined one's self seeing and doing, and one of the elements in those im- aginary scenes has been the feeling of volition, the sense of maintaining those scenes by voluntary •effort. If in one's memory of such scenes that feeling of volition is represented, the scenes are remembered as imaginary — as having really been imagined ; if that feeling of volition is omitted, has dropped out, the scenes are remembered simply as real — as having really happened. And as with one's own volition, so also with the voli- tion of one's fellows — supposing always that one has fellows : (it is not the sceptic and his allies that have introduced a psychological discussion into metaphysics ! but if questionable psychology is brought forward as of metaphysical import, it can hardly be beside the mark to contend that that psychology is questionable ; ) everything that one's fellows say they have conceived by sheer voli- tion, or that apart from their saying, or in spite nf their saying, takes shape in one's mind as having been by them conceived by sheer volitifii, |)ie- sents itself in its place in one's own Weltbild as really iinaginary, as having really been imagined by one's fellow men. l^xcrything tliat they say is steadily *' l)orne in upon them," cr that apart 90 SELF- TRANSCENDENCE in in Lheir saying, or in spite of their saying, takes shape in one s mind as being steadily borne in upon them, presents itself in its place in one's own ]Veltbild2.s really believed by them, as '^real " to them, as "real" to one's self in that it is really one of one's fellow-men's beliefs; and, if it happens also to be steadily borne in upon one's self, as ** real" to one's self in another sense,— in the sense of being also one of one's own beliefs. If one by sheer volition Introduces some new detail into one's vision of the world— il, for example, one conceives one's self as richer or wiser than one is— and, so far as one's will is concerned, maintains that detail, the rest of one's Weltbild, independently of one's will, adjusts itself to the new detail ; the detail forced into onr's vision of ilie world is in the nature of an hypo- thesis is an hypothesis— and the alterations in one's Weltbild that spontaneously take shape as the result of that details being maintained ni one's vision of the world, are just so many hypothetical beliefs : such and such would be the case, if I possessed more wisdom or more gold In so far as the process is voluntary, is a mental affirmation, it is imaginary; in so fir as it is invmnitary, is not mentally affirmed, it is a judgment. One may choose whether one will think or nut, and what one will think about, as one m ly choose whether one will listen and look or not, and wliaL one will listen to and look at ; but one can r.o SELF- TRANSCENDENCE 99. more choose to think, in the sense of believing, what one will, than one can choose to see or tc> hear what one will. 1 I' CHAPTER iV. Insufficient Reason. Nor is truth specifically the virtue, nor is error specifically the vice, of a representative or copy ; nor is logic at all concerned with truth in that -sense. Let us begin, the sceptic says, with logic. I. However much at variance logicians may he in regard to other points, there are certain fundamental tenets on which, for the most part at least, they tacitly agree. Whether they announce their subject as the Organon of Discovery, or as the Grammar of Assent, they are at one in the belief that logic may be of service at some stage, under some conditions, in the ascertainment of truth by reasoning — of truth not given but inferred. To whatever extent they mav rpjrv their absorption in grammatical detail — however prone they may be to imply that truth is a divine emanation from the parts of speech and was materially affected at the Tower of Babel by INSUFFICIENT REASON lor the confusion of tongues,^ they assert (when they are put to it) that truth is justness of representation,, precision in the correspondence between a state of mind and the original of which that state is, perhaps by way o! forecast, a copy :^ La v^ritd consiste a imaginer les choses comme Dieu et les saints les voient. And for insuring in matters of inference, of reasoning, this correspondence, logicians know, generally speaking, of but one device — the obtainment of principles at once universal and true, or at least *' objectively valid,'' and the demonstration that a given case is but a fresh instance of some one of those principles ; and at one time or another logicians have undertaken to provide for both these exigencies. So far as the first is concerned — the obtainment of principles at once universal and true — the 1 Sigwart, for instance, finds a material difference in the same thought expressed in different idioms, ^.^. , between " I am hungr)' " and " Mich hungert" See Logik^ vol. i, p. 76. ^ See Bradley's Principles of Logic ^ book I, ch. ii. et seq. Aquinas {Contra Gentiles^ lib. I, c. 59) says: "Veritas intellectus est adaequatio intellectus et rei, secundum quod intellectus dicit esse, quod est, vel non esse, quod non est." Hamilton quotes this definition {Lectures on LogiCy vol. 2, p. 63), and claims it for the Schoolmen. He must refer to a certain neatness in the wording simply ; in substance it differs not at all from statements made by Aristotle, as is evident from the following quotations : rb fji^p yap- X^eti' rb dv fjLT] elvaL -fj rb fxy 6v eZ^ai xj/evdos, rb 5^ Tb 6v elvaL Kal rb fiijldv ixt} ehoLL akrjdi^ {Metaph. 3, 7, lOI I b, 26 seq^. oi yap 5ta Tb r)/xds oCes ae \evKbv eXvai, el sj> XevKds' dXXd 5td rb ak €lv(U \evKbv ijfxeU ol (f>dv7€s TovTo a\7)d€vojj.€v {Id. 8, lO, 1051 b, 6 seq .). o{> ydp iffTi rb: ^pevSos Kal rb dXrjdh h toTs vpdyfiaatv, . . . dXX' iv diavol' in beinir called A. may be called B ; and this though as yet we know neither the denotation nor the connotation of any one oi trie terms used. it may be, nay often is, that only after reaching the inference that John is Zh we ^'af--,v ■(>r-^.r-.*,,-. .■*»''«uJ.,.r ■■ io8 INSUFFICIENT REASON learn the connotation of B ; we have substituted conventional qualities or signs for real or uncon- ventional qualities or signs, and lost sight of the meaning of the arbitrary symbols until we have done working with them. We habitually use arithmetical signs in this way, in utter oblivion of their signification. The signs, 5x5 = remind us of like signs in the past, 5x5=25; and immediately the similarity in the first terms of these equations leads us to fill out by analogy the blanks in the second ; If 5 x 5 = ^as coupled with 25 then, so it should be now, and we write it down, 5 X 5=25. Indeed we not only do use arithmetical signs, not to speak of algebraic, in this way, but we can use them in no other when the numbers become large. This sort of substitution carries with it, however, certain dangers as well as certain advantages. Signs, whether written or spoken, are things with qualities of their own (their possession of a ** meaning" being in some sort an accident in their history), and bear toward one another relations that must either correspond to the relations subsisting between the things signified or be neglected in argument; the similarity bciwien the sounds "light 'and "light," for in- stance, must either be matched by a similarity in their significations or must be left out of account in ratiocination, on pain of absurdities like the following : INSUFFICIENT REASON 109 Light IS contrary to darkness. Feather :> are light. Feathers are contrary to darkness. Against every form of this liability to error those who purpose to reason with signs at a] I (and who does not?) require to be put on their guard. It may be done in two ways. The\ may be put in possession of the principle of error and be left to apply it at their own discretion, as men may be put in, possession of the principle of incorrect speech as the departure from good usage. Or the se\-eral errors to wiiich this principle leads may be noted and classified, inci there may be compiled a system of precepts-- a grammar, in effect, — her the avoidance of them. Now the syllogistic logic clearly consists of a set of just stich precepts ; it is the Grammar, not indeed of Assent, but of reasoning in signs, and Ti >: ') coming to the same results as if the reason were in ideas. Rule i : — In every syllogism there must be three terms and only three. That is to say, none of tiie terms must be ambiguous : we must not, from a similarity of words, conckjde a ^i''nilarn;y of quaUties, unless the simihtr words pos- sess nke mea,mn: were our attention hxed on the things signified we should not do so -we should be in no danger, for instance, o\ conchuding that feathers are contrary to darkness, on the grounc that tra-v are lig-ht, Ri. — In ^-merv svlloeism no INS UFFICIENT RE A SON there must be three propositions and only three. Tint is to say, there are three steps in the reasoning process, one reprr-^^ntod in each pro- position. We are aware of a certain class of ob- jects as being of a certain description— "Men are mortal;" we perceiveanother object that resembles them in its known qualities— "Socrates is a man;" we (quite involuntarily) fill out the percept of that object, by the addition of such attributes as the familiar objects to which it has been assimilated are known to possess, and as it is not known not to possess, — " Socrates is mortal." Rule 3 : — The middle term must be distributed at least once in the premises. It is only when we can affirm mortality of all men in respect to whom we have been in a position to judge — only, that is, when we are prepared (after the fashion explained a moment since in speaking of in- duction by simple enumeration and of the nature of universal beliefs) to affirm that all men are mortal — that we are certain to attribute mortality to the next object we may assimilate to men already known. If our experience on the subject has been divided, if some men have been found to be mortal and some not, our decision may go either way in a new instance, or may remain in suspense. When, therefore, we can affirm only that in some instances we have known men to be mortal and in some not, we have no assurance that anv reasoning we may do in words will INSUFFICIENT REASON III L'* represent the reasoning we should in that case do, if we kept to our ideas ; we must turn from the words to the ideas r^r 10 trie hicts themselves (if tncy be of a nature to admit of it), and this the rule about a distributed middle bids us bear in mind. And so throughout ; one might go through the syllogistic logic, point by point, with the same result. And, this being true, the supposed cogency of the syllogism is an illusion. The process of reasoning is an inference from particulars to particulars ; if it is illegitimate when it is per- formed with ideas, or with the objects them- selves directly before the mind (as we found with reference to induction by simple enumera- tion that it was), it is no less illegitimate — no less inconclusive in form — when it is performed in words, which are the symbols of ideas or (if you will) of things. A copy can possess no greater authority than its original. If in this case it appears to do so, the reason is that tlie original frankly confesses that it contains four terms — that its middle terms are never identical but only similar, while the copy does not ; but the four terms exist m the one not less than in liie other. It has been insisted with much justice, — Associationists have given occasion to their adversaries to make much ot the distinc- tion — that no mental state or bit of consciousness can be repeated ; when an idea or a sensation has i*M«l«> w 112 INSUFFICIENT TREASON INSUFFICIENT REASON 113 once passed away it is gone for ever. A similar idea or sensation may be experienced, but never twice the same idea or sensation. But the meaning of ci word is a mrnuil phenoiiitiion, and as such subject to this (i; tin i So is the word itself it will be plain, tliciciuic, ^iii especial to those who find liiemselves adverse to Associationism), that we can never **use the same word twice," nor " use the same word, or two different words, in the same sense ; " the utmost we can do is to use like words in like senses. So that it is over no firm-built principle, such as the Dictum de Omni, that we pass from the premises, ''All men are mortal" and "All philosophers are men," to the conclusion '' All philosophers are mortal ; " the "men" in the two cases are not the same — there is no foundation on which such a principle could rest. The "men" are only similar, not the same, and tiie principle invoI\(u L not a logical principle at all, but a psychological one — an exorbitant doctrine of analogy, which we know at a glance to be untrustworthy but are powerless to cease to trust, it being of the very essence of the mind. The certainty of the syllogism lies in the statement simply, not in the thing stated. We may admit the premises and deny the conclusion without committing a contradiction in thought ; wc coiiiniu a contradiction at the utmost in words. We contradict ourselves psychologically, go counter to our belief: we do not contradict our- selves logically, do not go counter to our grounds of belief Nor does it seem to be possible by any change of frnHit satisfactorily to avoid encountering this difficukv. We no longer lin4d, as the oltler text- books taught us, that the operations of the mind 2. are in universum tres — Simplex Apprehensio, fudi- cium, DiscursMS; the distinction between psycho- logy and logic has come to be sufiic itiith trimiliar — for logic at least almost fatally familiar ; ahin si it has come to be supposed that the logical inrnd and the psychological bear to one another no more intimate relation than the enchanted dreamland of the Arabian Nights bears to the obstinate me- chanic drift of things that constitutes the world of science. V\c are perfectly instructed that there is a difference to be marked between the way in which a conclusion is in fact attained, and the way in which, when once attained, it is, if at all, to be justified. There is, however, a further distinction to It! marked between ascertaining the way in which a conclusion when once attained is, if at all, to be justified, and denionstraaing that that way is practicable to so Hmited an instrument as a critical, a. !]ieta|)hysically critical, psychology re- veals the human mind to be. " (i) It is impossible," Mr. Bradley says, stating briefly what he regards 114 INSUFFICIENT REASON as two of the indispensable requirement^ which an inference must if it is to be justified fulfill — '* it is impossible to reason except upon the basis of identity ; (ii) It is impossible to reason unless at least one premise is universal. It will be time to say vicertint empirici when these positions have both been forced."^ Principles, that is in effect to say, at once universal and true must be obtained, and the case in hand must be shown to be an in- stance of one of them : all men, (to speak more especially of the syllogism), must be shown to be mortal, and Socrates must be identified as a man. Very good : what then ? Such are indeed two indispensable requirements which an inference must if it is to be justified fulfill : if principles at once universal and true can be obtained, and if a case in hand can really be shown to be an instance of one of them, something may indeed be done : but is it possible adequately to provide for either oi these conditions precedent ? Until this question is answered affirmatively by a detailed statement of the precise means proper to be employed, and means too that the human intelligence in all its infirmity is able successfullv to emplov, loq-ic has but defined its purpose, ii t achieved nor begun to achieve it. Most certainly no such affirmative answer is to be found in the syllogism. Apart from the unsolved and perhaps insoluble difficulty of obtaining principles at once universal and true, ^ Principles of Logic, p. 260. INSUFFICIENT REASON 11% there is the metaphysical absiirciitv in attempting literally to identify a new case as an in t iice of one of them. ** It is obvious," Mr. Bradlev aJ mirably says, '* if we dismiss our hardened preju- dices and consider the question fairly by itself, that you cannot argue on the strength of mere likeness. Whatever else may be right, this at all events must be wrong ; ' A is similar to B, and i) to C, and therefore A is like C,' is a vicious in- ference, one that need not always be mistaken in fact, but that always must be a logical error"— always must, that is, be lacking in conclusiveness^ *' A construction of given premises is not possible unless each pair of premises has a common point. And this common point must be an identical term. Thus in *' A-B, B-C, therefore A-B-C," the B in each premise must be not merely alike but must be absolutely the same.^ But given the human mind as it is, the B in the two premises never can be absolutely the same. Socrates' manhood is distinct and separate from the manhood of any other man ; it can at the utmost l^e shown to be similar to the manhood of other men Granted, if you insist, that rdi men are mortal; it is abso- lutely on the sole "strength of a likeness" that Socrates can be declared to be a man it seem credible that the way which Mr discovers out of the difficulty will rec : an ^ Principles of Logic, p. 26 1 . ^Principles of Logic, p. 263. .. s I *r ci* a:s H ii6 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON 117 to ultimate acceptance. ** We can put the thing," he says, **in more simple language, if we say that inference rests on the principle that what seems the same is the same, and cannot be made different by any diversity, and that so long as an ideal content is identical no change of context can destroy its unity. The assumption in this prin- ciple may be decried as monstrous, and I do not deny that perhaps it is false. In a metaphysical work this question would press on us, but in logic we are not obliged to discuss it. The axiom may be monstrous or again it may be true, but at least one thing is beyond all doubt, that it is the in- disi)ensable basis of reasoning. It may be false metaphysically, but there is no single inference you possibly can make but assumes its validity at every step.''^ Having declared ideal contents to be non-entities, Mr. Bradley now declares tlie ideal contents in question to be identical. Having demonstrated that similarity affords no basis for reasoning, he suggests that we re- christen it identity. But Mr. Bradley's demons- tration holds good not against the name simply, but against the fact ; if similarity affords no basis for reasoning when it is named similaritv, it can scarcely be made more efficacious by a change of mere letters and syllables. Nor can it be said that this is quibbling, that what Mr. Bradley means by identity is exact likeness: for, " I am ^ PrincipUi of Logic ^ pp. 263-264. watting," Mr. Bradley says, ''and have been wait- ing for years, to be told what is meant bv an * exact likeness.' " If exact likeness is less than sht t r identity, no appeal to it can be of service ; if exact likeness is a mere synonym for sheer identitv , there is no exact likeness in the case to be appealed to. When Mr. Bradley intimates that the principle that whiat seems the same is the same may be decried as monstrous, he does that principle less than complete justice : the two middle terms in the syllogism do not seem to be the same, nor even merely seem to be different, thev self-evidently and stubbornly are by the very fact of their duality different, they self- evidently are at the utmost in a limited number of respects similar, not the same. The principle of which Mr. Bradley is in search must run : Things which under penalty of self-contradiction cannot be more than similar must be the same. And this principle not only may be monstrous, it undeniably is monstrous ; and the suggestion that it may nevertheless be true, is one to which it is not logically possible to give assent. Nor is it the syllogism only that is in this plight — at least if we accept Mr. Bradley as our guide : non-syllogistic reasonings also are in the " same " case — it was of non-syllogistic reasonings more particularly than of the syllogism that Mr. Bradley was speaking in the passages cited above. Mr. Bradley indeed regards all reasoning as non- xi8 INSUFFICIENT REASON syllogistic : ''the syllogism," he says, " is a chim- scra, begotten by an old metaphysical blunder, nourished by a senseless choice of examples, fostered by the stupid conservatism of logicians, . . . protected by the impotence of younger rivals," and scarcely to be reckoned with except as in attendance " for decent burial."^ The major premise in especial, Mr. Bradley holds, is obviously superflous ; and he asks, "How," if inference is based on axioms, ''did people reason before axioms were invented?" and challenges his reader to admit that though he feel the force of the argument : " A is to the right of B, B is to the right of C, ... A is to the right of C," yet the the major premise involved is to him an utter stranger, an invention of Mr. Bradley's own : '' A body is to the right of that which that which it is to the right of, is to the right of." " I know this major," Mr. Bradley says, " because I have just nianufaciircl it; but you who believe in major premises and who scores of times must have made the inference, confess that you never saw this premise before."^ Not quite all of this, however, will be found to be compatible with a constant command o^ the distinction between the logical and the psychological points of view. At least five positions in defence of the validity of the syllogism are to the logician possible. '^Principles of Logic^ p. 228. ^Principles of Logic ^ p. 227. INSUFFICIENT REASON 119 (i.) That the syllogism presents the analysis nut merely of a formally secure process of inference, but of the process and the only process actually employed or capable of being employed by the intelligence when it infers. (2.) That though there are psychologically a number of processes which the intelligence may and does employ in inference, the syllogism presents the analysis of the only one of them that is formally secure. (3.) That however many other formally secure processes of inference may be to the intelligence possible, the syllogism presents us with at least one. (4.) That however impossible it may be to a mind like ours to practise formal correctness in the actual process of attaining its conclusions, — however incapable we may be of varying from the single formally insecure process, above de- scribed, of inference by analogy, — the syllogism supplies us with the conditions by the fulfillment of which onlv we can hope formaiiy to justif)' our conclusions when attained. (5.) That however many other methods there may be of justifying formally our conclusions when attained, the syllogism presents us with at least one. Of these five positions the first only can be forced by Air. Bradley's showing that there are inferences in which the implied niair^r is an m ft or 'thought even tliai can be forced by sucf logically, nut uii the side of \i^ claim to forinal cog^ency, Ijut onU' \^-^'-c:^\ >^:: ,i \. mi the side of and showing^ not I20 INSUFFICIENT REASON its claim to psychologicaly exclusiveness, its claim to being the sole possible method, secure or insecure, of moving forward to a new conclusion : a claim which is on other accounts so patently iiKiefrnsible thai ihere is perhaps no one kii* wn who makes it, or, phraseology employed by the older logicians to the contrary notwithstanding (their recognition of the possibility of fallacies sufficiently correcting their language), ever has made it. The remaining four positions — the four actually occupied — lie aside from the line of Mr. Bradley's attack. In the case of the second, the possibility is recognised of there being inferences with unexpressed and even inexpressible majors : It IS contended only that such inferences are not formally secure. If it be urged that the inference : —A to the rightof B B to the right of C, . . . A to the right of C — is as safe, as secure, as could be wished, the reply is, that the security which it affords is psychological only, not logical ; the security results from the familiarity and simplicity of the relations concerned ; it pertains not at all (Mr. Bradley, seemingly, accepts what is here denied — the formal conclusiveness of the syllogism) to the mere form of the statement. And in the case of the third position, no such reply need be offered ; that there may be formally secure methods of inference other than the svllon-jstic is ^ •*•- supposed ; while so far as the fourth and the fifth position are concerned, to urge that there are INSUFFICIENT REASON inftreiicci^ the major premises of which are mere after-thoughts is to fortify those positions ; it is the very essence of the contention of those w !io maintain those positions that not only in the case of certain inferences, but in the case of every infer- ence, the major premise (and perhaps the minor too !) is an after-thought. k is to be added, that certain at least of the instances of non-syleogistic inference brought for- ward by Mr. Bradley are questionably inferences at all. Surely, to regard comparison, distinction, and recognition, as modes of inference, on the ground that they are " ideal operation^ which demonstrate new truth, that is, truth new to us,''^ is almost deliberately to overlook the distinction v/hich Mr Bradley himself has emphasized be- tween inference and observation. *' There is a difference," he says, "between reasoning and mere observation ; if the truth is inferred it is not simply seen, and a conclusion is never a mere perception ; "2 but nothing could be more simply and immediately seen than the likeness or un- likeness of two states of mind in (if Mr. Bradley insists) one's head. Mr. Bradley means, of course, that a preliminary operation must be performed on the objects to be discriminated or compared — they must be brought together before the mind ; but the ol)jects to w discriniinated or compared ^ Principles of Logic, p. y]^, ' Principles of Logic, p. 225 8 122 INSUFFICIENT REASON may be already before the mind ; and even it they are not, the mere act of recollection or imagina- tion — the mere act of bringing two ideas before the mind — is no more an essential part of the distinctively intellectual process of comparing or discriminating them when brought, than a man's walking with the copy of a manuscript in his pocket to the British Museum, to collate it there with its original, is an essential part of the dis- tiiiciively intellectual process of observing, when ilie original and copy are at last spread duI before him, an agreement or a disagreement in the texts. *'The logician," Mr. Bradley says, ** shudders internally," when he attends a demons- tration in anatomy, ** at the blasphemous assertion that ' this which I hold in my hand ' is * demons- trated.' " But his trials are not over ; the illiterate lecturer on cookery overwhelms him by publicly announcing *' the demonstration " of an omelette to the eyes of females.^ *' But the logician," Mr. Bradley holds, ''has no real cause of quarrel even with the cook."^ ** Demonstration in logic," he says, ** is not totally different from demonstration elsewhere ; ^ and he finds the distinction between logical and non-logical demonstration to lie solely in the performance of the operation with (iie's hands (it seems that with one's hands one can 3 Principles of Logic, p. 235. ' Principles of Logic, p. 236. 'Principles of Logic, p. 236. INSUFFICIENT REASON 123 perform it!) or with one's head. ''When in ordinary fact some result can be seen and is pointed out, perhaps no one would wish to call this 'demonstration.' li i-:^ mere perceiving or observation. It is called demonstration when, to see the result, it is necessary for us first to mani- pulate the fact ; when you show within and by virtue oi ^. preparation you are said to demonstrate. But if the preparation experiments outwardly, (sic), if it alters and arranges the external facts, then the demonstration is not an inference. It is an inference where the preparation is leieal, where the rearrangement which displays the unknown fact is an operation in our heads. . . Let us take an instance from geographical position. A is ten miles north of B, B is ten miles east of C, D is ten miles north of C ; what is the relation of A lo ]j : hi draw the figure on a piece of paper, that relation is not inferred; but if I draw the lines in my head, in that case i reason." ^ Surely, it may be said rather that, so far as Mr. Bradley's statement goes, there is no inference in either case. Tf inspection of the lines drawn on paper gives immediate and therefore not inferen- tial knowledge of the relation between [)oint A and point D inspection of the lines imagined on paper, or drawn ^u Mr. Bradley insists) in one's head, gives immediate and therefore r.ot inferen tial knowledge of the relation between die niingined ^Principles of Lo^iCy p. 238. 124 INSUFFICIENT REASON point A and the imagined point D. The fact is, that Mr. Bradley has in appearance made out a case for himself only by beginning his analysis in the middle, and even then, only by declining to pur- sue it beyond a certain point. One of the only two inferences conceivable in the example which he has chosen lies beyond the point where Mr. Bradley's analysis pauses ; lies, as he would say, i i ''referring away" the result of the inspection to reality ; lies in the interpretation, in the sense of that word defined already in the analysis of reasoning in words, of the lines and letters in the drawing by him supposed ; lies in the involuntary rearrangement in the details of one's vision of the world which results from that inspection ; lies in cuie's seeing, with one's "mind's eye," in one's IVeltbild, the object symbolized in the drawing by the letter A assuming toward the object symbo- lized by the letter D a relation analogous to that immediately observed, intuited, between the letters A and D drawn or imagined on the page, or in one's head. This latter part only of the process, this interpretation only, is inferential ; and it can- not, one need hardly say, be performed with the hands. The other of the only two inferences conceivable in the example which Mr. Bradley has chosen takes place prior to the point at wliich Mr. Bradley's analysis begins, and consists in the involuntary mental processes which control the choice of the symbols and the drawing of the INSUFFICIENT REASON 125 lines consists in the construction, by analogy to some known matter of topography, which Mr Bradley has not specified, of the mental scheme of lines of which the drawing on paper is at best but a copy. And this, Mr. Bradley, inconsistently and insufficiently enough, in a manner recognizes : the mental construction must not, he savs, be formed *' arbitrarily," or it will not be formed *' logically," and we shall have no reason to think that our inference from that construction is true. *'Ifwe took A-B and C-D and joined them to- gether as A B-C-D, our procedure would be as futile as if in anatomy we showed connections by manufacturing them. . . We cannot logically join our premises into a whole unless they offer us points of connection."^ But if our drawing-, our cnnstruction. is o-Qverned bv soniethincr else, it is *— ' -' fly in the act of government, and not in any inspection of the result, that the process of the inference consists. ** If the terms between which the re- lations subsist," :vlr. Bradley continues, **are all of them different, we are perfectly helpless, for we cannot make an arch without a keystone. Hence, if we are to construct, we must have an identity of the terminal points. Thus in A-B, f*"h.. 1; i-> tne s;ime, and we connect Ad3X ; in A thC an I C-D, C is the same, and w^- :r w : A-B-C-D. The operation consists in the exten- sion and enlargement of one datum by others, by "^ rnnciplcs of IaYIc^ pp. 236-237 126 INSUFFICIENT REASON means of the identity of common links. And because these links of union were given us, there- fore we assume that our construction is true; although we have made it, yet It answers to the facts. "^ That is in other words to say some- what unanalytically and ambiguously, yet with sufficient clearness (when we stop to recollect that the construction must not be arbitrary and that by identity Mr. Bradley means similarity), that inference consists in involuntarily conceiving or picturing the unknown by analogy with the known: the formula for psychological inference reached above.' That all inferences are of this form the sceptic will hasten to agree. That no inference of ujr III- this form can be conclusive, and liiat nciii duction by simple enumeration, nor the syllogism, nor any other logical device, presents the means of making inference in this form conclusive, the sceptic, following Mr. Bradley's lead, expressly con- tends. Let the principles of mathematics, or of what you will, be as unquestionable as you please, not one step in any reasoning is "logically sound. This does not nieau, of cuursc, tliat even from the sceptic's pomt of view the syllogism and induction by simple enumeration are useless— that ^Principles of Logic, p. 237. ^ Supra, pp. 105-6 INSUFFICIENT REASON 127 logicians, from Aristotle down, have laboured in vain ; it means simply that log-icians have laboured other than they knew — that tiiey have failed in tb^ — paratively easy task of giving a good of ..jeniselves. To supply, in a measure, their defi- ciency in this respect it is necessary for the sceptre to begin some distance back, considering first the meaning properly attached to the word ** truth." Trutli, \ve have seen, has been declared to be justness of representation, precision in the cor- respondence between a mental copy, or forecast, and its original. And so fir as memories and inferences are concerned, this is sufficiently intel- ligible. They at least, it may be argued, represent sonitjtiiifig, or are supposed to do so — mi t intuitions also are true, and that more certainly than memories or inferences, vet surelv not in the sense of precisely representing nythnig. Intuitions represent nothing, they are by detmi- tion presentative, not representative — in them the SiavoLa and the Trpdyaa are one. I 1 wliat sense, then, are ^key true? Thev can hardly be lelt nut of account. A i'-i i^f things true that should con- leK)re. (Even Associa- tionists noiv be supposed to have learned at last that a mental state which once disappears never comes again — although indeed it is not the} w hio 130 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON I ii have shown themselves most culpably unaware o it ) The case is, that from our memc ry of having burned the letters we inferred that we should never have again sensations and perceptions of just the kind, that constitute our consciousness of taking the bundle off the mantel and examining the handwriting. This inference being at fault, we hold the memory disproved. Or we inferred that we might have the sensations and perceptions that constitute our consciousness of beholding the charred fragments, and, this inference proving correct, we hold the memory confirmed. The principle seems to be that the memory which leads to true inferences is an accurate transcript of the past, and that the memory which leads to infer- ences of the opposite kind is false. How frankly superior to evidence this principle is, need scarcely be remarked. Direct evidence there can, of course, be none — to obtain it we should need access to the past for the purpose of collating it with the memories that lead to true ■,iS f ( u and to false inferences respectively ; and indirect evidence, it is conceivable that .vX our memories should be false and all our inferences from them true. Were this the case, it is hard to say how we should ever find it out. Suppose a being created at this instant exactly like one's self — nervous system and a.li, if' indeed tlic nervous system be the organ of mind and th^ gfallerv *?! Ui*- uasn lie woultj , 11 1 iiave nieinones in all essentials like one's own, and grounds as unimpeachable for re- irding them as true ; yet every one of them would be false, even to the fact oi there having been a past time — at least lor him. It may seem indeed tliat we can extract some comfort from the doctrine of the uniformity of nature ; it may be argued that if the course of nature really be uniform — if the future be connected with the past in certain uniform ways-- an accurate forecast of the future along those lines is evidence of our possessing a trustworthy clue also to the past. But to argue thus is really to beg the question ; any showing that there is order in the world nnir^t presuppose the trust- worthiness of memory. Without that, even a Kantian could prove only that we are ai this passing moment under a certain subjective necessity of conceiving the world as orderly, whether It is so or not, just as we are under a subjective necessity of conceiving a ti u prior to the present, whether it existed or not, and prior also to the existence of any empirical ego. And a Hureean has not the beiicfit of even this poor shiii , he can only recognize another imper- fection ui the instrument that he is obhged to labour with. The worst of the thnig is its fatality its irremediableness. The prnicii)le in question is not one that we ha\a3 picked up and can lay down (we weuh/i chscard it on th(Mnsta,nt. if It were) ; it is m the make and tissue oi the mind. 132 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON 133 I! Just as we must infer that things which are alike in certain respects are alike in others in which they are not known to be unlike, so we must regard memories which lead to true inferences as true, and memories which lead to false inferences as untrue, though in the one case as in inc other we are perfectly aware that the proceeding is unjustifiable. But we decide also (which seems to be the point on which all turns) concerning the truih and falsity of inferences, and that not solely by the brutal ex- pedient, so seldom possible or even desirable, of awaiting the event, but by reflection ; and the question is, '' By reflection on what ? " Here again, as in the case of memory, the natural answer seems to be, •' By reflection on the facts." We reject an inference that it is possible for a given man to do thus and so — it is inconsistent with all that wr }ia\c ever seen or heard of human capabilities. And if this were an accurate account of the inaiicr, or rather a complete account (for accurate it is), we should have attained the unprofitable con- clusion that our memories are tested by our inferences and our inferences by our memories; but the case is not so desperate as that. The inconsistency does not lie between a present (actual or possible) inference and certain remem- bcrc 1 facts — the inference does not relate to the : iered facts, to the men that one has known or heard of before ; it lies simply between an inference from those facts and the present in- ference. From something that we know of the given man — something, it may be, that is re- ported of him — we infer that he can do thus and so : frr)]n suaiclliing else tliat we know of him, his similarity to other men. we infer tliit he cannot. These two inferences are incompatible — it is an observed fact that we cannot entertain them both at the same time. Whichever gives place, whichever has to run in ck It to the ni J i i order to maintain itself in the struggle for exist- ence, ceases to be held true, ceases to constitute an inference, a belief The principle is that the per- sistent inference is the true inference, and there- fore, if by truth we are to understand justness of representation, that justness of representation always coexists with the ability of self-neiintenance to the exclusion of all inconsistent details in one's vision of the world. That this principle is not meant to bear inspection, is tolerably obvious. Presentative cognitions (intuitions) possess par excellence the ability of self-maintenance to the exclusion of all inconsistent details in one's vision of the world; but justness of representation, as has been already noticed, cannot be attributed to them. Or if it be objected that it is only in respect to inferences that the coexistence and companionship of thes two qualities need be maintained, the reply i i 3 Ij 134 INSUFFICIENT REASON that we are a dozen times a day reminded by experience of inferences contradicting one another, that they do not coexist. If it be still objected that they have been found to coexist on the whole, the reply is threefold, (i.) Tl is appeal I ) experience is an appeal to memory, and tlie trustworthiness of memory is one of the very thinors that are here in question. (2.) Even if it could be cstablislicJ liKii the prin- ciple on which we depend in judging inferences had been trustworthy in the past, it does not follow that it will be so in the future. Conditions may be preparing which to-morrow will evolve a universe wherein everything will be strange to us. Should this be so, there is no reason to suppose our present memories and inferences would be at all different from what they are. (3.) The principle under consideration is not held on evi- dence ; it is not itself an inference ; it is logically prior to all inferences ; it is not a product of the '*mind," but a part of the **mind," and from the point of view of metaphysics a very lamentable part. All of which (actually to cross the threshold of the obvious, about which the argument has long been hovering) leads to the expedient statement of what everybody is ready to let pass approvingly so long as the speaker does nc t raise his voice. Some memories, everybody admits must be in- accurate, and some inferences; and iliat tiie attri- INSUFFICIENT REASON ^35 bute by which they ultimately come to be recognised as such is their failure to maintain themselves, their failure in persistence, in predominance, is implied in common speech. If we consider what belieis we call true (meaning by beliefs our intuitions, memories, and inferences, the whole extent, in brief, of the term **triie"), we find that thev differ from all other rival or possible beliefs m this, til it we believe them. Of the doctrines we do not accept, we say that they are not true, or that it is doubtful whether they are true — i.e,, that we are ourselves in doubt about them, ii we say we believe a thing, we give no additional in- formation by adding that we believe it to be true. When, as often happens, some belief we hold is shown to be inconsistent with another that we hold still more strongly, the instant that the former ceases to be believed we cease to denomi- nate it true, and begin to denominate it false. Nor can it be claimed that in this version of the matter there is committed the fallacy of v^repov wporepov and that we cease to believe because we have first recognised a failure justly to represent ; for it has been seen that we cease to believe in the great majority of cases under circumstances in which no such failure is perceived, or could have been perceived. Fhe beliefs of a person of wide experience are regarded as more trustwonhy, other things equal, than those of a person o! narrow experience, because they have persisted 136 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON 137 ^ in the face of more "evidence:" it is more probable, or rather more credible (not unneces- sarily to run the risk of a contest in regard to the theory of probabilities) that the wide experience of such a person will have made apparent what- ever latent conflict may exist between his beliefs and any rival ones that might displace them ; such a person is not so likely to find himself obliged to change his mind. So too we allow more readily that the beliefs of a reflective person are likelv to be true than those of an uareilective person ; reflection weeds out inconsistencies in one's beliefs, disclosing the antagonism between beliefs held at different times and never brought into comparison before. The elimination of inconsistencies is merely a process of dis- covering which of a group of incompatible inferences is the predominant one ; considered as a process of guaranteeing the validity of the beliefs left over, it assumes that in beliefs persistence is the mark of truth. Here, then, is the somewhat anomalous conclusion. Truth and falsity are almost always clearly defined in one meaning, an 1 !niost always used HI another. *' True " furmallv connotes justness of representation, and should be applied only to beliefs displaying that quality. But, so far as we can tell at any given moment, there are no such beliefs. At the instant an inference is "verified" (which seldom happens), the belief becomes presentative, and the moment afterwards it 1h comes bui one element in a memory. Whether onr n,ann<)ries and inferences do possess or not the attribute of justly representing the past and future, and perforce it must be added the conditional past and future, it is certain they keep it a close secret ; if they have it, we can never discover its presence ; if they have it not. we are equally unable to discover its absence. Our application to any given belief of the word "true " is determined therefore, not by accuracy of representation! which we cannot judge of, but by a very different and entirely disconnected quality — persistence in the face of inconsistent beliefs. Unable to secure an agreement between the copies and the originals, we set about diligently to secure an agreement among the copies. Taking the meaning of the word, not from the official, formal definition, but from the very stamp and die of the mind, the true belief is the one that will continue to be held under all possible turns of reflection and experience ; and truth, ni the most absolute sense in which we can prolinibly propose it as an idted of iinnetn i nideavour, is synonymous with the sort of predominance th it would be displayed by the beliefs of one who at any given instant had digested all his "knowledge" into a body of doctrine in which there lurked no lattait niconsisiencies — a predominance not to be disturbed, that is, by further thought. Disturbance 138 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON 1 39 ( ; by further experience it is not in our power to guard against. For assisting us to the attaifiincnt ^^i tliis ioeal of consistency, or, say, to an approximation to it, it is reasonably plain that induction by simple enumeration and the syllogistic logic are instruments especially adapted — one might almost say designed. The former bids us set out quite explicitly all the ''facts" we "know" that are relevant to the inference to be tested (ttci^tu ra virapxovra). No better or other method could be devised for bringing to light, where it exists, an in- ference incompatible with the present one, and more predominant than it, (we have already seen that the incompatibility lies not directly between the present inference and the remembered ''facts," but between it and the inferences from those facts) ; all other methods, with one a doubtful excep- tion, are in essence this. But a relevant instance is a somewhat elusive phenomenon, in especial when it takes the shape of an irrelevant relevant instance : the memory must be prodded to do its work with anything like completeness. Mere intensity of attention and repeated efforts are capable, no doubt, of securing this end so far as it is attainable, and in any event they are neces- sary ; but putting our reasonings into words (it is the merest commonplace) serves the same purpose more expeditiously, and with a less expenditure of r)fnver, a smaller ni^-ntaJ strain. Now, the syllogistic logic supplies us with a system of rules for making this statement complete, and for guarding against certain dangers that are incidental to so doing ; and in making it complete, makes it in several ways more efficacious. It bids us " define " every word, and make sure of the "truth" of every proposition — it makes, that is, not our conclusion only, as inductive logic does, but every step in our reasoning and every element in those steps, a fresh starting-point tor rummaging the memory ; and, presenting the things to be done in a systematic way, it miamiizes the danger of inadvertently supposing we have exhausted all our clues before we have done so really. The relation of induction by simple enumera- tion and of the syllogism to the ideal of predominance, or relative stability, is direct and obvious ; but there are three other possible tests of truth, or possible aids at least to its ascertain- ment, whose relation to that ideal needs perhaps to be made clear. (ij li has been seen that our belief in a general or universal proposition is not, structly speaking, t \ ! 'A i" 1 ' Q - t A- ^i-A k V.3 a belief in a single proposition at all, but position to believe an infinity of particular propositions of a certain kind ; and that disposition 140 INSUFFICIENT REASON has been symbolized as the mental habit that grows up, when a number oi A's have been found to be B, of filling out the mental image of the next A that occurs by the addition in idea of an appro- priate B, Now it is tolerably plain in what the testing of the truth of such a universal proposition should consist; in the ascertaining, namely, whether such a habit does in fact exist. This can be ascertained thoroughly by nothing less than a review of all the A's *' known" to us, in the manner induction by simple enumeration suggests, and an inquiry whether they all point to B or at least whether they point to B so predominantly as to leave small doubt that in riiiy future case the exceptions met with in the past will be neglected. And supposing this review to have been made and the habit of connecting A and B established, it is in a sense plain that a further review need not be made in the case of the next A, nor of the next, nor of the next. Virtually, it has been made already — made before- hand. If the review in the case of ^ tenth was exhaustive, we are certain what the result of a repeuiion oi uidi review lur ihe benefit of A eleventh would bring forth. Not logically certain of course (logical certainty attaching, as has perhaps sufficiently been shown, to intuitions only), but psychologically certain, and often enough most mistakenly so, as it turns out ; we remember making the review with more care and - * V*1 INSUFFICIENT REASON 141 completeness than we have either time or oppor- tunity to make it now, and we remember nothing that has happened since to change the result. This is the rationale of iIil mental satisfaction, such as it is, that we feel in recognizing a strange case as but a fresh instance of an established principle": — we have already tested it. and that with the last degree perhaps of thoroughness ; it comes to us stamped with authority. But the analogy between a fresh case and the instances included under the general principle may be by no m( ins of an obvious kind. The qualities by virtue of which the ^'s already known have been classed together may be of a sort not open to inspection ; it may require indeed a pro- ceeding of some complication and delicacy to lay them open. If so, and if the principle is at all important, the proceeding (or proceedings, where the qualities in question may be approached from more than one side) should be fitly described and recorded. And if the principle be of sujireme importance an! of constant use, the directions k>r those preliminary processes may not unjustly be included and disr-o^srd in a treatise on logic — the general arsenal of tin;: w(a,ip<)ns the collective intelligence has devised lor its own aid in its contest with error. The law of causation is such a principle, and the so-called canons of induction (the tide is clearly a misnomer) were supposed by the logician who first treated of them as a branch 143 INSUFFICIENT REASON of his subject to be just such preliminary direc- tions. They are at present uiKlergoiiig their baptism by fire ; there is no need to enter into the merits of that controversy here. It is enough that so long as the relation of cause and effect continues to be one that does not lie open to inspection, the Inductive Canons, or something corresponding to thern fil' indeed anything curres- ponding to them can be devised that will bear criticism) may fitly occupy a place in logic, and tliat this place has been here accurately assigned. (2) There are alleged to be certain principles, rirnonLf them the law of universal causation, the opposites of which are inconceivable. This means — or seems at least to mean — that ilie mental images of the particular instniices includt/d, under those principles cannot, so far as the qualities con- cerned in the principles are involved, be altered by any effort of the will. It might be difficult to prove that there are such principles, but if there be, a collection of them might not unfitly be given a place in logic, whether we believe them to be logically prior to experience (or at any rate logic- ally independent of it), or logically subsequent to experience. To the Humean, they are principles which he cannot feel it to be likely that any review of the past will shake — and that i. nl! a Ihmicaii can say for any principle ; to the f liowt r »l Re 1 1 or of K:cnt. thev are principles that no review oi the past can sh.ike. Sucli !i;dits should iica be INSUFFICIENT REASON 143 hidden unde r J.rl. to Inn 'nisi IM ■ liis niiiid With aii -the inquirer who wishes available tests of truth should not be left to discover these for liim- self If it is the business of logic to present us with the tests of truth, logic should present us with these. It should be understood, however, in what their efficacy consists. As warrants of 5tabihty, there can be made out for them some sort nf case. The Humean complains, indeed, that he has at times been deceived b\ them- thai that of which he took the opposite to be incon- ceivable, turned out upon a narrower review to be unable to maintain itself; but the fact that they sometimes lead one astray is no sufficient ground for dismissing them altogether. What could the their \)vau: that had not as warrants tor fiunierui brini^ turward in led one astra F> beyond mere stability, and that of the i not d kind here in question, there can be made out tor them no case. The follower of Reid may be indulged to the height of his bent m showing tliat they are imbedded in the mind; that much rnca^e fcrmidable personage, the follower of Kant, may be indulged to the height of his l)ent m showmg that they are conditions prior to experience ; t ut without putting a naive faitli in memory, neither of them can show that before the present moment one had a mind or an experience ; nor, without putting an cquaiiy naive feith in inference, that one will ha\a: a mind or an experience at any 144 INSUFFICIENT REASON INSUFFICIENT REASON M5 period hereafter, or that, if one have, it will not be of a totally different nature, or subject to totally different conditions. (3) It has thus far been assumed that everyone does his own thinking — that each mind is a distinct and separate standard of the truth. And unless truth is to be regarded as a social con- vention, and subject in the last resort to decision by the ballot, so each mind is ; but it is notorious that some one else may set our mental stores in order for us — usually much better than we can set them in order for ourselves. Publicity and discussion is, in essence, this, and we feel very justly a diffidence about any doctrine that has not yet been submitted to this ordeal. This vicarious reflection reduced to a method is of course the Platonic dialectic. Here, then, are the salient features of the view of logic which a strict regard for the demands made by the intellect leads us to entertiin. P^or ascrib- ing truth, in the sense of justness of representa- tion, to our beliefs, we can find no warrant either in induction, or deduction, or intuition, or memory, or inference. Truth, so far as we may suppose it to be attainable more or le^s completely by reflection, resolves itself into a certain sort of stability, or predominance. As **aids to reflec- tion" in this pursuit, the collective intelligence has thrown off the following devices : (i) Induc- tion by simple enumeration, which (with a I ■doubtful exception) is the foundation of all the rest, and the least elaborated, unless Locke's little book On the Conduct of the Hnman Understanding be taken as an essay on it ; (2) The syllogistic logic, whose utility it is hard to overestimate — though its professors have century after century shown themselves competent to that feat ; (3) indirect induction, or proof by reference to a previously established principle; and in- cidental to this the so-called canons of induction ; (4) The inconceivability of the opposite, which is the doubtful exception referred to above ; (5) Discussion, and Dialectic as its most searching form. ! 11 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS HT CHAPTER V THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I. And all this, the adversaries of the sceptic cry, is extrivai^ant beyond the bounds of comedy — this reinterpretation of logic, this redefinition of truth, this assault on transcendentalism, this defence at any hazard, against all the world, of the sole validity of the Specious Present. The sceptic knows nothing except the Specious Pre- sent, yet is apodictually shocked at the bare sug- gestion that the future may be contemporaneous with the past. He knows nothing, nothing whatever, of the past and the future, {^Ae past, ^Ae future!), not even that the past has existed nor that the future will exist ; yet he is posi- tive to the point of demonstration, in whatever sense there can be a demonstration, that the future has not existed, and that the past will not exist, and that neiither the past nor the future do exist, and in especial that they are not one but two ; he distinguishes trenchantly between these dual non-entities and is prepared argumentativeljr to demonstrate what attributes may and what may not in reason" be ascribed to them. We know nothing, he holds, not even the existence, of any mind other than our own, and of our own we know the passing moment only ; but we can distinguish with a certain neatness of Inniiatioii between our mind and any mind other than our own, and between moments passing, past, and to be past, and in our distinctions can avail our- selves if it aids devised by ** the collective intelli- gence " from century to century, in especial of the svllorrisis loL^ic and l.ockcr's little book, ana we knuw ill it a mental state once gone can never again return, and Liiai other minds cannot know da future and the past except as we know Uicui— cannot, that is, know them at all— and cannot know our minds without by the very f K t of that knowledge becoming one with our minds. The unity of two related terms in a single consciousness consists in their relations being *' known ; " *' precisely in what the unity of con- sciousness consists," it was said, "is this nn mediate knowledge of relations— the presentmeiii of the relations along with the related terms ;"^ but the related terms are two Unngs. sepiirate and distinct : and the relation between them is ier^zum quid that may exist, as in the case ibr instance of a past and present thought, when at 2 Supra p. 54. t* 14« THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS '49' least one of the relata is extinct ; and the exist- ence of a relation is one thing and a consciousness of its existence is onother. Precisely in what the unity of consciousness therefore consists is the addition to two things possessing no unity with each other of a third thing possessing no unity with either, which, by an exception to the sceptics ''familiar" rule that a thought and the object ot ihaL Lliought are one, knows a fourth thing not in consciousness at all ! — nay, in the addi- uuii Lu these io^.x ihings, since they must all of them in turn be related and those relations must be known, of at least ten further things ; and in the addition to these fourteen on the score of their relations and a knowledge of their relations, of at least a hundred and seventy flirtlit r things ; and so on by lengthening leaps towards infinity. A thought and the object of that thought must needs, according to the sceptic s theory, be one — there is nothing behind memory nor in front of expectation nor beyond intuition ; ^ either therefore there is no such thing as the thoiicfht of a succesion, of a change, or of a simi- larity, or of a coexistence, or of one thing to the right or to the left of another (m ( f i tliinu in motion — all which is contrary to the familiar, fact ; or the thought of a succession must in empiricism s cii iritable phrase that covers a multitude of sopliistrics " consist in " a succession of thouu-ht^ •5tr/«i pp. 76^77. ;m 1 the thought of a change must consist in a change of thought, and the thought of a similarity in a simiiantv of thoughts, and the thought of a coexistence in a coexistence of thoughts, and the thouKl^t of one thing to the right or the left of another in one thought to the right or the left oi another, and the thought of a motion in the motion of a thought. But a succession of thoughts can as such possess no unity. The first thought cannot know the second, the second canntn know the first, the f-irsi thought knows- itself only, the second thoti-hi knows lt^.elf only ; there is no second thought to be known till the first has ceased to be, and no first thought to know or to he known by the time the second has begun to be ; and so on, in the case of the second thoughit and the third, and of the third thought and the fourth, to the series' end. And the series *'as much. '* Change, it is evident ' -^ Mr Bradley says, ''must be change ot something;' In contract to a mere succession of loose and separate units, change is by clehnition I50 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 151 a succession of phases of one and the same per- juring something. But a thought is and can be no more than it is perceived to be. A changed thought is a different thought. There is no identity possible between a present thought and a thought no longer present— between a somewhat existent and a somewhat non-existent ; it is not in the insubstantial, fleeting, evanescent nature of an essence that is mental to perdure. The suc- cession of so-called phases must exhaust all that portion of a change of thought which is mental, and the mental portion is the whole, and a change of thought and therefore the thought of a change is a sheer impossibility. And if the thought .f a siiiiiiarity "consists in" a similarity of thoughts, then neither of the thoughts taken separately can know the similarity, for that thought would ipso facto cease to be merely a similar thought ; it would in violation of the hypothesis become a thought of similarity, to be in its turn resolved into a similarity of thoughts, and so on to infinity. And ior each of the thoughts taken separately to know the similarity, would but multiply the difficulty, and involve the additional paradox that iewer than two thoughts of one similarity cannot €xist ; and if a similarity of distinct and sepanite thoughts, one in *' one mind " and one in " another mind," does not constitute a thought of \\v.'\t Similarity, it is inconceivable how a mere similarity of equally distinct and separate thoughts in the .l^.'S ^'same mind" should constitute a thought of their similarity — unless indeed, according to the favorite formula of empiricism, precisely in what their being in the same niiiid ''consists" is in tiitir "constituting" a thought of their own similarity. And it is not easy to divine by what iniracle of deftness even this device could be made to serve in the case of a thought to the rio-ht ur to the left of another, or of a moving thought — or rather a thought in motion. A thought in motion ! The plain fact is — is it not? — continue the adversries of the sceptic, that in his effort to sever the Specious Present from all necessary connection with anything beyond itself the sceptic has inadvertendy destroyed its inner unity. In the interests of a fantastic intellectual economy he has denied his epistemology the "necessities of experience." Contract the circle of the Specious Present as narrowly as one may ; so long as circumference and centre do not coincide, so long as the Specious Present is more than a mere vanishing point, so long as it is spacious enough to include or to constitute a denial tJiai anything but itself can be known, it must consist in a divcr^itv of elements held together 111 a unity nf winth the necessary logical implications transcend liie Specious Present. The instant the Specious Present becomes a whole, it ceases to be merely its parts— merely the loose and separate 152 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 153 elements in which it "consists ;" it becomes what is a very different thing, the sum of its parts. The instant the Specious Present presents itself as ,1 J Fe/^di/d of the moment, as aii orderly vision ol llic wurld, it consists in more liiaii ils' nit-r*' ** togetherness in the mind" of the ideas into which that vision is in part analysable ; it consists in thoughts of successions and changes and similarities and dispositions to the right and left and indefinitely much besides, together with everything (since to be actual is a fortiori lo be possible!) that these necessarily involve. The categories — at the least categories of some sort — are immanent in the most limited conceivable bii of consciousness ; it is therein precisely, rather than ill any such considerations as those on which the Humean or Berkeleyan idealist relies, that ''for those," as Mr. Bradley pointedly remarks, *'who understand," the sufficient proof of idealism has been found to consist : the world of experience consists less in the isolated qualities — the qualities that qualify paradoxically nothing — with which Berkeley was for the most part content exclus- ively to deal, than in this composition into objects and in the orderly arrangement of these objects in relation to one another ; and if the intelligence which alone is competent to apprehend such com- position and arrangement is by itb nauii c uiit iisu must luive brought about the very composition and arrangement it apprehends ! *' In order that I i S successive feelings may be related objects of experience, even objects related in the way of succession, there must be in consciousness an agent which distinguishes itself from the feelings, uiutin- them in ilicir severalty, making them equally present in their succession. And so lar from this agent being reducible to, or derivable from, a succession of feelings, it is the condition of their being such a succession — the condition of the existence of that relation between feelings, as also of those other relations which are indeed not relations between feelings, but which, if they are 111 liters of experience, must have their being in con- sciousness. If there is such a thing as a connected experience of related objects, there musL be operative iii consciousness a unifying principle which not only presents related objects to itself, but at once renders them objects and unites them in relation to each other by this act of preserva- tion ; and which is single throughout experience. The unity of this principle must be correlative to the unity of the experience. — The source of the relations and the source of our knowledge of them is one and the same." ^ The sceptic as such indeed, it is scarcely hazard- ous to aver, is never on really defensible grounds or even in consistency an ally of the idealist : least 01 all sucli a sceptic as we have just been listening ^ Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 34-35- Of- Introduction to Hume's TreatisgyStc. 158. 10 '54 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 155 to .-—the reformation in question of the commonly accepted definition of truth positively by Hume's express declaration, plays into the hands not of the idealist but of the crudest of crude realists. " It seems evident," writes Hume, in one of many passages to the same effect, "that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated.'" If, as has been con- tended by the sceptic, truth is in a manner synonymous with predominance, with permanence ; if a true belief is distinctively one that will continue to be held under all possible turns of reflection and experience ; it may well seem that the belief in a universe external to us, independent of us, self-subsistent, so far at least as we are concerned and relatively permanent, may advance a claim to truth more justly than almost any other belief whatever. If it be answered that this belief IS precisely one that does not continue to be held under a// turns of reflection— that as Berkeley has sufficiently shown It involves a multi- tude of self-contradictions ; the reply may well be that no sense of its self-contradictions can be permanently maintained— that it almost immedi- ^ Inquiry, Section xil. Part I. ;it(iv prevails over them. *' Nature," Hnme contuiues, ** is always too strong for principle: An ,? hough a Pyrrhoniaii may throw himself and , into a momentary amazement and confusion l)y his proiound reasonings ; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same in every point of action and speculation, with the philoso- phers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, lie will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe ; though they are not able, by their most diligent inquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections which may be raised against them."^ And, manifestly it is not only of our faith in an *' external " world and in the existence of other people that all this holds, but also of our faith in memory and expectation generally as distinguished from our faith in particular memories and ex- pectations, — our belief in our own and other people's past, in our own and other people's future : considerations such as have by the sceptic been nlicd on to mrike plain the untrustworthi- 1 Inquiry y Section xn., Part II. 156 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 157 ness of memory and inference possess no perma- nent hold on the attention, prevail if at all only for the short time during which they are specially adverted to or recollected, and casually interrupt the predominance of the beliefs that they antago- nize, rather than depose them. The philosophy of Reid may thus on Hume's own premises be shown to be more profound than that of Hume. 2 So far the adversaries of the sceptic. And admittedly, the sceptic answers, it was a passably diverting jeu cTesprit some philosophical generations since to include actuality in the essence of, say, God or the angels or what you will ; to coerce God or the angels or what you won 1(1 into however reluctant an existence by sheer force of definition. There is, however, a much neglected principle of metaphysics, namely, that it is not impossible for a philosopari to be mistaken about a thing even before he has examined it. (His liability to error subsequent lu ciii examination has never been wholh' dis- regarded.) The ground of the philosophers beinq- called upon at all to direct his attention to iridiiiuna! notions of past and future time, unity, rei it; n motion, is a not unreasonably conceived siis|)ici HI that actuality may precisely not be of tlie essence of those objects of speech as commonly defined ; that the traditional nouons in respect 1 1 U':,s. m them in V be ii ui in every particular, or even not in any particular, accurate, may be not ;in!)robably even psychic//zV nullius, notions of nothing. It is much neglected principle of metaphysics thai nothing which is actual can be utterly impossible, no matter how fantastic in the light of certain prepossessions of our own it may present itself as being ; and it is accordingly the business of philosophers (this was sometimes a platitude—it has become a paradox) to modify their notions hi order to make them ** fit the facts," instead of building out the facts into some corsespondence with preconceptions of their own, and showing liow, upon certain suppositions which covertly derive all their^ plausibility from the very notions and principles at issue, it is still not quite iin|)OS- sible that things are in general, or in the main at least, as the impeccable philosopher even in iiis iiietaphysical nonage had supposed them to be. Tonsidering the disrepute into which the arorument from design has jusdy fallen, it might have been expected to become by this time a dialectic commonplace that, strictly speaking, there is no such thincT as an essential implication; that seemingly the most intrinsicaTy significant, ^of thinp-s taken in absolute isolation is bare vrith metaphysical completeness of implication ; tnat except upon certain presuppositions and principles nf intc riiretation no implication can exist, and a fortiori, (if there can be a degree of negativity / 158 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IS9 beyond a negation already perfect), no necessary implication : that at the first step in in alters metaphysical, in which all principles and |He- suppositions are as such in question, to speak of implications at all is to afford a notable example of va-Tepov irporepov — in especial to speak, in reference to an intelligence that can command no necessarily binding discursive logic, of necessary logical implications. If it be suggested that in the absence of a binding discursive logic the foregoing objection is itself of no avail, the reply IS thcit the former part of that objection is good in logic if there is a logic, and that, if there is not a logic, then both the former and the latter parts are good in what alone is left for an argument to be good in — in ''psychologic." Nay, if the theorist professing rationally to transcend the Specious Present claims that there is a competent logic, lie but sets in a clear light the demands that his own reasoning fails conspicuously to fulfill ; and if he urges that the argument to show the in- competence of logic depends on the competence of logic for its conclusiveness, he but makes out a case for scc[)ticism and scepticism is tatal to his posiii fi ; and if he urges that, since there is no com; tt lit logic that can be appealed to, the « ' to his position are not final, he does i-"'^^-- '^'\^vv,v tiiDse objections of ti:Cir coii- l)Ui he deprives also at the same clusiveness, instant his uwn ductnue of its bcinij. The nee- 9-. ;a I , u) logical implications of the ^specious l.j.p<,ent!— sav rather in matters metaphysical t\iQ ■cessarily illogical implications! "The plain f,ct is— is it not ?— that in his effort to sever t!,e bpecious Present from all necessary connections s^ith anything beyond itself the sceptic has in- advertently destroyed its inner unity!"— The ,, fact is— is it not?— that the sceptic of the Specious Present (what a deceptive appellation afttr all for one who pointedly declares the ;,pecious Present at least to be known with a rrtainty beyond the reach of scepticism I) and il,c transcendentalist alike start with a certain datum which the transcendentalist undertakes, by the instrumentality of an uncoercive logic operating in a presuppositionless premiseless void, to force the said sceptic necessarily in logic lu I'ranscend!" In the interests of a fantastic intellectual economy the sceptic has denied his epistemology the necessities of experience "—has denied the conditions which alone make knowledge or experience possible !— But an inquiry into what sort of knowledge and ex- perience are actual is prior in logic, in whatever sense there may be a logic, to any investigation i to how such knowledge or experience can le possible ; an I lie latter investigation can employ no uni.iplcs li.at are not supplied it l:v the former; ana the former supplies it with ju.i none at all, and with just none at all it can i6o THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS in reason move not one step. It cannot even state the difficulty that it aims to dispose of: it cannot even show that any such difficulty, or that any difficulty, exists ; the very question how such knowledge and experience as are actual can be possible proceeds upon the simply monstrous assumptions, that at least suck knowledge and experience are not or rather cannot be self-existent, self-sufficient, self- complete ; that they call for — nay that they (or anything else !) permit of — explanation ; that they (or anything else !) may be, nay are, conditioned : assumptions which in any meta- physics not confessedly a half-hearted criticism of final premises in the interests of some irrevocable foregone conclusion clamour to be justified some- what otherwise than by faith alone, assumptions that owe the whole of their facile persuasiveness to notions we all of us picked up we know not when or how before we left the nursery, thai it may well be (the sceptic does not say it is) the prime business of philosophy to disabuse us of, and that every instants consideration of the question what sort of knowledge and experience are actual, tends to render more and more untrustworthy, — that is to say, in metaphysics, more and more ''impossible.' it i^ uiily in the art of fiction that a irpuyrov yly-evSog is allowed an unquestioned authority such as no subsequent depcirtiire from the truih, or ^r that matter V m \ u THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS i6r subsequent veracity, may permissibly lay claim to • it is only in the art of ficiion that it i^ compulsory ^l^evSfj Xeyeiv w? Sel — to bend everything to the lie one started with and steadily to prefer impossible plausibilities to implausible certain- ties. Unity the Specious Present, if you insist, adnritiedly does possess ; but unity of the specific kind alone, whatever that may be, which it presents itself as possessing — which may upon inspection be discovered in it : of unity at all indeed, unless (look after your definitions and your facts will look after themselves !) we have taken the strategic precaution once for all to define our terms before proceeding to any exact scrutiny of the matters they denote, we know by the very nature of our undertaking simply nothing, save that it is a superficially identifi- able somewhat that the Specious Present has. (i) Tf the unity of the Specious Present is, as seemingly it is, a unity of elements intrinsically not loose nor separate nor separable nor in the chemical or physical sense component — d a is the iinitv ni wh It | >sychologists would call a simple inihxdsibU: i .sx^cd'^os's diversified in detail — then the i at rii^ouri of a unifying "agent'' anion- those (■lementsis fxratintous, if net downright disruptive : he eari at trie utmost establish among tnose elenvaits no eloser unity than they intrinsicaily possess ; ana beeenie u' 1 .1 * n T ; I U 1 1 A i i. J. 1 ^ ^ V-' A i. l63 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS identical w: i Liurii, wiihout ceasing to be different from them and the condition of them, an 1 yet to remain intelligible, he will assuredly need all the omnipotence that definition can invest liini with. (2) If the unity of the Specious Present were (and though seemingly it is not there is difficulty in conceiving any a priori sufficient reason -vvhy it mi^ht not have been) such a unity as that, for ex ci!ii|)ie, o! ,1 whist party or o^ n body politic or of the so-called physical universe is commonly supposed to be : a unity, namely, ofelements con- ceivably at least transferable from one organic whole to another, and at least tu iw.iX ( xient intrinsically loose and separate, and (though not perhaps without loss or alteration) separable, with nothing ** between" them, not even a figment of the imagination, **to hold them together" — or to keep them apart ! — then : ^ (i) To offer proof that in any event such elements could not of themselves possess, or at the least could not account for. the unity that on this hypothesis they would present themselves as possessing, would be little better than a joke. It would lightly imply among other things a pre- established certainly {a) xhwx there are iliiiio-s susceptible of being accounted for — it m ly be ^ I must ask the reader to distinguish sharply for the moment between the characteristics in such a unity which might be ** given," and the characteristics which must at best be inferred only. \i .1 J? 1141 11, ■ " THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 165 I i 1 1 ( > it w know those two things as related, are different ways of phrasing the same statement, it seems t » be a self-contr idiction to affirm that the terms of i!o relation known may be in minds or moments of consciousness ejective to each other, or that relations between minds or moments of conscious- 166 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS tiess ejective to one another, if such there be, may be immediately known. The specific unity in diversity that the Specious Present has, {the appeal is to introspection,) is the unity in diversity that is of the essence of an immediate consciousness of relations. For x and y to be known is for x and y to exist ; for x and y to be known as related is for x and y to exist in the same moment of consciousness — to exist as dis- tinguishable elements in one psychic whole ; for X and y to be known, but not known as related, is for X and y to exist in moments of consciousness ejective to each other. 2 To ask what then breaks down the barrier between x and y — what cognizes them as related? — is by the very form of the question to assume {a) that the identical x and y cognized as related have existed in ununited isolation before they were cognized as related that the x and y cognized as related are in effect intrinsically separable and loose ; and {b) that to be cognized, is to be cognized by something that the unity belonging to a cognition of relation is a unity of intrinsically repellent mental particles lield together by something different from them- selves : and both assumptions — need it at this late day be said.^ — are gratuitous, almost gro- tesque. Wo der \erstand vorher nichts verbunden 2 The reader will of course bear in mind in testing this affirmation the familiar observations and experiments in " split-off" conscious- ness. THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 167 hat, da kann er auch nichts auflbsen : if you choose in sheer \ iolcnce to take for granted that a combi- nation has been affected, it would indeed evince a mistimed scrupulosity to hesitate about asserting that the combination has been effected by an abra- cadabra, or a hippogriff, ox par excellence an agent, r r uli it v( u will. The plain fact is. that what is L;p;tn is ^ and jv cognized as related; that things r imericallydifferent cannot, however similar other- w i ,l;. be metaphysically identical ; that since a 1 III il state is what it is known to be, a mental state differently known is a different mental state ; that an existing mental x andj^, cognized as dis- tineuishable inseparable details of one indivisible psychosis, cannot without self-contradiction be affirmed Lu Le the " same " as a non-existent x and y, formerly, if at all, constituting mutually ejective bits of consciousness not so cognized ; that it is a signal example of the *' psychologist's fallacy " to confuse a mental x and y related, but ri ?t knwii to be related, as bits of consciousness ejective to each other, with an x and y related and known to be related as bits of consciousness not ejective to each other ; and that if ;t; and jk are re illy elective bits of consciousness, the agent by vhir il they are — miraculous achievement ! — to be "combined" without losing their identity (or rr'fiiainiii^' the same!) into iirecisely what they were not, details in a metaphysical unity, niust 1 e either identical with them, or sunictnini£ i68 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 169 ejective to them ; and in the first case that agent is by hypothesis a mere collective name for the disunited particulars to be "combined;" and in the second case, that agent is merely an additional unattached particular ; and in both cases, it is an enigmatic somewhat, magnificently charged with the performance of an operation that escapes proving unintelligible so long only as no attempt is made to understand it. The sceptic has been too severely disciplined in the etiquette of the transcendental court to insist on being prcseiued to this agent — this agent has always just stepped out and left a sense of agility, or the pronoun I, to give audience in his stead. And it must never for an instant be forgotten that this agent is not anything real, nor subject himself 10 be cate- gorized, and cannot therefore be literally single, nor operative, nor unifying; and cannot distinguish himself from things, nor present them to himself, — except possibly in a transcendental acceptation : and can neither be conceived nor spoken of except falsely — it being so much better to conceive and speak of him falsely (we may, it seems, be sure at least of that ! ) than not at all. If, however, our concern in metaphysics is not primarily to discover what, rightly or wrongly, by implication or explicitly, we do actually l>e- lieve ; nor even what beliefs for all practical pur- poses we act on and are no doubt determined to continue acting on; but which, if any. of our beliefs we hold on grounds that exclude at least, every obvious possibility of mistake ; then a certain deference to the meaning attached to words by the '* collective intelligence," and to "Locke's litde book," and to the syllogistic logic and its professors from century to century, is, so long as no conclusion distinctively metaphysical is based on that deference, perfecdy consistent with a scepticism in metaphysics of the most uncom- promising kind; the absurdity of attempting to found an objection on such a deference is so pervasive as almost to infect any effort to expose it. If the phrase, "to gram simply for the pur- pose of argument.** can mean what it says, if we may, without yielding an atom of assent to a body of doctrine, follow out its logical consequences and pronounce what is consistent with it and what not, we may in unviolated ignorance of anything beyond the Specious Present, or even in irremedi- able mistake in regard to everj^hing beyond the Specious Present— even to the length of sup- posing that there is something, anything, beyond the Specious Present to be mistaken •* about" — be shocked at the bare suggestion that "the future " can be contemporaneous with " the past. or that "the future" has existed, or that "the ;>ast" will exist, or that either •'the future** or ^•the past" do exist, or that "they" are not two but one; we may without in metaphysical cer- tainty knowing anything, even the existence, of II lyo THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS any mind other than *'our own," and without knowing more of **our own" indeed than the ''passing moment," distinguish with a certain neatness of Hmitation between what we know with metaphysical certainty, and what we simply conjecture, about **our mind" and any suppo- sitious mind other than our own, and between ** the " passing moment and suppositious moments passed or to be passed ; and may know that, if a mental state exists only when and in so far as it is perceived, then when it has ceased to be felt it has ceased to be, and that if by the future and the past we mean what the words say, '* other " minds cannot know the future and the past otherwise than we do without knowing them as by definition they are not, and cannot, in the only sense we can attach to the words ''immediate knowledge," know our mind immediately without by that fact becom- ing one with it and being known by us. If a rela- tion, and the related terms, and the consciousness of that relation, are four things possessing no unity with one another, then the knowledge achieved by the " agent " or " principle " which " presents them to itself," and "distinguishes itself from them," must be either immediate in the sense that the agent knowledge is direcdy constituted by them, that that agent's knowledge of them and their knowledge of themselves are one, or in some S( nsc mediate— in the sense, if we are to take seriously the word "to present" (as of course we THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 171 are not), tiiai the agent or principle stands over against them in their invincible multiplicitys and I ikcs, in the unity of its own essence, a total impression : but to know them immediately, would be to know them disunitedly ; if the agent's knowledge is constituted by them, is wholly or in part made up of them, no holding the^n together, W}X gumming them together, nor connecting them at the edges or elsewhere, can give them a unity other til III that of a mixture, or mosaic, or web, ( r psychic crystal of perdurable atoms of mind- stuff: and to know them mediately would be not at all to know them but to know somewhat else that "knows" them ; and in what sense the agent can know that somewhat, and can know it knows, and know that somewhat knows, and what that somewhat knows, and in what sense if at all it 1' akiA does that somewhat know, are matters in- volving in an aggravated form the difficulty wtih V hich we set nut ; nor can it be readily conceived in wkait that somewhat itself should consist except in a cognition of relations, to be resolved in turn into a relation, and related terms and consciousness of relation, in disunion. If the first of a uccession ' f iliotiorhts ceases to exist before the second comes nito being, and the second ceases to exist before the third comes into being, and so on, then the knowledge achieved by an agent or principle which liferents the succession to itself cannot he immediate in the sense that the successive I70 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 111 any mind other than **our own," and without knowing more of *'our own" indeed than the ** passing moment," distinguish with a certain neatness of limitation between what we know with metaphysical certainty, and what we simply conjecture, about **our mind" and any suppo- sitious mind other than our own, and between ** the " passing moment and suppositious moments passed or to be passed ; and may know that, if a mental state exists only when and in so far as it is perceived, then when it has ceased to be felt it has ceased to be, and that if by the future and the past we mean what the words say, ''other " minds cannot know the future and the past otherwise than we do without knowing them as by definition they are not, and cannot, in the only sense we can attach to the words ''immediate knowledge," know our mind immediately without by that fact becom- ing one with it and being known by us. If a rela- tion, and ihc rclcLtcd terms, and the consciousness of that relation, are four things possessing no unity with one another, then the knowledge achieved by the " agent " or " principle " which " presents them to itself," and "distinguishes itself from them," must be either immediate in the sense that the agent knowledge is directly constituted by them, that that agent's knowledge oi ihem and their knowledge of themselves are one, or in some sense mediate — in the sense, it we are to take seriously the word "to present " (as of course we are not), tliat the agent or principle stands over against them in their invincible multiplicitys and takes, in the unity of its own essence, a total impression : but to know them immediately, would be to know them disunitedly ; if the agents knowledge is constituted by them, is wholly or in part made up of them, no holding them together, nor gumming them together, nor connecting them at the edges or elsewhere, can give them a unity other than that of a mixture, or mosaic, or web, or psychic crystal of perdurable atoms ()f mind- stuff: and to know them mediately would be not at all to know them but to know somewhat else that " knows " them ; and in what sense the agent can know that somewhat, and can know it knows, and know that somewhat knows, and what that somewhat knows, and in what sense if at all it really does that somewhat know, are matters in- volving in an aggravated form the difficulty wtih whicli we set out : nor can it lie readily conceived in wliat that somewhat itself should consist except in a cognition of relations, to be resolved in turn into a relation, and related terms and consciousness of relation, in disunion. If the first of a uccession of thoughts ceases to exist before the second conies into being, and the second ceases to exist before the tivird comes into being, and so on. then the knowie Ice achieved by an agent or principle vvliich orescnis the succession to itself cannot be i nmediate in the sense that the successive 172 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS thoughts are in whole or in pan the stuff wliich i w ked up into that knowledge ; by hypothesis no two of the successi\ c thoughts are in existence at once to be worked up together, and bv the time the succession is complete and a knowledge of it possible the last thought only of the succession exists. And that knowledge cannot by way of total impression be even at one remove mediate ; directly from the succession itself no total im- pression can be taken ; the whole number of its parts at no one time exist ; there can at the utmost, (to say that the agent is timeless is not to say that it is of all times, still less that it is of all times at once ; it is to say that it is of no time whatever! and in any event the object of know- ledge in is time even if the knower is not), be taken now an impression of one part of the succession, and now of another part, and now of another, and so on, and finally a total impression of these impres- sions ; and there is no unity amongst the succes sive thoughts, and no unity between the successive thoughts and the partial impressions, and no unity amongst the partial impressions, and no unity be- tween the partial impressions and thetotal impres- sion, and no unity (unity of impression being a cognition of relation) in the total impression itself, norbetween the total impression and the agent which presents it to itself '' In order tli it succes- sive feelings may be related objects of experience, there must be in consciousness an agent which THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 173 distinguishes itself frcHii the feelings, unitiiii: ihein in their severalty, making them equally iireseiit in liu ir succession — the unity of this principle must 1 ( correlative to the unity of the experi- ence:"^ the unit} ? i this principle indeed is the golden thread on which the pretty beads are strung! Really the contemners of metaphysics have in even the sceptic's eyes some reason on their side — it is the proverbial last ditch in which embattled ideas die. It seems, for some reason too delicate to bear the light, to be supposed that if a thing has existed in the past, more of it than would otherwise exist must be in existence now : if the present agent is identical with the past agent, all of that agent that has existed (is that the argument?) does exist, and any knowledge that was immediate is immediate. But without questioning the timelessness of the agent and the similarity of its relation to present knowledge and to past, it is clear that on the hypothesis of a knowing agent no knowledge ever was or is immediate ; the agent brings to the problem of immediate knowledge in the present or the past greater difficulties than those it is invoked lo solve ; and even if it did not, to be the same somcwvhat or no-what that presented, or presents. (though the past \n time is by definition gone). the past to itself is one thing, and to know that one is such a somewhat is another, the idealist head. But the ideahst head ci, ami whate\^cr vision there deta may be ( f its special history, are Specious l^resent ; and Mill's doctrine, pl< the li % II I 176 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 177 Stated, would run, that the Specious Present con- tains among other things a belief that it (the S| ecious Present !) is a unit in a certain series of its own details. As for finding oneself obliged by the suggested redefinition of truth to revert to the belief of the crude realist, the answer needs must vary with the sense to be put upon belief ''in an external universe that depends not on our perception, but would exist though we and every sensible creaiurf were absent ur auniiiilated." (i.j \i Liie belief meant is that the idealist *' landscape" is "external" to the idealistic head; and that the idealistic landscape and the idealistic body and head are, as compared with the ** contents" of the idealist head (if some small matter of emotions, volitions, and ** unobjectified " feelings generally, rn iv permissibly be so called), relatively stabie, and peculiarly apt, because in so many cases ** recoverable " upon a mere "readjustment of the sense organs" and (seemingly at least) "stable enough for all practical purposes," to be laxly described as more stable than thev rcallv are ; and that the idealist head and body, aiil the idealist lieads aiKi bodies ui '•^Dnc's fellow crea- tures/' are but ' c|)hemerar details in one's \ isioii of the universe : then belief is a feeble term 1^ n immediate certainty ; and it is idle tu talk of " reverting to " what has never for an instant been departed from. (2.) If the belief meant is, that the idealist head and body and ttie rest of llic eiitire idealist vision uf ilie universe are inside a "material" head, which is a sort of fac-simile in a different stuff of the idealist head ; and that there are " material " fac-similes of so much at least of the vision of the universe as is "regarded as" present, which bear to the material head relations corresponding to those borne by the idealistic landscape to the idealist head : then he who uses this extraordinary verbiage may fairly be requested to iraiismute a, with a fuli sense of the spatial absurdities it involves, into its equivalent in thought ; and if he finds the feat impossible, or even difficult, or even unaccustomed, — if he finds that when he attempts it he inevitably dwarfs the idealist landscape, or inflates the material head, or conceives the material head simply as a sort of ghostly double of the idealist head and does not trouble himself to put tiie ideiHst landscape into the material head at ail, or does trouble himself and does not succeed, or is m any event simply running a line of division through his vision of the universe and saying to himself, however inadvertently, " So much of my vision of the universe shall be called * my entire vision ' of the iniiverse, and the remainder shall be called the ' material ' head in which it lodges, and ^tii 5 ■h I 178 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS the material universe," — then he may be chal- lenn-ed to admit that in that sense at least a belief in an external world is not at all inevitable or common, and that the proposition \ ulgarly confounded with it\ "that it is only b) the senses we communicate \\ itii the outer wori 1 ", is either idealist ti-nns, or nr)t transmuted into thougrht in transmuted into thought at all, or (what in all but quite exceptional instances is probably liie case} but partially transmuted. (3.) If tlie belief meant is that the ** contents of the idealist head" (the small matter of emotions, volitions, and unobjecti- fied feelings already mentioned above) are of one kind of stuff, specifically to be denomin ted mental, and are only what they are felt to be and when they are felt, and all the rest — other *' minds" excepted — of one's universe as ''known/ including one's own body and head, are of a different, relatively permanent, kind of stuff specifically to be denominated material, and are what they are whether they are ** felt " or not, (and sometimes even are something different from what they are felt to be !) : then the reply is, that, the instant the question is understood, so much of one's vision of the world as is ** historical," as has relation to the past nr future, will be by everyone admitted to be distinctly mental ; and that upon a stcNiAJv scnitinv much of what is at first pralaip- re- gard d as ' iiresent," as "given, is recognized as ul Liic same stuff as what is historical, as in effect m «&'■ 1 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179 inferential or reminiscent, and what is inferential or reminiscent is mental ; and that the rest is sensation, an 1 sensation is mental : and that the whole doctrine is an instance of taking scrinuslv ellipses and simplifications found as a rtjie sufficient or even advantageous tor practical |iu,rpu:Dcs , and of insisting that the technic.i! terms ai)Tiropriate to those simplifications should be n ts in the nature of a discovery of anything really new. or c:\am uniamiliar, than of the correction o! an habitual inadvertence. Berkeley's achievement and Hume's were descru)tr\a,a or at the utmost discnnunative, simply ; and possess & ■eat is .^ n {\ i8o THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS constancy and "hold" on the **mind" as any- other nice distinction, or indeed as any other distinction whatever nice or not. One does not keep reiterating to one's self without intermission that two and two are four, or that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle equals two right angles, or (to come to instances in point of immediacy and certainty more pertinent) that one is experiencing such and such " bodily " sensations, or that the centre of the ** field of vision " is more distinct than the neighbourhood of the circum- ference, or any other truth that may or may not be regarded as having come to us " in the first instance " with a shock of mingled familiarity and surprise ; these cognitions are stable in the precise way and in no other in which the cognition of the '* external" world as mental is stable — they are •adverted to on occasions when they are pertinent, simply, and any ratiocinative construction that may conflict with them shatters itself against them. To characterise them on these various accounts as possessing an intermittent hold on the mind, or merely throwing one into a momentary amazement and confusion, would be recognised at once as a perverse or perversely humorous misstatement. And answers to the like effect are to be made in regard to ni if y and in regard to inferences relating to times other tluiu liic present. If bv belief in memorv^ and in such inferences is meant simply belief that one's ( THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS i8i coir Hit ion I the ''present" state of the "external" world aii'.l of the "present" state of one's " body"^ 1 Dart ot lU'J 1 f-*; i J" and "feelings" form but < one's vision of the universe ; that antecedent an subsequent "states" both of the urn verse and oi one's bodiiy and feeling self make up a great part of that vision — that the present is built out a parii ante and a parte post by an ideal con- struction : then again belief is a feeble term for vvhii i< immediately certain; the credibility of memory and inference in that sense is not an 1 has not been called in question. But if by belief in memoHv^ andi m such inferences is meant beliet that one's entire vision of the universe as it is, as It ii;i:. betan as it will be, constitutes one cornplete moment of one's consciousness, and falls as a whok wiiiun the temporal unity of that particular one of its own parts wlilch is distinctiveh regarded as the present state of one's feeling self, or at the utmost of one's "perceptive" self; and that corresponding to each of the "memories of past states." or expectations of future states," of one's physaal and feeling and "perceptive" self in that monient, one supposes there have been or will be other moments bearing to that momena such re- lations as the content of the respective memories and expectations to which thev severally corre- sDond bear to the content of the cognition si the ri esf ni siatc of one's physical and feeling and "ve self: then aeo.in he who uses this pera:i: ■T J r is- II ,1 l82 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 'extraordinary verbiage may fairly be requested to transmute it with a full sense of the temporal absurdities it involves, into its equivalent in thought ; and if he finds the feat impossible, or even difficult, or even unaccustomed — if he finds that when he attempts it he simply imagines a microscopic inaccurate copy of the "complete moment," and introduces it by main force into the contents of the present state of the feeling self, or simply ignores the limits of the present state of the feeling self, or first conceives a double time series and mentally denominates one of them the complete present moment and the other the original which in part represents it, — then again he may be challenged to admit concerning such a belief in memory and expectation, that if the plain man does not go in search of it, it will not come in search of the plain man. And if by belief in memory and in such inferences is meant belief that the past as known by memory and the future as known by expectation differ, one or both of them, from the present as known, not in stuff nor mode of existence, but simply in position in a series : then the answer is that the language of the muses indeed recognises no such difference; but that, unless perhaps the some- what apocryphal Melete is to be so accounted, there has been no muse oi metaphysics ; and that in any event the plain man, in spite of language and the niuses, shows himself perfectly aware, .am m ■ THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 183 V henever there is any point in his taking cogniz- ance of that difference, that it exists ; that what he calls the iuiure and the past are really only present '' make-believe ", marked off in mode of existence and essential stuff from present "reality," and separable from the most distinctively capricious vagaries of the imagination at first sight 1)) nothing more than a certain pertinacity and spontaneity. I ' «i] I f ! I v CHAPTER VI THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I. Must it be concluded then — because the sceptic has reduced the question to sheer nonsense ! — that we can know nothing but the Specious Present ? — or, avoiding modestly the assumption of omnisci- ence involved in an assertion about potentiality, that simply we do know nothing but the Specious IVesent? — or, avoiding the responsibilities of a denial, that we know the Specious Present and in Mr. Bradley's phrase are waiting, and are under the impression that we have for years been wait- ing, to be shown that there is more to be known, and, even if so, that we may obtain access to it ? The case is rather — shall it not be said ? — that the sceptic's argument, like the argument in Humean writings generally, is in effect a reducho ad absurdum of a certain theory of knowledge. It addresses itself not so much to conviction as to hilarity, and demands less that we assent to its conclusion than that we abandon iis premises. Ii THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 185 li I i f ,. 1 88 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS *' Speak the language.'* There are, in brief, three distinguishable modes of intelligence — intuition, memory, and inference ; of these three intuition alone is of unblemished authority, and has for some ceriim ies therefore been accepted as supplying a standard of perfection for the other two. Intuition has been employed to criticise on the basis of its own distinctive excellence the products of the other two — that is the rationale at once of every sceptical argument (falsely so-called) known to the history of philosophy, and of the conclusiveness of such arguments, and of the Involity of any effort to ignore them or prove them self-destructive, and of the insufficiency of any effort to reply to them, and of the metaphysics of the Specious Present. Memory and inference have by tacit consent been required to operate with the lucidity, the distinct- ness, the exclusion of all possibility of mistake, which intuition at its best displays ; and in so f ar as they have been supposed to meet this require- ment, they have been regarded as affording knowledge in strictness so called, and in so far as they have been supposed to fail to meet it, they have been regarded as affnrrling mere opinion. Of memor\ , on this hypothesis, the less that was saitl the beiier ; and philosophers are to be com- plimented on their discretion. With inference the case has been imagined to be different. 0\\ die ground of a mistaken estimate of the sort and degree of certainty achieved in geometry and m !M 'i ! t 'i •{■ « I ,1 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 189 mathematics generally, and of the security of the progress from preina'ses to conclusion in the syllogism and in such other modes of argumenta- tion as iinglu be found ** conclusive in form," it has been fancied that in certain cases at least, which it was the business of logicians precisely to define, inference could be made to do in essentials the work of intuition ; and it has been the special function of metaphysics to take heed that in any event in the all-important cases inference should be made actually to do so: precisely what has been intended by metaphysical or logical certitude is just that — the certitude of an intuition, a certitude comparable in degree to that of intuition. But such certitude is to all appearance the exclusive prerogative of uiimediate knowledge; the supposition in regard to inference would seem to be a tl elusion founded on a primitive psychology and an uncritical logic ; constructive metaphysics was by the inherent falsity or frivolity of the very definitions with which it set out committed to the futility that it is jusriy credited with having in all ages achieved. Gli uomint sono miseri i)er neces- sitd e risoluti di credersi miseri pe7^ accidente : men are fallible of necessity — metaphysicians have resolved to believe them fallible h\ chance. Unic:.- the law of causation and generally the final premises of knowledge can be justified to the point of an essentially intuitive certitude, meta- phvsicums decline to feel comfortable: some por- ^ A III 190 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS tioii of their '' whole nature " is dissatisfied. They might as profitably, as rationally, as significantly, decline to feel comfortable so long as the physical proportions of men and women fall short of those of the Phidian Zeus and the Melian Venus. The one thing plainer than another about the human intelligence is, that in all its operations it is grop- ing, fumbling, tentative, insecure, certain (if at all) ex post facto\ that it is incompetent to deal adequately with the simplest material presented to it ; that its successes are but strokes of lurk and its failures the fit expression of its powers ; that its conclusive demonstrations and clever dialectic are tricks of statement, tricks of style, tricks of literary toilet, rhetorical powder, patches, paint and rouge. He who asserts that to admit this frankly is to do what in one lies to degrade the dignity of the mind, must be prepared 10 maintain that the dignity of the mind is heightened by its openly affecting to be what patendy it is not. And unless the meaning of words is a matter of capricious definition simply and not a matter in the last resort of the analysis of some thing signified, logical certainty is such certainty and such certainty only, whatever that may be, as logic is able to supply, and knowledge is such knowledge and such knowledge only, with all its blemishes, as we possess. A man knows some portion of his own past by memory : knows some portion of the past, some portion of the pro- I i THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 191 blematical present and the future, some portion of tiie hypuih' tical present, past, and future, of him- self and other people, by inference ; and knows by intuition liis uwn Specious Present : if in deference to a sentiment of discomfort, if in deference to what in the extinction of his sense of humour he need not perhaps refrain from calling the demands of his ** whole nature," he chooses to restrict the word knowledge to such knowledge only as is of intuitive certitude, then on that definition he knows nothing but the Specious Present, his own Speci- ous Present ; but the solipsism and the scepticism contained in that doctrine are purely verbal, and belono- whether he acknowledg^e them or not 10 the person who accepts that definition, which the plain man may not unreasonably reject. There are three distinguishable sorts of knowledge, simply, corresponding to three distinguishable modes of the intelligence, and they are of varying degrees of certitude. 2. Vicerunt empirici, cries the psychological idealist : the victory lies with the empiricists, and in particular with psychological idealists ui the type of John Stuart Mill. ^lore pretentious philosophers propoiiml f)]'oblenis ili ii they cannot in fairness raise, and offer solutions of them that they cannot verify. They assume that human I 192 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS knowledge is other than it is, only in order to argue that there would have to be presupposed certain other non-existent things to make such knowledge possible ; and that argument itself, even as a logical construction on hypothetical premises, is found on critical examination to be unsound. They take iur granted an unreal some- what only in order to explain it afterward on the supposition of certain fictitious conditions, and the explanation is a paralogism. The psychological idealist alone starts under no misconception of the facts, raises no questions that are in their nature futile, makes no demand on any power of the intelligence for a display of qualities exclu- sively pertaining to one of the other powers, employs intuition whenever intuition can be employed, and memory and inference whenever in default of intuition memory and inference must be employed, and neither ascribes to memorv and inference nor endeavours to exact of them the sort of security that belongs to intuition only, and neither repines at the limitations of his instrument nor imagines that if he did repine those limitations would disappear. About tlie present fact q7ia present, and about its secret essence, its inner nature, he has no doubt : it is mental, it is single, it is "subjective;" it has properly speaking no secret essence, no inner nature, it is known through and through, it is and is only what it is conscious of being — to deny that or an) Davi of i J c I i I H \ \ ' 1 1 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 193 that is to commit a contradiction in terms ; and to say, not that it is what it is conscious of itself as being, but that it is what the mind which takes cognisance of it is conscious of it as being, is to have a care for idiom and to be careless of tact. The psychological idealist does not ask what a con- sciousness such as t]i = it implies; how it can have come about ; under what conditions it is possible ; least of all, under what conditions only it is possible : he is too keenly aware that to ask a question is indirectly to make an assertion, perhaps a multitude of assertions ; and that the assertions on which the questions mentioned are based are such as he is utterly unable to justify or even to make intelligible. The psychological idealist believes on the w irrant of memory that his present consciousness is a "moment" in a ** stream of consciousness;" he believes on the warrant of inference that there are streams of consciousness other than "his own;" but he recognises the insecurity attaching to such beliefs, and, unversed in the satisfactions to be found ni explanations of the ultimate by the unmeaning, does not seek to account for whit is mental by what IS iiuii-mental, nor to convince himself that in some way sufficiently mysterious what is mental would be deprived of the disconnectedness and multiplicity it really possesses, if onlv there could be shown to be a transcendental somewhat else possessing unitw 11 i\-in,cr a relish for words » ' II 194 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS to which some signification may be ascribed, the psychological idealist confines his remarks to emotions, volitions, ideas, sensations and per- manent possibilities of sensation — his own and other people s. ** Permanent possibilities of sensation" — and that with a relish for words to which some significance may be ascribed ! — the hostile critic, as the psychological idealist well knows, is certain to exclaim. And there has indeed come to be something almost comic about the phrase '* per- manent possibilities of sensation : " the grotesque- ness of certain misinterpretations and comments due to misinterpretations has a little rubbed off on it It might therefore with advantage be dis- carded, but for the sheer impossibility of discovering a substitute that shall so precisely and plainly define the element of truth, the element that abides triumphant in the face of criticism, in the psychological idealist's account ot belief in an external world. The difficulty commonly felt in regard to it has often been formulated, and by nobody perhaps more neady than by Professor Andrew Seth. After quoting Mill's statement that the modifications in our possibilities of sensation are '* quite independent of our consciousness and of our presence or absence,"— that ''whether we are asleep or awake the fire goes out and puts an end to that particular possibility of warmth and light," and '' whether \ c 11 ' ' } THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 195 are present or absent the corn ripens and brings- .1 II' w possibility of food ; " Professor Seth says : We may fairly ask how a change can take place ^,, ;, possibility at a time when it does not exist. *A change in nothing,' as Mr. Stout puts it, * is no change at all.' Equally baseless is the notion of one of these possibilities causally modifviiv^- another at a time when, exhypothesi both are non-existent. The truth is that under cover of the ambiguous word 'possibility,' Min has cn\ crdy re-introduced the * trans-subjective It ility'." The truth is in other words, according to 1 Vofessor Scili, (since Mill's denial of any such re- iiuroduc tion is explicit), that on a consistent inter- pretation of subjective idealism Mill's statements possess and can possess no meaning, and that such significance as for him they had was unavowedly "borrowed." To the follower of Mill it seems that Professor h( fh and those who share with him the respon- sibility of such criticisms are fairly open to the charge of passing judgment on psychological ideal- ism before they have understood it. and plncinL: ;it the service of the psycho logical idealist not so rnuiii their nitelligence as their courtesy: when what the psychological idealist really means forces itself uiH ui tiicir minds at all, they either dismiss it hristily as too fintasticto be attributed seriouslv to a man in his senses, they either misconstrue him out of pure good manners, crediting Ivim ni the f =. '<& f96 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS interest of his sanity with having felt the irresis- tible attraction of some proposition of their own, or else politely urge on him his very meaning as an objection toitself — as an implication that he can- not have perceived in the language he consents to employ. In especial, it would seem, they can scarcely trust their eyes when they read in the pages of a psychological idealist that he can dis- cover no ground for believing that a change ever takes place in any strict sense in anything, least of all in a possibility : a change without a basis of identity, without a somewhat that is the same in the midst of change, a somewhat perdurable that, ^iii their phrase) changes, is to them so monstrous so obviously impossible, a conception, thai uicy cannot bring themselves to ascribe it to a fellow mortal except in derision : whereas there is perhaps but one thing more monstrous and iiiipossible than this doctrine as it appears in their eyes, and that is their own doctrine of change as it appears in the eyes of the psycho- logical idealist. To the psychological idealist, the only guise in which what is denoted by tlie word change is discoverable or indeed conceivable is mere sequence : first one thing, and then another thing, numerically distinct and separate from the first, but closely related to it in tim^ or 111 time and space. If in an unguarded niuineni of deference to current forms of speech, the I ; . riological idealist seems to say iliat be Wk\ liiii I'- {. 'I il •! I THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 197 identifies the two as successive phases of the same thing, he must be understood to refer to his recognition of this intimate relation, simply ; to his connecting the two things in liis thought of them, not to hi^ confounding them — far less to his supposing that there subsists between ihem an identity properly so-called. Fancy the identity of two things numerically distinct and separate ! — for example, since all existence is mental, of two states of mmd 1 When the psychological idealist speaks of a change having taken place in possi- bilities, he means that there was first a possibility of one thing, and then the impossibility oi that and the possibility of something else, and no discernible or conceivable connection between the two, except ex post facto in his thought. The statement ni iv by an adversary be regarded as false to introspection, or again it may not, but it is nut unmeaning and it is not trans-subjective, at least not necessarily. And it is not lightly to be taken for granted that the psychological idealist finds his own mental attitude as difficult to maintain as his adversaries find it ; there is somcnhini? almost naive in an inability to recognise that the psychological idealist may find trans- subjectivism as awkward as his adversaries find subjcctivisin. Everybody ha- at some time or uiliei believed, everybody habitually does believe, that the sun movr^s rounti the earth ; even the practised astronomer might find it difficult from 198 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS hour to hour to translate the certainties of daily life into scientific terms ; but the practised astronomer would find it still more difficult, assuredly, to conceive his Copernican astrono ny in Ptolemaic terms ; and certainly he would never do so inadvertently, would never in a desperate effort to make Copernicus intelligible steal for him a proposition from Ptolemy. When the psychological idealist is challenged to say what a possibility is, he has every right to reply that by possibility he means what everybody else means that speaks the language — a certain sort of conditional fact, a fact the conditions precedent of which do not seem to be unrealisable; his ground for asserting a conditional fact being an hypo- thetical judgment. His hypothetical judgment may of course be mistaken, the fact he believes to be possible may really be not possible, but his conviction is not unintelligible nor self-contradic- tory nor unsupported by evidence such as his opponents would not hesitate in confirmation of a belief of their own to accept. Let us take two cases. {a) The psychological idealist believes himself, let us suppose, to hold three matches m his hand ; he believes that he can *' strike " them all ; he does " strike " one and watches it burn to ashes. A change in possibilities of sensation, he believes, has taken place, in the plain sense that, wiiereas he could (he remembers believing) a moment ago strike three matches, he can now, he *i THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 199 believes, strike but two. Instead of saying that a change in the possibilities has taken place it would be more studiously precise to say that the possibilities are changed, i,e,, are different, simply. {b) The psychological idealist, let us suppose, believes himself to hold three matches in his hand, believes that he can strike them all, does strike one, and shuts his eyes ; presently he opens his eyes and believes himself to hold in his hand two matches and a bit of charred wood /\ change in possibilities of sensation has, he believes, taken place as in the case first supposed, in the plain sense that whereas a moment ago he could, he remembers believing, strike three matches, he can now strike but two. But also a change in possibilities of sensation, he believes, was taking- place from instant to instant during the time while he held his eyes shut, in the perfectly plain sense that. If he had not shut his eyes as he struck the match, he would, he believes, have had a peculiar sensation of sight, he would have seen a spurt and flare, such as he remembers seeing w = ! e :n other matches were struck ; anc A t r at 1! iie had opened his eyes an instant after he struck the nidtch, he would, he believes, have had not the sensation of a flare and spurt of light, but a numerically and qualitaLi\ Ci) different sensation, — would have seen the match beginning to burn steadily, and but beginning ; and so on generally tor each succeeding instant. That a,nd tiiat on,iy 200 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS is what is meant by saying that whether or not the psychological idealist opens his eyes (let it be assumed for the moment for simplicity's sake that no consciousness other than that of the psycho- logical idealist in question can take cognizance of the matches that he holds), the possibility is changing : nothing is changing, because nothing is in existence to change ; but if the man open his eyes at one instant he gets one sort of sensation, if he opens his eyes at another instant he gets another sort of sensation, simply : so the man believes. A change in a possibility of sensation the psychological idealist should make haste to add by way of proof that he is not borrowing sanity from trans-subjectivism, is to all appearance ^a breach in the order of nature : a certain act, a certain attitude, holding open one's eyes in a certain way, is at one instant followed by one set of consequents, and at the next instant, abruptly and inexplicably, by a different and qualitatively different set. The universe is on ihc surface at least, according to psychological idealism, an all but utterly chaotic affair, — is not at the first Mance o to be called except in mockery a universe at all ; and the law of causation is not the description of any feature of realirv nor nf my portion of reality, but is the sham law of a sham world. All that exists is comprised in my consciousness, your consciousness, the conscious- THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 201 ness of Hermann, the consciousness of Hermann's Irish scttt^r, and so fortli — each individual being a distinct and separate stream of fact or centre of fact ; and causation, at least as understood and formulated in the law of the uniformity of causa- tion, obtains neither in the relations of individual to individual nor even amongst the psychoses of the *'same" individual. So far as causation is concerned, every psychosis — almost every sensa- tion at the very least — is a fresh start from nowhere to nowhere, a capricious absolute beginning in the realm of consciousness to be followed causally by nothing, perhaps even temporally by nothing. There are, in the technical scientific sense, no laws of nature, if by nature you mean anything actual as distinguished from what is hypothetical, and precisely non-actual and it may be even, iii the sense above defined of " possible," non-possible. There are no '' laws " of mind, no laws in introspective psychology, no laws that hold good of reality. Certainly the so-called laws of association are not such and do not purport to be ; they do not affirm that a present impression or idea will be followed uniformly or unconditionally by a recollection of whatever states of consciousness in the **same" - iKOiiii 1)1 thought have in the past been like it or associated by contiguity '' in time or space " with the like of it ; they say only that such a recollec- tion mav happen, or rather that approximately 202 THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS such a recollection may happen — that if any recollection at all happens, it will be of this description. And this may serve as the formula of all purely subjective laws, of all laws which relate to what alone in the judgment of the psychological idealist is the world of reality : they none of them state that such psy- choses are always, foreign intervention apart, followed by such and such others ; they state only that such and such psychoses not uncommonly are so followed, or rather that in the general chaos of consciousness certain bits of sequences are "repeated," meaning by ''repeated" nothing more nor less than that amid great and striking differences certain fragmentary almost fanciful resemblances are not unobservable. And to bring forward the logical consequences of all this as an objection to psychological idealism serves mainly to put in question one's own capacity for any metaphysical discussion whatever. " Many persons talk," Professor James remarks, "as if the minutest dose of disconnectedness of one part with another, the smallest modicum of independ- ence, the faintest tremor of ambiguity about the future, for example, would ruin everything and turn this goodly universe into a sort of insane sand-heap or nulliverse, and no universe at all." If the "universe" is familiar and tolerable before it is precisely described, it does not cease to be familiar nor become intolerable after it is precisely THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 203 described, no matter how fantastic in the light of our prepossessions that description may appear. The principle relied on by those who attempt to refute this theory by pointing out its logical conse- quences seems to be that nothing is possible which it would greatly disconcert them to become aware of, — which would take them superlatively by surprise. It seems safe to affirm that this principle falls short of perfect self-evidence. The Humean world, however, is in fact not so chaotic as it may on simple inspection appear ; its rhythm is simply too complex to be rounded in a formula and too recondite to be laid open to inspection. Piece-meal and patternless as the mental world, the " multiverse," as Professor James calls it, presents itself as being, we are hi possession of a device susceptible to all appear- ance of indefinite improvement, that enables us already (if we may take for granted, as the psychological idealist insists on taking for granted, the general trustworthiness of memory and of " records " of the " past,") to foretell approximately a considerable part of it — to foretell with some accuracy not only particular sensations a 11 1 iiMS for particular people, but changes in public senti- ment and opinion and in the conduct )1 |)ul)iic and private life ; and since the device is regular in the principles of its operation,