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 A defence of idealism; some questions & con- 
 elusions •.. London, Macmillan, 1917. 
 
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 ■■'■■•■^•"-^^•-'•^liMiifiifTiifrtMa — 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
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 V 
 
 I 
 
A DEFENCE OF 
 IDEALISM 
 
 SOME QUESTIONS & CONCLUSIONS 
 
 s- 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 BY 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR 
 
 S.VV 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1917 
 
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 C\ —1 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
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 A. M. A. 
 A. W. 
 
 E. S.-M. 
 
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 I 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 There is a certain embarrassment in coming forward 
 with an Apology for Idealistic Monism at the present 
 moment. You cannot be quite sure whether you are 
 putting in an appearance too late or much too early. 
 
 It does look like personal misfortune or perversity 
 v| that, when there are lots of other philosophies to choose 
 from, you should happen to hit on the one that has just 
 had a tremendous innings, and is now in process of 
 being bowled out. As long ago as the early 'nineties 
 Idealism was supposed to be dead and haunting Oxford. 
 T know that the New Realists have said that it is now a 
 fashionable philosophy. But either they do not really 
 mean it, or they mean that only philosophies in their 
 last decrepitude become fashionable at all. They mean 
 that nineteenth-century Monism is a pseudo-philosophy 
 of the past, and that twentieth-century Pluralism is the 
 living philosophy of the future. 
 
 It is possible to agree with this view without accept- 
 ing the programme of the pluralists. I think it may 
 be said that certain vulnerable forms of Idealism are 
 things of the past ; and that the new atomistic Realism 
 is a thing of the future ; at any rate of the immediate 
 future. But we know of Old Realisms that died and 
 decayed, and were buried, and of New Idealisms that 
 died and rose again. In India the Sankya philosophy 
 of the Many fought the Vedanta philosophy of the One. 
 
 Vll 
 
Vlll 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IX 
 
 It can hardly be said to have driven its opponent from 
 the field. Pragmatic Humanism and Vitalism are 
 going from us in the flower, you may say, of their youth. 
 And they were robust philosophies. M. Bergson even 
 made Philosophy the vogue in Mayfair for a whole 
 season. And so I think that some day (which may be 
 as distant as you please) the New Realism will grow 
 old and die, and the New Idealism will be born again. 
 
 It will be born, not out of its own ashes, nor out of 
 its own life only, but out of what is living in the system 
 that for the time being has superseded it. The drastic 
 criticism of their opponents is what keeps robust philo- 
 sophies alive. And, seeing the great part that Idealism 
 has played in the past, I cannot think that to choose it 
 (if you have any choice in these matters) is perversity. 
 
 It is, however, a personal misfortune when your 
 choice causes you to differ, almost with violence, from 
 those for whose accomplishment you have the pro- 
 foundest admiration. You cannot help feeling that it 
 would be safer to share some splendid error with Samuel 
 Butler and M. Bergson, or with William James and 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell (if the uncompromising virtue of 
 Mr. Russell's logic left him any margin for error), than to 
 be right in disagreeing with any of them. 
 
 In Samuel Butler's case I feel no sort of certainty 
 that, on the one point where I have differed from him, 
 I am even approximately right. His theory of Personal 
 Identity is free from certain complications which are 
 serious drawbacks to mine. Mine, if tenable, would 
 solve the one serious difficulty of his. It would also go 
 far to support the argument for Human Immortality. 
 This, however, must tell against it rather than for it, 
 by suggesting an unscientific parti pris. Pan-Psychism 
 has an irresistible appeal to the emotions. I like to 
 think that my friend's baby made its charming eye- 
 
 I 
 
 lashes, that my neighbour's hen designed her white 
 frock of feathers, and my cat his fine black coat of fur, 
 themselves ; because they wanted to ; instead of having 
 to buy them, as it were, at some remote ontological 
 bazaar. But emotion doesn't blind me to the possibility 
 that things may not, after all, have happened quite in 
 this way. And this is the only " appeal " of any sort 
 that Butler does make. He is pure from the least taint 
 of what Mr. Bertrand Russell, quoting Mr. Santayana, 
 calls " maliciousness." 
 
 As for Personal Identity, both his theory and mine 
 are open to the objection that they are not theories of 
 personal identity at all. In this matter I feel as if I 
 had used Butler (and perhaps abused him) for my own 
 purposes. He has given me an inch and I have taken 
 an ell. Still, I think my ell was very fairly suggested 
 by his inch. 
 
 Discovering dilemmas in M. Bergson's philosophy is 
 an enthralling occupation while you are about it ; but 
 it leaves no solid satisfaction behind. It does not, as 
 Samuel Butler would have said, give you " peace at the 
 last." When it is all over you feel as if it had not been 
 quite worth while. What do a few logical dilemmas 
 more or less matter in the work of a poet and a seer ? 
 I said just now that Vitalism is a robust philosophy. It 
 is nothing of the sort. It is subtle, exquisite, fragile. 
 To try to analyse it, to break through that texture of 
 beautiful imagination, is to lay violent hands on a living, 
 palpitating thing that endures only on the condition 
 that you do not handle it. 
 
 One other part, at any rate, of what I have written 
 calls for some apology — my criticism of Pragmatism 
 which is associated with an honoured name. The 
 monist who hates Pragmatism and loves the prag- 
 matist ; who, let us say, abhors William James's way of 
 
1 
 
 ■i 
 
 X A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 thinking and adores his way of writing ; who, in the 
 very moment of hostility, remains the thrall of his 
 charming personality and brilliant genius, that monist 
 is in no enviable case. But what was I to do ? I 
 believe the issue between Pragmatism and Idealism is 
 vital. I believe in Pragmatism as a branch, and a very 
 important branch of casuistry. I do not beheve in it 
 as a philosophy. It is a method and not a philosophy. 
 It is not even a philosophic method. Pragmatism is 
 one long argumentum ad h^ominem, and it is nothing 
 
 more. 
 
 Now, the argumentum ad hominem is all very well in 
 its way, but that way should be purely supplementary. 
 It is a perfectly fair and legitimate method when em- 
 ployed as an outside prop to the clean metaphysical 
 arguments by which a clean metaphysical case must 
 stand or fall. Anybody may use it for all it is worth, 
 provided he gives due notice and isolates it to guard 
 against infection. Mr. McDougall, for instance, defends 
 Animism with a long array of arguments ad hominem ; 
 but he uses them under protest, as if he were a little bit 
 ashamed of them ; and he is careful to keep them in 
 the strict quarantine of a chapter to themselves. Prag- 
 matism, by its very nature, knows nothing of these 
 precautions. It does not sterilize its instruments before 
 it uses them. It does not want to sterilize them. It is 
 courageous. It .courts rather than fears infection. It 
 must stand or fall by its appeal to the pragmatic instinct, 
 the business instinct in men, or it would not be 
 Pragmatism. 
 
 And so I do not think that the pragmatist is always 
 fair to his opponents. I do not mean that he weakens 
 their case by misstatement before he demolishes it. 
 Far from it. You. might say that the mere statement 
 of the monist's case was far safer in William James's 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 XI 
 
 hands than it is sometimes in his own. I mean that the 
 pragmatic method, faithfully followed, lands the prag- 
 matist in misrepresentation, not of his opponent's case, 
 but of his opponent's attitude. To call Monism the 
 philosophy of the " Thin " and Pluralism the philosophy 
 of the " Thick " is fair enough controversial practice. 
 Rationalists may not like it, but they have brought it 
 on themselves. But would it have occurred to any- 
 body but a pragmatist to preface a serious course of 
 lectures on his subject with a classification of Idealistic 
 Monists as " Tender - minded," and of Pluralists as 
 " Tough-minded " ? You might just as well call your 
 opponent a fat-head at once and have done with it. 
 It is deadly ; it is damning ; it is unforgettable. Such 
 epithets stick and sting to all eternity. They keep 
 people off Monism. They must have prejudiced William 
 James's audience against it from the start, before he 
 could get in any of his logic. 
 
 And that is precisely what it was designed to do. 
 What was that audience to think when it was told 
 that the tender - minded are : Rationalistic, intel- 
 lectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free-willist, y 
 monistic, and dogmatical ; and that the Tough-minded 
 are : Empiricist, sensationalist, materialisfic, pessimistic, 
 irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, sceptical ? 
 
 Observe how Pragmatism appropriates all the robust 
 and heroic virtues, and will not leave its opponent one 
 of them. Think of the sheer terrorism of the per- 
 formance. Could you wonder if, covered mth that 
 six-shooter. Professor James's audience plumped for 
 Pragmatism before it had heard a single argument? 
 Each member of it must have registered an inward vow : 
 '' Tough-minded ? Fll be that ! " 
 
 But does the classification really hold ? Are the 
 virtues and vices justly apportioned ? Nobody thinks 
 
Xll 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 xiu 
 
 of Kant and Hegel as nice comfortable philosophers 
 whose bosoms they could lay their heads on. The 
 Third Book of Hegel's Logic is not exactly an Education 
 sentimentale. And the Triple Dialectic is not regarded 
 by anybody except pragmatists as smtable readmg for 
 the mentally deficient. Kant's Pragmatism (of which, 
 of com-se, I shall be reminded) was an after-thought ; 
 which doesn't prevent pluralists from using him as a 
 whipping-post when they want to. The author of 
 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung was not precisely 
 one's idea of an optimist. There are passages in Dr. 
 McTaggart's Studies in Hegelian Cosmology from which 
 you gather that he is not inaccessible to human tender- 
 ness ; but, with a toughness that no pragmatist has ever 
 equalled, he denies his Absolute to be a " person." He 
 has stripped it bare of everything that is comfortable 
 and nice. If it comes to that, what about the Pragmatic- 
 Humanist's God who is so tender-minded that he cannot 
 be held responsible for pain and evil, and collapses under 
 the sheer emotional strain of his own universe ? The 
 God of Pantheism may have his brutal moments and 
 his moments of unbending, but his worst enemies can't 
 say he isn't robust. And there is no tenderness at all 
 about Mr. Bradley's Principles of Logic. As for the 
 Mr. Bradley of Appearance and Reality, if he has a 
 fault, it is that, in the interests of his Absolute, he carries 
 hard-headed, hard-hearted, thorough-paced scepticism 
 to excess. By no possible manipulation of phrases can 
 you make it appear that Mr. Bradley is even soft in 
 places. He is, in fact, a " tough " whom one would 
 have thought few pragmatists would care to meet on a 
 dark night. Mr. Bertrand Russell is about the only 
 living philosopher who can stand up to him. And we 
 have heard before now of dogmatic Realism. 
 
 And after all, is it so very certain that logical ideas 
 
 are tender and that facts are hard ? Can you find a 
 fact that's harder, more irreducible, than the principle 
 of contradiction, or than any axiom of pure mathe- 
 matics ? Facts have a notorious habit of elusiveness 
 and liquescence. As for thinness, is there anjrthing 
 more tenuous than matter, apart from our sensations of 
 so-called material qualities ? Matter of which William 
 James says that it is " indeed infinitely and incredibly 
 refined." The physicist is he who deals in phantasms 
 of thought, invisible, impalpable, compared with which 
 even Dr. McTaggart's Absolute is a perfect Falstafi. 
 
 It looks as if the only things that stand firm in this 
 universe are Ideas. Truth, Goodness, Beauty : there 
 is not a '' fact " that bears their imprint and their image 
 for long together ; yet they, eternal and immutable, 
 
 remain. 
 
 The backbone of Philosophy is Logic. Pragmatism 
 has no logic ; it is spineless. Idealism may have too 
 much logic ; it may be too rigid. But this, surely, is a 
 fault on the side of hardness rather than of softness. 
 At any rate, the method of Philosophy should be purely 
 logical. The idealist does claim purity for his method ; 
 and with some reason. The method of the pragmatist 
 is contaminated with its genial contacts, its joyous 
 commerce with the metaphysically irrelevant. 
 
 Pragmatism is an unsterilized Philosophy. 
 
 I do not say it has not done good service in criticism ; 
 that it has not reminded us of the existence of things 
 that idealistic philosophers forget. But if it were 
 passionately adopted, consistently held, and carried to 
 its logical conclusions, the eternal ideas of Truth, Good- 
 ness and Beauty would lose their meaning and we our 
 belief in them. Luckily, people are seldom logical, and 
 consistent, and passionate in their adoption even of 
 wrong methods in Philosophy. 
 
XIV 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 It is painful to differ from M. Bergson and from 
 William James; but it is dangerous to differ from 
 llr. Bertrand Eussell. If there is dismay just at present 
 in the ranks of Idealistic Monism, it must be mainly 
 owing to his formidable methods of attack. I hope 
 there is dismay. I should be very sorry for the idealistic 
 monist who did not feel it. His complacency would do 
 more credit to his heart than to his head. Humanism, 
 Pragmatism and Vitalism have all " gone for " him ; 
 but, barring the shrewd thrusts of William James, they 
 have " gone " with no particular " flair " for his special 
 vulnerability. And when touched he could always 
 point to some wider chink in his opponent's armour. 
 The assaults of Vitalism, at any rate, left his position 
 practically intact. But the Realistic Pluralism of 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell, of Mr. Whitehead, of Mr. Alexander 
 and the New Realists is a very different thing. 
 
 For the logical structure of Vitalism is faulty, though 
 you feel instinctively that M. Bergson " has vision," and 
 that his vision is right. With Atomistic Logic it is the 
 other way about. Its structure is almost flawless ; 
 though you may feel instinctively that its vision is, not 
 wrong, but simply not there. I do not think that even 
 an atomistic logician would go so far as to maintain that 
 instinctive feelings and algebraic logic have nothing to 
 do with each other, since leelings can be subjects of 
 propositions. But he would say, and he would be 
 perfectly justified in saying, that, if intellectual truth 
 is your objective, you must get your logic right first, 
 and settle it with your instincts and your feelings after- 
 wards as best you may. 
 
 Now Atomistic Realism gives no support to the 
 " Belief in the Beyond," and very little encouragement, if 
 any, to the " Hope of the Hereafter." And in this world 
 there is an enormous number of people (probably the 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 XV 
 
 majority of the human race) whose instincts and feelings 
 are passionately opposed to any theory which would 
 deprive them of the Belief in the Beyond and of the Hope 
 of the Hereafter. Many of them who would surrender 
 the belief with composme still cling to the hope ; many 
 would give up the hope if only they could be sure of the 
 belief. Others again, like William James; are quite 
 genuinely indifferent to the event. The idea of life after 
 death is even slightly disagreeable to them. Personally 
 I do not share either the indifference or the repugnance. 
 
 But those who do not desire personal inmiortality 
 for themselves may desire it for others who are dearer 
 to them than themselves. They cannot face with 
 equanimity or indifference the thought of the ever- 
 lasting extinction of these lives. And many of them 
 care for intellectual truth as passionately as they care 
 for their hope and their belief. And between these two 
 passions the new Philosophy draws a hard and fast line. 
 It says : "If you are out for truth you must play truth's 
 game. Your feelings and your instincts must take their 
 chance. They must not be allowed to load the dice." 
 
 That is the gist of Mr. Russell's austere and beautiful 
 charge to the students of Philosophy ; as it was Plato's ; 
 to " follow the Argument wherever it may lead " ; to 
 wait patiently when it '' puts on a veil." There are 
 passions and passions ; and it is to the passion for 
 intellectual truth, fiery and clean and strong, that he .^ 
 makes his irresistible appeal. 
 
 There are still a great many people who think that 
 ihe Belief and the Hope are more compatible with some 
 form of " Idealistic Monism " than with " Realistic 
 Pluralism." They think that if Atomism is pushed to 
 its logical conclusion there will be very little chance for 
 God and Immortality. And I gather that Realistic 
 Pluralists think so too. 
 
XVI 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 xvii 
 
 Is Realistic Pluralism really true ? 
 
 If it is, every hope and every belief that is incom- 
 patible with it must be given up. 
 
 But if it is not true, if it is even doubtful, it would 
 be, to say the least of it, a pity that anybody should be 
 lured from his belief and hope by its intellectual fascina- 
 tion. I have tried to disentangle what is true in it 
 from what I believe is merely fascinating. I have tried 
 to disentangle what is untrue in Idealism from what I 
 believe to be sound and enduring. Above all, I have 
 tried to disentangle in my own conclusions what is 
 reasonable supposition from what is manifestly pure 
 conjecture. I have tried to state my adversary's case 
 to the best advantage for him. If I have failed in this, 
 it will have been through misunderstanding, and not, 
 I hope, through " maliciousness." Some misunder- 
 standing may have been inevitable in dealing with the 
 purely mathematical side of Mr. Russell's argument; 
 since mathematics are, for me, a difficult and unfamiliar 
 country. It is here that I have every expectation of 
 being worsted. 
 
 In all this it has been hard to free myself from the 
 fascination of Pluralism. When exercised by Mr. Russell 
 it is so great that almost he persuades me to be a 
 Pluralist. If I have not surrendered it is for reasons 
 which I have tried to make clear. 
 
 There is one side of the New Realism which is not 
 directly touched in these essays— its Ethics. This 
 ground is covered by what has been said about its theory 
 of concepts or " universals " ; the "' Platonic Ideas." 
 But I believe that Ethics owe a greater debt to the New 
 Realism than to any philosophy that has been its fore- 
 runner in modern time.' If ** Goodness " and " Justice " 
 are not eternal realities, irreducible and absolute. 
 
 I 
 
 " moral sanction " is a contradiction in terms ; there 
 will be no ethical meaning and no content that dis- 
 tinguishes " goodness " from " usefulness," or " pleasant- 
 ness," or " justice " from " expediency." The work of 
 Mr. G. E. Moore is a perfect exposure of the fallacies and 
 sophistries of Hedonism, Utilitarianism, Pragmatism, 
 and Evolutionary Ethics. The clearest and strongest 
 statement of the case for " Absolute " Ethics is to be 
 found in his Principia Ethica, and in Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell's Philosophic Essays. 
 
 The reader must judge whether Absolute Ethics and 
 the moral sanction are securer on a basis of Spiritual 
 Monism or on the Pluralistic theory of "outside" 
 realities. They will remember that a purely external 
 sanction is no sanction at all. The metaphysical basis 
 is crucial in the ethical question. 
 
 It may be that it is too late to reconstruct what 
 Realism is destroying. It is certainly too early to fore- 
 cast the lines on which reconstruction will proceed ; 
 and it would take a very considerable metaphysical 
 genius to do it. These essays, therefore, only suggest 
 the possibility of the New Idealism. 
 
 No doubt many people will find that my " Questions " 
 are out of all proportion to my " Conclusions," and that 
 the Conclusions themselves are too inconclusive. To 
 these I cannot give any answer that would satisfy them. 
 Others will object that my Conclusions are out of all 
 proportion to their grounds, and that far too much has 
 been taken for granted. They will protest against the 
 appearance of an essay on " Mysticism " in a volume 
 professing to deal seriously with serious problems. 
 They may even look on its inclusion as an outrageous 
 loading of the dice. 
 
 To them I can only reply that that is why I have 
 
XVlll 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 XIX 
 
 given to Mysticism a place apart. I agree that mystical 
 metaphysics are an abomination. But metaphysical, 
 mysticism is another matter. I would remind my 
 readers that some psychological questions were part 
 Ns^ of the programme too ; that mysticism is of immense 
 interest and importance in Psychology ; and that I 
 have criticized certain aspects of it as severely as its 
 bitterest opponents could desire. I am as much repelled 
 by the sensuous variety of mysticism as I am attracted 
 by its austere and metaphysical form. I am as con- 
 vinced as any alienist that its more abhorrent psycho- 
 logical extravagances are the hysterical resurgence of 
 "^ natural longings most unspiritually suppressed. These 
 exponents are worthy only of the pity we give to things 
 suffering and diseased. 
 
 But there is another side even to what may be called 
 
 the Saints' Tragedy. There is a passion and a strain 
 
 and a disturbance of the soul, born of its struggle between 
 
 ,' religious dualism and its imconscious longing for the 
 
 Absolute. 
 
 And there is also a pure and beautiful Mysticism 
 that springs from the vision or the sense of the " One- 
 ness " of all things in God. It knows nothing of passion's 
 disturbance and its strain. Its saints are poets and its 
 counterpart in Philosophy is Spiritual Monism. 
 
 The fact that this sense has been evolved steadily 
 and perceptibly from the primitive savage's sense of the 
 supernatural is no ground for depreciating it. You 
 might as well depreciate the mathematical attainments 
 of a pluralist philosopher on the grounds that they have 
 been evolved from the primitive savage's calculations 
 with the fingers of one hand. The question for students 
 of comparative religion is, not whether it is a survival 
 (for all life is a survival)', but whether its presence marks 
 a reversion or a progression — whether it is a sort of 
 
 i 
 
 vermiform appendage, or a form inspired with the secret 
 of the life that was and is and is to be. 
 
 But I am painfully aware of the extreme uncertainty 
 of my " Conclusions," too. If it had been possible to 
 give them the form of Questions, without making a mess 
 of my sentences, I would have done so. It would have 
 shown, perhaps, a greater courtesy to the Inscrutable. 
 In any case I do not want to be wholly identified with 
 my imaginary monist, who is so undaunted and cock- 
 sure. Under the horrible mauling he gets from vitahsts, 
 and pragmatic humanists, and pluraHsts, he does not, 
 I am afraid, always display the very best metaphysical 
 temper. 
 
 Though I think the pragmatic method a wrong 
 method in philosophy I have used it in one section of 
 my final chapter ; but I have followed Mr. McDougall's 
 good example in placing it where it could do no harm. 
 
 So many sources have been drawn on that but a 
 small part, if any part, of this book can claim to be an 
 original adventure. The best of it is only a following 
 of good examples. Where I have touched on General 
 Psychology I have invariably followed Mr. McDougall 
 as the best available authority ; but readers who are 
 not familiar with his work should reaUse that he is not 
 responsible for any theories I may have based on it, 
 and most likely he would not endorse them. 
 
 My thanks are specially due to my friends Mrs. 
 Stuart-Moore (Evelyn Underhill), who first introduced 
 me to the classics of Western Mysticism, and to whose 
 work in this field I am more indebted than I can say, 
 and Mr. Cecil Delisle Burns, who made me acquainted 
 with the New Realists and held continually before me 
 the risks I ran in differing from them. And to Mrs. 
 Susie S. Brierley, for criticism relating to an im- 
 portant point in experimental psychology. Also to 
 
s 
 
 XX 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 Dr. Beatrice Hinkle of Cornell University, for kindly 
 
 allowing me to use her admirable rendering of the 
 
 Hymn " I am the God Atum," which appears in her 
 
 translation of Dr. Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious ; 
 
 and to the Editor of The North American Review for 
 
 leave to reprint my article on the " Gitanjali of Sir 
 
 Rabindranath Tagore." 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 London, 
 January 25, 1917. 
 
 Introduction .... 
 
 I. The Pan-Psychism op Samuel Butler . 
 
 II. Vitalism ..... 
 
 III. Some Ultimate Questions op Psychology 
 
 IV. Some Ultimate Questions op Metaphysics 
 V. Pragmatism and Humanism 
 
 VI. The New Realism 
 VII. The New Mysticism 
 VIII. Conclusions 
 
 Appendix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 1 
 
 49 
 
 75 
 
 123 
 
 145 
 
 173 
 
 269 
 
 325 
 
 381 
 
 P 
 
 XXI 
 
 i 
 
THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 
 
 The plain man is supposed (by philosophers who are 
 sure of nothing) to be sure that, whatever else he is or 
 isn't, he is himself. He may or may not believe that 
 he has a soul, or that, if he has one, it is the least bit 
 likely to be immortal ; but he is quite, quite sure he 
 has personal identity ; that he is not his own grand- 
 mother or his own son ; and certainly not one of those 
 objectionable Robinsons. 
 
 He may even flatter himself that he has what he 
 calls Individuality. 
 
 It is these happy certainties, and this pride of the 
 plain man, that Samuel Butler shatters with his theory 
 of Pan-Psychism. If he does not positively strip every 
 one of us bare of those three things, he maintains that, 
 so far as we can be said to have them at all, they are 
 what we have least cause to be proud of. 
 
 As there certainly is a sense, and a very distinct 
 sense, in which a man may be said to be his own grand- 
 mother and his own son (if he has a son), it may be 
 worth while asking what we mean by Individuality, by 
 Personal Identity, and by a Self ? 
 
 It is sometimes assumed, both by philosophers and 
 plain men, that when we talk about these three things 
 
 3 
 
 mm 
 
4 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM i 
 
 we mean, or ought to mean, the same thing. Yet it is 
 pretty evident that we don't, and that we oughtn't to. 
 We say that a man has individuality if he has certain 
 striking characteristics that mark him out from other 
 men. And though, no doubt, by " individuality " we 
 mean something rather more subtle and intimate than, 
 say, a boisterous manner or a taste for Cubism, or for 
 remarkable and distinctive neck-wear, we are very far 
 from knowing precisely what we do mean. 
 
 Anyhow, the term individuality would seem to 
 stand, not so much for personal identity as for the marks 
 and signs of it, and for something belonging to a self 
 rather than for selfhood. 
 
 In the same way, " personal identity " is not a term 
 we can play ducks and drakes with. It does, I think, 
 imply something that either has identity or has it not, 
 that either is or isn't the same something wherever and 
 whenever it appears to be. And that " something," 
 again, would seem to be what we call a self. 
 
 But it is by no means certain that the something that 
 we call a self exists. It is, indeed, highly problematical. 
 And as the existence of the Self happens to be the 
 problem before us we mufit not assume it at the start. 
 
 The trouble is that we have got to make some 
 attempt at a definition, and that our definition must 
 be wide enough to cover all the ground on which the 
 problem has been previously debated. For this purpose 
 we are driven to assume, most improperly, that the 
 terms Self, Selfhood, Personality, Personal Identity, and 
 Individuality all stand for one and the same thing. 
 
 For the moment, then, I shall take the simplest of 
 these terms, Self, and define it as that which is present to 
 all states of consciousness in any one conscious organism, 
 and even this is a hazardous definition. Still, I can't 
 think of any other that is more likely to satisfy any 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 5 
 
 of the disputants without begging the question in 
 dispute. 
 
 Consider what a question it is. 
 
 For materialists the Self is an illusory by-product of 
 consciousness, which is itself an illusory by-product of 
 the physical processes of the organism and the world it 
 lives in. 
 
 For idealists like Mr. Bradley the Self is one horn of 
 the interesting dilemma which lands him in the Absolute 
 as his only refuge. 
 
 For idealists like Dr. McTaggart it is a fundamental, 
 though imperfect, *' differentiation of the Absolute " ; 
 a paradox that does not quite amount to a dilemma. 
 
 For pragmatic psychologists like WiUiam James it is 
 Individuality, the bundle of its own characteristics ; so 
 its appropriate place is, quite clearly, with the things 
 that are not selves. Which is the other horn of Mr. 
 Bradley's dilemma. 
 
 Again, for psychologists intimidated by William 
 James and anxious not to compromise themselves, it is 
 " psychical disposition," whatever that is. 
 
 Souls were "out of fashion" when William James 
 was lecturing at Harvard ; but they are coming in again 
 with the courageous psychology of Mr. McDougall, for 
 whom a self is, in plain, honest language a Soul. 
 
 For biology the self is the Individual, and the 
 Individual is the living organism. 
 
 For biologists like Samuel Butler, so far as individu- 
 ality is more than numerical identity, it is the sum of 
 the characteristics acquired consciously by the organism 
 after its birth, — a contemptible sum compared with 
 the vast capital it carries over from the experience of 
 the race. All that experience (by which it has incredibly 
 profited) the individual keeps stored in his unconscious 
 memory, and draws upon for every occasion in his daily 
 
 # 
 
6 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 life. His unconscious memory is thus a vast pantech- 
 nicon of knowledges and aptitudes that serve him far 
 better than any that he can learn or cultivate on his 
 own account. According to Samuel Butler our uncon- 
 scious life is the only life that is complete and perfect 
 and worthy to be lived. And he drives us to the 
 conclusion that individualitv is the most insecure of our 
 possessions, and that, any way, the individual does not 
 greatly matter. 
 
 We should have had to leave it at that but for 
 certain recent developments in the study of abnormal 
 psychology. 
 
 Psychoanalysis, which is based on a minute and 
 detailed observation of the same facts of unconscious 
 memory, suggests the opposite conclusion. 
 
 It is odd that the only light that has so far been shed 
 on this dubious question should come from that region 
 of profound murkiness. This is not the place either 
 for a defence or for a critique of Psychoanalysis (1). 
 Psychoanalysis is on its trial. The result of the trial 
 need not concern us. Psychoanalysts themselves 
 appear to be divided into two camps. Their differences 
 need not concern us. For our purposes they do not 
 amount to a row of pins. For all psychoanalysts are 
 agreed that the Unconscious is a vast pantechnicon ; 
 but a pantechnicon murky to the last degree, and chock- 
 full of hideous and repulsive things. But its murkiness 
 need not concern us either. Granting for the moment 
 that we know what we mean by the Unconscious, and 
 that the Unconscious is, or can be, a pantechnicon, and 
 that it is full to overflowing, I see no reason w^hy it 
 should overflow with things hideous and repulsive any 
 more than with beautiful and attractive things. It 
 seems fairly obvious that all sorts of things must have 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 7 
 
 been put away there, and that psychoanalysts have 
 not laid their hands on all of them. Enough that both 
 the psychoanalysts and Samuel Butler find the main- 
 spring of evolution in the organism's Will-to-live and 
 to-make-live. Both assume that the Life-Force is a 
 psychic rather than a physical thing. 
 
 For our purposes it does not matter whether the New 
 Psychology of the psychoanalyst lays too much stress 
 on the Will-to-make-live and too little on the Will-to- 
 live. On both theories the Will-to-live is indestructible. 
 It persists in the unconscious memory of the individual. 
 And through his unconscious memory the individual is 
 one with the race psychically as well as physically. 
 
 But whereas Samuel Butler says our only sane and 
 perfect life is the life we live unconsciously, the whole 
 theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests on the 
 assumption that we only live sanely and perfectly so far 
 as we live consciously, so far as our psyche lifts itself up 
 above its racial memories and maintains the life which 
 is its own — that is to say, so far as we are individuals. 
 The secret of individuality lies in the sublimation 
 to consciousness of the unconscious Will-to-live. 
 
 To me this theory of sublimation is the one thing of 
 interest and of value that Professor Freud and Professor 
 Jung have contributed to Psychology. Unfortunately 
 the classic literature of the subject leaves this part of 
 it a little vague. The student is told all about psycho- 
 analysis — more indeed than he may care to know ; all 
 the horrific contents of the pantechnicon are turned 
 out for his inspection. But it is left to his own in- 
 genuity to discover precisely what sublimation is and 
 how it works. Roughly speaking, it is the diversion of 
 the Life-Force, of the Will-to-live, from ways that serve 
 the purposes and interests of species, into ways that 
 serve the purposes and interests of individuals. Roughly 
 
•\ 
 
 8 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 speaking, all religion, all morality, all art, all science, 
 all civilization are its work. 
 
 Now it may be objected that (unlike Samuel Butler) 
 the psychoanalyst is a specialist, and a specialist in 
 abnormal psychology at that. And, as his conclusions 
 are drawn from minute and incessant observation of 
 the behaviour of abnormal psyches, they can be of no 
 possible use to us (2). We are not concerned with the 
 eccentricities of neurotics and of moral lunatics. But 
 though we are not concerned with them, they have a 
 vital bearing on our problem all the same. For the net 
 result of the psychoanalyst's investigations can be 
 summed up in three words : Neurosis is degeneration. 
 
 In this sphere every transgression is retrogression. 
 Every perversion is reversion. The neurotic, or the 
 morally insane person, has turned back on the path by 
 which he came. He is the slave or the victim of his own 
 unconscious memories and instincts, of that forgotten yet 
 undying past that preys upon the present and the future. 
 
 Individuality, on this theory, is the outcome of a 
 successful resistance to racial tendencies. The normal 
 grown-up individual has no longer any need to struggle 
 against the forces that would drag him back and back 
 to the life of the child, the savage, and the ape ; but 
 the more individual he is the more he will resist the pull 
 of the generation just behind him. And all individuality 
 — the first time it appears — is genius. 
 
 Clearly, this triumph of the individual would be 
 V impossible if the Will-to-live were incapable of sub- 
 ^ limation, and if there were not more of it going, as it 
 were, than what suffices for the needs of the species. 
 We have, therefore, to assume this incalculable amount 
 over and above, and this capacity for sublimation. And 
 here we are up against that bogy of the psychoanalysts 
 — Repression. 
 
 • • 
 
 I THE PAN PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 9 
 
 At first sight it seems obvious that sublimation 
 should involve repression. The instincts of the primitive 
 savage must be repressed in the interests of civilization. 
 The baby's sucking instincts must be repressed if the 
 child is to be fed from cup and spoon. Adolescence 
 must break the child's habit of dependence if it is ever 
 to become manhood. At any age there is a limit to the 
 desires the individual can satisfy and the pursuits he 
 can follow with success. Sooner or later a selection 
 must be made ; and, other things equal, the beauty and 
 worth of the individual will depend on the beauty and 
 the worth of the interests he chooses for his own. All 
 sublimation is a turning and passing of desire from 
 a less worthy or less fitting object to fix it on one more 
 worthy or more fitting. 
 
 In the healthy individual there is no more danger in 
 this turning and passing than in the transition from 
 infantile baldness to a head of hair. But for the neurotic 
 every turning, every passage bristles wdth conffict and 
 disturbance. He goes through crises that the normal 
 individual never knows. Repression seems to be 
 positively dangerous to him. He cannot take even a 
 little mild correction ^without it hurting him. He 
 cannot take anything like other people. 
 
 Now the psychoanalysts tell you that wherever there 
 is repression without sublimation there is a neurosis or 
 psychosis. It would be truer to say that wherever 
 there is repression there is no sublimation, and wherever 
 there is sublimation there is no repression. The Will- 
 to-live has found another outlet, the indestructible 
 desire another object, and all is well. For the happy 
 normal individual, desire is never repressed ; it is either ^ ^ 
 directed and controlled, or it wanders of its own accord 
 into the paths of sublimation. (Psychoanalysts, out to 
 vihfy the Unconscious, have not paid sufficient attention 
 
4 
 
 10 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 to the facts of unconscious sublimation and all that they 
 
 imply.) 
 
 It is not quite clear whether with the neurotic every 
 attempt at normal control issues in a repression. Most 
 cases seem to point to some inhibition of the process of 
 sublimation. The neurotic is so ticklish that both 
 righteous reproof and tender admonition may have this 
 arresting tendency. Anyhow, it seems pretty certain 
 that, whatever may cause it to occur, genuine repression, 
 the damming up of every outlet for the Will-to-live, does 
 really, sooner or later, set up some form of neurosis. 
 
 When this happens, the repressed Will-to-live, the 
 frustrated desire, whatever it may be, turned back again 
 into the Unconscious, is stamped down there, forsaken 
 by the psyche and forgotten. 
 
 But it is not destroyed. You cannot destroy what 
 is indestructible. Cut off from the psyche's real life, 
 it sets up an unreal life of its own. It lives again, as all 
 unaccomplished desires live, in the dream world, and 
 in the haunted world below our waking consciousness. 
 There it plays its part disguised in fantastic and sym- 
 bolic forms that have an ancient history. 
 
 For when Professor Freud began analysing the 
 dreams and waking phantasies of his patients, he 
 discovered that the persistent and recurrent symbols 
 of the neurotic dream and the insane phantasy are 
 the same symbols that we find, persistent and recurrent, 
 in all primitive ritual and myth and folk-lore. For 
 instance, in the dream — which he defines as "the 
 disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish "—a serpent, 
 fire, wood, water, a tree, an arrow, a sword, an eagle, a 
 wheel, a circle, a cross, a ram, a lion, a hat, have the 
 same symbolic meaning and are used with the same 
 psychological intention of revelation and disguise as in 
 the oldest rituals and mythologies. Wherever they 
 
 I THE PAN-PS YCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 11 
 
 appear they stand for the Life-Force, the Will-to-live 
 and to-make-live ; and their ritual intention represents 
 man's primitive and incomplete effort at sublimation (3). 
 
 They are there, in the Unconscious, just because they 
 were there from the beginning. The very fact that the 
 repressed desire finds them there and arrays itself in 
 them shows how far it has turned back along the path 
 by which it came. 
 
 The psyche has forgotten these things, and knows 
 nothing. But the Will-to-live has been there before 
 and remembers. It knows its old playground and is at 
 home on it. And there it stays, horribly, forlornly 
 enchanted ; beyond the reach of consciousness, its 
 vehicle a symbol, its clothing a dream. 
 
 You see how dreadful it all is, and how easily the 
 cause of neurosis and of insanity might lie there ; in the 
 cutting and casting off, the miserable isolation and 
 abandonment of the Will-to-live, its powerlessness to 
 answer to the psyche's call. If the neurotic cannot 
 sublimate his Will-to-live it is because his Will-to-live 
 has been turned back so far that all conscious links with 
 it are broken. 
 
 If this is not psychoanalysis, it is the purified spirit 
 of psychoanalysis. It is, I believe, the truth that under- 
 lies its theory. The reality that underlies its practice 
 is the breaking of the spell of forgetfulness ; the deliver- 
 ance of the Will-to-live from its bondage to the Un- 
 conscious. With its restoration to the psyche's conscious 
 hfe sublimation becomes possible to it. And with 
 sublimation the individual comes again into his own. 
 
 In this healing process it is clear that we have to do 
 not so much with the disclosure of a shameful secret as 
 with the recovery of a lost Will. 
 
 It does not look at first sight as if Psychoanalysis had 
 given us anything that amounts to very much. Only 
 
 ggggH^gl^lllglllllgl 
 
12 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 three conceptions more or less coherent : a conception 
 of the Will-to-live, valid as far as it goes, but vague, 
 and bound up with a conception of the Unconscious 
 worse than vague, because it betrays its inherent self- 
 contradiction as soon as you begin to work with it : a 
 conception of Sublimation by which this Will-to-live 
 perpetually transcends itself and is made manifest in 
 higher and higher and more and more complex forms 
 of life, — a process described in terms which sound 
 morally satisfying, and are still anything but clear : a 
 conception of the Individual as a being of immense 
 importance, seeing that just those forces within and 
 without him which arrest and retard his individuality 
 are backward forces ; that the worst misfortune that 
 can befall him is the backward turn that lands him in 
 his own past, and that the peculiar malignity of his 
 worst maladies is that they rob him of his power to 
 assert his qualities against the general characteristics 
 of the race. Still, this conception of Individuality is 
 something. The individual, at whatever stage we find 
 him, appears as the forerunner, the master builder, that 
 superior, swifter vehicle of the Will-to-live which carries 
 it forward and upward. By virtue of his individuality 
 he serves the higher functions of the Will-to-live. The 
 plot thickens, widens, deepens, and grows infinitely 
 richer as the individual gets his hand in more and 
 more. 
 
 We have there a perfectly valid and comparatively 
 precise conception. 
 
 And yet it is only when we come to the Individual 
 and ask ourselves what we mean by Individuality that 
 our real troubles begin. 
 
 This conception of the Individual that Psycho- 
 analysis gives us is bound up with our vague conception 
 of the Will-to-live, which is itself bound up with the still 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 13 
 
 vaguer conception of the Unconscious. And it is this 
 conception of the Unconscious which blocks the way. 
 
 Until now, here and elsewhere (4), to avoid confusion, 
 I have followed my authors in using this term— using 
 it in any sense which happened to serve any purpose of 
 the context at the time. In slavish subservience I 
 have spoken of instincts and desires, symbolic meanings 
 and ideas hidden away in our Unconsciousness, as if 
 our Unconsciousness were a cupboard or a cellar. Just 
 now I spoke of stamping them down into the Uncon- 
 scious, as if it were so much damp earth, and of lifting 
 them up out of it and carrying them into the Conscious, 
 as if this operation were performed with a spade and 
 wheel-barrow. I even suggested, and not so very 
 figuratively either, a going down into the Unconscious 
 to fetch back the Will-to-live. 
 
 And all the time I was doing it, it seemed to me that 
 my authors and I were describing a perfectly credible 
 performance. It seemed to follow from the grounds 
 and from the whole trend and purpose of Psycho- 
 analysis that the performance was credible ; and with 
 each step the Unconscious acquired more and more an 
 almost discernible substance and a palpable power. 
 There it was, underlying everybody's psychic processes, 
 and doing people— quite innocent people— all sorts of 
 harm. And if I did not speak of unconscious psychic 
 processes it was more by good luck than good 
 management. 
 
 Now, by the Unconscious you may mean, properly, 
 either things without consciousness, such as chairs and 
 tables, and thunder and lightning; or living things, 
 including ourselves, in their moments of unconscious- 
 ness. Or a metaphysical Reality conceived as un- 
 conscious. 
 
 The first sense was not contemplated in any of our 
 
14 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 contexts. (You cannot talk about stamping instincts 
 and desires down into the inorganic.) And we should 
 have had to be very sure of our "selves" and the 
 " selves " of other organic beings before adopting the 
 second. The third will appear later, but we have no 
 need for it yet. 
 
 So our real meaning emerges. When we talk about 
 unconscious psychic states and unconscious psychic 
 processes, we mean psychic states and processes of which 
 we are not conscious. It is owing to the limitations of 
 the language that we are obliged to talk about the states 
 as if they were or could be conscious or unconscious of 
 themselves. We have no business whatever to hand 
 over our consciousness or unconsciousness to them. We 
 may have to go on talking about conscious and uncon- 
 scious states, for the sake of convenience in handling 
 sentences, but we should be very sure that we know 
 what we are doing. 
 
 On the other hand, we cannot talk about states of 
 unconsciousness as if the term were interchangeable with 
 states we are not conscious of. For we have nothing 
 immediately before us from moment to moment but the 
 states of consciousness. A state of unconsciousness 
 may mean any condition of unawareness, from profound 
 sleep to mere forgetfulness, or inattention to what is 
 going on around me, or ignorance— say of what President 
 Wilson is going to do about the Blockade, or of what 
 my neighbour is doing in his back-garden. A state of 
 which we are not conscious is a state whose existence 
 we infer from its results when we happen to be conscious 
 of them. Such are our so-called inherited instincts, the 
 hidden "complexes," the hidden ideas, meanings,' and 
 associations revealed under hj^notic suggestion' and 
 psychoanalysis; and all states of so-called "uncon- 
 scious cerebration." 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 15 
 
 Now at any moment 1 may wake from my sleep, I 
 may remember what I have forgotten, my attention 
 may be drawn to what is going on around me, even my 
 ignorance of what President Wilson is going to do will 
 cease when, if ever, he should finally make up his mind, 
 and with a little trouble I can inform myself of what 
 my neighbour is doing in his back-garden. But of my 
 states of " unconscious cerebration " I am never con- 
 scious ; and I may go all my life without being conscious 
 of a single one of my " inherited " instincts or of those 
 hidden things. And the probability is that I shall in 
 no circumstances ever be conscious of by far the greater 
 number of them. Even of the things I merely do not 
 attend to— to say nothing of the million impressions 
 that assail my sense organs every instant, of which 
 every instant I remain profoundly unaware— the chances 
 are that, though they must be faithfully recorded some- 
 where, I shall never be more conscious of them than I 
 am now. 
 
 I am insisting on these distinctions— familiar to 
 every student of psychology— because they help to 
 clear up the original confusion, and because we shall 
 have to consider them very carefully later on. 
 
 For the moment, then, we must assume that the 
 terms Unconscious and Unconsciousness stand for any 
 or all of those psychic or psychophysical states of which 
 we are not conscious. And by the " Conscious " and 
 the " Consciousness " we have been talking about we 
 mean states of consciousness and nothing more ; other- 
 wise we shall be begging the question of the existence 
 and the nature of the ultimate principle we desire to re- 
 establish later on. We ought to mean this, and we 
 must mean it ; for, whatever else we want to mean and 
 intend ultimately to mean, it is all that discreet 
 Psychology will allow us to mean at present. 
 
16 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 "Unconsciousness," or the "Unconscious," then, 
 resolves itself into a negative abstraction. 
 
 But we must not forget that in our context its 
 function was neither negative nor abstract ; it played a 
 very positive and concrete psychological role. And if 
 we are asked whether in dismissing it we have anything 
 half so good to put in its place, we may say that states, 
 or processes, of which we are not conscious will do 
 extremely well ; and if we want to keep the old terms, 
 " the Unconscious " or " Unconsciousness," understood 
 as a sort of convenient shorthand for these fuller and 
 more precise terms, we may. Or we can use them as 
 equivalents for the sum of those processes and states. 
 
 As we have seen, by far the most important part 
 among them was taken by the Will-to-live. It is this 
 Will-to-live that we have conceived of as transferred and 
 transformed, or sublimated, and as passing over from 
 the Unconscious to the Conscious, as if it belonged 
 veritably and by its own nature to both worlds. If it 
 did it would be as good a bridge as any we have a right 
 to ask for ; and it may prove to be all the bridge we are 
 
 entitled to have. 
 
 But we found the greatest difl&culty in representing 
 to ourselves at all intelligibly its double role. And as 
 far as our conception of Individuality and Personal 
 Identity is bound up with this conception of the am- 
 phibious nature of the Will-to-live it will be affected by 
 its vagueness and confusion. It may be that this is 
 inevitable, and that we cannot form any intelligible 
 conception of either, or of their relations to each other ; 
 in which case we shall have to accept the problem as 
 insoluble and put up with the vagueness and confusion. 
 
 Let it be clear that this trouble is the old trouble 
 carried a step farther, and that the vagueness, confusion, 
 and unintelligibHity arise from aothing more or less than 
 
 .' 
 
 I 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 17 
 
 the intrusion of the Unconscious, with a big U, into the 
 region of the Conscious with a big C. As a matter of 
 fact, unconscious states, states we are not conscious of, 
 always are intruding, that is to say, conditioning, deter- 
 mining, generally influencing, and for all we know to 
 the contrary, actually causing conscious ones. They 
 can do this to the disturbance and the detriment of our 
 Individuality, or perhaps (a most disagreeable thought) 
 even of our Personal Identity. 
 
 Now, if it could be shown that there never was an 
 unconscious psychic state that was not, at some time 
 or other, a conscious one, and may be, at some time or 
 other, a conscious one again ; if it could be shown that 
 all unconsciousness at least of what we call " past " 
 states is simply a forgetting which is never final and 
 complete ; if, further, it could be shown that what we 
 call forgetting is never fortuitous or arbitrary, is never 
 even involuntary, that we forget not because we must, 
 but because we will and for our own purposes, and that 
 we remember for the same reason, remembrance being 
 selection and selection an act of will, and that both 
 remembrance and forgetting serve the interests of our 
 individuality, and are part of the everlasting process of 
 sublimation, we shall be very much nearer the solution 
 of our problem than we are now. 
 
 I confess that I should not have known where to turn 
 for the precise evidence which will show this if it were 
 not for the work of Samuel Butler (5), the only thinker, so 
 far as I know, except his predecessor. Professor Ewald 
 Hering(6), who has succeeded in making the subject 
 of Heredity thoroughly intelligible. I might have said, 
 who has made it thoroughly amusing at the same time. 
 
 The undeserved neglect of Butler's scientific work is 
 probably owing to his incurable habit of being amusing, 
 not mildly and academically, but startlingly, recklessly. 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 18 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM i 
 
 extravagantly amusing throughout the entire course of 
 a serious argument. What was the scientific world of 
 the 'seventies and 'eighties to think of a man who could 
 dream of immortalizing his Address on " Memory as a 
 Key to the Phenomena of Heredity " under the title of 
 Clergyman and Chickens ? (7) It seemed to consider that 
 a man who couldn't control himself far enough to be 
 serious over a serious subject like that was not to be 
 taken seriously. Besides, though Butler could dissect 
 clergymen very skilfully, it was evident that he had 
 never so much as skinned a chicken in his life. So the 
 scientific bigwigs of his day neglected Butler. And I 
 am afraid that even at this moment Psychoanalysts who 
 can talk about the " polymorphous perverse " and the 
 " Father-Imago " without the ghost of a smile will have 
 no use for Butler either. 
 
 Still, they ought to have, for he has done more to make 
 them intelligible than they have themselves. 
 
 I cannot help myself to as much of Butler as I should 
 like, for I should get into trouble with the holders of his 
 copyright. So I must refer my readers (if I am lucky 
 enough to have any) to the four books on evolution and 
 heredity: Life and Habit, Evolution Old and New, 
 Unconscious Memory, Luck or Cunning? and all the 
 passages in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler which bear 
 on those subjects and on Individuality and Personal 
 Identity. And if in the end I accept Butler's theory of 
 Heredity and reject his theory of Individuality and 
 Personal Identity it is for his own reasons and for others 
 which I hope will be made clear. 
 
 First of all (readers of Butler must forgive me if I 
 take them over ground already familiar to them), first 
 of all he starts with certain observations of experience. 
 Actions which we once performed with difiiculty and 
 with attention, with immense effort of will and intense 
 
 t 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 19 
 
 consciousness, such as playing an instrument, writing, 
 reading, talking and walking, we now perform auto- 
 matically and unconsciously, and with a success increas- 
 ing according to the extent of our practice, that is to say, 
 according to the numbers of times those actions have 
 been repeated, the point of perfection being only reached 
 when the action is performed unconsciously. 
 
 All these actions, constantly repeated, have become 
 habits of our body. 
 
 Still, a certain amount of consciousness goes with 
 the action of walking, and a greater amount with the 
 action of talking, and so on, while (Butler might have 
 added) continuance of all of them past the point of 
 fatigue will bring us back to effort and consciousness 
 again. So that we can realize how great must have been 
 the effort and how intense the consciousness they 
 started with. 
 
 But the older actions and habits, such as the beating 
 of the heart, breathing and digestion, are unaccom- 
 panied by consciousness and effort, or any memory of 
 consciousness and effort (8). And Butler asks : " Is it 
 possible that our unconsciousness concerning our own 
 performance of all these processes arises from over- 
 experience ? " (9) 
 
 His entire theory of evolution is thus based on the 
 simple truism that Practice makes perfect (10). When 
 he finds an action performed with a supreme perfection, a 
 supreme unconsciousness, he concludes— not that these 
 actions have always been unconscious, but — that ages 
 of practice, of effort that has been conscious, have gone 
 to the result (11). He argues that we do these things so 
 well only because we have done them before, because in 
 the persons of our parents and our ancestors we have 
 practised doing them for untold ages. (Observe that 
 Butler regards the experience of our parents and our 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 20 
 
 ancestors as our experience just as much and in as much 
 as our bodies are our bodies.) Because-m short- 
 we " know how " to do them. 
 
 "What is to know how to do a tUng? Surely to do it. \Vhat 
 is proof that we know how to do a thing 1 Surely the fact that 
 we can do it. A man shows that he knows how to throw he 
 boomerang by throwing the boomerang. No amount of talking 
 and of Jting can get over this ; ivsofact., that a baby breathe 
 and makes its blood circulate, it knows how to do so ; and the 
 fact that it does not know its own knowledge is only proof of 
 the perfection of that knowledge, and of the vast nuraber of past 
 occasions on which it must have been exercised already (11). 
 
 And what holds good of the baby and its body after 
 birth holds good before birth. 
 
 " A baby, therefore, has known how to grow itself in the womb 
 and has only done it because it wanted to on a balance of con- 
 siderations, in the same way as a man who goes into the City 
 to buy Great Northern Shares. ... It is only unconscious of 
 these operations because it has done them a very large number 
 of times already. A man may do a thing by a fluke once, but to 
 say that a foetus can perform so difficult an operation as the 
 growth of a pair of eyes out of pure protoplasm without knowing 
 how to do it, and without having done it before, is to contradict 
 all human experience. Ifso facto that it does it, it knows how to 
 do it, and ifso facto that it knows how to do it, it has done it 
 before " (13). 
 
 And what holds good of the unborn baby holds good 
 of the primordial germ-plasm. 
 
 '< There is in every impregnate ovum a. lorn fide memory, 
 which carries it back not only to the time when it was last an 
 impregnate ovum, but to that earUer date when it was the very 
 begin^g of life at all, which same creature it still is whether 
 as man or ovum, and hence imbued, as far as time and circum- 
 stances allow, with all its memories " (14). 
 
 That neither the baby nor th'e germ consciously know 
 
 \ 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAIVIUEL BUTLER 21 
 
 and remember any longer is what we might infer from 
 the present ease and perfection of their performances. 
 
 " We must be all aware of instances in which it is plain we 
 must have remembered, without being in the least degree con- 
 scious of remembering. Is it then absurd to suppose that our past 
 existences have been repeated on such a vast number of occasions 
 that the germ, linked on to all preceding germs, and, by once 
 having become part of their identity, imbued with all their 
 memories, remembers too intensely to be conscious of remember- 
 ing, and works on with the same kind of unconsciousness with 
 which we play, or walk, or read, imtil something unfamiliar 
 happens to us ?" (15) 
 
 This "something unfamiliar" that happens to it 
 
 being birth. 
 
 And when we look at the life of the grown-up indi- 
 vidual and of the baby and of the germ as an unbroken 
 series, it is a '' singular coincidence " that '' we are most 
 conscious of and have most control over " our distinct- 
 ively human functions, and that we are " less conscious 
 of and have less control over " our prehuman functions, 
 and that "we are least conscious of and have least 
 control over " those functions " which belonged even to 
 our invertebrate ancestry, and which are habits, geo- 
 logically speaking, of extreme antiquity " (16). 
 
 Surely an utterly incomprehensible arrangement if 
 we exclude consciousness and design from evolution, 
 perfectly comprehensible, not to say inevitable, if we 
 
 admit them (17). 
 
 There are other facts in evolution which axe perfectly 
 explicable on Butler's theory, and utterly incompre- 
 hensible if we exclude desire and design and the con- 
 tinuity of consciousness in all organic beings. Such are 
 the sterility of hybrids, the instincts of neuter insects ; 
 and, to some extent, the effects of use and disuse, which 
 fit into it without exactly calling for it (18). 
 
22 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 His conclusion is, not that memory and instinct are 
 habit, but that all habit and all instinct are memory (19) ; 
 that both are the result of practice ; that both, unerring 
 and perfect in adaptation as they have become, pre- 
 suppose knowledge and volition on the part of the 
 individual that displays them, and not, as we are 
 accustomed to imagine, merely on the part of its 
 ancestors ; that when we talk about inherited memory 
 or inherited anything, we have fallen into confused 
 thinking and are using words without meaning ; that 
 every reflex is a lapsed volition, and all imconsciousness 
 a lapsed consciousness ; that change and growth arise 
 in fulfilment of a need, a want, a '' libido," ha\ang at one 
 time been brought about with consciousness, with design 
 and with volition ; that the individual inherits his own 
 and not another's, and therefore knows it again so 
 perfectly that he is not '' conscious " of it, he himself, 
 the irreducible entity, having been present in all experi- 
 ences and in all memories we call racial or ancestral. 
 
 '* Wliat is this talk that is made about the experience of the 
 race, as though the experience of one man could profit another 
 who knows nothing about him ? If a man eats his dinner, it 
 nourishes him and not his neighbour ; if he learns a difl&cult art, 
 it is he that can do it and not his neighbour " (20). 
 
 But when we come to ask how the Individual has 
 been present in the experiences of his ancestors, and in 
 what way his ancestors, on this theory, differ from him, 
 Butler's answer, though transparently clear, is hard to 
 reconcile with any conception of the importance of the 
 Individual. Not that there is the smallest confusion 
 in his mind on this crucial point : 
 
 " . . . an impregnate ovum cannot without a violation of first 
 principles be debarred from claiming personal identity with 
 both its parents. ..." 
 
 THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 23 
 
 "... We ignore the offspring as forming part of the personaUty 
 of the parent . . . the law . . . perceives the completeness of 
 the personal identity between father and son. ..." 
 
 " The continued existence of personal identity between parents 
 and offspring." (Life and Habit, pp. 85, 95, 97.) 
 
 " But can a person be said to do a thing by force of habit or 
 routine when it is his ancestors and not he that has done it 
 hitherto ? Not unless he and his ancestors are one and the same 
 person." (Unconscious Memory, p. 17.) 
 
 It is also expressly stated that " oneness of person- 
 ality between parents and offspring " is the first of the 
 "four main principles" laid down in Life and Habit. 
 (Uncofibcious Memory, p. 19.) 
 
 " Personal identity cannot be denied between parents and 
 offspring without at the same time denying it as between the 
 different ages (and hence moments) in the life of the individual.** 
 (The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, p. 375.) 
 
 On this showii. f the individual has but little that he 
 can call his own. It is not so much that the memories 
 of his ancestors are platted in with his memories as that 
 his memories — all but the comparatively few and in- 
 significant ones contributed by his experiences after 
 birth — are platted in with theirs. To say that this is 
 impossible, because he has never appeared as an indi- 
 vidual before birth, is to beg the question of his appear- 
 ance and his individuality. 
 
 It is clear that Butler had no particular prejudice in 
 favour of his own conclusion, but that he was driven to 
 it by an impartial survey of the facts. We shall see 
 later on that he was driven into the very last place where 
 we should expect to find him, the last place where he 
 would have wished to be. I repeat, there is no confusion 
 and no hesitation in Butler's mind on this point. We 
 were our own parents and grandparents, we ivere our 
 entire prehuman ancestry. Even after birth we are 
 
24 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 little else besides, and before birth we were nothing 
 more. 
 
 He even regards the individual's life while yet in the 
 bodies of his parents as superior to his life after birth, 
 because he considers that all perfect knowing is un- 
 conscious. 
 
 " When we were yet unborn our thoughts kept the roadway 
 decently enough ; then we were blessed : we thought as every 
 man thinks, and held the same opinions as our fathers and 
 mothers had done upon nearly every subject. Life was not an 
 art — and a very difficult art — much too difficult to be acquired 
 in a Hfetime ; it was a science of which we were consummate 
 masters." (Life and Habit, p. 60.) 
 
 And yet, Butler has just pointed out that unless we 
 have maintained our own personal identity throughout 
 the experiences of our forefathers, those experiences will 
 in no way profit us. 
 
 On his own showing this must be so. Equally on his 
 showing it is difficult to see how it can be. For, through- 
 out the entire argument the individual is identified with 
 his own experiences after birth, and with his own and 
 his parents' memories before. (Their experience as 
 individuals is presumably what he does not share.) All 
 his embryonic experiences are '' vicarious," and more 
 vicarious his experiences further back. At the same 
 time he is said to have '' participated " in these experi- 
 ences. The trouble is that when Butler talks about ^ 
 man's being identified with his parents he does not seem 
 to have considered all that is implied in identification. 
 A is identical with B in this that B is identical with A. 
 If a man is identified with his grandfather his grand- 
 father must be identified with him. But, according to 
 Butler, identification is a lop-sided affair in which A 
 persists and B disappears, while everything depended 
 upon B's persistence. So where, by what chink, does 
 
 I 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 25 
 
 *' he " come in ? And in what cranny does he lodge ? 
 If the most that he can show for himself is this cellular, 
 prenatal existence in the bodies of his parents and his 
 grandparents, and of all his countless ancestors, each of 
 whom must have enjoyed precisely the same sort of 
 existence in the bodies of their parents and ancestors, 
 we are still no nearer the secret of his being. Granted 
 that he thus participated in each and all of their experi- 
 ences in his primordial cellular way, still the manner of 
 his participation remains mysterious, even if we assume, 
 as we perfectly well may, a most extraordinary capacity 
 for participation and for storage of experiences in the 
 cell. 
 
 How are we to imagine participation — practical and 
 intelligent participation, such as will enable him to 
 perform creditably a series of complicated co-ordinated 
 actions as soon as he is born — without a participator ? 
 
 Butler's arguments are unanswerable. We cannot 
 explain or account for the most ordinary facts of our 
 life and consciousness without presupposing that we 
 have lived and been conscious before. 
 
 And yet there is not one of his unanswerable argu- 
 ments that cannot be turned against his own conception 
 of Personal Identity. 
 
 Unless the Individual carried through all his previous v ^ 
 experiences some personal identity over and above that of ^ 
 his ^progenitors, their experience will remain theirs, and 
 be no earthly good to him. For he could not profit by 
 it, to the extent he has been proved to have profited, if, 
 at every stage of his past career, he had not been capable 
 of absorbing and assimilating it — of taking it to himself. 
 Therefore he must have a self, a continuous, inde- 
 structible self, distinct from his progenitors' selves, yet 
 in direct communion with them, to take it to. 
 
 It is precisely that self, that personal identity over \^ 
 
 / 
 
 \ 
 
* s 
 
 26 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 / 
 
 and above, that Butler denies to him. And in denying 
 it to him he denies it equally to each of his progenitors 
 all along the line. There is none to participate and 
 none to profit. Grant him that self, and the whole 
 process of evolution and the whole problem of heredity 
 are transparent as a pane of glass. Deny it, and we 
 are where we were in the dark days of Darwinism. But 
 whereas Darwin and Wallace at least left us free to take 
 what Natural Selection could not give us, what Butler's 
 right hand gives us his left hand snatches from us again. 
 
 It is as if Buffon and Lamarck had opened a window 
 on the dark side of our house, looking towards our past. 
 And it is as if Butler had found that window and cleaned 
 it, and made it bigger, and called to us to look through, 
 and then, in sheer perversity, had closed and darkened 
 it before we could look again and be sure of what we had 
 seen. 
 
 Without a self, over and above organism, over and 
 above memory, the whole series of past memories and 
 / ^ past experiences is unthinkable. 
 
 For we start with an individual. Even if we could 
 conceive him maintaining his divided identity fairly well 
 in the persons of his parents, and perhaps of his grand- 
 parents, what of the generations behind them ? What 
 of his infinite division, the scattering of him, the in- 
 divisible, throughout those geometrically increasing 
 multitudes ? 
 
 But even his pre-existences are not much more un- 
 thinkable than the poor and precarious existence which 
 is all that Butler allows him as an individual after birth. 
 For if it is not quite clear how he persisted in his parents, 
 and whether anjrthing of him persisted over and above 
 them at all, there is no sort of doubt as to how his parents 
 persist in him and in what ravaging and overwhelming 
 proportion (21). 
 
 "X 
 
 
 \ 
 
 A 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAJVIUEL BUTLER 27 
 
 Could there be a more shocking irony of fate than 
 that Euxler, who did more to destroy the prestige of 
 parents tEan any writer before or after him, who so 
 abhorred the idea of parentage that he resisted " the 
 clamourings of the unborn " rather than commit the 
 cruelty of giving any child a father however much it 
 might desire a father — could there be a more shocking 
 irony than that this great repudiator of parents, this 
 passionately original and individual soul, should be 
 driven by his own terrible logic to identify himself in- 
 distinguishably with his father and his mother and his 
 grandfather and his grandmother, and so on backwards 
 with all his ancestors, and that he should have regarded 
 \ the life identified with theirs as infinitely richer and 
 more important than anything that he could claim and 
 call his own ? Nor could he have answered that he only 
 objected to parents as individuals, for he has made it 
 clear that he objected to them most emphatically as 
 parents ; so that this plea would only impair his logic 
 without diminishing the irony of his case. 
 
 Now, I think it can be shown that he was not really 
 driven to this suicide, but that it happened to him 
 because he put the cart before the horse, and attached 
 personal identity to memory, and memory to organism, 
 instead of attaching both to personal identity. 
 
 All the same, as an account of the gathering together 
 of memories, and of the apparent miracles of psychic 
 synthesis performed as a matter of course by every 
 living organism, as a view of evolution which makes 
 every stage in its process transparent as a pane of glass, 
 Butler's theqry is perfect. It is a clear vision of all life 
 as one organism, and of that organism as God. That 
 he could not allow God to be anjrfching over and above 
 an organism, and was pained by the merest suggestion 
 that he might possibly be more, was the logical conse- 
 
 tf 
 
 alsaa^ifriilMiiiil^^ 
 
28 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 quence of his refusal to admit that the Self coiild be 
 anything over and above its memories. This consistency 
 should not be charged too heavily against him. Nor 
 can we hope to substitute anything clearer for that clear 
 vision of his. 
 
 Let us see whether we cannot keep it intact while 
 adding to it the very factor that Butler left out of the 
 account. 
 
 The problem of the relation of psyche to organism 
 would be comparatively simple if living beings descended 
 from one parent. It is obvious that we are following 
 up not one thread but two threads, each of which is soon 
 lost in a multiplying network of threads, and we must 
 faithfully concede the self to be present in each and all 
 of them if it is to gather together the experience which 
 will enable it to burst on the world as an expert in 
 psychic and biological behaviour. Could anything well 
 be more unthinkable than a theory which compels us to 
 this vision of selfhood maintained in such a multiplicity 
 as that ? Identity where all identity is lost ? Were 
 we not better off with the old simple idea of hereditary 
 transmission which we had accepted before Samuel 
 Butler came among us to disturb our peace ? 
 
 Well — were we ? 
 
 We have an idea, a vague idea, it is true, but still an 
 idea of the unity of individual consciousness, of the 
 holding together in one synthesis of a multiplicity of 
 states, and even this idea does little justice to the 
 astounding complexity of that synthesis. It is identity 
 in multiplicity with a vengeance. 
 
 But we have no idea at all of how hereditary instincts 
 are transmitted. The physical theory of the trans- 
 action leaves the essence of the thing — ^its psychic 
 complexity — untouched. The idea that a complicated 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 29 
 
 system of experiences can be handed over as it stands to 
 a psyche innocent of all experiences, and used by that 
 psyche instantly with the virtuosity of an expert, is 
 about as thinkable as the idea that the Central London 
 telegraph and telephone system could be handed over 
 to and successfully worked by a single operator ignorant 
 of the first principles of telegraphy. 
 
 Of the two I would back the operator. 
 
 You do not make it a bit more thinkable by regarding 
 the heritage as accumulated by imperceptible increments 
 from generation to generation, since in the last resort 
 the whole of it has to be handed over en bloc. 
 
 I said it would be simpler if living beings were 
 descended each from one parent. And as it happens, 
 if we follow it far enough back, the bewildering process 
 simpMes itself, since eventually we do trace them all 
 
 to one. 
 
 Supposing that we turn from our present and our 
 future, and set our faces backwards, and imagine that 
 network of the generations— owr generations— spread 
 out before us and streaming away from us to our past, 
 and that we hold the hither end of it by the single 
 thread of self. The network is broken in many places 
 where individuals have remained single and left no 
 issue, and where whole families and species have dropped 
 out. But, on the whole, it is a comparatively con- 
 tinuous network. If we could follow all the unbroken 
 threads of all the meshes to their beginning on the 
 farther end of the net, we should find them all united 
 again in one thread, one single living being. A being 
 of extreme primordial simplicity, but not simpler or 
 more primordial than our own very complicated organism 
 was when it began as a single germ-plasm. 
 
 And thus the Individual that we saw so scattered 
 has become one again. Somewhere, in some time and 
 
30 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 earthly place, he and all the individuals he sprang from 
 have existed in some relation to one simple, indestruct- 
 ible, primordial speck of protoplasm. 
 
 What is the nature of that relation ? 
 
 Only five relations are possible. 
 
 1. We may suppose that the speck of protoplasm 
 produces the personality, and in reproducing itself pro- 
 duces another personality, and that reproduction of 
 organism and production of personality go on till we 
 come to reproduction through the union of two pri- 
 mordial cells, which so far from altering the essential 
 nature of the process only knits it tighter. This process 
 of reproduction, which is what actually happens on the 
 physical side — on the part of the organism — is, on the 
 psychic side, unthinkable because open to all the objec- 
 tions which have been brought against the theory of 
 transmission. That is to say, a personality which has 
 been produced brand-new with each organism, by each 
 organism, has ipso facto been absent from the past 
 experiences it is supposed to profit by. To say nothing 
 of the enormous difficulty of conceiving the production 
 of a psyche, a consciousness, from a speck of protoplasm 
 by a speck of protoplasm. A difficulty wTiich will meet 
 us again. 
 
 2. Or we may suppose that all the innumerable 
 personalities that have been and shall be are present 
 somehow with or in that one original speck of proto- 
 plasm, and are simply transplanted with or into succeed- 
 ing specks of protoplasm as they multiply, and are 
 developed with the development of the organisms. This 
 theory would account all right for the sharing of the 
 experiences, but it may be dismissed as putting rather 
 too great a strain on one small speck of protoplasm. 
 
 3. We may suppose that the burden of reproducing 
 its own kind is borne by the self, and that it takes an 
 
 i 
 
 1 THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 31 
 
 even share in the labour of a psychophysical association, 
 each self looking after its own future development, the 
 business of the protoplasm being limited to producing 
 more protoplasm and building itself up into organic 
 forms. This theory ignores the influence of the organism, 
 through which the self gains its experiences and there- 
 with its development, and the influence of the self by 
 which the organism is built into just such forms as are 
 adapted to the needs and the ends of the self. We are 
 not helped by any theory of the mere production of self 
 by self. For, again, unless some portion of the original 
 self endures in the selves it produces it cannot impart 
 to them its own experience or benefit by theirs. And 
 unless the selves — again — ^have been present with it in 
 all its past experience, they cannot share and benefit 
 
 by it. 
 
 4. Let us suppose, then, that the greater strain (which 
 
 is, after all, a purely metaphysical one) is borne by this 
 hypothetical self ; that the self and not the protoplasm 
 contains within itself all selves that are and shall be, 
 and that the relation of the self to the original speck of 
 protoplasm, and to all succeeding organisms throughout 
 all generations, is that of the association of an un- 
 divided, unapparent being with the means of its division 
 and appearances. We have here a much more workable 
 conception of the self, inasmuch as our difficulties are 
 shifted to the metaphysical sphere where anything may 
 happen. Some awkward things are bound to happen 
 to an unapparent metaphysical being when once for all 
 it makes up its mind to appear. Still, they need not be 
 too awkward. On this theory the integrity of the 
 original self must suffer severely if it does not endure 
 throughout all its multiplied experiences, that is to say, 
 if it is lost in the multiplicity of selves, and the integrity 
 of the selves suffers if they are lost in it. 
 
 i 
 
32 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 Either, then, there is no such thing as the integrity 
 
 of the self, or : 
 
 5. Each self is something over and above all other 
 selves, over and above its own organism and all organisms 
 in which it has had part ; over and above its own ex- 
 periences and memories gained through association with 
 all the organisms. Until they are actually born as 
 individuals the selves will be members of many groups, 
 associated through the organisms they share, in such 
 sort that the experiences and the resulting benefits are 
 mutual. Neither experience nor benefit being obtain- 
 able unless we presuppose in each self a " personal 
 identity" over and above all other selves in its own 
 
 organism. 
 
 On this hypothesis, which I believe to be the 
 one in strictest accordance with the theory of Pan- 
 Psychism, the relation of self to organism will be by no 
 means the simple affair of one self, one organism, but 
 will stand somewhat thus. At one end of the scale, 
 entire ownership of the first speck of protoplasm which 
 it finds itself associated with, in the sense of one 
 self, one organism. At the other end of the scale, 
 practically entire ownership of the organism it is born 
 with as an Individual. In between, starting from 
 below upwards, half ownership of two specks of proto- 
 plasm, supposing the original speck to have split up into 
 two, and to have taken up with two other selves ; owner- 
 ship of one-fourth of each member of the next two 
 pairs similarly formed ; ownership of one-eighth in 
 the four succeeding pairs, and of one-sixteenth in the 
 next subdivision ; and so on till his share diminishes to 
 a thousand-millionth part, say, in a' thousand million 
 
 organisms. 
 
 But always, through all his thousand milKon incarna- 
 tions, his thousand million ^shares in other people's 
 
 THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAJVIUEL BUTLER 33 
 
 undertakings, though his experiences are scattered and 
 subdivided, he is never lost. 
 
 He is only lost if, with Samuel Butler, we insist on 
 identifying him with his business and his innumerable 
 partners in the business, and ignoring his constant and 
 indestructible presence. He is only scattered and 
 divided if we think of him, not in his own metaphysical 
 (or for the matter of that metapsychical) terms, but in 
 terms of protoplasm. You might just as well think 
 of him in terms of the colour that would indicate his 
 presence in a diagram. 
 
 As for his infinitesimal share, it is decidedly better, 
 from his point of view, to hold an infinitesimal share in 
 an infinitely great undertaking than to be entire owner 
 of one speck of protoplasm. 
 
 As we have seen, the most awful consequences for 
 the Individual follow if we hold the theory of heredity 
 precisely as Samuel Butler held it. I do not see how 
 they are to be avoided as long as we persist in identifying 
 the self with its memories, and with the organism by 
 means of which it acquires them. On the other hand, 
 it must be admitted that the diificulties of the hypothesis 
 of independent selfhood are great. But I do not believe 
 them to be insuperable if we bear in mind that selfhood 
 is not necessarily interchangeable with " individuality," 
 or numerical personal identity in the sense of one in- 
 habitant of one body. In that sense an individual is 
 not an individual until he is born ; and in any case our 
 bodies may very likely have more psychic inhabitants 
 than ourselves. 
 
 It may be objected that on this view of the self the 
 origin of its own and of all succeeding organisms looks 
 a bit inadequate. But if its own original and inde- 
 structible germ-plasm was, as it certainly seems to have 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 been, a sufficient organism, to begin with, for a self that 
 has drawn together innumerable past memories, why- 
 should not the original speck of protoplasm be an 
 organism sufficient to begin with for a self that harbours 
 innumerable future possibilities ? If we conceive of 
 the organism as nothing more or less essential to the 
 self than its means of appearing, of manifesting itself, 
 we do greatly simplify the problem of their relation, that 
 everlasting subject of contention for biologists and 
 psychologists and philosophers. 
 
 Let us think, then, of the self's relation to its organism 
 as the seeking, finding, possession, and more and more 
 perfect use of a means to manifestation. Obviously, it 
 can only manifest itself through its behaviour and its 
 experiences. Instantly, then, it begins to behave and 
 to experience. Even at this very earliest point in its 
 extraordinary career, it knows how to behave and to 
 experience. The first experience of any account that 
 comes to it is when it finds that the original speck of 
 protoplasm, sufficient for a start, is absurdly insufficient 
 to carry on with. (If we like, we may imagine that 
 other selves, baffled by this insufficiency, have given up 
 their protoplasms in disgust, but that our self is more 
 patient and more adventurous.) So, in obedience to its 
 inner urging, the speck of protoplasm grows. 
 
 But still this humble self-contained existence cannot 
 satisfy its unquenchable longing to appear. 
 
 And so, it compels its organism to reproduce itself, 
 and the first Scattering begins. Only by scattering, by 
 incessant subdivision, can it acquire sufficient experience 
 and sufficient practice in behaviour to fit it for the life 
 it is to lead, the really personable appearance it is 
 ultimately to present. When the self has acquired 
 enough animal experiences, and enough practice in 
 animal behaviour, and an organism so obedient to 
 
 
 ) 
 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCmSM OF SAIVIUEL BUTLEE 35 
 
 animal promptings that it can be trusted to run itself 
 without perpetual interference from higher authority, 
 then, and not till then, it becomes human. Literally, 
 we can only do our work as men because, as Samuel 
 Butler has shown, we have done all the animal part of 
 it for ourselves so efficiently in the past. Just imagine 
 how we should get on if, before we could cook our dinner 
 and while we were eating it, we had to give our personal 
 attention to each one of our visceral functions separately ; 
 if in order to digest we had to superintend our digestion, 
 or in order to breathe we had to superintend our breath- 
 ing. Or if in order to fight we had to see to the working 
 of each separate unit of the fighting machine which is 
 our body. Or if in order to write a poem (I do not want 
 to labour my instances, but the case of the poem-writer 
 has points of special psychological importance), if in 
 order to write a poem we had to superintend each 
 separate operation of our hand, each separate operation 
 of our brain, to turn back on our path in time to recover 
 all our meanings, to travel in space to find and capture 
 the loveliness we know. We can understand the why 
 and wherefore of the process of our evolution when we 
 reflect that all the selves that we have ever been, that 
 we have put under us in the successive stages of our 
 ascension, are working for us now, clearing up all the 
 troublesome and boresome jobs we are tired of and so 
 repudiate, and leaving us free for our own affairs, the 
 work of the proud individuality we now are. 
 
 Whatever he may have been and is, the scattered 
 one does not and cannot appear as a complete and full- 
 blown Individual until he has made up his mind once 
 for all to gather himself together and be born. 
 
 And this presumably is precisely what he has done. 
 Therefore, throughout all the generations he has existed 
 as want, striving, desire, will-to-live, to burst forth and 
 
 > 
 
 1 
 
36 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 be born. If we were puzzled about the striving of the 
 One to become Many, what about this striving of the 
 Many to become One ? 
 
 II 
 
 The question now arises : What of his immortality ? 
 Is this outcome of his supreme efEort his one and only 
 appearance as an individual ? Does he scatter himself 
 again in his descendants and find his immortality only 
 in them ? Has he come to nothing if he leaves no 
 
 descendants ? 
 
 Now on Butler's theory, which identifies the indi- 
 vidual with his own organism and his own parents, he 
 has no immortality of his own, only a scattered and 
 vicarious life after death in the persons of his descendants 
 (if he has any) ; only a subjective immortality in the 
 memory of posterity, if he has had sufficient f orcefulness 
 to impress posterity. In fact, on Butler's theory, his 
 chances of existing as an individual in the first place, 
 of ever being bom at all, depend on circumstances over 
 which he has no control. For all Butler's belief that it 
 is " the clamouring of the unborn " that is responsible 
 for each individual existence, so that the entire culpa- 
 bility of the enterprise rests with the unborn, and no 
 child has a right to blame its parents if the enterprise 
 should turn out badly, still, as the potential parent can 
 and frequently does turn a deaf ear to the clamouring, 
 the actual decision rests with him. And his refusal, 
 or the mere accident of his death, even if he is well- 
 intentioned, dooms untold millions of personalities to 
 
 extinction. 
 
 The individual, then, has but one chance of existence 
 to several million chances of extinction, and he has no 
 possible prospect of any immortality that counts. And, 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 37 
 
 if we narrow him down to his bare achievements as an 
 individual, the small experience he acquires for himself 
 in his short lifetime, compared with his immense accumu- 
 lations in the persons of his progenitors, doesn't really 
 amount to a row of pins ; so that existence itself, when 
 it does happen to him, hardly seems worth the trouble 
 of being born. Why all those tremendous labours of 
 the generations for such a poor result ? Why all those 
 strivings and longings to be made manifest for such a 
 pitiful appearance at the end ? If you say it is all for 
 the Race and not for the individual, and that the 
 individual only exists in and for the Race, that doesn't 
 make the affair a bit more intelligible or a bit better. 
 
 In fact it makes it worse, for we. are sacrificing a 
 reality, a poor, perishing reality, but still a reality for as 
 long as it lasts, to an abstraction. For what is the Race 
 but an abstraction, if it is not the sum of the individuals 
 that compose it ? And for the matter of that, races 
 themselves are doomed ultimately to extinction. 
 
 It may be so, and if it is so we must bear it ; for we 
 cannot help it. But we are only driven to the conclusion 
 that it is so if we accept Butler's view of personal identity, 
 or the view of all those persons who, on this point at any 
 rate, are agreed to agree with him. 
 
 If it can be shown, in the first place, that the achieve- 
 ments of the Individual are not quite so insignificant 
 as has been made out ; and in the second place, that, 
 so far from personal identity being dependent on memory 
 (and ultimately on organism), memory (and organism 
 ultimately) are dependent on personal identity, to the 
 extent that not the simplest fact of consciousness, and 
 not the simplest operation of building up a primordial 
 germ-cell, is possible without the presupposition of 
 personal identity ; if further, there is even the ghost of 
 a reason for inferring, in the absence of any other assign- 
 
 h-^ 
 
38 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 able cause, that the mysterious thing we call Personality 
 behaves as we know causes do and can behave, then, 
 though immortality will not follow as an absolutely 
 certain conclusion (how could it ?), there will at least be 
 a very strong presumption in its favour. Whether there 
 will be evidence to satisfy the authority whom Butler 
 called " any reasonable person " is another thing. 
 People show their reasonableness in such different ways. 
 
 Even from the foregoing brief review of the latest 
 findings of Psychoanalysis it must have been obvious 
 that they are the corollary of the conclusions Samuel 
 Butler drew from the processes of evolution. It is not 
 necessary to go over all that old ground again in order 
 to point out the correlations. The reader cannot have 
 failed to identify that need or want, which Butler traces 
 for us as the spring of all evolution, with the Will-to-live, 
 the " libido " which the psychoanalysts have traced for 
 us as the source of all life and the spring of sublimation. 
 Only when it comes to the relative value of racial and 
 individual qualities, of unconscious and of conscious 
 being, do the psychoanalysts part company with Samuel 
 Butler. 
 
 First of all, then, if they did not openly declare the 
 supreme importance of the individual, they showed us 
 that his grown-up individuality, be its quality what it 
 may, is a far more highly sublimated thing than the 
 bundle of racial functions and qualities he " inherits." 
 To say that I am inferior to my own grandmother, as I 
 very well may be, simply means that my grandmother 
 was the superior individual, that is to say that the 
 functions and qualities that distinguished her from her 
 progenitors had a higher sublimative value than the 
 functions and qualities that distinguished me, not that 
 the fimctions and qualities, she in common with all 
 my other ancestors, bequeathed to me are more highly 
 
 
 i 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 39 
 
 sublimated than mine. Yet, wretched individual that I 
 am, coarse where she was fine, most stupid where she 
 was most intelligent, ungraceful and unlovely where she 
 was all grace and all beauty, still, by the one fact that I 
 refused to be submerged by my racial qualities and 
 functions, that I lifted my head above the generations 
 and added another living being, another desire, another 
 will, another experience to the sum of human experiences, 
 by the mere fact that, after all, here I am, playing my 
 part and not any of their parts, I prove the superiority 
 (as far as it goes) of my sublimation. 
 
 Besides, if it comes to that, who is to say whether 
 these undesired and undesirable traits of mine are really 
 mine, and not part of my '' inheritance " ? 
 
 It is when I fall short of my part, when I return on 
 my path and go hack to them, or when I simply refuse to 
 grow up, and persist in being a child, and not a very 
 enterprising, or intelligent, or original child at that, it 
 is when, in four words, I resign my individuality, that I 
 become inferior. And the one word for it is Degeneration. 
 
 To be degenerate is to fail to add the priceless gift of 
 individuality to the achievement of the race. (There- 
 fore it seems an inappropriate word to apply to those 
 very considerable individuals who have given their 
 priceless gift in the form of genius, however far they may 
 have fallen short of the ethics of the family and the 
 crowd, and supposing this falling short to be a more 
 frequent attribute of '' true genius " than it actually is. 
 We may suppose that this failure in one direction is the 
 price they have to pay for their supremacy in another ; 
 and posterity that benefits by their loss should be the 
 last to remember it agamst them. As a matter of fact, 
 in spite of the efEorts of biographers to fix it firmly in 
 its mind, posterity very seldom does remember it at 
 all.) And if it comes to that, what debt can the indi- 
 
^ 
 
 40 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vidual owe to the race that is greater than the debt the 
 race owes to the individual ? What, after all, was the 
 origin of our much -valued, much-talked-about racial 
 characteristics ? The instinct of self-sublimation, the 
 desire and subsequent effort of certain enterprising 
 individuals to outdo themselves, to be something that 
 they are not yet, something, however small, that their 
 progenitors were not. Think of the enterprise (com- 
 pared with foregoing enterprises), the daring originality 
 of the creature that first " improvised " a stomach 
 because it wanted one. Can you deny an individuaUty, 
 and, all things considered, a very startling individuality 
 to that creature ? And to go back to our much-valued, 
 much-talked-about, and possibly overrated progenitors, 
 every single one of them was an individual once ; and 
 his value for posterity was chiefly his individuality ; if 
 he only showed it in the choice he made of one female 
 rather than another for his mate. Individuals, in their 
 successive (and successful) sublimations, raised the pri- 
 mordial will-to-live from the level of mere need and 
 want, through the stages of desire, to those supreme 
 expressions of individuality — love and will. 
 
 There is too much talk about the Race. The race is 
 nothing but the sum of the individuals that compose 
 and have composed it, and will compose it. Not only 
 so, but without the individuality, the very marked and 
 eccentric individuality of individuals, races, and the 
 Race itself would not exist. It is the outstanding 
 individuals, the " sports," that have been the pioneers 
 of evolution. They have enriched and raised the species 
 by compelling it to adopt their characteristics. 
 
 And yet it looks as if in the welter of unconscious 
 and subconscious memories and instincts the individual 
 had little, if anything, that he could call his own. He 
 is dwarfed to utter insignificance by the immensity of 
 
 . I 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 41 
 
 his ancestral heritage. But I do not think we have to 
 choose between the views of the comparative value of 
 the Individual and the Race, and the comparative 
 amounts of their respective debts to each other, for 
 we cannot separate them. Our problem is more 
 fundamental. 
 
 We have to choose between a difficult (I admit it is 
 a very difficult) theory of the continuous identity of one 
 self in many organisms, associated for a while with the 
 equally continuous identity of many selves to one 
 organism, and a self-contradictory theory which insists 
 on continuous memory as the clue to the mystery of the 
 individual's past evolution, and yet regards him as a 
 momentary, insignificant spark of consciousness struck 
 out from the impact of the masses of roUed-up un- 
 conscious memories ; each individual, in the series of 
 generations that come together to form the masses, being 
 himself such a momentary, insignificant spark. At this 
 rate continuous consciousness, that is to say, continuous 
 memory, vanishes from the whole performance. 
 
 Between difficulty and self-contradiction there can 
 be only one choice. The alternative to the spark theory 
 is not handicapped by any inherent contradiction. The 
 individual's heritage is his, if we allow him, not onlv that 
 "sense of need " which Lamarck and BufEon allowed 
 him, and that " little dose of judgment and reason " 
 which Huber claimed for his insects and Samuel Butler 
 claimed for all organisms, but " a little dose " of self- 
 hood over and above his sense of need, over and above 
 reason and judgment, over and above memory. The 
 Individual is not his heritage. His heritage is his. It 
 IS the stuff he works with and sublimates and transforms ; 
 It is the ladder he has raised himself by, the territory 
 he has conquered— or it is nothing. 
 
 There is, of course, that alternative. 
 
f 
 
 42 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 Can we justify our assumption that selfhood is over 
 and above ? 
 
 Now there is a very strong consensus of opinion 
 among psychologists and ''mental physiologists" that 
 Personal Identity does depend, and depend absolutely 
 upon Memory. So strong that I have considerable 
 qualms about putting forth any opinion that runs 
 counter to that consensus. It is strongest among those 
 who, like Mr. William James, M. Bergson, and Mr. 
 McDougall, by no means regard mind as entirely de- 
 pendent on its physical basis. It is upheld by arguments 
 that appear at first gight to be unanswerable, and that 
 on no theory should be lightly set aside. 
 
 So far, I have been going all along on the assumption 
 that we conceive Personal Identity as something which, 
 whatever its ultimate nature may be, " holds conscious- 
 ness together." We must not assume the thing we have 
 got to prove ; so we cannot take for granted that what 
 we call Personal Identity amounts to anything we think 
 of as a substance, or a self, or a soul, or as a being in 
 any way separate from and independent of conscious- 
 ness. For all we know, it may be no more than the 
 relation of each conscious state to another and to the 
 whole. We take the term as equivalent to " the unity 
 of consciousness." Consciousness certainly appears to 
 be a unity, whether there be a self to make it one or no. 
 We have nothing immediately before us but states of 
 consciousness, yet they appear to arrive in a certain 
 order and to hang together with a certain cohesion of 
 their own. Describe consciousness in terms deliberately 
 chosen so as to exclude the Personality we must not take 
 for granted ; say that its states are only fortuitously 
 associated ; still, association involves, perhaps I ought 
 to say constitutes, a certain unity. Say that conscious- 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 43 
 
 ness is nothing but a stream, and that though it appears 
 to have islands in it, the islands are really only part of 
 the stream ; still the stream would not be a stream if it 
 had not a certain unity. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that, for all we are justified 
 in saying about it beforehand, this unity may be nothing 
 more than the relation of states of consciousness among 
 themselves. But when we have reduced consciousness 
 to the simplest, the least assuming terms, we have still 
 this unity to reckon with. Even if the dream of 
 Professor Huxley came true, and the ''mechanical 
 equivalent of consciousness " were found to-morrow, 
 even if consciousness were proved to be nothing but a 
 strange illusory by-product of the brain, the queer 
 spectral illusion of its unity would still confront us. 
 
 And here is my opponent's main argument. How, 
 on any theory of consciousness, could these appearances 
 be kept up without memory ? If, as impression super- 
 vened on impression (to take consciousness at its 
 " lowest "), each were instantly effaced ; if we forgot 
 our states of consciousness — I mean if consciousness 
 forgot its states— as fast as they occurred ; that is to 
 say, if consciousness kept on continually forgetting 
 itself ; if there were no sort of even illusory registration 
 anywhere, what becomes of even that illusory unity ? 
 And what on earth becomes of personal identity, sup- 
 posing there was such a thing anyway ? If we could 
 never remember anything that happened to us we might 
 just as well not exist at all, for we should never be 
 conscious of our existence. Personal identity may or may 
 not be provable, but without memory it is unthinkable. 
 
 I hope the adherents of memory as the presupposition 
 of personal identity will not find fault with this way of 
 putting it. I do not think it is an unfair statement of 
 their position. I do not want to weaken their position 
 
 ^»^ 
 
p 
 
 44 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 in order to have the poor pleasure of demolishing it. 
 It is not at all easy to demolish. And perhaps it is I 
 and not they who are responsible for the only palpable 
 flaw in it, the ultimate argument ad hominem ; for it 
 is clear that we might exist without being in the least 
 aware of our existence ; in fact, that is the way most of 
 us do exist ; it may even be the only terms on which it 
 is possible for us to exist at all. I think there is some- 
 thing in the point ; but let it pass. Let the case stand 
 without it. Personal identity may or may not be 
 provable ; without memory it is unthinkable. 
 
 But — ^is it ? 
 
 It may be that neither is possible, or at any rate 
 actual, without the other. But thinkable ? If you can 
 prove the existence of personal identity, of a self, a soul, 
 a principle, call it what you like, that is conscious, but 
 is not consciousness, that is inseparably present to all 
 its states of consciousness and identifiable Vvdth none of 
 them, unless it be with the act of will, I will undertake 
 to " think " it. 
 
 You say you can only prove it from consciousness, 
 that is to say, from memory. Perhaps, very likely. 
 But that is only saying that it is dependent on memory 
 for its consciousness, its mode of existence, not that it 
 is dependent on memory for existence itself. 
 
 We have just seen how Samuel Butler landed himself 
 in the very bosom of the progenitors he abhorred, as 
 well as in a certain amount of self-contradiction, just 
 because he would insist on identifying personality with 
 memory. Even the " plain man," to whose common 
 sense he was always appealing, could have told him 
 better than that. For the plain man does not place his 
 identity in the fact that such and such things happened 
 to him at such and such a date, but that at such and 
 such a date they happened to hiniy to such and such a 
 
 I THE PAN-PS YCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 45 
 
 person. The whole point and poignancy of their happen- 
 ing, and of his remembering them, is that they happened 
 to him, and not to another, and that he and not another 
 remembered them. The plain man very properly 
 assumes that he has a self, that he personally was 
 present at such and such dates, that he is personally 
 present to each state of consciousness as it arises, and 
 to the piling up of each state on another, and to the 
 whole. ^ 
 
 If you choose to say that he himself is only another 
 bit of consciousness added to the pile—that the affirma- 
 tion of self -consciousness comes for ever and from 
 moment to moment to the top— that is a theory like 
 another. But I do not think it is a very good theory, 
 because it overlooks the fact that he was at the bottom 
 too, and went through all the layers. And most 
 certainly the plain man would have none of it. 
 
 But let us say that personal identity presupposes 
 memory and is dependent on it. Then it follows 
 rigorously that whenever we forget our personal identity 
 ceases. It goes out for long hours together in deep 
 sleep, when we have no memory and no consciousness at 
 all. And it comes to life again with the return of con- 
 sciousness and memory. I am afraid I do not see any- 
 thing in the theory of its independent existence half so 
 unthinkable as the recurrent miracle of its death and 
 resurrection (22). Let alone the inconvenience of not 
 knowing whether it is we who have come back and not 
 somebody else. If you say we do know, because the 
 revived memories are the same, and that we have no 
 other means of knowing, the answer is that in the first 
 place we do not know that they are the same, and in the 
 second place that they are not the same ; for even in 
 continuous memory all we get is a succession and a 
 synthesis of states, a memory of a memory, and identity 
 
 # 
 
46 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 of them there is none. Sleep has so divided to-day's 
 *' unity of consciousness " from yesterday's that to talk 
 about identity of states is absurd. So it looks as if 
 memory and unity of consciousness, so far from con- 
 stituting personal identity, depended abjectly upon it. 
 
 And are we so very sure that Personal Identity is 
 unthinkable without Memory ? 
 
 I do not mean merely inconceivable or imimaginable. 
 I suppose, for that matter, we can conceive, or imagine, 
 or present to ourselves any state of consciousness as 
 existing independently of any other, or the whole of 
 consciousness as existing without anything to " hold it 
 together " ; in fact, it is in this self-sufficiency that 
 consciousness does present itself immediately and before 
 reflection. By ruling out all presuppositions of thinking 
 we may and do conceive it so ; and many philosophers 
 have refused to conceive it otherwise. 
 
 In the end it must be shown that personal identity 
 is more than a presupposition of our thinking, if we are 
 to avoid the fallacy of concluding that what is first in 
 thought is necessarily first in existence. It must be 
 what Kant called a " Voraussetzung der Erfahrung," a 
 presupposition of Experience, something without which 
 experience would not be what it is and what it appears 
 to be. But for the moment let us suppose that personal 
 identity is unthinkable without memory. 
 
 With what memories or memory did our conscious 
 life, then, begin ? Say that it started with unconscious 
 memory (the " heritage "). Well and good. But for 
 consciousness that is the same thing as starting with no 
 memory at all. To all intents and purposes, I, or if 
 you prefer it, my conscious states, start with an absolute 
 blank behind as well as before them. In this case it 
 will be truly my body that remembers, and not I or 
 they ; and though its memories will affect very pro- 
 
 I THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 47 
 
 foundly my conscious states when they do arise out of 
 the blank, for me or for consciousness they do not exist ; 
 nor can they exist on the theory of unconscious memory, 
 or on any theory that precludes personal identity ; that 
 is to say, the existence of a self before memory. 
 
 We saw that " the heritage " itself, the instinct, the 
 knowledge made perfect through long ages of practice, 
 all that we have learned to call unconscious memory, 
 is meaningless unless it has once been conscious, and 
 would be utterly useless to us if it were not our memory ; 
 we saw, that is to say, that our past consciousness like- 
 wise presupposes personal identity, a self. 
 
 I admit that the argument from forgotten memory 
 cuts both ways. But when we consider that our con- 
 scious life, the life of each individual in the series, began 
 with a forgetting, and that in order to know perfectly 
 we must know how to forget perfectly, it looks as if the 
 argument that presupposes memory has, if anything, 
 the more dangerous edge. 
 
 And if, to avoid both edges, we turn for safety to 
 the obvious alternative that memory and selfhood, or 
 that memory and consciousness, are neither afore nor 
 after another, but simultaneous and mutually dependent, 
 consciousness becoming memory before we are conscious 
 of it, we are faced again with the annihilating fact of 
 forgetting. 
 
 All these dangers and dilemmas are avoided if we 
 do but put selfhood where the plain man puts it, and 
 where our everyday thinking puts it— first. 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 ™ 
 
 II 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 49 
 
 E 
 
II 
 
 i 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 I SHALL be reminded that dangers and dilemmas would 
 be avoided much more easily and surely if we would 
 only consent to put memory where the physiologist puts 
 it — in the brain-cells of the organism, and leave it there. 
 This would certainly be one way out, if memory were 
 really that simple afEair of neural association fixed into 
 habit which the physiologist takes it to be. 
 
 But does not memory presuppose two things which 
 are not simple — Space and Time ? Time for the order 
 of events in memory, space for their juxtaposition ? It 
 is not easy to see how any set of neural associations could 
 yield either. Whether as presuppositions or as forms of 
 arrangement (schemata), they stand, as it were, between 
 memory and that hypothetical self, removing memory 
 a stage farther yet from its supreme place as the first. 
 Memory itself is so dependent on them that we can make 
 no valid statement about it that does not take them into 
 account; and it will be no use trying to show that 
 personal identity is independent of memory unless we 
 can show also that it is independent of space and time. 
 
 And space and time draw with a large net. 
 
 The view that M. Bergson has set forth in Sur Us 
 Donnees immediates de la Conscience and La Matiere et 
 la Memoire does more to make clear the relations of 
 
 51 
 
52 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 Time, Space, and Memory than perhaps any philosophy 
 before the day of Vitalism. ^ 
 
 This clearness is not altogether due to M. Bergson s 
 metaphysical theory ; for, as we shall see, that theory 
 lands him in many hopeless contradictions by the way. 
 But his view of time and space does not stand or fall 
 with his theory of the J^lan Vital ; and, whatever the 
 ultimate destiny of Vitalism may be, no metaphysic 
 that comes after it can afford to ignore M. Bergson's 
 really very singular view. It is mainly owing to its 
 author's brilliant and reckless inconsequence that 
 Monism can suck advantage out of it. M. Bergson 
 makes things apparently easy for himself at the start 
 by letting the work of the mere intellect (in his own 
 phrase) '' filter through," and plunging into the thick of 
 immediate consciousness. In order to preserve its 
 integrity he has to break with all past conceptions of 
 time as quantity, discontinuous, infinitely divisible. 
 But as this idea of time as discontinuous, divisible 
 quantity has an awkward way of cropping up in spite 
 of him, he distinguishes between Pure Time (Duree) and, 
 as you might say, popular or spurious time. 
 
 Pure Time, or Duree, is intensive, and neither divisible 
 nor measurable ; that is to say, it is not quantitative 
 but qualitative. For Time is pure succession, and never 
 simultaneity. Simultaneity is juxtaposition, and juxta- 
 position is a spatial thing. 
 
 " La duree toute pure est la forme que prend la succession 
 de nos etats de conscience quand notre moi se laisse vivre." 
 (Donnies immediates de la Conscience, p. 76.) 
 
 " On pent . . . concevoir la succession sans la distinction, et 
 comme une penetration mutuelle, une solidarite, une organisa- 
 tion intime d'elements, dont chacun, representatif du tout, ne 
 s'en distingue et ne s'en isole que pour une pensee capable 
 d'abstraire. Telle est sans doute done la representation que se 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 53 
 
 I 
 
 ferait de la duree un etre a la fois identique et changeant, qui 
 n'aurait aucune idee de I'espace. Mais familiarises avec cette 
 derniere idee, obsedes meme, par elle, nous I'introduisons a notre 
 insu dans notre representation de la succession pure ; nous juxta- 
 posons nos etats de conscience de maniere a les apercevoir 
 simultanement, non plus I'un dans I'autre, mais I'un a cote de 
 I'autre ; bref, nous projetons le temps dans I'espace, nous ex- 
 primons la duree en etendue, et la succession prend pour nous la 
 forme d'une ligne continue ou d'lme chaine, dont les parties se 
 touchent sans se penetrer." {Ihid. p. 77.) 
 
 Time thus conceived is a bastard conception, due to 
 the intrusion of the idea of space into the domain of 
 pure consciousness. 
 
 Space, in which all juxtapositions occur and no 
 successions, is purely quantitative, discontinuous, and 
 divisible ; and this bastard time, of which clock-time is 
 the glaring example, takes on all the quantitative char- 
 acteristics of space. Past, present, and future, the time 
 we divide into moments, days, and years, is quantitative, 
 is spatial. In pure Time there is no past, present, and 
 future, only duree, the past which '' bites into " (qui 
 mord sur) the present, the present that bites into the 
 future. 
 
 There are no interstices in time. 
 
 Let us take it at that and see what happens. 
 
 You can never say of pure Time that so much of it 
 has passed, an hour, a minute, or a second. This is the 
 spurious time which is really spatial, measured by the 
 shadow on the dial, the sand in the hour-glass, the hands 
 on the clock. Moreover, shadow and sand-grains and 
 hands move, and movement is in space. 
 
 This is plausible — and we shall presently see why. 
 
 It must follow that if I beat time : tum — tumty — 
 turn — ^tum : tumty — ^tumty — ^tum, I am really beating 
 space. For, though a tumty is equal to a tum, their 
 equality is of space and not of time. For all the time 
 
 I 
 
54 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 55 
 
 they take, there is no difierence between one hundred 
 and twenty-five tumties and one turn, seeing that there 
 are no interstices in Time's turn where its tumties could 
 
 creep in. 
 
 In fact, time is taken by M. Bergson as a convenient 
 stuffing for the interstices of space. 
 
 And, since Time is pure succession and not simul- 
 taneity, no two events can happen in the same pure 
 Time. And there is no time left for them to happen in 
 but that impure time which is really space. So that 
 *' Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born," 
 can only mean that the death and the birth occupy the 
 same space ; which is precisely what they are not doing 
 and cannot do. 
 
 Then there is Pure Space, which is quantitative, 
 measurable, infinitely divisible. Space is responsible 
 for the awkward interstices we do not find in Time. 
 And though we think of space as divisible, we perceive 
 it as extended, that is to say, continuous. According 
 to M. Bergson, in pure perception, immediate conscious- 
 ness, all contradictions are solved and all difficulties 
 overcome. Let us say, then, that we do actually per- 
 ceive space, or at any rate objects in space, as extended. 
 It is in space and space alone that objects can lie peace- 
 ably side by side. But I am afraid it follows that they 
 cannot succeed each other, for succession is of Pure 
 Time. Therefore there can be no movement. The 
 movements of molecules in bodies, and of atoms and of 
 electrons in ether, or wherever it is they do move, the 
 course of the stars in heaven, and the long succession of 
 motor buses and vans and taxis on earth, in the Strand, 
 is occurring, not in the Strand, and certainly not in Pure 
 Space ; but where the long succession of my thoughts 
 is occurring, in Pure Time. 
 
 You see what has happened ? Under M. Bergson's 
 
 I 
 
 skilful manipulation space and time have simply changed 
 
 roles. 
 
 For if quantitative time, in which events are simul- 
 taneous, is an impure and spurious time that is really 
 space, you may as well say that continuous space, in 
 which objects succeed each other, is an impure and 
 spurious space that is really time. 
 
 Again, M. Bergson's Pure Time is Duree, continuous 
 duration. But surely duration and succession con- 
 tradict each other every bit as much as extension and 
 divisibility ? 
 
 I do not think that M. Bergson can be allowed, more 
 than anybody else, to have it both ways. But his 
 contention is that in action, and in immediate percep- 
 tion which is based on action and on action only, you 
 do as a matter of fact get it both ways. You have got it 
 both ways before you have time to go back on the ^performance 
 and see what you have got, and how you have got it. It is 
 a performance that sets at nought all mathematical laws 
 of space and time and motion ; that takes no account 
 of the behaviour of hypothetical electrons in a hypo- 
 thetical medium. 
 
 M. Bergson gives a reality to sensible space and 
 sensible movement which he denies to mathematical 
 space ; consequently he has no difficulty in assuming 
 " real " movement. He argues that, because differences 
 of sensation depend on differences of movement, and 
 because differences of sensation are intensive, and 
 qualitative, and absolute, are of kind and not of quantity 
 or degree, therefore movement is absolute. 
 
 " In vain we try to base the reality of movement on a cause 
 distinct from it ; analysis always leads us back to movement 
 itself." 
 
 And this whether you watch the movements of 
 
 1 
 
 sa.li^aa&sfaaaA^i-^^'ae^'fiit ^Arm'-iSSSsi^ams^i 
 
56 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 57 
 
 objects in external space or are conscious of your own 
 movements in muscular sensation. 
 
 "... I touch the reaUty of movement when it appears to 
 me, within me, as a change of state or of quality.'' 
 
 Exactly as in my other sensations which are obviously 
 qualitative. 
 
 " Sound difTers absolutely from silence, as also does one sound 
 from another sound. Between Hght and darkness, between 
 colours, between shades, the difference is absolute. The passage 
 from one to the mother is, also, absolutely real. I hold, then, 
 the two extremities of the chain, muscular sensations in me, 
 the sensible qualities of matter outside me, and neither in one 
 case nor the other do I seize movement, if movement there be, 
 as a simple relation : it is an absolute." (La Matiere et la 
 Memoire, p. 217.) 
 
 Between these two extremities M. Bergson finds the 
 movements of external bodies properly so called. And 
 you would have thought that these bodies and their 
 movements might have given him pause. But no. 
 Some objects move ; others remain stationary. How, 
 he asks, can we distinguish between them ? How can 
 we distinguish between real and apparent movement 
 
 here ? 
 
 These questions he leaves unanswered. They are 
 beside the point. The question is, not how changes of 
 position in the parts of matter are accomplished, but 
 how a change of aspect is accomplished in the whole. 
 
 You see what has happened ? M. Bergson has 
 shifted the terms of the problem from movement and 
 immobility, that is to say, from that change of position 
 which is the very essence of the question raised, to 
 change of aspect of the whole, which was not in question. 
 If you accept change of aspect of the whole, as the 
 equivalent to change of position of the parts, you have 
 
 
 committed yourself, without further argument, to the 
 proposition that movement of objects in space is on all 
 fours with my sensations of movement ; it is qualitative ; 
 it is absolute. 
 
 And the real problem, change of position, with its 
 burden of quantitative spatial relations, of distance, 
 and the rest, has been quietly burked. 
 
 M. Bergson does not tell us how we can distinguish — 
 on his theory — between stationary and moving objects, 
 between real and apparent movement " here." The 
 question was trembling on my tongue long before he 
 asked it ; it excites still my burning curiosity. But he 
 is not going to satisfy my intellectual prurience. Never 
 shall I know how he squares it with a theory of move-, 
 ment as absolute and qualitative. Having demon- 
 strated that extension or space, as we perceive and feel it, 
 is continuous ('' le caractere essentiel de I'espace est la 
 continuite ") ; that only the unreal constructions of 
 mathematics put asunder what the God of immediate 
 consciousness hath joined ; and that science is in accord 
 with immediate consciousness in returning, after all, in 
 spite of appearances, to the " idea of universal con- 
 tinuity " (p. 219) ; and that all breaking up of matter into 
 independent bodies with absolutely determined contours 
 is artificial, he finds that the irresistible tendency to 
 constitute a discontinuous material universe comes from 
 Life itself. 
 
 " A cote de la conscience et de la science il y a la vie " (p. 219). 
 
 "Quelle que soit la nature de la matiere, on pent dire que 
 la vie y etablira deja une premiere discontinuite. . . . Nos 
 besoins sont done autant de faisceaux lumineux, qui, braques 
 sur la continuite des qualites sensibles, y dessinent des corps 
 distincts. lis ne peuvent se satisfaire qu'a la condition de se 
 tailler dans cette continuite un corps, puis d'y dehmiter d'autres 
 corps avec lesquels celui-ci entrera en relation comme avec des 
 
 
 Wliiftfifitfri#>*aa^^ 
 
 s^i'aJBaaa'ifiiilniiiiiiiiriiiiniiiiiriiMiiil 
 
 mm 
 
 im 
 
58 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM n 
 
 personnes. fitabUr ces rapports, tout particuliers entre des 
 portions ainsi decoupees de la realite sensible, est justement ce 
 que nous appelons vivre " (pp. 220, 221). 
 
 You could not have a more brilliant, nor, I believe, a 
 truer picture of the evolution and behaviour of living 
 organisms. But it is not a metaphysic that M. Bergson 
 has given us here. Unless we are to insist that the 
 operation of carving portions, as with a knife, out of 
 presumably pre-existing *' sensible reality " lands us m 
 a metaphysic, and a bad one at that. 
 
 What I would like to point out is that the " faisceaux 
 lumineux " of our needs have taken the place of the old 
 exploded " thought-relations " of idealism, the " diamond 
 net " into which the imiverse is cast, and that while the 
 function of the diamond net was to hold together, the 
 function of the " faisceaux lumineux " is to break up 
 
 and carve. 
 
 That is to say, Life does what Thought was blamed 
 for doing. It gives rise to the discontinuities and dis- 
 tinctions just now declared to be umeal, contradictory 
 and artificial. Vitalism may steal a horse, but idealism 
 mustn't look over the hedge. 
 
 And now the contradictions thicken. When we 
 carry Life's operations further we are prolonging vital 
 movement and turning our backs on true knowledge 
 (p. 221). Yet it is science that exacts this prolonga- 
 tion, and in the process '' the materiality of the atom 
 dissolves, more and more, under the gaze of the 
 
 physicist" (p. 221). 
 
 We have Life itself aiding and abetting him by 
 starting the disastrous process which represents, for 
 M. Bergson, " an ordinary form of useful action mal a 
 jyropos transported into the domain of pure knowledge " 
 
 (p. 221). 
 
 Why mal a propos ? If it belongs to the domain of 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 59 
 
 i 
 
 pure knowledge, it belongs ; if it does not belong, we 
 have no grounds for complaint ; and anyhow Life 
 began it. 
 
 However, the further the process is carried into that 
 domain, the more the physicist is forced to renounce all 
 hypotheses of solid atoms, of bodies formed of solid 
 atoms, and of real contacts between bodies — of such a 
 universe, in short, on which we have " most manifestly 
 a grip." 
 
 ' ' Why do we think of a solid atom and wliy of shocks ? Because 
 solids, being bodies on which we have most manifestly a grip, 
 are those which interest us most in our relations with the external 
 world, and because contact is the only means of which we can 
 apparently dispose in order to bring our body into action upon 
 other bodies. But very simple experiments show that there is 
 never real contact between two bodies which move each other ; 
 besides, soHdity is far from being a state of matter absolutely 
 cut and dried. SoHdity and shock, then, borrow their apparent 
 clarity from the habits and necessities of practical life — images 
 of this kind do not throw any light on the ultimate nature (fond) 
 of things " (p. 222). 
 
 These considerations, far from leading M. Bergson to 
 suspect that both in practical life and in the hypotheses 
 of pure knowledge we are dealing with appearances, far 
 from throwing doubt on the absolute reality of that 
 time and space and movement of which we have 
 immediate consciousness, confirm him rather in his view 
 that here, if anywhere, is the absolutely real world. 
 
 And so, while nothing can bridge for him the gulf 
 between this reality and pure knowledge — his whole 
 philosophy is based on this distinction— we have the 
 apparent contradiction that it is life, desire, action, the 
 very things held to be most manifestly " real," that are 
 responsible for the work of division, which, on the theory 
 
60 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 61 
 
 that life puts together and thought divides, should 
 belong to the intellect. 
 
 And on the very next page we are told, indeed, that, 
 while science tends to dissolve it more and more into 
 forces and movements, the atom " will preserve its 
 individuality for our mind that isolates it " ; the only 
 atom which science knows being, to Faraday, '' a centre 
 of forces," each atom occupying " the whole of space 
 to which gravitation extends," and " all the atoms 
 interpenetrating each other " ; while, according to 
 Professor Thompson, it is " ' a ring of invariable form, 
 whirling round and round in a perfect, continuous, 
 homogeneous, and incompressible fluid which fills 
 space.' " (I am translating M. Bergson's translation 
 of Faraday and Professor Thompson.) And, M. Bergson, 
 caught between continuity and discontinuity, and com- 
 mitted to the theory that the difference between all 
 qualities is absolute, while confronted by the view of 
 science and of common sense that movements go on 
 independently of us in space, which he admits to be 
 quantitative, concludes that " real " movement is the 
 " transport of a state rather than of a thing'' (p. 225). 
 
 There will, however, owing to that admission, still 
 be an irreconcilable difference between quality and pure 
 quantity, between the world of our " heterogeneous " 
 sensations and the world of " homogeneous " move- 
 ments independent of our sensations, unless it can be 
 shown that differences between " real " movements are 
 more than quantitative — that real movements are 
 " quality itself." 
 
 To this hopeful idea of real movement as quality 
 M. Bergson takes his flight. 
 
 Let us say, then, that '' real " movement is quality 
 and see what happens. All differences of movement, 
 differences in direction, distance, and velocity, will then 
 
 S' 
 
 1 
 
 be qualitative, absolute. There can be no degrees 
 between approach and distance and between fast and 
 slow. We are compelled to think of fastness and slow- 
 ness, and of distance and of approach and flight in terms 
 of absolute, irreducible moments. A strange doctrine 
 this for a philosopher who insists on the continuity of 
 real space and real movement and of real or pure per- 
 ception. I said " compelled to think " ; but this is 
 not an affair of the compulsions of our thinking ; when 
 you come to quality it is an affair of immediate percep- 
 tion and of life itself. And this " absoluteness " of 
 quality makes, not for continuity, but for discontinuity, 
 as far as " external realities " are concerned. 
 
 True, M. Bergson distinguishes between this qualita- 
 tive " real " movement and the movement which is the 
 subject of mechanics. But when it comes, as it must 
 come, to the relation between the two we are faced with 
 another difficulty. The movement which is the subject 
 of mechanics " is nothing but an abstraction, or a 
 symbol, a common measure, a common denominator, which 
 permits comparison of all real movements among them- 
 selves'' (pp. 225, 226). (The italics are not M. Bergson's.) 
 
 Now how, in heaven's name, can movement, thus 
 declared to be purely quantitative, serve as a common 
 measure and common denominator of all movements 
 declared to be purely qualitative ? In movement, as 
 such, not even immediate consciousness, the all-recon- 
 ciler, can discern the ghost of absolute quality. Not 
 until you (and science) have translated movement into 
 terms of energy, into intensity, which is quality again, 
 can you escape from quantity. Nor can you altogether 
 escape it here, since science presupposes amounts of 
 energy and degrees of intensity which immediate per- 
 ception knows nothing of. Not even in the interests 
 of Vitalism should we confuse those *' absolute '' 
 
62 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 qualities, those immeasurable intensities of sensation 
 which accompany the putting forth of energy with the 
 measurable intensities of energy itself. 
 
 In the same way the movements of our bodies are 
 attended by muscular sensations and sensations of 
 freedom and well-being which are purely qualitative, 
 but, I think, we have no business to argue from them 
 to the quality of movements. 
 
 But to return to these real and qualitative movements 
 of which quantitative movements are the common 
 measure and denominator. Looked at in themselves 
 (envisages en eux-memes) they are 
 
 " indivisibles which occupy duration, presuppose a before and 
 after, and bind together the successive moments of time by a 
 thread of variable quahty, which," M. Bergson says, " should 
 not be without some analogy with the continuity of our own 
 consciousness. ... If we could draw out this duration, that is 
 to say, Kve in a slower rhythm, should we not see, in proportion 
 as this rhythm slowed down, colours fading and lengthening out 
 into successive impressions, still no doubt coloured, but more and 
 more ready to merge in pure vibrations {ebranlements)V' (p. 226). 
 
 That is to say (unless the brilliance of M. Bergson's 
 style blinds me to his meaning), that those differences 
 in the movements of molecules, difierences of which I 
 am not immediately conscious, by determining the 
 qualities of my sensations, of which I am immediately 
 conscious, take on continuity and quality, so that their 
 world, the world of " unreal " vibrations, reflects in 
 some sort the continuity of consciousness. 
 
 We have seen that M. Bergson uses time as stufl&ng 
 for the interstices of space. We now see him using 
 qualities of sensation as stufiing for the interstices of 
 movement, which is as good as a confession that he can 
 no more get continuity out of his " real " movements 
 than he can out of any other movements. And his 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 63 
 
 adroit suggestion of "some analogy" does not disguise 
 the essential truth of the matter, that from first to last 
 it is the continuity of consciousness that has done the 
 trick. 
 
 What are we to make of a theory which seems, now, 
 our only clue to the very heart and secret of reality, 
 and now a splendid mass of incoherences ? We have 
 the " real " movements of which M. Bergson has just 
 said that the movements known to mechanics are the 
 common measure and denominator ; we know that the 
 laws of physics are based on those very laws of mathe- 
 matics which are not real in M. Bergson's sense of 
 reality, being the work of the intellect that divides ; 
 we have the qualities — sensations of which we are told 
 that they are absolute, that is to say, irreducible as any 
 atom ; and we have movements which, but for the 
 quality which is called in to stop their gaps, would be 
 as discontinuous as space itself. And with these irre- 
 ducibles M. Bergson builds up his certainty. 
 
 And the £lan Vital does not help him, since it began 
 the whole business of defining and dividing, of burrowing 
 and digging holes, as it were, in real space, and drawing 
 the contours of bodies to suit its own purposes. 
 
 And supposing we were justified in transferring the 
 quality of sensations to the molecular movements to 
 which we are obliged to refer them, quantity being thus 
 transformed into quality, the common quantitative 
 measure and the common denominator would no longer 
 apply. 
 
 What M. Bergson does not appear to admit is that 
 all space, even " real space," may be an intellectual 
 construction ; that there is no perception of extension 
 so immediate as not to presuppose it, so pure as not to 
 include it ; that, as the work of thought, it is as discrete 
 or as continuous as thought pleases, that is to say, it 
 
1 
 
 64 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 may be hoih ; and that, if it were continuous only, as 
 continuous as the real space of M. Bergson's immediate 
 perception, it would be no less quantitative on that 
 account. 
 
 I do not want to dispute M. Bergson's conclu- 
 sions : that matter is the vehicle and plastic tool of 
 ! the Ehn Vital ; that pure remembrance is a spiritual 
 manifestation ; and that with memory we are actually 
 in the domain of spirit. These are precisely the con- 
 clusions to which I believe the balance of the biological 
 and psychological argument inclines. But I do not see 
 that these conclusions are supported by a theory which 
 begins and ends in metaphysical dualism, that tries to 
 establish " reality " on the far from stable ground of 
 action plus immediate perception, and that, in spite of 
 having coolly let " filter through " every consideration 
 inimical to its argument, lands itself in perpetual con- 
 tradictions in its efiorts to escape from the position it 
 has created for itself. 
 
 For, while it takes its stand on action and immediate 
 perception as alone affording the clue to the Real, and 
 asks us to suppose such absurdities as that homogeneous 
 space is logically posterior to " material things and the 
 pure knowledge that we have of them " — knowledge 
 that it declares, four pages later on, to be tainted with 
 the impurity of the sensations, " qui s'y melent " (p. 262) 
 — and that extension precedes space (p. 258), at the 
 same time, we are to suppose that it is this very same 
 homogeneous space that " concerns our action and our 
 action alone " (p. 258). 
 
 M. Bergson's aim is to escape the pitfalls of Realism 
 and Idealism alike, to '' resoudre les contradictions," 
 to " faire tomber I'insurmontable barriere," and at the 
 same time to " rejoindre la science." 
 
 L 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 65 
 
 He finds a common error in the realism of the vulgar 
 herd that takes for granted a world of things existing 
 plump and plain outside and independent of any con- 
 sciousness, and the realism of Kant that presupposes a 
 Thing-in-itself independent of and inaccessible to con- 
 sciousness : '' I'une et I'autre dressent I'espace homogene 
 comme une barriere entre I'intelligence et les choses" 
 (p. 258). 
 
 You wonder why Kant should be lumped with the 
 vulgar realist when he made of homogeneous space and 
 of time, not barriers erected, but forms of the intelligence 
 for the co-ordination of the data of sense. 
 
 The common error is that both realists made space a 
 condition a priori of experience ; whereas immediate 
 perception has no a priori elements, nothing is afore or 
 after another ; but our experience, consisting mainly 
 and primarily of action, so to speak, gathers space and 
 time with it as it goes along. Space and time will thus 
 be " given " with the sensations, co-ordinated by means 
 of them. It is not quite clear whether M. Bergson 
 means that sensations occur ready co-ordinated in space 
 and time, and that our perception reflects, as it were, 
 the given co-ordination, or whether it is we who co- 
 orciinate as we go along. From his theory of perception 
 co-ordination (of objects in space) would seem to be 
 given ; from his theory of action that we co-ordinate 
 would follow. Anyhow, co-ordination proceeds hand- 
 in-hand with experience, and is not provided for it 
 beforehand. 
 
 The shipwreck of Idealism, rather, is in " the passage 
 from the order which appears for us in perception to 
 the order which succeeds for us in science" (p. 253). 
 And Idealism and Realism proceed from a common 
 error, in that, on both theories, " conscious percep- 
 tion and the conditions of conscious perception are 
 
 F 
 
i 
 
 66 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM ° 
 
 directed towards pure knowledge, not towards action " 
 
 (P- 258). , :, f J 
 
 Here M. Bergson, and the great body of modern 
 pUlosopliy with him, part company with the meta- 
 physics of the past. He has put his finger on the weak 
 spot of all the transcendent theories— their neglect of 
 action: " toujours eUes neghgent le rapport de la 
 perception a I'action et du souvenir a la conduite 
 
 (p 254). 
 ' Let us see how a philosophy fares that is directed 
 
 towards action and action alone. 
 
 In order to escape Realism and IdeaUsm M. Bergson 
 identifies perception with " preparation for our action," 
 having " laisse filtrer," the work of intellect, its logical 
 constructions and presuppositions and the account that 
 science gives us of the real or assumed action of external 
 things, on the grounds that thought-relations and " real " 
 action are not given in immediate perception; but, 
 having decided that pure perception is concerned with 
 action and with action alone, and that " the body is an 
 instrument of action and of action only," he has less 
 difficulty than might have been supposed in estabhsh- 
 ing the correspondence between perception and cerebral 
 
 Yet we find in this correspondence that the cerebral 
 state is '' neither the cause nor the effect, nor in any 
 sense the duplicate," but simply the '' continuation " 
 of perception ; perception being " our virtual action 
 and the cerebral state our action begun '' (p. 260). It is a 
 '' correspondence," and yet it is a " continuation." It 
 is a continuation of perception, and yet not perception 
 
 itself. 1 xi. 
 
 Now the only way in which one thing can be the 
 
 continuation of another without being that thing itself 
 
 is for it to be an effect of that thing, the cause passing 
 
 n 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 67 
 
 over into, that is to say, continuing in the effect. And 
 yet this continuation - cum - correspondence of percep- 
 tion is not its effect. 
 
 And this perception — already doubly tainted by 
 identification with our virtual action of which our body 
 is the instrument, and the action of '' things " upon the 
 instrument — is what M. Bergson calls " pure." 
 
 And the taint does not end there. This theory of 
 pure perception must be " attenuated and completed." 
 Pure perception is mingled, further, with affections 
 (sensations) and recollections (memories). We have to 
 " restore to body its extension and to perception its 
 duree," to " reintegrate in consciousness its two sub- 
 jective elements, affectivity and memory " (p. 260). 
 
 We have seen what has happened to extension and 
 duree. We have now to see what happens to perception 
 and memory. M. Bergson, plunging into the very 
 thickness of experience, starts with the extremely one- 
 sided proposition that our body is an instrument of 
 action and of action only. The true role of perception 
 is to prepare actions. Perception is 
 
 " nothing but selection. It creates nothing ; its role, on the con- 
 trary, is to eliminate from the ensemble of images all those on 
 which I should have no hold ; then, from among the images 
 retained, to eliminate all which have no interest for the needs of 
 the image I call my body" (p. 255). 
 
 " The body is a centre of action and of action only. In no 
 degree, in no sense, under no aspect does it serve to prepare, 
 still less to explain, a representation ... all in our perception 
 that can be explained by the brain are our actions begun, or 
 prepared or suggested, and not our perceptions themselves." 
 
 So much for perception. 
 
 When it comes to memory, the body preserves motor 
 habits capable of bringing the past again into play ; 
 also, by " repetition of certain cerebral phenomena 
 
f^ 
 
 68 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 n 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 69 
 
 which prolong ancient perceptions, it will furnish to 
 remembrance a point of attachment with the actual, 
 a means of reconquering a lost influence over present 
 reality" (pp. 251,252). 
 
 We might ask how cerebral phenomena can " pro- 
 long " what they have never been concerned with. 
 But let that pass. We shall be involved in still more 
 serious contradictions before we have done with this 
 theory of perception as a preparer of actions only. We 
 are not quite sure whether we are to suppose that the 
 fimction of perception is not to perceive, or whether it 
 is to perceive only those things that make for action. 
 
 '' Here," says M. Bergson, " is my body with its 
 ' perceptive centres.' These centres are shaken and I 
 have a representation of things. On the other hand, I 
 have supposed that these shakings can neither produce 
 nor translate my perception. It is, then, outside them. 
 Where is it ? " M. Bergson has no hesitation in deciding 
 that it is " in " material objects. My perception " ne 
 pent etre que quelque chose de ces objets eux-memes ; 
 elle est en eux plutot qu'ils ne sont en elle." His 
 grounds for this view of perception are that in '' posing " 
 his body he " poses " a *' certain image," and with it 
 " the totality of other images " ; because his body has 
 its place in this assembly he concludes that his perception 
 must be there also. 
 
 And though the body and its cerebral shakings have 
 nothing whatever to do with his perception, which exists 
 outside them (can he mean as an independent object in 
 space ?), the unique role of these shakings is to prepare 
 the reactions of his body and to sketch out his possible 
 actions (''actions virtuelles "). Lest we should con- 
 clude rashly that in this case the roles of the cerebral 
 shakings and of perception are one and the same, he 
 tells us that perception consists in detaching from the 
 
 » 
 
 ensemble of objects — ^not particular objects or groups of 
 objects, but " the possible action of my body on them " 
 (p. 255). 
 
 So that, whatever else it may be, the primary function 
 of perception is not to perceive. 
 
 Perception, therefore, is selection. 
 
 Now this is surely giving a somewhat incompre- 
 hensible and contradictory account of a complex but 
 perfectly intelligible performance. Because perception, 
 in addition to its obvious function of perceiving — of 
 being aware of — and its less obvious and possibly dis- 
 putable function of posing its own objects, has a dis- 
 tinct reference to action, just as it has a distinct reference 
 to appetite and love and aesthetic emotion and moral 
 attitudes and intellectual interest and cosmic rapture 
 and mystic passion and every conceivable mode of 
 conscious experience, because both attention and in- 
 tention play a part in determining what perceptions 
 shall dominate our experience, making all allowances 
 for the part they play, we are still not justified in con- 
 tending that perception is nothing but selection with 
 an exclusive reference to action. 
 
 And it is the same with memory. Its primary 
 function is "to evoke all past perceptions which have 
 analogy with some present perception, and to recall to 
 us what went before and what followed after, and thus 
 to suggest to us the most useful decision among possible 
 decisions " (p. 254). True, this is not all. M. Bergson 
 distinguishes between physical memory, which is an • 
 afiair of motor habit associations, and " pure " memory. I 
 Pure memory holds together " in one unique intuition 
 the multiple moments of duree, it disengages us from^ 
 the movement of the flux of things, that is to say, fromj 
 the rhythm of necessity." But this unique intuition 
 again has a primary reference to action. " The more 
 
70 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 n 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 memory serves to contract these movements into one, 
 the more solid the grip on matter that it gives us ; so 
 that the memory of the living being seems to measure 
 beforehand the power of its action on things, and to 
 be nothing but the intellectual repercussion of if 
 (pp. 254-255). 
 
 After all, pure memory is not so very pure. Like 
 pure perception, it is tied and fettered to action of 
 which alone our bodies are the instrument. 
 
 " Observe," M. Bergson says, " the position we thus 
 take between realism and idealism." 
 
 We do observe it. We observe that in the interests 
 of the Elan Vital, M. Bergson has ignored everything 
 in consciousness that does not bear upon action ; and 
 that, in consequence of his wholesale rejections, his 
 position is between the devil and the deep sea. The 
 deep sea holds all the " relations " that he has let filter 
 through ; not only those despised ones which are the 
 logical framework of the actual, but those which science 
 reveals as part and parcel of the real ; and the devil 
 has rim away with the possibilities of sensation and the 
 " intermediary perceptions " which have *' escaped " him. 
 But, however irrelevant they may be to M. Bergson's 
 action, however slender their " grip " on matter, they 
 are not destroyed. The devil and the deep sea still 
 wait for the thinker who denies them. 
 
 " Supposing that my conscious perception has an 
 end (destination) which is altogether practical, that in 
 the ensemble of things it emphasizes (dessine) only those 
 which interest my possible action on them : I understand 
 that all the rest escapes me, and that all the rest, never- 
 theless, is of the same nature as that which I perceive " 
 (p. 257). 
 
 How do I, how can I know this if " all the rest " 
 has '' escaped " me ? 
 
 
 71 
 
 In order to suppose that conscious perception has 
 " une destination toute pratique," I have had to suppose 
 a lot of things besides : that '' homogeneous space is 
 not logically anterior, but posterior to material things 
 and to the pure knowledge that we have of them ; that 
 extension precedes space, . . . that homogeneous space 
 concerns our action and our action only, being like an 
 infinitely divided band that we hold below the con- 
 tinuity of matter in order to make ourselves masters 
 of it, to break it up in the direction of our activities and 
 of our needs" (p. 258). 
 
 This is all very well as long as we are considering 
 the psychology of animals and babies, whose adventures 
 in space and experiments in action are neither delayed 
 nor hampered by considerations of the logically anterior ; 
 but it is to ignore immense departments of adult psy- 
 chology, and it is not what is meant by a metaphysic. 
 If it were, if what is first in experience were first in 
 reality, why not start at once with the human embryo 
 or the protozoon ? Why bother about human psy- 
 chology at all ? Only you ought to know exactly what 
 you are doing. If you may light-heartedly '* laisser 
 filtrer " everything that makes Eealism what it is, plus 
 everything that makes Idealism what it is, on the one 
 hand, the '' real " space of mathematics on which all 
 the laws and conclusions of physics are based, on the 
 other hand, all psychic and logical processes which have 
 no immediate relation to action, of which action is not 
 the object and the aim, this is indeed to escape both 
 Realism and Idealism ; it is to escape all metaphysics ; 
 but it is hardly to " resoudre les contradictions," or to 
 
 faire tomber les insurmontables barrieres," or to 
 
 rejoindre la science." 
 But, when criticism has shown up all its weak points, 
 it remains a superb attempt to reduce the phenomena of 
 
 <c 
 
 a 
 
 ^ttmmm^i 
 
72 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 consciousness, with all its multitudinous references and 
 loves and interests, to a unity which shall not leave life 
 and action out of the account. For it is true that in 
 action, in life taken in the thick as it is lived, we do 
 get a fusion of perception and of memory and interest 
 and will, of time and space, in a continuity and one- 
 ness which knows nothing of the contradictions, the 
 dilemmas, the presuppositions, the infinite dividings 
 and limitings of the intellect. 
 
 It is no less true that neither Life nor action in itself 
 will deliver the secret of that fusion and that continuity. 
 
 In the very effort to escape those contradictions and 
 dilemmas M. Bergson has added to them those special 
 contradictions and fallen into those special dilemmas 
 of his own which I have just tried to make clear. 
 
 And what has happened to M. Bergson is what 
 happens to every philosopher who is out looking for his 
 J unity in the wrong place. That is to say, he has put 
 1 Puje Time before the Self. He has given to Time that 
 special form of continuity, the duration that belongs 
 only to a self. He has made Pure Time, in which 
 action happens, the beginning that it cannot be, and 
 thus brought it again under all the categories of spurious 
 time. To avoid the pitfalls that await him as the result 
 of his rash choice in priorities, he has transferred all the 
 contradictions and dilemmas of spurious time to space, 
 in the evident hope that they will find reconciliation 
 and solution there. Moreover, to escape the net of 
 illusion he has thus prepared for himself, he gives to 
 space — which he has identified with spurious time — 
 the purity and reality he denies to spurious time. He 
 is bound to do this in the interests of that " outside 
 world " which is the playground of the J&lan Vital — 
 that is to say, in the interests of that ultimate dualism 
 in which Vitalism begins and ends. 
 
 VITALISM 
 
 73 
 
 But he has shown us that time and space are corre- 
 latives, and that neither is to be thought of without the 
 other, that they work in and out of each other and play 
 into each other's hands. We are aware, both of the 
 position of objects in space and of the movement of 
 objects from point to point in space, which is, as it 
 were, a sort of succession in space. We are aware both 
 of the succession of events in time and of their simul- 
 taneity, which is, as it were, a sort of stationariness in 
 time. But it is neither space in itself nor time in itself 
 which is holding objects together. With pure space 
 alone you will never construct a synthesis of objects in 
 space, nor with pure time alone a synthesis of events 
 in time ; but if either construction is to be valid and 
 intelligible, a synthesis must be made of both. 
 
 And that construction and that synthesis, if it is to 
 he at all, will depend in the last resort on personal 
 identity, on an unchanging self. 
 
 On any theory except that of the " mechanical 
 equivalent," the construction and the synthesis will be 
 made in the last resort in consciousness, whether it 
 repeats or whether it corresponds with the arrangements 
 of the independent " Real," or whether construction 
 and synthesis in consciousness is all the construction 
 and synthesis there is. 
 
 For, if the self changed to each member of a final 
 synthesis, or to each member of an incomplete and 
 provisional synthesis, if it changed to each term of the 
 intricate system of relations within each synthesis — 
 to all the multitudinous changing events in time, to all 
 the multitudinous changing objects in space — if it 
 had no unity and no duration, there would not only 
 be no final synthesis, but no synthesis anywhere at all. 
 There would, obviously, be no time, and (not quite so 
 obviously) no space. Certainly no perception of space. 
 
74 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 n 
 
 \fJ^ 
 
 And this is positively the last opportunity for the 
 upholders of the superior necessity and priority of 
 Memory. They may say, with the most perfect obvious- 
 ness : Much more obviously there would be no time and 
 no perception of space without memory. 
 
 For, if time is the form of inner perception, and space 
 is the form of outer perception, is not memory the 
 synthesis of both ? 
 
 But is it ? Could it be ? Because memory holds 
 together all remembered objects in space and all re- 
 membered events in time, does it follow that it is re- 
 sponsible for the synthesis of time and space taken 
 together ? Or for the entire synthesis under each head ? 
 
 It would not be possible unless all consciousness, 
 and time and space themselves, were nothing but 
 memory. But what of the original synthesis— the 
 perception of objects in space ? What of the perception 
 of the first member of a series in time ? Because they 
 have been buried under layers upon layers of repeated 
 images that are memories you cannot say that there 
 never was any original synthesis, never any perception 
 of a first member of a series. And we are continually 
 confronted with new arrangements of old material, 
 new successions in time, new juxtapositions in space ; 
 and though the material is old, recognized, therefore, 
 and remembered as much as perceived, the sjmthesis 
 « is new. The new perceptions, the new sjmthesis escape 
 for ever the net of memory. 
 
 What, then, holds perception and memory together ? 
 
 And is it more truly memory or the Self that makes 
 
 us '' seize in one unique intuition the multiple moments 
 
 of duration, frees us from the movement of the flux of 
 
 things, from the rhythm of necessity " ? 
 
 '■V 
 
 III 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 7fi 
 
 
Ill 
 
 1 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 In what, then, does Individuality consist ? Not in 
 our memories, even supposing that they are pure, for 
 we have seen that they presuppose us. Not in our 
 individual experiences, in the fact that such and such 
 things happened to us and to nobody else ; for this 
 is to plant our individuality outside ourselves in pre- 
 cisely those events over which it has least control. 
 Besides, we have no reason to suppose that our experi- 
 ence is unique and every reason to suppose the contrary. 
 Still, when we reflect, we do suppose it, in the sense, 
 not that our experiences are in any way extraordinary, 
 but that precisely this order and arrangement of experi- 
 ences which we call ours has never occurred before. 
 
 But no possible arrangement of experiences will 
 yield or make recognizable a self that is not presupposed 
 in the arrangement and has had no hand in it. We have 
 a sense of individuality ; we find, if we look for it, that 
 we have a sort of self-feeling. I do not mean self- 
 consciousness. I am not thinking of our general feeling 
 of possessing a body, a feeling which is made up of 
 muscular sensations more or less insistent, and of visceral 
 sensations more or less vague. I am not thinking of 
 what is called feeling-tone (23), for this may differ, if not 
 from moment to moment, from day to day, or even 
 from hour to hour. All these feelings which come to 
 
 77 
 
78 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 US througli our bodies help our sense of individuality. 
 But I am thinking of something more akin to memory, 
 of that feeling which is not memory, but which accom- 
 panies it and gives it the quality which makes it ours, 
 saturating it like a perfume, staining it like a colour, 
 always recognizable as the same perfume and the same 
 . stain. To place our individuality in self -feeling is so 
 far satisfactory that it does at least attempt to explain 
 why our memories are recognizable as ours. It is as if 
 we scented ourselves out all along our track. I may 
 say I do not know whether my experience is really mine, 
 or whether I am simply part of an experience labelled 
 mine for convenience' sake ; or, granting that I am I, 
 I still do not know from moment to moment whether 
 I am the same self, or whether another self arises on 
 the top of me and takes possession of my memories ; 
 but I do know that something reacts with the same 
 feeling to all my memories all along the line, that it is 
 reacting now to the contents of my immediate con- 
 sciousness, and that when I dream I shall find it in my 
 dreams ; and I take it that this something either is 
 me, or involves somewhere a continuous and not a dis- 
 crete me. 
 \ Does self-feeling yield the secret of individuality ? 
 
 No. Self -feeling helps to fix our floating sense of 
 individuality, and so far justifies us in calling it self- 
 feeling ; and no doubt it enters largely into the building 
 \ up of the superstition of the self. But our sense of in- 
 j dividuality is one and the existence of the self another. 
 Mere self-feeling goes no way towards proving that the 
 self is more than a superstition. Self -feeling, though a 
 fairly continuous accompaniment of memory, is vague ; 
 and from its peculiar vibrant emotional quality we may 
 suspect it to be nothing more than a sort of general 
 reverberation of the memories themselves. Even if it 
 
 i 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 79 
 
 be something more than that, it is something that 
 accompanies consciousness and not anything that could 
 conceivably bind it together and make it one. And 
 if Personal Identity is nothing more than such an 
 accompaniment, it will fare no better than if it were 
 nothing more than memory. 
 
 But what about that peculiar vibrant and emotional 
 quality we noted ? This accompaniment of self-feeling 
 is not always the same. It has degrees of intensity ; 
 it attaches itself more to some memories than others ; 
 it is stirred to a stronger glow by some associations 
 than by others. It seems to know and to remember 
 almost " on its own." It, then, has preferences. In 
 short, self - feeling, this indestructible haunter of 
 memories, has about it more than a suggestion of the 
 Will-to-live in its aspect of interest and desire. 
 
 Are we to say, then, that the secret of Personal 
 J Identity and Individuality is to be found in Will ? 
 
 This certainly seems to bring us nearer to the root of 
 the matter. And it has the advantage of being definitely 
 thinkable as antecedent to experience, and therefore 
 to memory, and of being traceable in the lowest con- 
 ceivable germ of Personality — the will-to-live, the need 
 to appear, to grow, to reproduce the self, to gather 
 experience and appear more and more. In a sense it 
 is the stronghold of individuality. For it is with his 
 will that the individual fences himself off and asserts 
 himself against other individuals. It is with his will, 
 in the form of interest and love, that he draws near to 
 them and is drawn, and so makes his personality greater, 
 through theirs and theirs through him. And at every 
 stage of his biological ascension it is his will that is 
 the mainspring of his sublimations. It is through his 
 will, through his need, want, desire, interest, affection, 
 love, that he appears as self-determined. 
 
80 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 It is his will as energy that, whether in resistance 
 or obedience, knits him to the forces of the " real " 
 world outride himself. 
 
 It is his will that in submitting or aspiring, in adora- 
 tion or in longing, links him to the immanent and 
 transcendent Reality that he calls God. 
 
 The perfect individual is the person perfectly adapted 
 to reality through the successive sublimations of his 
 
 will. 
 
 It is clear that the will of such a creature is not, any 
 more than his perception or his memory, concerned with 
 action only. 
 
 Before we go farther let us take stock of our results 
 
 so far. 
 
 We have refused to identify the self entirely with 
 its own memories, to find the secret of personality in 
 the fact that such and such experiences have been ours ; 
 for this is to plant our personality outside, in extraneous 
 and probably accidental happenings, without taking 
 account of its interior reactions ; besides begging the 
 possible question of its existence. 
 
 We found a faint aroma of selfhood in the self-feeling 
 that accompanies consciousness ; and though this may 
 be, and very probably is, due to some inner working of 
 a self, and though it has a warmth and intimacy that 
 we look for in vain in what we call " self -consciousness," 
 it was not comprehensive enough for us to hope to 
 find in it the secret of selfhood. 
 
 So far as that secret is discoverable at all, we seem 
 \ to find it in the Will. The will seems to us at once 
 the most ancient, the most comprehensive, and the most 
 intimately self -revealing of the powers of self. It seems 
 the surest and the most conspicuous bridge from the 
 inner to the outer world. Also we have seen every 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 81 
 
 reason for supposing that processes and actions which 
 are now involuntary and unconscious were once conscious 
 and willed ; we had even some reason for supposing that 
 the very machinery of such processes may have been 
 built up gradually under the impulse of the will ; that 
 the will, working through coimtless generations, may 
 be itself the builder and the engineer of our bodily and ^^ 
 mental machinery. 
 
 We considered the theory of Vitalism, with its 
 assumption of Matter as an independent outside solid 
 substance offering itself to the " grip " of Spirit and 
 carved by our needs as by a knife. We found that 
 this theory, and its attempt to base perception and 
 memory upon action only, ends in contradiction and 
 dilemma ; and we concluded that to refer will likewise 
 to action only is to ignore the actual range of desire i 
 and interest and love. 
 
 So wide is that range that we might well rest in 
 the conclusion apparently forced on us that the will is 
 the Self. 
 
 And yet, if we were to put our conclusion to the test, 
 we should find that, though it has served us so far 
 infinitely better than self-feeling and memory, though, 
 so to speak, there is more self in will than in memory 
 or self-feeling, it still falls short of complete selfhood ; 
 because, though intimate and comprehensive — more 
 intimate than either memory or self-feeUng — it is not 
 comprehensive enough ; not nearly so comprehensive, 
 in fact, as memory. It will not give us the synthesis 
 we want ; the synthesis of all our states of consciousness, 
 itself included ; so far as will is a state of consciousness 
 at all. 
 
 That is to say, so far as consciousness includes states 
 which are not states of willing, but states of feeling, 
 perceiving, remembering, conceiving, judging, reasoning, 
 
 G 
 
 J4 
 
82 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 
 and imagining, the unity of consciousness cannot be 
 found in Will. 
 
 We have now three alternatives. A complete irre- 
 concilable dualism between Will and Idea ; a dualism 
 that may fall " outside " consciousness, between the 
 Will as the Unconscious and consciousness as the Idea ; 
 or that may fall " inside " consciousness itself, in which 
 case it is all up with the unity of consciousness ; or a 
 partial dualism within consciousness, which allows of 
 the interpenetration of Will and Idea, and of interaction 
 between them, without necessarily admitting selfhood 
 as the unity of all conscious states. -— 
 
 (These two forms of dualism will face us equally, 
 whether we regard consciousness as a by-product of the 
 physical mechanism, or as wholly or partially independ- 
 ent of it.) 
 
 Or there is a unity of selfhood, of personal identity, 
 prior to consciousness as its condition, or arising with 
 it, at any rate, in no sense arising /rom it, a unity in 
 which alone Will and Idea can be held together. 
 
 For it may be argued^ — it is argued with extreme 
 plausibility — ^that Will and Idea are in no more awkward 
 position than any other two states of consciousness 
 considered out of relation with each other ; and that 
 when they are taken in relation, the very relations 
 themselves provide all the plaster necessary to stick 
 them together ; that this will hold good whether the 
 relations are regarded as thought relations in conscious- 
 ness, or as " real " relations outside it ; that if these 
 relations do not and cannot bind, there is no conceivable 
 unity that, added to them, will do their binding for them ; 
 while if they do bind that is enough ; it is at any rate 
 all we have any right to ask. For instance, will and 
 idea come together and are suflSciently held together in 
 
 s 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 83 
 
 purpose or design. Thus the unity of selfhood is either 
 powerless or superfluous. 
 
 This argument is much more formidable than it 
 looks at first sight. So formidable that it can only be 
 dealt with later on when we are considering the ultimate 
 questions of metaphysics. For the moment our problem 
 is psychological. 
 
 Needless to say, the hypothesis of unity is thoroughly 
 inconipatible with the mechanical by-product theory of 
 consciousness, and does not necessarily " go with " the 
 partial independence theory in itself. 
 
 Now I have tried to make it clear under separate 
 heads that personal identity is not memory, is not self- 
 feeling, is not will ; but it may be just possible that this 
 disposing of under separate heads was the secret vice of 
 my whole procedure ; and that, though the self cannot 
 be any one of the three, it may very well be all three 
 taken together. Personal identity, the self, the unity 
 of consciousness may be the sum of our states of con- ^ 
 sciousness taken together, and it may be nothing more ; 1 
 in such sort that when there are no more states of A 
 consciousness there is no more personal identity. 
 
 And though I have stated repeatedly that this unity 
 and this sum presuppose personal identity, I am aware 
 that logical presupposition is not enough unless it can be 
 shown that this unity is more than a sum, and that it is 
 of such a sort that it is not only unthinkable, but un- 
 workable without personal identity. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that there was another 
 alternative, the mechanical by-product theory, the 
 theory on which consciousness is, as it were, given off 
 (hke a gas) by the neural processes which are its physical 
 antecedents and correlates, is resolvable into them, and 
 ceases when they cease. 
 
 If I have not paused to dispose of this theory before 
 
i 
 
 84 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 going further it is because I mean to return to it also 
 later on. Meanwhile, if we succeed in establishing 
 personal identity as a working hypothesis, the indis- 
 pensable condition of consciousness as we know it, the 
 importance (for Psychology) of the by-product theory 
 will collapse in the process (24). 
 
 But Personal Identity must do something for its 
 Hving before we can be allowed to presuppose it in the 
 light-hearted manner of the foregoing. 
 
 And as I took Samuel Butler as a classic authority 
 on the behaviour of the psyche in its human and pre- 
 human past, I am going to take Mr. William McDougall 
 as a classic authority — and on the whole, the clearest, 
 simplest, and most convincing authority — on the 
 behaviour of the psyche here and now. Not that the 
 two behaviours can be separated, or that any modern 
 psychologist would dream of separating them, but that, 
 while one large part of Mr. McDougall' s work necessarily 
 overlaps Butler's, a still larger part deals with psychic 
 powers and processes, all the synthetic and higher mental 
 functions which Butler leaves untouched. And though 
 a great deal of Mr. McDougall' s work is necessarily 
 founded on that of WiUiam James (every psychologist's 
 work is bound to cover the same ground as his pre- 
 decessors, and Mr. McDougall would be the last to claim 
 a superior originality), it also covers ground that has 
 appeared since the publication of William James's 
 Principles of Psychology, besides emphasizing several 
 important points of difference, and disengaging the 
 ultimate issue, if anything, with greater clearness and 
 directness and simplicity. 
 
 So simple and direct and clear is Mr. McDougall that 
 he puts a pistol to our heads and presents us with two 
 alternatives and two alone : Psychophysical Parallelism 
 and Animism. 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 85 
 
 It should be stated at once, for fear of misappre- 
 hension, that Mr. McDougall does not make his psychology 
 a diving-board for a plunge into metaphysics. He tells 
 us in his Preface that metaphysical Dualism is an 
 " impHcation " he is " anxious to avoid." But he will 
 have none of Psychic Monism on any system. He 
 affirms a distinct dualism between soul and body. And 
 it should be borne in mind that, in the absence of any 
 higher unifying principle, his Animism lands us logically 
 in the Pluralistic Universe of William James. 
 
 Still, he not only allows us to have a soul, but his 
 aim is to make us see that, our consciousness being what 
 it is. Animism is the only theory which will be found to 
 work. 
 
 Before he consolidates his position he overhauls all 
 the alternative philosophical theories, and finds that all 
 but two are reducible to some form or other of Psycho- 
 physical Parallelism. 
 
 The two outstanding forms are both Monisms and 
 both by-product theories : 
 
 Physical Monism or Materialism, which regards con- 
 sciousness as the illusory by-product of the 
 mechanical processes of Matter (Epiphenomenal- 
 ism), and 
 
 Subjective Idealism or Solipsism, or Complete Egoism, 
 which regards the whole universe, including matter 
 and its mechanical processes, as an illusory by- 
 product of the ^elf Alone. 
 
 The three remaining forms are grouped under the 
 head of Parallelism : namely 
 
 1. Strict Psychophysical Parallelism, which regards 
 physical processes and psychic processes as 
 running on two parallel lines that never meet, 
 
86 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 14 
 
 and have no branch Unes that intersect them, 
 each line representing a distinct and different 
 system of causation. According to this view 
 there is no sense in which the two may be 
 considered one. 
 
 2. Phenomenal Parallelism, which regards physical 
 
 processes and psychic processes as two aspects, 
 modes or appearances of one underlying Reality. 
 They run on purely phenomenal parallel lines 
 that never meet. The underlying Reality is 
 Spinoza's Substance or God, Kant's Thing-in- 
 Itself, Herbert Spencer's Unknown and Un- 
 knowable, Schopenhauer's and von Hartmann's 
 Unconscious. All these philosophers agree in 
 regarding their underlying Reality as neither 
 mind nor matter, and in declaring that, though 
 it might be a necessary postulate, it could not 
 be known. 
 
 They all afl&rm the complete phenomenal 
 Dualism of mind and matter. And Mr. 
 McDougall is one with their opponents in demon- 
 strating that their metaphysical 'Monism does 
 nothing at all to bridge the gulf. But in 
 deference to the underlying Unknown they all 
 figure as holders of Identity-Hypothesis A. 
 
 3. Psychical Monism, or Objective Idealism (Identity- 
 
 Hypothesis B), which regards all physical 
 processes and Nature, the sum of them, as 
 products of Thought. It is the redoubtable 
 theory of the world as " arising in consciousness." 
 
 I am following Mr. McDougall rather than my own 
 inclination in including the Objective Idealist as a 
 Parallel-liner. But Mr. McDougall' s classification will 
 serve my purpose as well, for his sinister intention is to 
 
 \ 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 87 
 
 expose the latent dualism of that system, not in the 
 interests of any metaphysical Monism he may have up 
 his sleeve nor yet of a Pluralistic Universe, for he does 
 not exalt his souls to ultimate principles, but for the 
 sake of the cross correspondence he is to prove. 
 
 I do not think that Mr. McDougall's dealings with 
 " Psychical Monism " are always entirely satisfactory. 
 Objective Idealists might object to being called Psychical 
 Monists, and they would certainly be surprised to find 
 their universe described as the " shadow of thought." 
 Again, I think Mr. McDougall somewhat underrates the 
 importance of strict Psychophysical Parallelism, which 
 is, after all, his real, or at any rate, his legitimate adver- 
 sary. For in an encounter with any of the alternative 
 systems he runs the risk of attacking ultimate meta- 
 physical principles with merely psychological weapons ; 
 that is to say, he may be carrying an argument that holds 
 good in one sphere into another where it may not hold 
 good at all. Moreover, his own theory of Animism — 
 interaction and all — ^is by no means incompatible with 
 " Identity-Hypothesis A," for which the soul itself may 
 figure as a phenomenon or aspect of the underlying 
 Reality. 
 
 We will see how he disposes of his five alternative 
 theories. 
 
 Materialism, and Subjective Idealism, the mechanical 
 by-product and Self- Alone theories fall an easy prey. 
 
 Materialism has on its side a formidable array of 
 arguments from facts. It can point to certain un- 
 deniable and invariable sequences of cause and effect. 
 All sorts of disturbances and alterations of consciousness 
 arise when poisons are introduced into the blood, from 
 the excitement or stupor of intoxication to the profoimd 
 coma of Bright's disease. Again, my brain processes 
 slacken down, and I pass into the unconsciousness of 
 
 
88 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 dreamless sleep. They are interfered with by the 
 rupture of a blood-vessel, and, either special departments 
 of my consciousness are interfered with, or I lose con- 
 sciousness altogether, or for so long as the interference 
 lasts, that is to say, according to the extent and persist- 
 ence of the lesion. My brain processes cease alto- 
 gether, and — ^the inference seems too obvious to state. 
 
 And yet the extreme conclusion does not follow 
 unless materialism can show that physical processes 
 y( give rise to consciousness in the first place. If they 
 cannot, there will be no need to infer that their ceasing 
 must cause its extinction. And ultimately the argument 
 for materialism rests on two laws and a corollary : the 
 law of causation, according to which the cause passes 
 over into its effect, and is discernible therein ; and the 
 law of the conservation of energy, according to which all 
 the energy in the universe is a constant quantity which 
 can neither be added to nor diminished (25) ; the corollary 
 being the biological law of the continuity of evolution. 
 Mr. McDougall points out {Body and Mind, pp. 150-151) 
 that the mechanical theory of consciousness saves the 
 law of conservation of energy at the expense of the law 
 of causation ; for there is no sense in which it can be 
 said that molecular change, the presumed '' cause " of 
 sensation, passes over into its effect. It also breaks 
 the biological law ; since, however undefined, however 
 dim the borders between the conscious and the un- 
 conscious, there could hardly be a greater breach of 
 continuity than the appearance of consciousness when 
 it finally emerges at some point in the course of 
 evolution. 
 
 As for the Subjective Idealist or the Self-Aloner, 
 Mr. McDougall does not take the trouble to demolish 
 him, regarding the mere statement of his case as suffi- 
 cient demonstration of its absurdity. " With the 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 89 
 
 Solipsist we cannot argue, but all of us are agreed 
 that Solipsism is an impossible attitude for a sane 
 man " (26). 
 
 So that the true alternative, the real opponent is 
 Psychophysical Parallelism in its three forms : Identity- 
 Hypothesis A, Identity-Hypothesis B, and Strict Psycho- 
 physical Parallelism. 
 
 The theory of the " two aspects " and the Underlpng 
 Identity (Identity-Hypothesis A) is open to the objection 
 that as the " aspects " are " two events of radically 
 different orders and are apprehended in two radically 
 different ways," that is to say, are incommensurable 
 and devoid of any common term, they are not intelligibly 
 referable to any real process underlying them. 
 
 I confess I cannot understand Mr. McDougall's " still 
 more serious objection." He says very truly that a 
 thing can appear under two different aspects " only if 
 and when both aspects are apprehended by the mind of 
 some observer " ; and he argues that because 
 
 " in the case of the physical and the psychical processes which are 
 said to be the aspects of one real process, there is no such observer 
 occupying the inner standpoint and apprehending the inner or 
 psychical aspect of the real event, except in the altogether 
 exceptional case of the introspecting psychologist " (Body and 
 Mind, pp. 157, 158) ; 
 
 therefore, neither the real event, nor the physical event 
 nor the psychic event are apprehended at all. All we 
 know of the real event is its two aspects ; and all we know 
 of the physical event is known, not in its own terms, but 
 m terms of consciousness which is the other aspect; 
 and only a consciousness that was aware of its own 
 brain processes could occupy the position of observer 
 of the inner event. 
 
 i 
 
90 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 Surely all that the theory takes for granted is the 
 undeniable fact of a stream of consciousness, and the 
 undeniable fact of a stream of physical events ; on the 
 one hand, the mysterious behaviour of mind, on the 
 other the mysterious behaviour of matter, including 
 our brain processes (which are part of the outer and not 
 of the inner event), and is not obliged to presuppose an 
 inner spectator of the entire inner stream. You might 
 as well argue that, as the physical events are only 
 apprehended partially and not entirely, the underlying 
 reality is not manifested in them. The real crux of the 
 position being, not that there is no spectator of the 
 inner event, but that there is one inner spectator of both 
 outer and inner events ; while of the real event there is 
 not any spectator at all ; and while both aspects are 
 to some extent given, and both to some extent known, 
 the underlying reality (substance or process) in which 
 both are one, remains unknown and unknowable. A 
 situation baffling to the intelligence ; yet its supporters 
 might answer that they can't help it if it is, and that 
 intelligences were born to be baffled. 
 
 Next comes the theory of Psychical Monism or Objec- 
 tive Idealism ; the theory of Consciousness as the All, 
 the Only Reality, and of the world as arising in con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 This theory is held in too many forms to be broken 
 quite so easily as Mr. McDougall breaks it, on the " unity 
 of consciousness," though his argument is destructive 
 to the loose Monism of his own principal opponents. 
 
 " My consciousness is a stream of consciousness which has a 
 certain unique unity ; it is a multiplicity of distinguishable parts 
 or features which, although they are perpetually changing, yet 
 hang together as a continuous whole within which the changes 
 go on. This then is the nature of consciousness as we know it. 
 
 ra ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 91 
 
 Now it is perfectly obvious and universally admitted that my 
 stream of consciousness is not self-supporting, is not self-sufficient, 
 is not a closed, self-determining system ; it is admitted that 
 each phase of the stream does not flow wholly out of the pre- 
 ceding phase, and that its course cannot be explained without 
 the assumption of influences coming upon it from without. What 
 then are those influences ? The Psychical Monist must reply — 
 They are other consciousnesses. How then about the process 
 by which the other consciousnesses, the other streams of con- 
 sciousness, influence my stream of consciousness ? Is this also 
 consciousness ? (For, we are told, all process is conscious 
 process.) If so, it also is a stream of consciousness, and it miist 
 influence my stream through the agency of yet another stream, 
 and so on ad infinitum. Thus my consciousness itself, by reason 
 of the fact that it hangs together as a stream of process relatively 
 independent of other streams of process, impHes the essence 
 of what is meant by substantiality, namely, the continuing to 
 have or to be a numerically distinct existence, in spite of partial 
 change." (Body and Mind, pp. 162-163.) 
 
 The fact of the unity of consciousness can certainly 
 not be accounted for or explained on the simple theory 
 of consciousness as a stream or streams^ or as any 
 sequence or even conglomeration of merely " associ- 
 ated " states. The inner weakness of this form of 
 Psychical Monism is confessed by one of its ablest repre- 
 sentatives, Professor C. A. Strong, who turns up more 
 than once in Mr. McDougall's pages with his distressful 
 query, " What holds consciousness together ? " As it 
 is manifestly impossible to get any unity out of a stream, 
 or rather out of many streams, he is driven to the 
 hypothesis of " psychical dispositions " as a substitute 
 for a soul. But psychical dispositions must either also 
 be part of the stream or streams ; in which case it is not 
 easy to see how unity is to be got out of them ; or they 
 must be " raised to the rank of extra mental realities, 
 and a system of such realities neither ' simple ' nor 
 
 :J 
 
92 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
 * undivided,' yet quite suiBiciently active, will form our 
 substitute for the soul," so good a substitute that Mr. 
 McDougall sees no difference between this theory and 
 Animism. 
 
 I am still following Mr. McDougall, and for the 
 moment I must ignore, as he does, the older theories 
 of Objective Idealism. Its adherents, so far from 
 regarding consciousness as a flux, saw it held together 
 in a firm net of '' thought-relations," to which it owes 
 its " objectivity." For them the unity of consciousness 
 was as the very rock of their belief. 
 
 Mr. McDougall, like his opponents. Professor Strong, 
 Professor Paulsen, Professor Munsterberg, and all the 
 witnesses to Psychical Monism whom he summons up, 
 look upon consciousness both as a stream and as some- 
 thing essentially disjointed ; and they all cry aloud for 
 something to '' hold it together." He has no difficulty 
 in breaking all their backs one after the other over the 
 " unity of consciousness," and finally settling them 
 with the problem of unconsciousness. It is obvious 
 that a stream of consciousness, even with central whirl- 
 pools in it of psychical dispositions, cannot have periods 
 or even moments of unconsciousness without ceasing 
 to exist. There are other arguments, drawn from other 
 qualities of consciousness ; but these two are sufficient 
 for the aestruction of the Psychical Monists. Fechner, 
 the author of strict Psychophysical Parallelism, is 
 twice broken, once as a Parallelist and once as a Psy- 
 chical-Monist. 
 
 It is hard to see why Fechner should be involved in 
 the special ruin of the Psychical Monists, though he 
 certainly held a somewhat unstable position mid- 
 way. Fechner's case is peculiar. He starts with a 
 vigorous Parallelism, and then, by what seems the 
 masterly inconsistency of his enthusiasm, lands himself 
 
 1 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 93 
 
 in Psychical Monism with his theory of Pan-Psychism. 
 All the same, he never abated one jot of his Parallelism 
 in his serious Psycho-Physik. But his Pan-Psychism 
 lands him peacefully in Animism, side by side with Mr. 
 McDougall, so far as he gives the ghost of personal 
 identity to his souls (27). 
 
 But, after all, what does his inconsistency amount 
 to ? He held that wherever we find matter we find mind 
 in some degree, however low. Not the smallest grain 
 of inorganic dust that has not its psyche. And he 
 held that wherever we find mind we find matter. This 
 position he defended to the last against all his opponents. 
 So far Fechner must be judged a Parallel-liner. Inside 
 his system he is almost fanatically consistent. But 
 he had an imaginative genius that would have been 
 dangerous to any system, and it carried him far beyond 
 the limits of his own. 
 
 But when we come to the strict Psychophysical 
 Parallel-liners, back-breaking isn't quite so simple a 
 matter. For they are the people who are punctiliously 
 just in weighing the claims of both sides ; they refuse 
 on any consideration to let the balance tip to one or the 
 other. And as Mr. McDougall is, if anything, still more 
 punctilious and still more just, it is not so easy for him 
 to make out a case for Animism against them. They are 
 less vulnerable because less adventurous. 
 
 Fechner's follower, Wundt, who outdoes his master 
 in simple Parallelism, is a formidable adversary, whose 
 views require rather more detailed consideration. He 
 lays down his parallel lines with laborious science and 
 strenuousness, and he runs his system along them with 
 sobriety and discretion. If it leaves the rails it is not 
 because Wundt allows himself to be distracted by 
 ecstatic visions of the cosmic soul. 
 
 4 
 
94 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 . Never, on Wundt's theory, can the two lines, the 
 physical process and the psychic process, hope to meet. 
 Between them there is equivalence and point to point 
 correspondence, for every neural change a psychic 
 change ; for every psychic change a neural change ; 
 with a sequence so invariable that where we can detect 
 the one we may infer the other ; but no connection, no 
 cross-correspondence from line to line, no interdepend- 
 ence, no interaction. 
 
 In psychophysical organisms 
 
 " body and soul are, for our immediate knowledge, one being, 
 not different. . . . When from all natural phenomena, and 
 therefore from all phenomena of physical life, we carefully 
 abstract the psychic processes, it is obvious that from these 
 objective processes, thus stripped of their subjective side, sub- 
 jective properties could never be deduced, just as, vice versa, the 
 deduction of physical life-processes from psychic experiences 
 as such is impossible. Body and soul are a unity, but they are 
 not identical : they are not the same, but they are properties 
 that are found together in all living beings." (Physiologische 
 Psychologie, vol. iii. chap. xxii. p. 767 et seq.) 
 
 They are not the same. How are we to conceive 
 the relation between them — their unity ? We are to 
 conceive it as a parallelism. And the Law of Parallelism 
 nms thus : 
 
 " Wherever and whenever we find ordered relations between 
 psychical and physical phenomena, these are neither identical 
 nor interchangeable (in einander transformirbar). For they are 
 not comparable one to the other ; but they are related to each 
 other in such a way that certain physical processes correspond 
 regularly with certain psychical processes ; or, to use a figurative 
 expression, they go ' parallel to one another.' This definition, 
 which we prefer to keep now that it has been once for all intro- 
 duced into psychophysiology is, however, only half correct. 
 It expresses very aptly the fact that the groups of phenomena 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 95 
 
 here brought into correlation are not identical, but not that there 
 is no ground of comparison between them." (Ibid.) 
 
 There is no bridge from the mechanical causality 
 that rules on the physical line to the teleological causality 
 that rules on the psychic line. 
 
 " Take the case of an act of will, try to break up the links 
 proper to the combined psychophysical series completely into their 
 physical elements ; in such a process starting point and ending 
 point will be connected up through all the intermediary Hnks 
 in the chain, and through all the conditions that accompany 
 them ; but this connection can never be thought of otherwise 
 than as a purely causal one. Whereas we cannot make the 
 proper teleological connection between ending point and starting 
 point of the (psychic) series until after the series is actually 
 completed, according to the universal character of teleological 
 connections." (Ibid. pp. 754-755.) 
 
 That is to say, in tracing the steps of the physical 
 process we go back and find the cause at the beginning 
 and the effect at the end of the series ; while in the 
 psychic series we go forwards and find the cause — the 
 design or purpose of our act of will — at its end and not 
 at its beginning. An act of will has always reference 
 to the future, is grounded in the future, while the 
 physical event is grounded in the past. 
 
 Again, in physical causality, cause and effect are 
 equivalent ; the cause passes over into the effect, so that 
 there is nothing in the effect that was not already 
 contained in the cause. In psychic causality the effect is 
 by no means already contained in the cause, and may 
 be out of all proportion to it. And, it may be added, 
 like causes do not necessarily produce like effects. Only 
 of subjective motive, as distinct from objective end or 
 purpose, can it be said that it is already contained, not 
 in the actual result of any given action, but in its general 
 
96 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 direction or tendency. The actual result may be 
 something that goes far beyond anything contemplated 
 in the purpose, something for which the motive is 
 utterly inadequate. For instance, I want to inflict a 
 slight physical injury on my neighbour for his good. 
 Reformation is my motive, chastisement my end or 
 purpose, death, by unrealized and undreamed-of violence, 
 the actual result. Neither violence nor death were a 
 part of my purpose ; they are in no way contained in, 
 nor are they commensurate with my motive ; but 
 chastisement may be said to be included in my general 
 policy of reformation. 
 
 I suppose it is something of this sort that Wundt 
 means by motives being '' already contained " in the 
 '' direction " of these results, as causes are in their 
 effects. 
 
 " In this sense," he says, '' every psychic connection of the 
 immediate contents of consciousness forms both a causal and a 
 teleological series. And that, not merely in the general regressive 
 sense which holds good of all natural causaHty, but also in that 
 specially progressive sense by which the End itself becomes 
 cause, and as such precedes its effect. To be sure, here too, the 
 end which, as motive, precedes its effect, is not identical with it ; 
 and thus far in this case also there remains a margin of causality 
 which stretches beyond causaUty itself." {Physiologische 
 Psychologies vol. iii. chap, xxii.) 
 
 Teleological judgment is based on this discrepancy 
 between the end proposed and the end accomplished. 
 It is a nice question of 
 
 " on the one hand comparing such and such results with the 
 motives which inevitably tend towards them (wehhe die Richtung 
 auf jene entMten), and on the other hand of valuing motives 
 according to the probable results." {Ibid.) 
 
 It will be seen at once that Wundt does not by any 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 97 
 
 means belittle the Psychic role. He has made over 
 to it the whole realm of teleology — a very handsome 
 concession — and of moral values. We shall see how 
 much more he has conceded when we come to his law 
 of the " creative resultants." 
 
 For the moment the chief points to notice about his 
 parallel lines are, first, that there is no common term 
 and no common value between them, no bridge of any 
 sort between the dual systems of mechanical and 
 teleological causality ; next, that every causal change 
 is the last link in a series of changes having their 
 starting-point in the vast physical universe outside the 
 body; whereas the psychic changes have, apparently, 
 no world of equivalent vastness to which they may be 
 referred. On the other hand, the psychic processes 
 show what William James would have called a '' thick- 
 ness " of their own. They are not only sequences, but 
 syntheses. They not only follow on, but stick together, 
 and stick together in such a way that the whole has a 
 different quality from its parts ; that is to say, it is 
 something more and other than the sum of the several 
 states which compose it, and is therefore a new thing. 
 
 For this newness and unexpectedness and otherness 
 that we meet with in every psychic synthesis, Wundt 
 found an admirable expression in his principle of the 
 " creative resultants." He calls them '' resultants," to 
 show that 
 
 "it is from single and empirically provable elements, or groups 
 of elements, that the synthesis is made, and in a strict accordance 
 with law analogous to that S5nithesis by which the components 
 of a mechanical movement give rise to their resultants." 
 
 But he qualifies the process with the adjective 
 " creative " to show that 
 
 " the effect is not, as in the case of a resultant movement, of the 
 
 H 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 98 
 
 same land and value as its components, but that it is a specifically 
 new event, m^ ready but not ready rru^, by its elements 
 ivarhereUetes aber nkht vorgeUldetes), and that its charactenst.c 
 value marks a newer and a higher stage than theirs. 
 
 For instance : 
 
 " A sound is more than the sum of the tones that compose it. 
 While these are melted into a unity, the ground-tone gams a 
 colour of its own through the overtones which, because of their 
 lesser intensity, have become powerless as independent elements , 
 these make it a very much richer sound than it could be as a 
 
 " LiSse every spatial perception is a product, or result, in 
 which, again, certain elements have lost their independence, and 
 impart to the result a completely new property-the spatial 
 order of sensations." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " In processes of wilUng the multiplicity of motives finally gives 
 rise to more and more complex forms of willing, which again, 
 as original psychic products, are difierentiated from the single 
 elements of motive which compose them." 
 
 But, lest we should build too much on this creative 
 principle, we are warned unmistakably that it refers 
 
 - only to syntheses and relations of such psychic contents as hold 
 together immediately, and never to such as are completely 
 separated ; even when these belong to a smgle individual con- 
 sciousness. In short, it is a principle that applies only to par- 
 ticular psychic events ; not a law that rules in spiritual evohition 
 generally." (Physiologische Psychxyhgk, vol. lu. chap, xxn.) 
 
 And we can no more draw conclusions from it as to the 
 future of existing spiritual values (or of spiritual beings) 
 than we can argue as to the future of the physical world 
 from the law of conservation of energy. 
 
 Meanwhile, the back of materialism is broken In 
 psychic processes we have got another principle of 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 99 
 
 causality altogether. We have something so new, so 
 different, that it cannot possibly be accounted for by 
 any mechanical or material process. 
 
 So far so good. But can strict Parallelism be kept 
 up ? Surely Parallelism implies correspondence of the 
 events on one line with events on the other. And 
 on a system of strict correspondence we should expect 
 to find that all events on one line were represented 
 somewhere on the other, or at least that all ascertain- 
 able sequences could be shown to correspond point for 
 point ; even when physical groupings do not correspond 
 with psychic groupings, and vice versa. But it is difficult 
 to see, on the one hand, how several million vibrations, 
 whose psychic correlate is a sensation of colour, are 
 represented in the psychic event, or, on the other hand, 
 how any conceivable grouping of nerve and brain cells 
 could represent or correspond with the perception of 
 objects in the field of vision. 
 
 Even if different qualities of sensations of the same 
 class are represented by differences in the rate of vibra- 
 tions, it is still difficult to see how differences between 
 classes — ^the difference, for instance, between sight and 
 hearing — are represented by any conceivable diflerences 
 in the construction, or disposition, or chemical quality 
 of molecules in the visual and auditory nerves. 
 
 So that, from the first moment of rudimentary con- 
 sciousness, Parallelism breaks down. And when the 
 psychic plot broadens and deepens, and its " thickness " 
 becomes apparent, the system definitely leaves the rails. 
 If it cannot stand the strain of such a simple psychic 
 process as elementary sensation, how is it going to 
 stand the strain of any psychic processes less simple 
 than those which are supposed to be accounted for on 
 the *' association" theory? (28) True, if memory and 
 the association of ideas are no more than the psychic 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 100 
 
 response to repeated stimulus of the same associated 
 nerve and brain cells, the faithful correlate of a purely 
 physical association, fixed by repeated treadmg of the 
 same nervous track, then physical habit and psychic 
 habit wUl run perfectly parallel. The parallelist's task 
 is even simpler than the associationist's, smce he has 
 not got to account for the psychic process causally at 
 
 all 
 
 We shall see how it is this too great simplicity of his 
 
 that wrecks him. 
 
 Here the crucial question raised by Mr. McDougall 
 
 turns on meaning. 
 
 " The parallehst has to beUeve that purely mechanical deter- 
 mination runs parallel with logical process and issues m the same 
 results He has to believe or at any rate assert, that every form 
 of human activity and every product of human activity is capable 
 of being mechanically explained. Consider then, a page of print, 
 the letters and words of a logical argument are impressed upon 
 the page by a purely mechanical process. But what has deter- 
 mined their order ? Their order is such that when an adequately 
 educated person reads the hues, he takes the meaning of the words 
 or sentences, follows the reasoning and is led to, and forced to 
 accept, the logical conclusion." 
 
 As for the author, for him the meaning and the logical 
 drift of his words and sentences was present in his 
 consciousness before and during and after the process 
 of writing ; his foreseen and foregoing purpose was to 
 demonstrate his meaning ; 
 
 *' his choice of words and order was determined by this purpose, 
 by the desire to achieve an end, a result, which existed only m 
 his consciousness. Now the parallelist necessarily maintains 
 that all this process ... is in principle capable of being fully 
 explained as the outcome of the mechamcal interplay of the 
 author's brain-processes : that a complete description of the 
 mechanics of these processes would be a complete explanation 
 
 I 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY lOl 
 
 of the ordering of the letters, words, and sentences." (Body and 
 Mind, pp. 174-175.) 
 
 I do not think that it is fair to the parallelist to fasten 
 on him a belief that the mechanical process, if known, 
 would account for the teleological process ; for that is 
 precisely what the strict Parallelist denies. And Wundt 
 would have been the first to insist on the purely teleo- 
 logical character of the process described. 
 
 Enough, if the Animist can show that there is a 
 teleological process on the physical line, that interaction 
 gives a better account of what goes on on both lines, 
 and that causation and teleology, so far from being 
 mutually exclusive, involve each other. 
 
 Mr. McDougall then asks : "Is there or is there not 
 any complete brain correlate of that part of our con- 
 sciousness which we call meaning ? " 
 
 The same question is crucial for memory. 
 
 Memory as mere habit -association is the great 
 psychic stronghold of the paralleUst ; and if it can be 
 shown that meaning is a determinant of association and 
 of memory, the stronghold will be very badly shaken. 
 
 In considering how associations are actually formed, 
 Mr. McDougall gives us a very clear and simple statement 
 of the case. 
 
 " Our consciousness comprises again and again complex con- 
 junctions of sensations which show no appreciable tendency to 
 become associated together. It is only when the attention is 
 turned upon the objects that excite sensations, and when the 
 sensations enter into the process of perception (serving as cues 
 that bring some meaning to consciousness) that associations are 
 formed. And even then, the forming of an effective neural 
 association is by no means an immediate and invariable re- 
 sult. . . ." 
 
 He illustrates this point by his own experience in 
 teaching his son, a clever and observant child of six. 
 
 S:iiri,»iwfe!M^rTlTilfli^^ il^sJik 
 
102 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 .The boy had no difficulty in learning the alphabet and 
 recognizing the forms of the letters. But, when it came 
 to naming each letter separately, many himdreds of 
 repetitions were required to fix the mechanical associa- 
 tion between the form of the letter and its name. In 
 learning to name numbers from one to ten 
 
 " an even larger number of repetitions of the naming were required 
 to establish really effective associations. 
 
 " This experience brought home to me very vividly the great 
 difference between memory and mechanical association. For 
 the boy, who required so many hundred repetitions for the 
 establishment of these simple mechanical associations, would 
 often surprise me by referring to scenes and events observed by 
 him months or even years previously, sometimes describing 
 them in a way that seemed to imply vivid and faithful repre- 
 sentation. Yet the memory pictures of such scenes involved 
 far more complex conjunctions of partial impressions than did 
 the remembering the name of a printed letter or number. 
 
 " The essential difference between the rememberings of these 
 two kinds was that in the one case meaning was at a minimum, 
 and remembering depended almost wholly upon mechanical or 
 neural association of the nature of a habit ; whereas the complex 
 scenes and events remembered (in some instances after a single 
 perception only) were full of meaning." 
 
 How crucial this factor of meaning is will be realized 
 
 when we consider the established psychological fact 
 
 that 
 
 *' an impression which is aheady associated with others acquires 
 new associations with more difficulty than one which is free from 
 previously formed associations, and that the difficulty is greater 
 the greater the number of the previously formed associations." 
 
 Hence, on the theory of mechanical association, 
 
 " the richer the meaning the greater should be the difficulty of 
 combining any complex of sense impressions and of reproducing 
 them as one memory picture ; it is therefore impossible to 
 account in this way for the fact that impressions which convey 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 103 
 
 much meaning are combined and remembered with so much 
 less difficulty than those of Httle meaning." {Body and Mind, 
 pp. 340-341.) 
 
 Mr. McDougall might have added that mechanical 
 associations have the longer ancestral history ; they 
 have been practised longer ; so that we should expect 
 their physical machinery to work with such an ease and 
 readiness as to render them pre-potent in determining 
 remembrance. What actually happens is clean contrary 
 to this— the higher, and biologically more recent, power 
 of appreciation of meaning rules the event. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mr. McDougall by any 
 means underrates the other side of the question. 
 
 " Neural associations or habits may so link groups of sensory 
 elements of the brain as to lead to successive revival of the 
 corresponding sensory complexes ... in so far as each sensory 
 complex has evoked meaning in the past, it tends to revive it 
 upon its reproduction and reinstate the idea in consciousness. 
 This is the process of the evocation of an idea from the neural 
 side. It plays only a subordinate part in the higher processes 
 of remembering." 
 
 For the idea is more than its sensory content ; it 
 is a " compound of sensory content and meaning." 
 And meaning, as we have seen, has escaped the net of 
 neural association. Yet the pre-potency of meaning 
 argues its persistency. 
 
 But — ^how or where do meanings persist ? 
 
 " Clearly," Mr. McDougall says, " they do not persist as facts 
 of consciousness. But the development of the mind, from 
 infancy onwards, consists largely in the development of capacities 
 for ideas and thoughts of richer, fuller, more abstract and more 
 general meanings. If then meanings have no immediate physical 
 correlates or counterparts in the brain, and if the meanings 
 themselves do not persist, we must suppose that the persistent 
 
 Ml 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 104 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ni 
 
 conditions of meanings are psychic dispositions." {Body and 
 Mind, p. 343.) 
 
 If anybody has a lingering doubt as to the possibility 
 of what is called the " psychic increment "—of psychical 
 dispositions and of psychophysical interactions — let 
 him ask himself what woidd happen if the automaton 
 theory of association really held good. The question 
 is crucial ; for, while all the higher mental processes 
 are based on association, it is still possible to acknow- 
 ledge the " creative " value (in Wundt's sense) of a 
 logical synthesis, and to deny strenuously that the 
 psyche has a hand in the associations themselves. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that it has no hand; that 
 it must always take what associations are given to it, 
 without any means of selection and rejection other than 
 the automatic stamping out of weaker and less frequent 
 associations by stronger and more frequent ones ; and 
 that these associations are formed strictly by neural 
 habits. We are told that, when two or more impressions 
 are received together, either often enough or with suffi- 
 cient intensity, a neural track from one to the other is 
 set up within the brain cell where both have met, a 
 track which henceforth becomes a line of least resistance ; 
 so that, either on the actual repetition of the one im- 
 pression, or its revival in memory, the other— through 
 the revived stimulation of the brain cell— spontaneously 
 and inevitably leaps forth. Suppose that this is all 
 there is in it ; suppose that we remember, never because 
 we choose, but always because we must ; and that our 
 memories are at the mercy of all sorts of random associa- 
 tions, being nothing but the revived stimulation of the 
 brain cells where neural paths having once met, meet 
 for ever ; suppose that there are no psychic dispositions, 
 no psychic interferences, no psychic preferences, and 
 no selections and rejections of associations, then our 
 
 
 r't 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 105 
 
 consciousness would be like nothing on earth but an 
 immense fantastic telephone exchange ; an exchange 
 where messages, indeed, received and registered and 
 answered themselves, but all at once, and in over- 
 whelming multitudes ; an exchange deafened and dis- 
 organized ; bells ringing incessantly all through its 
 working hours ; messages rushing in from all parts of 
 the city and suburbs at once, crossed and recrossed by 
 trunk calls from all parts of the outlying country ; 
 casually crossing and recrossing, interrupting and utterly 
 obhterating each other. 
 
 On these lines, neither logical departments nor central 
 control could possibly exist. Yet without some one 
 central sorting and supervising system, a system which 
 refused more calls than it received, mere automatic 
 association would have no more method about it than 
 that mad telephone exchange. 
 
 What is the more likely, not to say more conceivable, 
 theory : that the brain, which is itself the exchange, 
 the distracted hall where the infinite number of wires 
 meet and mingle, without aid selects and rejects, orders, 
 gives meaning, supervises, and controls ? Or that the 
 psyche uses the brain, and the memories which have 
 become the habits of its body and its brain, as its 
 machine, and its vehicle ; and that the secret of its 
 remembering and forgetting is its own ? 
 
 But if " psychical disposition " determines the 
 higher forms of memory, what, then, determines '' psy- 
 chical disposition " ? 
 
 As Mr. McDougall does not raise this question, we 
 may take it that he considers " the soul itself " to be 
 sufficient answer. 
 
 But, as you cannot cut the individual soul clean ofi 
 from its own history, from its long past existences, it 
 is just possible that preacquired experience may have 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 106 
 
 determined its individual " disposition," in the absence 
 of any permanent factor persisting in and partly deter- 
 mining those experiences themselves. 
 
 If there be such a permanent factor persisting through 
 past experiences, and in part determining them, it is 
 the Will ; and the Will itself will be in part determined 
 by past experience ; so much enterprise in seeking new 
 experience, so much adaptation to each experience found. 
 Go back to the earliest experiences of all ; say that the 
 first bit of protoplasm is formed in fulfilment of some 
 need, that the amoeba " improvises a stomach because 
 it wants to," and that our protoplasmic forefather did 
 the same thing for the same sufficient reason ; he may 
 be supposed to have taken the next step, and the next 
 step after that, also for the same reason, his want or 
 will determining his development and slowly but surely 
 shaping his memory, his associations, and his meanings 
 (when he has any), till in the long run (his intelligence 
 immensely helping) it has shaped the psychical dis- 
 position he is born with. If, at the top of the scale 
 to-day, Mr. McDougall's son's memory is determined by 
 meaning, is not that because of his psychic predilection 
 or choice of meanings ? 
 
 Is it rash to suppose that some such cumulative efiect 
 of will comes under the head of that " psychic increment " 
 of energy, which, as Mr. McDougall suggests, may in 
 all probability influence the behaviour of organisms ? 
 (He is trying to show that the law of conservation of 
 energy is not in itself fatal to the hypothesis of the 
 psychic increment.) 
 
 *' . . . all living organisms show certain peculiarities of be- 
 haviour that are not established by any inorganic aggregations 
 of matter. The pecuUarities of behaviour of Uving orgamsms, 
 especially the power of resisting the tendency to degradation 
 of energy which seems to prevail throughout the inorgamc realm, 
 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 107 
 
 are correlated with, that is to say, they constantly go together 
 with, the presence of psychophysical processes in them, and 
 this fact of correlation impUes causal relation between the two 
 things. . . . The few experiments which go to show that the 
 energy given out by an organism is equal in amount to the energy 
 taken in, are far too few and too rough to rule out the possibility 
 that psychical effort may involve increment of energy to the 
 organism ; for increments far too small to be detected might 
 effect very important changes in the course of the organic pro- 
 
 cesses. 
 
 If this hypothesis remains unjustified we have the 
 alternative possibility " that mind may exert guidance 
 upon the brain-processes without altering the quantity 
 of energy." In either case, the physical law of con- 
 servation is not one that can be legitimately applied 
 to energies presumably of a difierent order. 
 
 It seems to me that both alternatives, that of the 
 psychic influx (or increment) of energy and that of the 
 guiding influence of mind, are a little vague ; besides 
 being vulnerable to any experiment that may yet 
 estabUsh the law of conservation of energy in living 
 orgamsms. Whereas we do find that every act of will 
 is accompanied by the release of energy ; so much 
 so that desire seeking fulfilment may be said to be 
 psychic energy itself. Anyhow, whether as release or 
 as influx, it is the one psychic factor that appears the 
 fittest to play the decisive evolutionary role. It is the 
 one that lies nearest to life itself, that has the deepest 
 ground in our past and the highest reach into our future. 
 
 We have seen how the " psychic increment " may 
 work at the human level in the case of Mr. McDougall's 
 son. Let us see now what part it plays at a level slightly 
 lower than the human — in the case of Professor Thorn- 
 dike's cat. 
 
 wMliiimiiViriia^i "^*«fa''**'"'^&f ji 
 
108 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 m 
 
 Mr. McDougall is considering the process of acquiring 
 "new modes of bodily response to impressions" by 
 adaptation and movement. (Body and Mind, p. 318.) 
 Professor Thorndike, testing animal intelligence by 
 various experiments, hit upon the simple one of 
 shutting up a hungry cat in a cage within sight of a 
 saucer of milk placed outside. The door of his cage 
 was closed with a latch, which it was just possible for 
 the cat to open by a happy accident in his struggles to 
 escape. 
 
 " The cat, stimulated by the sight of food placed near the cage, 
 makes a great variety of movements, clamng, scratching, and 
 squeezing in all parts of the cage ; it runs through its vocabulary 
 of movement without the least indication that it appreciates 
 the presence of a door, or of a latch by moving which the door 
 may be opened. Sooner or later, in the course of these random 
 movements, the latch is moved by happy accident and the cat 
 escapes to enjoy the food. Now it is found that in nearly all 
 cases, if the cat is put back in the same cage on many successive 
 occasions, it gradually learns to escape more and more quickly ; 
 until eventually it goes straight to the latch and makes the 
 necessary movement." (Ibid. p. 319.) 
 
 Now on any theory which absolutely excludes the 
 psychic factors of desire and choice, and denies that 
 movement can be determined by anything but neural 
 habit associations, the cat's readiness to acquire the 
 habit of the rght movement is inexplicable. Why 
 just that particular movement of all the movements 
 he has made and repeated, each repetition setting wp a 
 neural habit ? Why should the habit of the successful 
 movement override the habits of the unsuccessful 
 movements, which have had the advantage of the 
 start, if desire and its fulfilment, if success or failure 
 are not to count ? 
 
 It is not necessary to keep a cat hungry and shut 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 109 
 
 him up in a cage within sight of food in order to test 
 the power of psychic associations over neural ones. 
 Everybody who has lived with animals, and loved them 
 and gained their love, must have observed what I may 
 call the pre-potency of their acquired affections over 
 long-established habit associations. (I am not sure 
 whether one may speak of the pre-potency of acquired 
 characteristics ! But an illustration will make my 
 meaning clear.) My own cat, like other cats, is obsessed 
 by his motor habits. Perhaps his most persistent 
 motor habit is his garden game of running away and 
 hiding in the bushes when I try to catch him. Indoors, 
 he is not happy unless he is sitting in my lap. There 
 he may be easily caught, and will even offer himself to 
 be carried like an infant in arms. Out of doors he will 
 not come to any call ; he will not be caught or touched 
 by any hand. My approach is the signal for his flight. 
 All through this summer, and last spring and summer 
 and autumn, all through the spring and summer and 
 autumn before that, he kept up his garden game, with 
 the same fixed gestures, the same lovely ritual of play ; 
 a ritual so invariable as surely to have become auto- 
 matic. This autumn I went away for seven weeks. 
 When I came back he was not in the house. I could 
 hardly suppose that if he was in the garden he would 
 come to me, since he had formed no habit of coming 
 when he was called. Still, I called him, and in an 
 instant he appeared on the wall of the next garden but 
 one. He stood there and stared at me till he had put 
 the voice and the figure together. Then he came 
 running fast, along the connecting wall into his own 
 garden, and straight into my arms. The rush of affec- 
 tion and of reminiscence had carried it over all the 
 motor habits of the garden game, and over all his 
 ancestral memories of pursuit and flight. 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 nt 
 
 110 
 
 Now if Parallelism cannot well account for the 
 behaviour of Professor Thorndike's cat, stiU less can it 
 account for the behaviour of my cat. 
 
 There are yet other psychic factors besides desire 
 and its opposite, aversion, which are not represented 
 on the physical side. There are pleasure and displeasure. 
 And there is a further problem : Do tUse psychic factors, 
 or does some neural process, determine the movements 
 of organisms? Grant that pleasant experiences are 
 beneficial and unpleasant experiences hurtful. 
 
 " If then " (I am still quoting Mr. McUougall) "' pleasure, 
 and displeasure are themselves the determinants of movements 
 of appetition and avoidance, we can understand how this 
 genera? agreement between the beneficial and the pleasurable 
 Ld between the hurtful and the disagreeable has been brought 
 about by natural selection. . . ." 
 
 And if 
 
 " we adopt the ParalleUst's assumption that two neural 
 processes, the physical correlates of pleasure and displeasure 
 [which we may call x and y) are determinante of appet.tion and 
 aversion then the correlation throughout the ammal world of 
 rStke beneficial and of , with the hurtful bodUy aftections 
 fol^ws . . from the Darwinian principle. But that x should 
 express itself in consciousness as pleasure and y as displeasure 
 would remain an insoluble problem." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " And if it be asked-Are we then to beheve that the feelings 
 themselves act directly upon cerebral processes 1 the answer 
 must be, I think. No ; they act only indirectly, namely, by ex- 
 citing conation or psychical effort, for conation is essentially 
 the putting forth of psychical power to modify the course of 
 physical events." 
 
 Now the parallelist and the materiaUst with him 
 might say : Why drag in psychical effort to account for 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY ill 
 
 movements of appetition and aversion which you have 
 allowed to be determined by x and y ? On the theory, 
 psychical effort can do no more than show itself as a 
 movement of appetition and aversion which has been 
 already accounted for. The Animist can only ''' down " 
 him by showing that psychic effort does do more. It 
 does so much by way of modifying physical events 
 that its teleological action deflects the teleological line 
 from the parallel, and sends it cutting across the causal 
 line continually. 
 
 The paralleUst's diagram of the transaction should 
 stand thus : 
 
 Physical and Causal Line. 
 
 Movement 
 accomplished. 
 
 Neural process. 
 
 h 
 
 A 
 
 a 
 
 Psychic and Teleological Lim. 
 
 Movement desired h' 
 as end. \ 
 
 Sense-impression. a' 
 
 These are positively all the factors that the strict 
 parallelist is justified in taking into account, if his lines 
 are to remain strictly parallel, and if point for point 
 correspondence is to be perfect. The diagram is absurd ; 
 but it is beautifully simple, as on any theory of rigid 
 Parallelism it is bound to be. You will notice that 
 interaction is inexorably barred. There is no bridge to 
 or from the causal physical process on the one side to 
 the psychic teleological process on the other. 
 
 You will also notice that no tdeological action has 
 taken place. It need not take place, because neural 
 process a has led directly to the accomplishment of 
 movement h. And it cannot take place because, clearly, 
 movement h is accomplished on the physical line, and 
 there is no means of transferring it to the psychic line. 
 
 So the parallelist must either give up his teleology, 
 
 &jfr*6ai&^tfeiis^; 
 
A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 in 
 
 112 
 
 or agreeing that teleological action has taken place he 
 Zl.Jt that it has contnbuted^o an effect O^he 
 movement) accomplished on the physical Ime , m .^h ch 
 case he gives up his Parallelism, and goes over to the 
 
 tlieorv of interaction. 
 
 1^0 not want to complicate this problem unneces- 
 sarily but if we introduce the factor of time-and we 
 canifot ignore it-some very odd consequences will 
 
 ^""plr we have not forgotten that, on the two lines of 
 physical and teleological causation, what is last m the 
 physical series as effect appears first in the psychic series 
 as cause. 
 
 Physical Process. Instants of Tin^. Psychic Process. 
 
 ^ ,.. . » ^r,c, r\i Qr>finn (1 
 
 (Action) d- 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 .>< 
 
 1 
 
 rr 
 
 C 
 h"' 
 
 Awareness of action 
 
 Will to act 
 
 Desire for action 
 
 (Action, 
 
 as final cause, 
 end or purpose.) 
 
 d' 
 c' 
 V 
 a' 
 
 1 
 
 I am not trying to circumvent Parallelism by arguing 
 
 that an action accomplished is identical w.th an a^K>n 
 
 designed; and that, consequently, the same thing 
 
 SSs existing both as the cause and the efiect o itseK 
 
 must exist (as cause) at the same mstant of time when 
 
 (as effect) it has not yet come mto existence. For there 
 
 l^notLn why the same thing should not behave as 
 
 cause and" fi^^^ respectively at different instants of 
 
 time and it is quite impossible to establish point for 
 
 poTnt' correspondence of the series of instants m time 
 
 ^th the series of physical and psychic events, so as to 
 
 Tree the conclusion that the time of those different 
 torce me ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^. 
 
 behaviours is the same, i au^^ pjio^yram 
 
 surdities. On the contrary, m spite of that diagram 
 I would insist that action physically accomplished, and 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 113 
 
 action as purpose or end, are two separate events — 
 divided, it may be, by a long period of time and by many 
 intervening processes — of which one event, invisible, 
 incalculable, psychic, most truly determines the other, 
 which is visible, calculable, and physical ; inasmuch as 
 the inner event is the one factor without which the outer 
 event would not have happened. And I would suggest 
 that, this being so, it is not the antecedent neural process 
 but the antecedent psychic process that is the prime 
 causal factor. 
 
 But — to return to the case of Professor Thorndike's 
 cat — ^there were other psychic factors, not represented 
 on that diagram, which cannot be ignored. 
 
 What has happened in the case of Professor Thorn- 
 dike's cat ? 
 
 The cat has received his pleasant sense-impression 
 of the milk outside his cage. He has hit on the lucky 
 means of escape, and established a pleasant memory of 
 the beneficial result. After a few experiments, which 
 he makes himself, a connection (but what connection ?) 
 is established between a', the sense-impression of the 
 milk, and 6, the movement which unlatches the door ; 
 so that, in future, sense - impression a' is instantly 
 followed by movement b. 
 
 Now, besides these two terms, there stands on the 
 psychic line a third term c\ the cat's pleasure or satis- 
 faction. (His pleasure and his pleasant memory are 
 really two terms ; or, if we count repetitions, they are 
 as many as you like ; but for the purpose of the problem 
 they may be taken as one.) This third term is of 
 supreme importance in determining b. It, not b (the 
 movement itself), is the real final cause, the motive, 
 purpose, or end of b. For the pleasure or satisfaction 
 of drinking milk is that for which the cat makes his 
 experiments and his successful movement. 
 
114 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 But though the psychic event c' will no doubt be 
 represented on the physical line by some point of neuxa 
 change c, on the parallelist hypothesis c (again) must 
 be a superfluous and impertinent interloper, since the 
 sense-impression and the memory of a , the sight of the 
 saucer of milk, or rather its representative mural change 
 a, is sufficient to bring about the movement h by nervoi^ 
 discharges along a path of least resistance, going direct, 
 that is to say without psychic intervention, from a to h. 
 (Direct, because the question is not of the neural reflexes 
 naturally involved, but of psychophysical interaction.) 
 So direct is it (in this sense) that, given strict corre- 
 sjmdence, the process on the psychic Ime-^ach term 
 accompanied, if you like, by its meaningless note of 
 neural change-ought to stand a'— -6 .without any 
 intermediary c'. The cat's pleasure (which, by the way, 
 has grown by repetition from one more or less simple 
 sensation to a perfect pile of memories and anticipations 
 of pleasure), the Cat's Pleasure, so immensely important 
 and personal to him, counts for nothing in the parallehst s 
 pro4mme ; though to the cat and to his master it 
 must rank as the chief actor in the psychic drama. 
 
 If it comes to that, is it, can it be, reaUy the chief 
 actor' Or even the chief motive power ? Behind the 
 cat's movement is his memory, and before it his anticipa- 
 tion of pleasure ; so that, even if we count the sensation 
 and the memory and the anticipation as one deter- 
 minant, the psychic plot thickens before our eyes. And 
 if we are really to do justice to the whole action, we must 
 assume a fourth factor d', the Cat's Desire. 
 
 Ehminate his desire, and his whole behaviour becomes 
 meaningless. His pleasure is meaningless ; his move- 
 ment is meaningless ; he might just as well keep quiet 
 in his cage. True, he would not desire the milk it he 
 had no pleasure in it. It is equally true, however, that 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 115 
 
 he would have no pleasure in it if he did not desire it. 
 And the peculiarity of this factor of desire is this : that 
 it does not enter the series as a single member of the 
 series (a', b', c', d'), but is present to each member of the 
 series {a'd', b'd', c'd'), and to the whole, in a way in which 
 they are not present to each other. 
 
 For instance, he desires his pleasure ; and he desires 
 the movement which is his means to his pleasure ; but 
 he has no pleasure in the movement itself. His desire 
 saturates his sense-impression a' of the saucer of milk, 
 and his pleasure c', and his memory and anticipation of 
 pleasure, and it is surely the true causal determinant of 
 his movement b. And if you say (the parallelist is 
 bound to say it, since he is committed to the teleological 
 view of the series a', V, c'), if you say and insist that his 
 desire d' is determined by his pleasure c', which thus 
 appears as the final cause of the movement b, still, you 
 cannot eliminate the factor of desire without doing 
 violence to the whole series with which it is so intimately 
 platted up. I think, therefore, you are driven to 
 acknowledge it, not as the final cause — ^for pleasure fills 
 up that role quite adequately — and not as the immediate 
 worlcing cause — for that is a complicated affair of nervous 
 discharges and muscular tissues — but as the determinant 
 of (or ruling causal factor in) the movement b. 
 
 Then you have got as clear a case of that trespass 
 which is interaction as the Animist could well desire. 
 
 And the parallelist's dilemma stands thus : If he 
 
 was justified in regarding the series, a b which stands 
 
 for the neural lines of least resistance representing habit 
 association and habit memory, if he is justified in regard- 
 ing this series as sufficiently determining b, he is obhged 
 to ignore the obviously existing psychic factors of 
 
 pleasure and desire, determinants of series a' b'. 
 
 But as, in any case, on his own showing, it must have 
 
116 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 been sense-impression a' that started the whole business, 
 some form of causation other than the teleological has 
 surreptitiously crept in on the psychic line, contrary to 
 the sacred law laid down by himself in the beginning. 
 For, clearly, without the psychic intervention of the 
 ori^nal sense-impression a\ the precise and particular 
 fact we are considering, though possible, would not 
 have been actually accomplished. 
 
 So that, in the most elementary process of psycho- 
 physical life, his rule which forbids interaction has been 
 
 broken. . 
 
 If, on the other hand, he acknowledges— as he is 
 bound to do— the existence of the psychic factors, 
 pleasure and desire, he will find one of them, desire, 
 breaking loose obstreperously from the teleological line 
 and invading (again !) the causal side as determinant 
 of the movement h. 
 
 In this case he has, to add to his embarrassment, a 
 
 whole psychic series within a' h\ in which d and d' 
 
 stand as the chief factors, a whole psychic series for 
 which it would be hard to find point for point corre- 
 spondence on the physical line. 
 
 Parallelism therefore breaks down badly in three 
 places : its law which demands correspondence breaks 
 down ; and its law which forbids cross-correspondence 
 breaks down ; and its law which distinguishes between 
 causal and teleological lines breaks down ; and a better 
 diagram of the real situation would stand thus : 
 
 Physical line 
 
 Psychic line 
 
 m ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 117 
 
 You have there a vision of the entire collapse, of the 
 most obvious crumpling and buckling and cross-cutting 
 of the lines ; while the Animist has established a sort 
 of ascending spiral as his image. (I must not father 
 this image on Mr. McDougall ; but I think it is justified 
 by the ensemble of the process.) 
 
 And yet we have not got farther than the simple 
 psychology of Professor Thorndike's cat. 
 
 Imagine then what a diagram would look like that 
 attempted to represent the higher psychic processes of 
 man, the complex play of many motives, determining 
 one of many actions seen to be possible and desirable ; 
 the conflict between desire and will ; the element of 
 choice — ^the will darting like a shuttle to and fro among 
 all those infinite threads and weaving them to its own 
 pattern. Add to this the emotions saturating the web 
 with their own colours ; and consider that you have 
 not yet allowed for the intellectual fabric, different and 
 distinct from this play of action and emotion and desire, 
 yet hardly distinguishable, so close is the psychic web, 
 so intricate the pattern. 
 
 When you come to the work of the adult human 
 intelligence (we do not yet know enough about animal 
 intelligence to say with any certainty what goes on 
 there), to even such an apparently simple operation as 
 the perception of an object in space, and of its relation 
 to other objects in space, it is even more obvious that 
 you are no longer dealing with a series alone, but with a 
 synthesis. Add to this — what is inseparable from it — 
 the perception of change, of the succession of events in 
 time, and your synthesis will be a synthesis of successions 
 and juxtapositions, or contemporaneous existences, in 
 which events will be perceived as moving one after 
 another and altogether, against a complex background 
 
118 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 in 
 
 of objects immobile in space. Add to this the mere 
 perception of their innumerable relations, and to this 
 the higher operations of the intellect, the innumerable 
 concepts involved in the most elementary process of 
 acquiring knowledge, and you get a series of syntheses 
 and the synthesis of this series. Add the operations of 
 judgment and of reasoning, inseparably bound up with 
 this process ; then abstract these operations from the 
 process and examine them ; you will find, not only 
 that they follow a certain fixed order of their own 
 (the laws of inductive and deductive logic), but 
 that yet another operation has crept in — analysis, 
 and that these syntheses, so laboriously built up 
 in consciousness, are in consciousness dissolved and 
 broken up, in order that new syntheses, new com- 
 binations, associations, and arrangements may be 
 
 formed. 
 
 This is Wundt's principle of the creative resultants 
 
 with a vengeance. 
 
 As Mr. McDougall points out, with that one rash 
 word '' creative " Wundt gives the whole show of psycho- 
 physical Parallelism away. And I do not think it is 
 unfair to hold him to it. There is no wriggling out of 
 the awkward position it has created for him. And if 
 we are offered our choice between Parallelism and Inter- 
 action I can see no grounds for hesitation. 
 . Parallelism is a sort of psychological book-keeping 
 by double entry, under such conditions that the values, 
 on whose constancy the integrity of the result depends, 
 change, not only between the dates of invoice and 
 account, but with every separate item in the ledger. 
 So that the parallelisms books never really balance. 
 Whereas the Interactionist allows for every fluctuation 
 in the values, while equally pledged to the austerity 
 and sanctity of book-keeping. 
 
 in ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 119 
 
 Now I think the fact of psychophysical interaction 
 is fairiy demonstrated. But so far from giving us the 
 metaphysical security we are seeking, it leaves that side 
 of the problem as much as ever in the dark. Psychology 
 suggests the ultimate questions it cannot answer. 
 
 We cannot strike a balance of interactions and say 
 whether physical or psychic action tips the scale. We 
 do not know how far psychic action can modify the order 
 of physical events. There are certain long-established, 
 not to say invariable sequences, such as the course of 
 the stars and the formation of water from the union 
 of H2O, with which we are pretty sure it cannot inter- 
 fere. You can persuade a plant or an animal to breed 
 and grow the way you want it — ^within certain strictly 
 defined and very important limits. But you cannot 
 force a single particle of inorganic matter to behave 
 contrary to its pre-established habit. Still there are 
 certain physical alterations that you can effect. You 
 can dam back the tides and divert the course of rivers. 
 You can change the outward appearance of the habitable 
 globe by merely displacing things on its surface. You 
 can turn steam into a cylinder so as to drive an engine. 
 You can so regulate a current of electricity or an ex- 
 plosion of petrol as to make them do the same thing. 
 So that, if a diagram could be drawn showing the 
 physical results of the psychic processes of a few enter- 
 prising individuals it might not equal our imaginary 
 psychic diagram in complexity, but it would be a very 
 imposing and intricate affair. 
 
 Shut up a puppy by himself in your study when he 
 is teething, or let loose a speculative builder over a 
 square mile of virgin wood and field ; and observe the 
 change their psychic processes will effect in the order 
 and integrity of material objects. In twenty minutes 
 the puppy has gnawed the backs off your books and 
 
 Bfefa^'^"--"--'1ltritWlrAlliiYlfir«ii"iliii'i^^^ 
 
120 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 in 
 
 worried the hearthrug to shreds, stained the carpet by 
 upsetting the ink over it, and, having eaten the best 
 part of your manuscript, he is about to change its 
 chemical composition when you find him at his work. 
 In a year's time the builder has caused the virgin wood to 
 disappear and has covered the fields with streets of 
 houses which show in outward forms of conglomerated 
 bricks and mortar the inner hideousness of his soul. 
 
 True, the puppy and the builder have been obliged 
 to use physical machinery to achieve these physical 
 results, pitting one set of physical forces and one arrange- 
 ment of molecules against another. Still, all this con- 
 tinuous construction and destruction has involved 
 continuous psychic efiort ; so that all along the series 
 there will be innumerable points where the physical 
 processes are no longer traceable, and the psychic 
 processes come into play. 
 
 But when we try to estimate the proportion of 
 psychic efiort to physical result we find we are dealing 
 with incommensurables (29). So many bricks laid, so 
 many psychic processes involved in the laying of each. 
 We can count the bricks, but we cannot count the 
 psychic processes ; neither can we gauge the intensity 
 of the psychic state at each moment of the process. 
 
 And so far we have only been dealing with one side 
 of the total operation, with extension, and the displace- 
 ment and rearrangement of objects in space. When 
 we come to time, all possible correspondence ceases. 
 You can measure the time taken to lay each brick, and 
 calculate from it the number of months it will take to 
 complete the entire scheme of the Estate ; but you 
 cannot measure the time of the psychic processes, for 
 the simple reason that those processes are more than 
 processes, they are syntheses. And with them we are 
 brought back once more to the unity of consciousness. 
 
 iai«i.,i:a,»aii^aJB 
 
 III ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 121 
 
 And we are once more driven to ask : 
 L Is there any unity outside our consciousness that 
 corresponds with this unity within it ? 
 
 2. If so, is that unity also a unity of consciousness ? 
 
 Or rather : Is there anything in that unity from 
 which we may infer that where it is there is 
 consciousness ? 
 
 3. Is there anything in both unities from which we 
 
 may infer an ultimate unity ? 
 Once more, the long round that we have fetched by 
 way of biology and psychology has landed us in ultimate 
 questions of metaphysics. 
 
IV 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF 
 METAPHYSICS 
 
 123 
 
 ■ittj^jugiaititiugmKUlHIiiM 
 
I 
 
 IV 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 
 
 It will be remembered that we adopted Mr. McDougall's 
 classification of metaphysical systems provisionally, 
 and with considerable reservations, in order that he 
 might do his own deadly work among them unhindered. 
 We have seen him do it. We have seen how far he has 
 justified the hypothesis of a self or soul as the unique 
 ground of the unity of consciousness. And we must 
 admit that he has certainly delivered it from the worst 
 assaults of the physiological psychologists. 
 
 He has done this, apparently, by demonstrating the 
 principle of psychophysical interaction. 
 
 But this is by no means the end of the matter. I 
 think we may ask him at least four questions. 
 
 1. How, without recourse to some metaphysical 
 
 principle, does he propose to maintain the unity 
 of consciousness throughout the interactions ? 
 
 2. How would he explain the soul's action in the 
 
 construction of time and space ? 
 
 3. What holds body and soul together ? 
 
 4. What holds the multiplicity of souls together ? 
 Surely (1), unless body and soul are one or aspects of 
 
 an underlying Reality which is one, each irruption 
 of either into the other's territory must be a break, 
 however slight, of their respective unities. And this, 
 whether the law does or does not hold good eternally, 
 
 125 
 
126 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 
 that the cause must pass over into its effect. Inter- 
 action is interaction. Now, whatever the unity of 
 matter may be, unity of consciousness is the unique 
 arm of the Animist. Take it from him, and he is 
 powerless. 
 
 Mr. McDougall is aware of his danger, and he tries 
 to reduce the soul's action to something less than cause 
 and more than correspondence. But the danger is only 
 masked and not removed. Once admit interaction, 
 with its resulting changes, and not only is the powerful 
 charm of Parallelism broken, but the Animist himself 
 is committed to the whole causal relation. 
 
 That relation is not like an unhappy love-affair with 
 the " reciprocity all on one side." It is not the simple 
 affair of body as cause, telescoping into soul, and soul, 
 as cause, telescoping back into body ; but each con- 
 tributes to the effect. This double relation of cause and 
 effect alters the ensemble so profoundly that to talk any 
 more of dualism is absurd. 
 
 Even granted (2) that each interaction is simultaneous 
 and not successive, the whole series of interactions con- 
 stitutes a process, a series in time. If you presuppose 
 a " real " time, you are promptly landed in all the 
 dilemmas which M. Bergson, for one, has shown to be 
 inherent in that idea (30). If the soul supplies, as it were, 
 its own time, then you have a psychic action covering 
 the whole psychophysical performance in one very 
 extensive and necessary relation. And the same holds 
 good of space. 
 
 What holds the high interacting parties, body and 
 soul, together ? (3) 
 
 (This question follows from Question 1.) As long 
 as they were parallel they could be considered as holding 
 themselves together ; but, as we have seen, their imities 
 are broken. Surely a system of interactions cries for 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 127 
 
 a unity just as loudly as a system of states of con- 
 sciousness ? 
 
 As for the fourth and last question : What holds 
 the multiplicity of souls together ? Since the souls 
 interact on each other, their system of interactions calls 
 
 for unity. 
 
 I do not think that these questions can be set aside 
 as frivolous. They are perfectly legitimate problems 
 arising out of the case ; and Animism provides no 
 solution of them. 
 
 When it comes to unities, as on the Animist's own 
 showing it must and does come, if the unity of conscious- 
 ness only holds good within and of consciousness, then 
 physical unity, if there be any, will hold good within, 
 and of bodies or matter generally ; so that, in the last 
 resort — and there must always be a last resort — each 
 unity will form a " closed system " ; and the Animist 
 must be numbered among the parallelists. I do not see 
 how, without recourse to a metaphysical principle 
 and a metaphysical unity, he is to escape from the 
 
 position. 
 
 It is clear that in that classification of systems 
 which I have borrowed from Mr. McDougall we are 
 dealing with two things : Psychophysics, which has no 
 philosophic axe to grind, and Metaphysics. 
 
 Neither Animism nor Psychophysical Parallelism 
 professes to give us a Metaphysic or a Metapsychic ; 
 but only certain psychophysical postulates. 
 
 It should also be clear that, however much we may 
 wish to separate them, we cannot, as a matter of fact, 
 keep them apart if we are to go on with— I won't say 
 finish — our thinking. 
 
 And I think it should be transparently clear that 
 neither empirical nor a priori metaphysics can take up 
 any impregnable position outside Psychophysiology, 
 
 llii i i llMrilS i 1| iaa«BaaiM-iftii^itmfriiii» 
 
128 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 I 
 
 and will not advance very far, or at any rate very 
 safely, as long as it ignores the psychophysical facts, 
 however radiantly honest its attitude may be. 
 
 But it may not have been equally clear that Psycho- 
 physiology cannot keep itself unspotted by some Meta- 
 physic or another ; that is to say, if it is to go on with 
 its thinking. It can, and we have seen that it does, 
 voluntarily arrest its thinking on its own borders and 
 refuse to take the metaphysical plunge ; but with the 
 first step over, and not even with the first step, but 
 with the first look, with the affirmation that there is, 
 and with the affirmation that there is 7iot a region 
 beyond its border, it is in. Only the non-committal 
 attitude that acknowledges that there may be a region 
 will save it from the plunge. 
 
 But if the Psychophysiologist goes on thinking he 
 is committed to a metaphysic. For there is a lurking 
 metaphysic in his most empirical conclusions, and even 
 in his non-committal attitude. 
 
 Let us look back at the systems we considered. 
 They may be reduced to three types, as far as body and 
 soul are concerned. 
 
 1 . Monism : the systems of the One. 
 
 2. Parallelist Dualism : the systems of the Two (with 
 
 or without assumption of an underlying One). 
 
 3. Animism : or the theory of the Mixed. 
 
 To these, as we leave the ground of Psychophysics, 
 we shall have to add Pluralism in its three forms of : 
 
 1. Pragmatism, 
 
 2. Humanism, and the 
 
 3. New Realism, 
 
 which are all systems of the Many. 
 
 Of these the New Realism is so new, so revolutionary, 
 so dangerous to every form of Monism we have con- 
 
 ^ * 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 129 
 
 sidered hitherto, that it calls for special treatment later 
 on and in a place apart. 
 
 I have not insulted the Animist by putting him among 
 the Parallel -liners, where, I think, if he finished his 
 thinking he would have to go ; because he may quite 
 honestly and legitimately decline to finish it. But I 
 have not followed Mr. McDougall, this time, in putting 
 Objective Idealism (which is somewhat inadequately 
 rendered by "Psychical Monism") among the Parallel- 
 isms ; for I do not think this arrangement is fair to a 
 philosophy which cuts the knot by maintaining, with a 
 stoutness verging on apoplexy, that the world arises in 
 consciousness, that it exists in and through and for 
 consciousness, and that consciousness is the " Thing-in- 
 Itself "; which thus begins its thinking with conscious- 
 ness as the totality of experience, and finishes it there. 
 
 If we consider each one of these systems in turn we 
 shall find that there is not one of them, no, not even 
 the most non-committal that has not its own dilemma. 
 
 The dilemma of the out-and-out Materialist is that 
 he must either admit that consciousness does not come 
 altogether into his net, or he must break his own sacred 
 law of the conservation of energy. In any case, if he 
 says that psychic processes are an illusory by-product 
 of physical processes, he fails to show why they should 
 be conscious processes. 
 
 The dilemma of the out-and-out Subjective Idealist, 
 or Self-Aloner, is that he must either deny the existence 
 of other consciousnesses, and of things he is not conscious 
 of and never could be ; or he must give up his funda- 
 mental hypothesis of his own solitary existence. If he 
 turns the materialist's position upside down and says 
 that his ego produces the physical series as the illusory 
 by-product of its own psychic series, he fails to show 
 why it should be at the pains of projecting any physical 
 
130 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 aspect of its psychic states, why there should be an 
 illusory appearance of a parallel at all. If he says that 
 there is no parallelism and only one series, his own 
 psychic states, he fails to account for the existence of any 
 consciousness other than the one he started with — 
 his own. Still less can he account for the order of physi- 
 cal things in ante-psychic time. For if there is no 
 universe outside his private consciousness, the universe 
 that physical science shows us as existing previous to 
 the appearance of his consciousness is a retrospective 
 illusion, and the manifestations of his neighbour's con- 
 sciousness are a past, present, and future illusion ; and 
 his neighbour's consciousness itself, with the universe 
 it carries about in it, is the illusory hypothesis of his 
 thought. Worse still, as he is not conscious of his own 
 neural processes, they also cannot be allowed to exist ; 
 their existence for another consciousness, that of the 
 scientific observer, is not existence in any consciousness ; 
 it must therefore share the illusory quality of all that 
 attaches to his neighbour and his neighbour's con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Worst of all, his own ego, the self which should be at 
 the bottom of the whole show, to produce and maintain 
 the system of illusions, can have no existence either ; 
 since it does not and cannot appear in its own con- 
 sciousness. The formula for this theory must be : 
 Consciousness is just consciousness, of nothing, for 
 nobody ; and it is nobody's consciousness. 
 
 So that the out-and-out Self-Aloner must either 
 show reason why he should exist in this solitary and 
 unsupported manner ; which he cannot do, as he has 
 no grounds to establish his self on except himself ; or 
 he must acknowledge the existence of a world — ^if it be 
 a world of selves — outside himself, in which case he is 
 no longer a Self-Aloner. 
 
 IT ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 131 
 
 Mr. McDougall has very clearly shown the sad plight 
 of the Parallelist. His attitude has no intervals of 
 repose. The more strictly parallelist he is, the more 
 he denies interaction, the more he has to keep jumping 
 backwards and forwards from one of his lines to the 
 other ; in which case he has to admit that there is a 
 jumping-off-place and a landing-place somewhere, that 
 is to say, a common terra firma for thinking and acting 
 on both lines. His dilemma is like the Materialist's. 
 He cannot keep his rules and his principle too. 
 
 The dilemma of the Animist, as I have tried to show, 
 is that without some " higher unity " to solder them, 
 his unity of consciousness, and the unity of all physical 
 things, finally form closed systems of penultimates 
 running parallel ; so that in the long run (his long run) 
 he is landed in a dilemma as serious as any he has 
 exposed. Either he must make the totals of psychic 
 and of physical interactions equal and opposite, an 
 assumption which he has no grounds for ; in which 
 case, by the law of causation, they will cease to be 
 interactions, and will form one action and one phenome- 
 non ; or, while insisting on partial interaction, he must 
 acknowledge a greater unknown second quantity of 
 actions and phenomena running parallel. In either case 
 the unity of consciousness is broken. 
 
 There are dilemmas and dilemmas. 
 
 There are dilemmas inherent in the nature of a 
 system. Such are the dilemmas of the Materialist and 
 Idealist by-product theories. 
 
 There are dilemmas which are latent in a system, 
 of which the upholders of the systems are more or less 
 aware. Such are the dilemmas of the strict Parallelist 
 and the Animist. Wimdt virtually abandoned his 
 Parallelism in his principle of the creative resultants. 
 
132 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 You feel that Mr. McDougall has either a monistic or a 
 pluralistic solution up his sleeve, if his conscience as 
 a man of science would allow him to produce it. 
 
 And there are dilemmas which are much more 
 apparent to the critics of a system than to its supporters. 
 Such are the dilemmas of the Imperfect Parallelist, or 
 devotee of the Underlying Unknown, and of the Psychical 
 Monist or Objective Idealist. 
 
 I have left the dilemmas of these Monists to the 
 last, because there are dilemmas and dilemmas ; and 
 because, since it must needs be that dilemmas come, 
 they seem rather less unbearable than any of the others. 
 
 The dilemma of the upholders of the Underlying 
 Unknown and Unknowable is that, in order to prove that 
 it is there at all, they have to assume it to be knowable, 
 and indeed known ; inasmuch as it is the ground of its 
 own aspects and appearances. When you have said 
 of your Unknowable that it is Underlying, or that it is 
 Substance, or the only Eeality, or the Thing-in-Itself, 
 you have already dragged it in the net of knowledge. 
 When you have added that it is Infinite or Absolute, 
 you have to all intents and purposes caught it and made 
 it the object of your thinking. The one thing you 
 absolutely don't know about it is whether it does or 
 does not exist. You cannot predicate of it that reality 
 which was the raison d'etre of your afiirming it at all. 
 
 Either you must give up its reality, by virtue of 
 which you declared it to be unknown and unknowable ; 
 in which case your Monism has the bottom knocked 
 out of it, and you are left with the dual aspects on your 
 hands ; or, declaring it to be the only real, you give up 
 its unknowableness, and, by defining it, have brought 
 it in under that aspect and manifestation which is 
 thought. 
 
 iv ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 133 
 
 This feat, which his predecessors performed in- 
 voluntarily, is the serious and deliberate accomplishment 
 of the Objective Idealist. There is but one step from 
 the Underlying Unknown Reality to Thought as the 
 Thing-in-Itself. 
 
 The Objective Idealist does not worry about dilem- 
 mas. Consciousness can swallow them all. There is 
 nothing that it cannot swallow. They are logical 
 dilemmas, are they not ? Very well, then. Already 
 they fall within consciousness. They are expressed in 
 terms of consciousness and lend themselves most oblig- 
 ingly to the expression. He does not worry about the 
 world outside him. It is outside his body, not outside 
 consciousness ; his body is part of it, and both it and his 
 body are expressible in terms of consciousness. Why 
 seek, or why assume other modes of expression ? If 
 you remind him that, on his own showing. Nature is 
 the " other " of Thought, he will say. What if it is ? 
 Doesn't that prove that it falls within consciousness, 
 since otherness is a " thought - relation " ? What is 
 Nature but a network of relations, and what are re- 
 lations but the work of thought ? The terms of the 
 relation ? You don't suppose I've been so simple as 
 not to allow for them ? What are your precious terms 
 when all's said and done, and you've analysed all the 
 thought out of them ? Sensations ; and if sensation 
 is not consciousness I should like to know what is. 
 Changes, you say, not of consciousness nor for con- 
 sciousness ? Changes, let me tell you, that wind up 
 in sensation, bang in consciousness. Changes, every 
 one of them, in the outside world. World outside 
 what ? Consciousness ? Not a bit of it. Outside and 
 inside are terms — ^if it's terms you're talking about — 
 of consciousness, or rather, they are thought-relations. 
 Can you see " outside " ? Can you hear " outside " 
 
 tffiMi" flMllTiltilMfill 
 
134 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 or touch it ? Outside (and inside) exists only in and 
 for thought. 
 
 World in time and space ? I believe you ; and 
 where, if you please, are time and space if not in con- 
 sciousness ? And what are they if not terms — there 
 you are again — of consciousness ? 
 
 Changes of matter ? All we know of matter is 
 expressible in terms of consciousness ; and what we 
 don't know of matter is not material to my argument. 
 Your argument ? Your argument doesn't matter so 
 much, either ; but — since you insist — you're not claim- 
 ing, are you, that matter is the Thing-in-Itself ? Con- 
 sciousness is the Thing-in-Itself. You think matter as 
 we dio not know it may be ? But what sort of matter 
 is that ? I thought you were an empiricist ; if you are, 
 you've no business to jump like that from the known 
 to the unknown ; and if you're not, you'd very much 
 better come in with me. Direct his attention to the 
 triumphant existence of the Parallel-liner's physical 
 line (or what is left of it after the Animist has done 
 with it), the neural and brain processes which never are 
 in consciousness, and he will smile patiently at your 
 fatuity while he tells you that, if they do not exist as 
 sense perceptions for your consciousness, or his, they 
 exist in and for both as knowledges ; and, even if they were 
 not in his consciousness, or yours, they are in s(yme 
 consciousness as knowledges ; and that there is no 
 reason why they should not exist as sense-perceptions 
 for a consciousness so constituted as to perceive them 
 sensibly. Talk to him of forces and of energies, and of 
 the conservation of energy, of the imperceptible ultimate 
 constituents of matter, of ether and electrons, and all the 
 impalpable and imponderable postulates of physical 
 science, and he will floor you with the same argument. 
 Draw for him the picture of the aeons of past time, 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 135 
 
 of solar systems rolling unperceived through space, of 
 lifeless seas, and of glacial ranges subsisting in their 
 august and solitary unknownness before sense and 
 thought were ever dreamed of, and he will repeat that 
 the picture itself is not only drawn in lines of conscious- 
 ness, but coloured deeply with its dyes ; and he will 
 ask you where and when these spectatorless dramas 
 could have been played, if not in space and time, which 
 he maintains, not without a show of reason, to be 
 thought-relations which need no duplicate ; and he will 
 invite you in your turn to eliminate all possible forms 
 of consciousness from the universe, and picture, if you 
 can, how much would be left of it. 
 
 Mr. McDougall cannot hope to disconcert him with 
 that little joke about eating without an eater and 
 without anything to eat, any more than you could shatter 
 Kant with the old pragmatist wheeze of the thousand 
 thalers; both instances being drawn from a region 
 below the level of the enquiry. He takes his stand on 
 the firm ground that consciousness at any rate is 
 " given " ; and if you are indiscreet enough to talk 
 about eating, his obvious answer is that he alone among 
 philosophers is not trying to eat his cake and have it 
 too. He alone is unthreatened by either horn of a 
 dilemma. 
 
 And when angry with him, this time, you turn and 
 ask him how he dare mention Kant, who was worth 
 fifteen of him, he will refer you to Kant's Prolegomena 
 to any Future Metaphysic, and swear that Kant was on 
 his side all the time with his imity of apperception, 
 only that he hadn't the courage to say so. He will add 
 that Kant deliberately dished the Transcendental 
 Realist (or Absolute Idealist) show in order to exalt 
 Practical Reason at Pure Reason's expense, and prove 
 himself the most moral man in Konigsberg. He will 
 
 \ 
 
I 
 
 136 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 suggest, not without plausibility, that if people would 
 only read Kant's Prolegomena and his Critique of Judg- 
 ment more, and the two Critiques of Reason a little less, 
 they would see that there wasn't such a great difference 
 between him and the Idealists after all. 
 
 At this point you will perhaps remind him that 
 Hegel's Naturphilosophie was not exactly a work its 
 author could be proud of ; and that Naturphilosophie 
 was ever the weak spot in the Idealist's armour ; but 
 he will stand his ground, protesting that, if Hegel had 
 not been so bent on keeping his chair at Berlin by 
 bolstering up the doctrine of the Trinity, he would have 
 been more in earnest with the " otherness " of Nature ; 
 he would, that is to say, have seen that if Nature is to 
 be the " other " of Thought, the more otherly she 
 behaves the better, and that that is why Nature kicks 
 against the Triple Dialectic. 
 
 If you ask him. what he will do, supposing, just 
 supposing, it should be proved to-morrow that Nature 
 did get in first, and that consciousness really was an 
 illusory by-product, he might be staggered for a moment, 
 but he would recover on the assurance that, even in 
 this case, consciousness would come out on top ; seeing 
 that, once the affair was knoum, the scientific explanation 
 of it must necessarily be given in terms of consciousness. 
 
 In fact, I don't think the prospect would really 
 stagger him even for a moment. You cannot starve 
 into surrender a system with such a prodigious 
 '' swallow," nor '' down " an opponent with such an 
 inexhaustible capacity for retort. 
 
 Almost you could believe that Objective Idealism 
 is the winning horse, and that you could do worse than 
 back it. 
 
 Almost, but not quite. The Objective Idealist's horse 
 is a remarkably fine animal, and of an incomparable 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 137 
 
 speed. He can cover the greatest possible space in the 
 smallest possible time, and you cannot *' wind " him. 
 That the Objective Idealist's wind is his only merit is 
 the opinion of most people who have tried to hold out 
 under his interminable recitative ; whereas his great 
 and undeniable merit is his almost infantile simplicity. 
 But he is vulnerable in two places. 
 
 Ask him what he makes of unconscious thinking, of 
 sleep and of forgetting, which are small holes, but still 
 palpable holes in the general web of consciousness, holes 
 which can never be filled up by the device of calling 
 them knowledges ; he ought to be able to say that no 
 consciousness is lost for ever, but that things lost for 
 us and forgotten are stored and remembered in the 
 Absolute ; but unless he is an Absolute Idealist he 
 cannot say it. 
 
 Ask him what he makes of the great energies of 
 instinct and of love, of will and purpose and action, of 
 conscience and ethical values and aesthetic values, 
 and he will tell you that he makes nothing of them 
 except that they are states of consciousness like any 
 other, and — ^if he is consistent — that one state of con- 
 sciousness is as good, because it is as real as any other. 
 
 He is either so absorbed in his vast vision of the 
 World '' arising in consciousness," so satisfied with his 
 fairly easy reduction of everything in the universe to 
 states of consciousness, or so intent on his series of 
 unanswerable repartees, that he has never paused to 
 consider what consciousness itself may be doing all the 
 time, and how its states are behaving among themselves. 
 
 And his secret dilemma, which he will not acknow- 
 ledge, is this : He has cut the Thing-in-Itself very 
 cleverly out of the problem and packed all Eeality into 
 states of consciousness ; not my states, or your states, 
 but all the states of all the consciousness there is ; so 
 
 aaatfaaaajMiaSa^^ 
 
%t 
 
 138 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 that the sum of Reality will be simply the sum of the 
 states. No state of consciousness, on his own showing, 
 can be more real than any other state. But Totality,' 
 the sum of all states, must be more real than any one 
 state or any number of states. So that his Reality is 
 purely quantitative, and every lapse of consciousness, 
 no matter whose or what— and these lapses are con- 
 stantly occurring— will be a dead loss of reality to the 
 Universe. And unless he can show that this loss is 
 made good somewhere and made good all the time, reality 
 must suffer very seriously. In order to make good the 
 loss, he must give up his assumption that all states of 
 consciousness are equally real ; so that he may protect 
 himself by the further assumption that what the Universe 
 has lost in quantity it has gained in quality (which is 
 impossible to prove). In this case he must either aban- 
 don his theory of consciousness as sufficient reality in 
 itself, or he must take refuge in an Absolute Conscious- 
 ness. Say that, like a wise man, he takes sanctuary. 
 Even then he is no better off. For he cannot contend 
 that his Absolute is real qua Absolute. Consciousness 
 being the only reality, his Absolute can be only real 
 qua Consciousness. So that, strictly speaking, he had 
 no right to summon it qua Absolute to his aid. But he 
 has done it, and is now faced with the further dilemma. 
 If Consciousness is only real qua Absolute, all those 
 states of consciousness which, on his own showing, con- 
 sisted chiefly, or entirely, of thought-relations are un- 
 real. He cannot save himself by picking out the 
 terms of the relation from the relation and declaring 
 them real ; for it was just their capacity for entering 
 into relations that entitled them to reality within his 
 closed system. Nor can he purchase reality for them by 
 merging them with his Absolute, except at the price 
 of the Oneness to which he was pledged. For then he 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 139 
 
 has indeed found the true home of the irreducible term 
 (shorn of its thought-relations), which must be held 
 henceforth to exist within the Absolute with all the abso- 
 lute reality of the Absolute ; yet, at one blow, he has 
 deprived of reality his entire system of thought-relations. 
 It is all up with the " diamond net," in which he had so 
 skilfully ensnared the universe. 
 
 He must now confess that appearance, not to say 
 unreality in the form of relativity, enters largely into 
 consciousness ; since Absolute Consciousness is the 
 only Real. This appearance must either exist within 
 Absolute Consciousness, infecting it with relativity ; 
 besides setting up a schism inside it as against the 
 " real " terms ; or it exists in states of consciousness 
 outside it ; in which case Absolute Consciousness will 
 be set up over against Relative Consciousness in a 
 relation of absolute to relative ; when it is all up with 
 the Absolute. 
 
 Even the Self-Aloner is not in a more horrible position. 
 He can swallow the entire Universe, and the Absolute 
 with it, in one sacramental mouthful, since at least he 
 has given himself a " Self " to swallow with. 
 
 Now, when we behold the collapse of one meta- 
 physical system after another, and of one psycho- 
 physical theory after another, and find the cause of the 
 collapse in some inherent dilemma, three courses are 
 open to us. 
 
 We may abandon all systems and all theories hence- 
 forth and for ever. This is the counsel of prudence and 
 of caution. It is also the counsel of intellectual 
 despair. 
 
 Or we may try to build up another system and 
 another theory out of all the old ruins on a new site. 
 This is what has been done with metaphysical systems 
 
140 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 from time immemorial, and done with perfect ease ; it 
 merely involves shifting the material and rearranging 
 the already generalized terms of the problem. But we 
 cannot play in the same light-hearted fashion with 
 psychophysical material, which has its own attachments 
 and its own territory, and refuses obstinately to be 
 shifted on to new ground. In any case, the chances are 
 that our precious erection would have most of the bad 
 points of its predecessors with a special and incurable 
 shakiness of its own. 
 
 Or we may go back to the old systems and the old 
 theories, to see whether they had anything in common, 
 and if so what, and try to find out the root of the 
 dilemmas which were the cause of their collapse. We 
 have got to face the fact that the psychophysical problem 
 has complicated our problem very seriously. 
 
 Supposing we find that all, without exception, have 
 a common interest and a common end, and that their 
 several dilemmas have a common root, we shall have 
 gained, not perhaps enough to build with, but enough 
 not to despair of building henceforth and for ever. 
 
 Now it cannot be maintained that all metaphysical 
 systems and theories seek unity, in the teeth— the really 
 very sharp and ferocious teeth— of the New Realism 
 which has gone out of its way to avoid it. The New 
 Realism is out and out Pluralism. But certainly all the 
 systems and all the theories we have considered yet 
 have this thing in common— the quest for unity, some 
 kind of unity, no matter what. The desired One may 
 be matter, or it may be mind ; it may be the Ego ; it 
 may be just Consciousness ; or it may be an unknown 
 and unknowable tertium quid, Substance, Thing-in- 
 Itself, the Absolute, the Unconscious, the Life-Force. 
 It is implicit in the very dilemmas of the systems that 
 have repudiated it. 
 
 IT ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 141 
 
 First, then, we have to see whether the dilemmas we 
 have considered have a common root. 
 
 We have seen Vitalism fall from one dilemma into 
 another, because of the iiltimate reality it ascribed to 
 matter, and the metaphysical importance it gave to 
 action. It seeks unity, it seeks reality, but it cannot 
 find it. And the root of its dilemma is that it looked 
 for ultimate reality in a penultimate place. 
 
 The dilemma of the thorough-paced materialist was 
 that he could only save his materialism at the cost of 
 the empirical law he based it on. Clearly he would not 
 have fallen into that dilemma if he had not given to 
 matter an ultimate reality, and conceived it as doing 
 what, as a purely mechanical phenomenon, it was 
 powerless to do ; besides giving to a purely physical law 
 a metaphysical validity he should have been the last to 
 claim for it. In other words, he looked for ultimate 
 reality in the wrong place. 
 
 The dilemma of the thorough-paced Subjective 
 Idealist was that, in denying the existence of any reality 
 outside himself, he cut away the ground from any 
 possible proof of his own existence. Again the root of 
 his dilemma was the quest of ultimate reality in the 
 wrong place. 
 
 The dilemma of the less consistent types of Parallel- 
 liners was that, placing Reality in a mysterious third 
 Something, expressly stated to be either Unconscious 
 or not definable in terms of consciousness, they straight- 
 way fell into either defining it plumply and plainly in 
 terms of consciousness, or bringing it into such relation 
 with consciousness as to compromise very seriously its 
 neutrality. 
 
 The root of their dilemma was that, while they 
 distinguished clearly between appearance and reality, 
 and recognized that body and soul, matter and mind, 
 
142 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 brain processes and consciousness, are equally pheno- 
 menal, they yet placed Reality in some Third Principle 
 from which they had previously abstracted every sign 
 and mark of the Real. They also were looking for 
 Reality in the wrong place. 
 
 The dilemma of the thorough -paced Parallel -liner 
 was that, the harder he drove his system on two lines, 
 the more it tended to leave them. And the root of the 
 dilemma is again the same. In renouncing the quest 
 of the Ultimate Reality he is obliged to ascribe to mere 
 psychophysical processes the metapsychic and meta- 
 physical functions they have not. If you cannot say 
 that he, too, has looked for ultimate reality in the 
 wrong place, since he was not looking for it at all, 
 he has looked on at the usurpation of its place and 
 power. 
 
 Nor can it be said that Objective Idealism, or even 
 that Absolute Idealism escapes ; in spite of its tremend- 
 ous swallow. If the Vitalist makes too much of action, 
 the Objective Idealist makes too little. His dilemma 
 was that, having defined reality in such terms of con- 
 sciousness as to eliminate all elements of consciousness 
 other than thought-relations, he infected his Absolute 
 with relativity, and was forced to deny to Thought the 
 ultimate reality he had claimed for it in the beginning. 
 
 The root of his dilemma is transparent. He, too, 
 looked for ultimate reality in the wrong place, in con- 
 sciousness held -together by thought-relations and by 
 nothing else. 
 
 Animism is safe from dilemma only so long as it has 
 not declared openly against metaphysical Monism. It 
 would be unfair to press any argument hostile to Plural- 
 ism against Animism as represented by Mr. McDougall, 
 still more unfair to fasten on him an opinion he would 
 disallow. His is clearly a case of suspended judgment. 
 
 IV ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 143 
 
 So long as he forbears to take the final plunge into any 
 metaphysical gulf I have no right to picture him as 
 hovering on the brink. 
 
 Leaving Animism, then, to its suspended judgment, 
 we may say that, with this doubtful exception, all those 
 systems and theories, psychophysical or metaphysical, 
 had some one ultimate reality for their common end. 
 And all, in mistaking one or other set of appear- 
 ances for ultimate reality, or one part of reality for 
 the Whole, have betrayed the common root of their 
 dilemmas. 
 
 All looked for Reality, looked for Unity, and looked 
 for it in the wrong place. 
 
 It would seem, then, that the universe is not built 
 up from the Life-Force in* action upon matter alone ; 
 nor from Matter itself alone ; nor from the Individual 
 Self alone ; nor from an Unknown and Unknowable 
 alone ; nor from Body and Soul alone ; nor from 
 Consciousness alone ; still less from Thought alone that 
 lands you in the barren Absolute. 
 
 But, if there were one term that would cover all these 
 terms : Life-Force ; Matter ; Individual Self ; Substance ; 
 Thing-in-Itself, the Unknown and Unknowable or 
 possible Third; Soul; Consciousness; Thought; the ' 
 Absolute ; one term which, besides covering all these, 
 
 covers also that which has slipped away from them 
 
 Will and Love, that term, could we find it; would stand 
 for the Reality we want. We want a term infinitely 
 comprehensive, and perfectly elastic ; and a term that 
 does some modest sacrifice to the Unknown. For the 
 vice of those terms was that none was elastic, none was 
 comprehensive ; but that some one excluded, inevitably, 
 some other. 
 
 If we could put that term in every place where we 
 
 I 
 
 I' 
 
 i 
 
144 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 IT 
 
 have used those others I do not think that the same 
 dilemmas would arise. 
 
 To the Unity and the Reality we are looking, for we 
 can give no name but Spirit. This leaves a wide margin 
 for the Unknown. 
 
 PEAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 145 
 
PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 The doctrine of the One has been worked so hard and 
 so incessantly, and with such passionate variance among 
 its adherents as to the nature of their " One," that the 
 reaction against it was bound to set in, and the tendency 
 of modern metaphysical thought is in favour of the 
 Two or the Many. 
 
 It was said that there are dilemmas latent in a system, 
 of which the upholders of the system are more or less 
 aware. 
 
 But a system may have a dilemma lurking in it of 
 which its upholder is not at all aware. 
 
 Pragmatism and Humanism are such systems. At 
 first sight they seem, like Psychophysical Parallelism, 
 to be exceptions ; but they also are exceptions that pay 
 an unconscious homage to the rule, an unconscious 
 craving for the unity they spurn. 
 
 The spurning, of course, was inevitable, by way ol 
 a change. Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, ostensibly a Pluralist, 
 subsides into a sort of ethical DuaHsm ; (31) while Mr. 
 William James is all for a PluraUstic Universe. Even 
 Mr. McDougall, who may be suspected of cherishing 
 some sort of metaphysical principle up his sleeve (he 
 has at least deprecated the imputation of metaphysical 
 Dualism), even Mr. McDougall joins with the pragmatists 
 
 147 
 
us 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 in robust derision of the monist, the slave of his " appetite 
 for unity." They deny that the craving for unity is 
 a universal craving, or even a legitimate hunger. They 
 do not feel it ; no good pragmatist could feel it ; the 
 vast majority of mankind are born utterly without it ; 
 therefore it is clear that it is bv no means a universal 
 need. They do not go quite so far as to say that it 
 doesn't exist, since certain absurd people do feel it ; but 
 they let you see that they regard the cincerity of these 
 people as more dubious than their absurdity. 
 
 Besides this suggestion of insincerity, the unpopular 
 monist is taunted with his supposed belief that his One 
 is holier and " nobler " than the Many ; whereas what 
 he does believe is that, as an ultimate metaphysical 
 principle, it is more necessary. 
 
 The driving wedge of the pragmatic huinanist's 
 attack on Monism is practically its argument ad hominem. 
 " Humanism," Mr. Schiller says, " like Common Sense, 
 of which it may claim to be the philosophic working-out, 
 takes Man for granted as he stands, in the world of man's 
 experience as it has come to seem to him." For, " even 
 Pragmatism is not the final term of philosophic innova- 
 tion : there is yet a greater and more sovereign principle 
 now entering the lists, of which it can only claim to have 
 been the forerunner and vicegerent." This is only an 
 inspired way of saying that Pragmatism lands you in 
 Humanism, as indeed it does. As for the principles 
 the miserable monist deals in—'' Pure Being, the Idea, 
 the Absolute, the Universal I" — what are they ''but 
 pitiful abstractions from experience, mutilated shreds 
 of human nature, whose real value for the understanding 
 of life is easily outweighed by the living experience of 
 an honest man ? " (32) 
 
 There you are ; could anything be plainer ? If 
 Man is not the Measure of all things, an honest man, 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 149 
 
 besides being the noblest work of God, is the measure of 
 metaphysical truth — and no other sort of man is. 
 
 If the monist does not like the turn affairs are taking, 
 he has nobody but himself to thank for it. 
 
 Now the honest man, the plain man, the man in the 
 street, Vhomme sensuel moyen, to whom Pragmatism 
 makes its plain common-sense appeal, does not reckon 
 among his familiar interests any conspicuous appetite 
 for unity. He can grasp a working hypothesis applied 
 to everyday life ; he can see the point of the little 
 joke about Pot-and-Pantheism ; but you may " work " 
 with two or five hundred ultimate principles for all he 
 cares. And in the last resort it is on his utter indiffer- 
 ence to the event that the pragmatist is banking when 
 he frames his neat arguments against unity as a meta- 
 physical ultimate and a necessity of metaphysical 
 thought. 
 
 It may turn out that unity is no such necessity ; but 
 surely the honest man's unawareness of it is neither 
 here nor there ? Ten to one the honest man will be 
 equally unaware of the unity of consciousness until 
 some psychologist or metaphysician explains the point 
 to him ; but when he sees it, ten to one if he doesn't 
 tell his informant to go — where bad metaphysicians do 
 go, he will let him know that he could have told him 
 that, in fewer words and with less trouble. For in 
 matters that he does understand the honest man is very 
 far from lacking in a sense of unity. 
 
 Where the pragmatist will seem to the plain man 
 to score is in taking the existence of the Many for 
 granted " as it stands." The Many undoubtedly are 
 there, and their existence does not, on the first blush 
 of it, suggest the existence of the One. And the assumed 
 existence of the One does not, in itself, help you to under- 
 stand the existence of the Many. 
 
150 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 151 
 
 This statement sounds like common sense to the 
 plain man. And as long as you are dealing with an 
 abstract One, and an abstract Many (for the pluralist's 
 Many is every bit as abstract as the monist's One), it is 
 a true enough statement. But the humanist and 
 pragmatist do not deal in abstractions. They deal with 
 the Many of honest human experience, the Many as 
 they stand. And the monist might retort : " Does the 
 Many, then, as it stands, explain its own existence ? 
 Do not all attempts to wring its secret from it end 
 in generalizations which are unions and unities, not 
 suggested by the Many as they stand, yet irresistible ? 
 Did not the high priest of Pragmatism declare that : 
 ' The most important sort of union that obtains among 
 things, pragmatically speaking, is their generic unity ' ? 
 And that : ' With no two things alike in the world, we 
 should be unable to reason from our past experiences 
 to our future ones ' ? And that : ' Absolute generic 
 unity would obtain if there were one summum genus 
 under which all things without exception could be 
 eventually subsumed'? (William James, Pragmatism, 
 pp. 139-140.) And does not Mr. Schiller declare that 
 Matter is a 'baseless abstraction' (Riddles of the 
 Sphinx, p. 69) ; that ' the development of Matter and 
 Spirit proceeds along converging hues; and that by 
 the time the supersensible is reached, a single reality 
 will be seen to embrace the manifestations of both ' ? " 
 (Humanisrh, p. 298.) So that unity would seem to 
 have even a pragmatic sanction. 
 
 Under all the pragmatist's cheerful appeals to the 
 honest man there lies, half suppressed, a still more 
 serious argument. It turns on the combined unthink- 
 ability and non-existence of the One without the Many. 
 But as the Many is equally unthinkable and equally 
 non-existent without the One, this argument cuts both 
 
 ' 
 
 ways. Either side gains its advantage from the insidious 
 substitution of the relative, predicative, quantitative, 
 numerical '' one " for the Absolute One of the monist. 
 You might argue in this way that one pragmatist is 
 unthinkable without many pragmatists, and one God 
 (if there is a God) without many gods. The trouble is 
 that, while we are sure of the pragmatists, we are not 
 sure of the God. And this is precisely where the prag- 
 matic pluralist's argument lands him ; and it is where 
 he wishes to land, and always meant to land. For by 
 insisting on the patent relativity of the one and the 
 many, he is still sure of an easy victory when he works 
 it the other way round : Many pragmatists are un- 
 thinkable without one pragmatist, and many gods 
 without one god ; a proposition where the one prag- 
 matist and the one god figure as the first units in a 
 numerical series, which lands you again in palpable 
 plurality. So that, by this surreptitious substitution 
 of unit for unity, and of quantity for not-quantity, the 
 pluralist gets plurality both ways, at either end of his 
 proposition. 
 
 But all that has happened is that, by his surreptitious 
 substitution, he has insidiously transferred the tainted 
 relativity of his predicates, one and many, to his sub- 
 stantive God ; or, let us say, the One Reality. And 
 when he goes on to argue that unity is unthinkable 
 and non-existent without multiplicity, the two-edged 
 natuie of the argument reveals itself at once. Multi- 
 phcity is unthinkable and non-existent without unity. 
 Neither side has the advantage ; but this time the 
 pluralist doesn't get his multiplicity both ways. For 
 unity, in the monist's sense of one all-embracing 
 Reality, is certainly not the first number in a numerical 
 series. 
 
 It is now pretty evident that both sides are dealing, 
 
152 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 not with the necessities of thought but with the barest 
 abstractions. 
 
 But when the monist contends that his One is not 
 the divisible, multipliable, numerical "one" of mere 
 quantity, but the Absolute One of self-contained and 
 self-conditioned Being, the pragmatist turns on him 
 and exposes the relative nature of his Absolute. If all 
 things are one in the Absolute, then the Absolute, being 
 all things, is not one but many. If the relative is not 
 the Absolute, then the Absolute is not all things. Again, 
 if the Absolute is not all things it is not the Absolute ; 
 because it will then stand in relation both to the things 
 it is not and to the things it is, and thus cease to be 
 Absolute. It holds its thin prestige of Godhead or of 
 cosmic unity at the cost of all god-like or cosmic attri- 
 butes ; for the moment it begins, either to be anything 
 or to do anything, it needs must " enter into relations." 
 At every turn the Absolute of the monist must face that 
 awful and incredible " self-diriemption," which makes 
 of it a sort of Judas Iscariot in the potter's field of 
 Philosophy, a Judas without any bowels. The sad 
 process of the Absolute is the suicide of the eternal 
 through time. 
 
 The Absolute, in short, is the most flagrant instance 
 of an empty, impotent, adjectival abstraction— and a 
 negative abstraction at that— posing as a cosmos or 
 God. 
 
 And Being is in no better case. What is Being, 
 anyhow, but an abstraction of the copula "is," by 
 which predicates are hooked on to their substantives ? 
 It is hard indeed to see wherein either is holier, or nobler, 
 or more convincing than any dual or any plural principle! 
 The pragmatic pluralist can at least show that his 
 plurality is concrete, that it is something, and that it 
 is " given." 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 153 
 
 It must be owned that this form of the pragmatic 
 pluralisms attack sounds very formidable. All the 
 same I think the monist' s monotonous answer meets it. 
 The driving point of the pluralist' s wedge is the assump- 
 tion that the relativity which is at the bottom of all 
 the dilemmas, and which holds good of the world of 
 appearances, holds equally good of the world of Reality ; 
 and that, while you may and indeed must have dilemmas 
 in the sub-metaphysical world, they should be strictly 
 excluded from your metaphysics. And the Absolutist's 
 answer is : Quite so. The sub-metaphysical world is 
 the very birthplace and the home of dilemmas, which is 
 precisely the reason why I am driven to assume a better 
 and a safer one. And to the pragmatist's sinister 
 assurances that his metaphysical world is not safer, that 
 it is not really half so safe, his reply is that the prag- 
 matist wilfully ignores his point, and for purely pragmatic 
 reasons. His point, which he reiterates with sickening 
 persistency, is that what appears as a dilemma in the 
 sub-metaphysical world is not a dilemma in the meta- 
 physical one ; doubt of appearances here is the very 
 foundation of certainty there, and denial of unreality 
 is its crown. 
 
 But the good pragmatist will have none of this. It 
 doesn't matter what you happen to be denying, denial 
 is bad Pragmatism. 
 
 "Du bist der Geist der stets verneint.'* 
 
 He is desperately afraid of any hand being laid on 
 the actualities he loves. Mr. Schiller protests against 
 Mr. Bradley's " conclusion that everything which is 
 ordinarily esteemed real, an3^hing which any one can 
 know or care about, is pervaded with unreality, is 
 * mere appearance ' in a greater or less degree of de- 
 gradation." He finds that " this antithesis has become 
 
154 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 to me a considerable nuisance, and also, it must be con- 
 fessed, a bit of a bore." In the heat of Pragmatism 
 he forgets that it was his Mephistopheles who tempted 
 Faust to say to the fleeting moment, 
 
 " Verweile doch, du bist so schon,'* 
 
 and that the soul's perdition lies in confusing the 
 passing loveliness with the Eternal and the First Fair. 
 
 But, after all, what has Mr. Bradley done ? He has 
 never, so far as I know, said a word about '' degradation," 
 or denied that an appearance may be a very noble and 
 beautiful and even useful thing. He has said nothing 
 to destroy pragmatic "values." The pragmatist is 
 annoyed with the antithesis, which seems to him to exalt 
 Absolute Eeality at the expense of appearances ; though 
 he knows perfectly well that, since appearances are 
 " there," since they have contrived somehow to get in 
 first, they are not a bit the poorer for the metaphysical 
 excesses of Mr. Bradley's Absolute. Yet the pragmatist 
 pays homage to that principle in his heart when he 
 ascribes absolute reality to the things he knows and 
 cares about. 
 
 And under aU his Pragmatism lies the monstrous 
 assumption that the honest man's knowing and caring 
 are the measure of all the knowledge and all the passion 
 m the umverse. Of Mr. Bradley's Absolute he says, 
 pragmatically and humanistically : "If It be not fair 
 for me, what care I how fair It be ? " 
 
 Now, in the first copy of Appearance and Reality 
 that came into my hands, fifteen years ago, I found that 
 the owner had written on the fly-leaf these words of 
 Saint Augustine : " Thou hast made us for Thyself, 
 and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee." So 
 that somebody seems to have cared about Mr. Bradley's 
 Absolute. 
 
 PEAGMATISM AND HTOIANISM 
 
 155 
 
 I do not know anything about the state of Mr. 
 Bradley's affections, or whether he has more or less 
 " heart " than a pragmatist ; I am quite sure he has 
 more imagination. He would probably find it no end 
 of a nuisance and a bore if all the nice, useful things 
 the pragmatist knows and cares about turned out to be 
 " absolutely real." 
 
 But he has reasons for his antithesis which are not 
 pragmatic. Assume, as he does, that Man is not the 
 measure of all things, but only of some things, and that 
 even those things are not as they appear to him, and 
 you will not worry about dilemmas. In a world of 
 appearances a few dilemmas more or less will not very 
 greatly matter. But assume, as the pragmatist does, 
 that things are as they appear, and a dilemma becomes 
 a very serious affair indeed. Assume an ultimate Dual- 
 ism or Pluralism ; then, since this is the only world 
 that Pragmatism allows us to know and care about, 
 the only world it allows us to assume, there is no hope 
 of a solution in the " highest synthesis " of another. 
 The pluralistic pragmatist abandons the hope of any 
 highest synthesis, and is happy ; because his genius, 
 his Will-to-believe, inclines him towards Humanism. 
 The absolutist claims that the perfection of his principle 
 is its capacity to swallow all dilemmas. It is what it is 
 there for. 
 
 Observe that there is an implicit charge of arrogance 
 in all that the pragmatist says about the absolutist. 
 As if the absolutist had not made the Great Surrender, 
 and as if it were he who had made human thought and 
 human emotion, and human conduct and morality, 
 *' as they stand," binding on the transcendent and 
 everlasting Reality ; as if he had not stripped himself 
 bare for his adventure into the " untrodden country." 
 It is an adventure on which he has staked his all. 
 
156 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 This recklessness of his is precisely what the pragma- 
 tist has against him. It is, you see, a question of 
 " values." Either your relations with the tjnseen are 
 good business, or they are nothing. The pragmatist 
 feels that the absolutist is not getting back his money's 
 worth. He is buying in the dearest market and selling 
 in the cheapest. What is worse, he is sending good 
 money after bad. Instead of driving a profitable 
 bargain with Eeality, as any sensible man would, he is 
 plunging. And Pragmatism abhors the plunger. The 
 Absolute, in pragmatic language, '' does not pay." 
 How can a " pitiable abstraction," a " mutilated shred," 
 even of " human " nature, be made to pay ? 
 
 Now there are several ways in which the absolutist 
 may meet this common-sense attitude. He may say 
 that it is not a question of values, but of truth or false- 
 hood, of sheer logical compulsion or the reverse, and 
 that logic drives him to the assumption of the Absolute. 
 He may say that, whether the pragmatist likes it or not, 
 the conception of the Absolute is not a mutilated shred 
 of human experience, but a necessity of thought. It is 
 not to be accounted for by any description of the way 
 in which the human psyche arrives at conception in the 
 course of its evolution. It is not obtained by picking 
 human experience to pieces. So far as it is '' obtained " 
 at all, it is obtained by testing all the " ultimate " 
 principles of empiricism and finding them wanting. 
 And they are found wanting precisely because they are 
 — not absolute. 
 
 This, his opponent says triumphantly, is making 
 himian thought the measure with a vengeance. You 
 see, you cannot get away from Humanism after all. 
 
 It is nothing of the kind, the absolutist retorts. You 
 are simply quibbling. My principle is expressly stated 
 as transcending human thought, in so far as thought is 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 157 
 
 hiunan, yours is not. It is presupposed in human 
 experience, but — unless we are agreed to include the 
 Beatific Vision as part of human experience — it is not 
 found there. 
 
 He may also say that the Absolute is under no 
 obligation to pay him, and that he is not looking for 
 payment. Or, if he takes the line that he has faith in 
 the Absolute, and believes that it will pay him in the 
 long run, I don't see what the pragmatist is to do about 
 it. He is pledged to the principle of the Will-to-believe, 
 and the absolutist's Will-to-believe is as good as his. 
 
 In any case, it is the pragmatist who begs thv question 
 when he says that the Absolute is an abstraction. So 
 it is, from his point of view. When you have pinned your 
 whole faith to the plump reality of a pluralistic universe, 
 strictly conditioned, the Absolute must needs be the 
 emptiest of abstractions. But even an uncompromising 
 absolutist like Mr. Bradley would claim that his principle 
 is the most concrete of all concrete things, since, on 
 the theory, it has swallowed up the whole Pluralistic 
 Universe of the pragmatist, and is ready to swallow 
 as many more as fast as the pragmatist produces them. 
 
 For his is not the frivolous contention that his 
 Absolute has merely the largest swallow. As M. 
 Bergson distinguishes between Pure Time and spurious, 
 popular clock-time, he distinguishes between the true 
 Absolute, which is the Self-conditioned, and the spurious, 
 popular Absolute, the Unconditioned tout court, which 
 he grants you is nothing better than a negation, and 
 liable to be bowled over by the first robust " condition " 
 that comes its way. He distinguishes between the true 
 Infinite, which includes the finite, whose image is the 
 circle, and the spurious Infinite, which is the finite all 
 over again, the infinitely divisible, the process ad in- 
 finitum, whose image is the line. There is no end to 
 
 ■'?■ VSl|^#^'A''S^C 'i^tS^^^^0z:^::^^^W:y^'(P. 
 
 rS@*/L^-.'«lS 
 
158 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 the dilemmas of the Infinite if you insist on tainting it 
 with the unreaHties of space and time. If you taunt 
 the absolutist with his everlasting negations, he can 
 retort that the negation of a negation is not a negation, 
 and that it is up to you to prove the reality of things,' 
 '' as they stand," since you care so much about their 
 status. 
 
 There is one metaphysical situation, and only one, 
 which would give rise to the dilemma which the pragma- 
 tist urges against him. He will agree that if the situation 
 were such that his absolute Reality were relative to 
 another absolute Reality, the two absolutes would then 
 be relative, and in their mutual relativity would kill 
 each other. Which is his reason for contending that 
 there are not two absolute Realities or many absolute 
 Realities, but one Absolute Reality. 
 
 But as for his Absolute " entering into relations," 
 like an Honest Man entertaining a business proposition, 
 he demes that it does anything of the kind. It could 
 only enter into relations if it were one term of the relation 
 only ; but it is both terms, and the relation ; for, on the 
 theory, it is all that is. Its function, as Absolute, is 
 to maintain itself and manifest itself through things in 
 relation, and, as One, to maintain and manifest itself 
 m multiplicity. If you appeal to the Law of Contradic- 
 tion, and protest that two contradictory propositions 
 cannot be upheld seriously by any sane mind, he can 
 pomt triumphantly to the fact that they can be, and are, 
 united, both in conception and in actuality. What 
 God hath joined, let no pragmatist put asunder. 
 
 In short, the pragmatic pluralist finds multiplicity 
 everywhere he goes and unity nowhere apart from it ; 
 while the absolute monist has to go no farther than 
 his own consciousness to find the unity which is always, 
 so to speak, top dog. And there would not be a pin to 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 159 
 
 choose between them if the absolutist did not mean 
 rather more than he actually commits himself to saying, 
 and if the pragmatist had not a sharper appetite for 
 unity than he cares to own to. 
 
 For the student of metaphysics there may be some- 
 thing nobly serious in this desperate contention, con- 
 ducted on one side with scorn and derision, and on the 
 other with imperturbable aplomb. But, to the student 
 of literature, born without any metaphysical prejudices, 
 it looks as if each side were criticizing the other with 
 the crudest literalism, a literalism which he would be 
 ashamed to bring to the interpretation of a classic. 
 
 To him it seems that, under the interminable webs 
 of reasoning the absolutist wraps his meaning up in, his 
 meaning is simplicity and clarity itself. He is trying 
 to say that Spirit is absolute, a law unto itself from 
 beginning to end of the world-process (if it has a be- 
 ginning and an end). The whole performance, as he 
 sees it, is neither one-sidedly psychic nor one-sidedly 
 physical, but is one spiritual act. He may think that 
 he arrives at this conclusion by a subtle dialectic, but 
 he really jumps to it by that spiritual recognition we 
 call analogy. Jumping from what goes on in his own 
 self, he knows of no elan vital to compare with the elan 
 vital of spiritual energy. For, raise either psychic 
 energy or physical energy to their highest pitch of 
 intensity, and you get Spirit ; you get something that, 
 either way, is immaterial. Whether this is what the 
 absolutist really means, to the student of literature, 
 who has his business among the high intensities of art, 
 this is what he ought to mean. And so far as both 
 Humanism and Vitalism admit this. Humanism and 
 Vitalism are good enough for him. 
 
 And the absolutist is too densely literal if he cannot 
 
160 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 see that the pragmatist's plural principles are every bit 
 as spiritual as his one ; with, of course, his private 
 reservation that, so far as they are spiritual, they are 
 one. The rest is an absurd juggling with terms of 
 arithmetic which, on either theory, do not apply. 
 
 In short, the unprejudiced student of literature 
 cannot for the life of him see what the two are worrying 
 about, and why they should not come to some arrange- 
 ment. Pragmatism, if you fancy it, for the affairs of 
 life, and Monism in its proper place. 
 
 But we renounced this light-hearted attitude in the 
 beginning when we decided for the rigour of the game. 
 We are now committed to the metaphysical adventure, 
 and must see it through. 
 
 There is one more consideration which may bring a 
 strange and unexpected food to the appetite for unity. 
 
 The pragmatist has another and a stronger line of 
 argument, the moral line. 
 
 He says the blatant Pantheism of the monist lands 
 him in moral catastrophe. If his One, his Absolute, 
 his God, is all things, He is evil as well as good. The 
 pragmatist cannot face the awful consequences of what 
 is to him an immoral God. If God's All-mightiness is 
 incompatible with His Goodness, then for God's sake 
 give up the All-mightiness and let us, at any rate, have 
 moral peace. Because man hates evil and shrinks from 
 pain, there must he a Dual principle ; there must be 
 Another, the scapegoat of a God not quite almighty, 
 upon whom all the evil in the world may be fastened. 
 Or there must be Others, a host of Evil Ones, abominable 
 spirits that have existed in their abomination, if not 
 from all eternity, then from inconceivable time. If 
 you ask how and why abominations should spring up 
 spontaneously in the imiverse, the pragmatic humanist 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 161 
 
 cannot enlighten you. He can only point to the exist- 
 ence of evil in the world as it is and has been since man 
 knew it or since it knew man. We can only ignore 
 it, Mr. William James says, bv *' taking a moral holi- 
 day." We can only meet it, Mr. Schiller says, by this 
 assumption of the incompetent God. The Infinite and 
 the Absolute are up against man's morality and his dis- 
 like of suffering, and they must go. God is only infinite 
 in his good intentions, which presumably pave the 
 hell of the Evil One. God, thougli infinitely well- 
 meaning, is powerless to prevent this Evil One or those 
 abominable spirits. But better, thrice better, that he 
 should be powerless than that he should be immoral ; 
 for he is not so powerless that he cannot struggle. The 
 pragmatist is happy in that he can point to an actual 
 state of struggle in the cosmic order. Given a Good 
 Principle, struggling with an Evil One, there is always a 
 chance that he may overcome him in the end ; that evil 
 may be swallowed up in good. 
 
 Really, this is not an unfair statement of the prag- 
 matic humanist's problem and his heroic position. But, 
 lest I should be suspected of loading the dice in favour 
 of my monist, I will let Mr. Schiller state it in his own 
 
 words. 
 
 (Mr. Schiller rejects Dualism, although it " seemed 
 able to preserve the all-important distinction between 
 good and evil, for which Monism left no room." Dual- 
 ism is " virtually disposed of with rejection of the 
 ultimate diflerence of Matter and Spirit.") 
 
 " The real battle has to be fought out between the champions 
 of the One and of the Many, between Monism and Pluralism. 
 And, contrary to the opinions of most previous philosophers, 
 we are inclined to hold that the Many is a far more important 
 principle than the One, and that PluraHsm, consistently inter- 
 preted and properly explained, is the only possible answer to 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 the ultimate question of ontology." (Riddles of the Sphinx, 
 pp. 350, 351.) 
 
 " The finiteness of God depends on the very attributes that 
 make him really God, on His personahty, on His being, like all 
 real beings, an individual existence. God is one among the 
 Many, their supreme ruler and aim, and not the One imderlying 
 the Many. The latter theory makes the Many inexplicable and 
 the One indifferent. God, therefore, must not be identified with 
 Nature. For if by Nature we mean the All of things, then 
 Nature is the possibiUty of the interaction of the ultimate exist- 
 ences, and of these God is one. And the existence of these 
 ultimate existences explains also why God can be finite ; He is 
 limited by the co-existence of other individuals. And from 
 His relations to these other existences, which we have called 
 spirits (chap. ix. § 31) arise all the features of our world which 
 were so insoluble a problem to Monism — its Becoming, its 
 process, and its Evil." (Ibid. p. 361.) 
 
 "... though Matter, being nothing in itself, cannot be the 
 principle of Evil, and is not in itself evil, it is yet characteristic 
 of an essentially imperfect order of things : it is, as it were, the 
 outward indication and visible reflection of Evil. For Evil is, 
 hke all things, ultimately psychical, and what is evil about Matter 
 is the condition of the spirits which require the restraint of 
 Matter ... if evil, i.e., inharmonious spirits were permitted 
 the full realization of their conscious powers, they would be 
 able to thwart and delay, if not to prevent the attainment of the 
 divine purpose of the world process . . . the lower existences, 
 i.e. the less harmonized, have their consciousness limited and 
 repressed by material organization, in order that their power 
 for evil may be practically neutralized, and that in the impotence 
 of their stupidity they may have little influence on the course 
 of events." (Ibid. chap. ix. § 31, p. 303.) 
 
 Observe, in passing, that, though Matter is *' char- 
 acteristic of an essentially imperfect order of things," 
 though it is " the outward indication and visible re- 
 flection of Evil," it is the weapon in the hands of the 
 ferociously good God (apparently the only weapon that 
 he has). It is " the check upon consciousness " : a 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 163 
 
 sort of poison gas which the Good God sends into the 
 enemy's lines, to smother and stupefy and reduce to 
 impotence the Evil Ones. 
 
 " We start with a number of spiritual beings struggling against 
 and opposing the Divine Power, which may overpower, but 
 cannot destroy them. What is to be done ? To leave them 
 in the full possession of their powers and intelligence would be 
 to give them the power to do evil, to reduce the spiritual order 
 fo a chaotic play of wild antagonisms.'' 
 
 (For, after all the fuss the humanist has kicked 
 up about the existence of Evil, it is " practically 
 neutralized ! ") 
 
 To return to the Evil Ones : 
 
 " To destroy them is impossible. But it is possible to do the 
 next best thing, viz., to reduce their consciousness to the verge 
 of non-existence. In such a state of torpor it would be possible 
 to induce them to give an all but unconscious assent to the laws 
 of the cosmos, and gradually to accustom them to the order which 
 the divine wisdom had seen to be the best. ..." (Ibid. p. 362.) 
 
 That is the Humanist's solution : a moral God, one 
 against many, armed with lumps of Matter. He cannot 
 destroy his enemies (besides, it would be immoral to 
 destroy them), but he can knock them senseless. So, 
 you see, he hasn't done so badly after all. 
 
 " For to impress on fools and beasts even a dim sense of the 
 rationahty of the scheme of things, is a task more difficult by 
 far than to prevail over the dissent of superhuman intelligences." 
 
 I do not know why it should be more difficult, except 
 that Mr. Schiller says it is, and he ought to know about 
 his own God. Anyhow, these are the triumphs of the 
 Good God. The rationality of the cosmos is proved by 
 a knock-you-down argument which prevails with fools 
 
 and beasts ! 
 
 Well, well, the problem of Evil is a very hard one. 
 
164 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 But this particular solution overlooks two rather glaring 
 facts, the fact that stupidity causes most of the moral 
 evil that we suffer from ; so that by dehberately causing 
 stupidity the good God becomes a cause of evil. There 
 is really no sense in which stupidity can be made out 
 to be a good thing. The other fact is the behaviour of 
 Matter, which is the cause of most of the physical pain 
 we suffer. On Mr. Schiller's theory, Matter at any rate 
 seems to be under the control of the Good God — why, 
 then, if he is all that the humanist would like him to be, 
 does he allow Matter to get so intolerably out of hand ? 
 You would have thought, that (even if the Evil Ones 
 can dispose of war material, and have all the best 
 designs for armaments) He might have put down, for 
 instance, earthquakes. An earthquake, after all, is not 
 an ultimate spiritual existence. But no, his efl&ciency 
 is limited in that direction, too. 
 
 Oddly enough, it is this well-meaning but incom- 
 petent God of Humanism that has caught the fancy of 
 Mr. H. G. Wells. Mr. Wells has given to the conception 
 a poetry and a dignity which is not its own, but he has 
 not succeeded in disguising either its inherent absurdity 
 or the moral hysteria to which it owes its being. 
 
 " Mr. Britling's " son has been killed in the Great 
 War, and " Mr. Britling " — ^type of all Britishers and 
 honest men — realizes, contrary to his usual way of 
 thinking, that there is a God. But not a God who " lets 
 these things happen." A God, amiable and inefficient, 
 who can't, for the life of him, help them happening. 
 
 " Letty," who has lost her " Teddy," insists that he 
 must let them happen. " Or why do they happen ? " 
 
 Mr. Wells, like Mr. Schiller, tells us why. 
 
 " * No,' said Mr. Britling ; ' it is the theologians who must 
 answer that. They have been extravagant about God. They 
 have had silly absolute ideas — that he is all-powerful. That 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 165 
 
 he's omni-everything. But the common sense of men knows 
 better. Every real religious thought denies it. After all, the 
 real God of the Christians is Christ, not God Almighty ; a poor 
 mocked and wounded God nailed on a cross of matter. . . . 
 Some day he will triumph. . . . But it is not fair to say that 
 he causes all things now. It is not fair to make out a case against 
 him. You have been misled. It is a theologian's folly. God 
 is not absolute ; God is finite. ... A finite God who struggles 
 in his great and comprehensive way as we struggle in our weak 
 and silly way — Who is with us — that is the essence of all 
 real religion. ... I agree with you so— Why ! if I thought there 
 was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and deaths 
 and all the waste and horror of this war — able to prevent these 
 things— doing them to amuse himself— I would spit in his empty 
 face. . . ."* {Mr. Britling sees it Through, p. 397.) 
 
 If Mr. Britling had left it " at that " we might have 
 been sorry for him. But when the flood of hysteria 
 subsides, he blunders up against the Open Secret. 
 
 " ' God is within Nature and necessity. Necessity is a thing 
 beyond God— beyond good and ill, beyond space and time, a 
 mystery, everlastingly impenetrable. God is nearer than that. 
 Necessity is the outermost thing, but God is the innermost thing. 
 Closer is he than breathing and nearer than hands and feet. He 
 is the Other Thing than this world. Greater than Nature or 
 Necessity, for he is a spirit and they are blind, but not con- 
 trolling them. . . . Not yet. . . . ' " [Ibid. he. cit.) 
 
 " Necessity is the outermost thing, but God is the 
 innermost thing." When Mr. Wells comes to see that 
 Necessity is an illusion, and that space and time, and 
 our good and ill, are not absolute and ultimate realities, 
 and that the *' innermost thing " is the Real Thing, he 
 will be at the end of his Research Magnificent. Mean- 
 while, he has shown his wisdom in not attempting 
 any picture of the actual procedure of the good and 
 inefficient God in his duel with Evil. 
 
n'< 
 
 166 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 You cannot very well state the humanist's position 
 in any terms that will not make manifest the absolutist's 
 advantage ; but I think Mr. Schiller's own statement 
 shows it, if anything, better than mine. 
 
 The monist's reply to this innocent Manicheism is 
 that it is the pragmatic humanist and not he who is 
 deifying Evil, since he has endowed it with ultimate 
 reality. He will suggest that an Absolute that is both 
 good and evil (since the pragmatist will have it so), is 
 not evil, even for one fleeting moment of his infinite 
 existence ; and that, for that matter, he is just as 
 capable, in fact ten times more capable, of bringing good 
 out of evil than a God, desperately moral, but of im- 
 perfect power ; since the Absolute as immanent is the 
 world-process, and as transcendent is also everything 
 that may be left over and above it ; that, if there is to 
 be a final victory, if the Evil Principle, or Evil Principles, 
 are ultimately to be swallowed up in the Good, you have 
 an ultimate unity ; that, with his struggles and his 
 victories and his ultimates and finals, the humanist is 
 giving a metaphysical reality to time that time cannot 
 be made to bear ; and that, since there is to be a final 
 swallowing, and a final unity, he might just as well have 
 had it first as last. 
 
 Here, I think, it must be admitted, the absolutist 
 scores. The pragmatist has betrayed his secret appetite 
 for unity. His evil must be swallowed up in good. If 
 the pragmatist is not plajdng with words, if there is to 
 be a real swallowing and a real assimilation, the two 
 must be potentially one. It does not matter whether 
 his resulting unity be a moral unity, or a metaphysical 
 unity ; unity it is, and union and At-one-ment ; and 
 really he might as well have had it first as last. 
 
 The absolutist does not take a " moral holiday." 
 He does not deny, and he does not ignore, the serious 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 167 
 
 and bewildering difi&culty of the problem of evil. It is 
 a difficulty from any point of view. But I cannot see 
 that it bears with a more awful weight on the theory of 
 an immanent and transcendent God, in whose reality 
 evil, as such, has no meaning that we can recojgrnize, 
 than on these two alternative theories of a Dual Principle 
 or of Plural Principles. Humanism either exalts Evil, 
 in all the prestige of an independent metaphysical 
 reality, or it poisons life at its source by fixing it in 
 matter, which should be, of all things, innocent if life 
 is to be kept holy. Or if it does not fix it there, it fixes 
 it in the human will, which is even worse, besides not 
 being altogether true. The one theory that it does 
 crush, you would think, should be the old theory of the 
 absconding deity, God the Creator, who is above all 
 things. Blessed for ever ; who sits outside creation, with 
 no part or lot in its conflict or its suffering. And yet it 
 does not crush it utterly. Incompetent as he is, the 
 humanist God, the God of the cosmic arena, has a certain 
 trait in common with the God who sits above it. " Re- 
 sistance," we are told, the resistance of matter, the 
 resistance of the hard, recalcitrant Evil Ones, is " neces- 
 sary " to the putting forth of his power, to the heroic 
 spectacle of his prowess. Who designed this accordance 
 of evil with the requirements of the gladiatorial God ? 
 Not the Evil Ones, you may be very sure. Suspicion 
 falls upon the gladiator. He has engineered the existence 
 of EvU to gratify his taste for combat and for personal 
 display. 
 
 But the immanent Spirit of the absolutist truly bears 
 his part, he truly labours and suffers, in so far as he is 
 all Nature and all mankind. He has literally shirked 
 nothing. Von Hartmann's one merit as a thinker was 
 that he saw that God the Creator is the intolerable God. 
 If he had had a little more metaphysical vision, and a 
 
168 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 little less moral cowardice, he would not have called 
 upon man to save God, to deliver the Absolute, by 
 bringing the world-process as quickly as possible to an 
 end. He would have called to him rather to save God 
 by saving himself, by behaving as much like a spiritual 
 being as possible. In no other way can he hasten the 
 end of the world-process — the tendency of all spirits 
 towards self-determination, after the likeness of the 
 Absolute Spirit in whom they live and move and have 
 their being. 
 
 So that Pragmatism and Humanism, in spite of their 
 closeness to life, and their admirable freedom from the 
 bonds of system, have broken out into a dilemma almost 
 as bad as any inherent in the systems. In the very act 
 of whitewashing its deity so as to bring him up to the 
 parochial standard of purity, Humanism has lapsed into 
 the unity it repudiatea. Horn one. Horn two, which 
 is a moral point, is not quite so obvious ; but it will 
 become so if the situation is examined. The Good God, 
 being good, is opposed to the evil He did not cause but 
 cannot help. He must, therefore, struggle against it 
 that his goodness may be proved. If he refuses the 
 heroic combat he is not a good God. If, having entered 
 the arena, he does not come off conqueror he is not, he 
 cannot be, so very good. If he conquers, the Evil One 
 is not destroyed, but merged in Good ; and you have, 
 not two principles, or many principles, but one principle. 
 And this is moral Monism. 
 
 The humanist, you see, is not quite so naif as the 
 Semitic theologies that have produced him. Uncom- 
 promising in the face of his moral dilemma, he boldly 
 throws over God's Almightiness so that his All-goodness 
 may be kept intact. On no account must he be identi- 
 fied with the trivialities and absurdities and iniquities 
 of existence. He should not, for instance, be held 
 
 PEAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 169 
 
 responsible for the presence in our universe of " so many 
 millions of fleas." 
 
 Mr. Schiller seems to suggest that it is Mr. Bradley 
 who should be responsible for the many millions. It 
 does not occur to him that they might have been designed 
 for the express purpose of demonstrating that man is 
 not the sole end of the universe, and that humanist man 
 is not the measure of all things, but that the humblest 
 organism may have its point of view, and its right to a 
 say in the matter of existence. 
 
 Having relieved his principle of its worst embarrass- 
 ments, the humanist has now got God almost, but not 
 quite, as moral as himself. But he has not avoided All- 
 in- Allness ; he has simply conceived it in the form of 
 human morality. Human morality, evolved by pro- 
 cesses of alternate conflict and readjustment from various 
 instincts of desire and repugnance adapted to the social 
 and physical conditions of the inhabitants of this planet, 
 this precious morality of his is what he solemiJy refers 
 to transcendent Eeality. And this, mind you, after 
 jibbing at any identification of deity with the absurder 
 details of our daily life. 
 
 And mark the dilemma that arises from an honest 
 man's attempt to whitewash God. After all, he can 
 only save his moral whitewash at the expense of his 
 Pluralism, and his Pluralism at the expense of his white- 
 wash. And, even then, he has not saved his Good God 
 entirely from the suspicion of complicity in Evil. The 
 Good God challenges, provokes, demands resistance. 
 He is no more All-good than he is All-powerful. 
 
 There is another very serious objection that the 
 absolutist might make. The pragmatist's helpless and 
 unhappy God is not good at all, any more than he is all- 
 powerful. For, on the pragmatist's theory, the good is 
 the useful ; it is what pays. The good God, then, is 
 
 mkimsm ^^^M 
 
170 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 the useful God, the paying God ; and Evil is swallowed 
 up in usefulness, in payment. So that Evil, also, is 
 what pays in the long run. 
 
 It would seem, after all, then, that imity, in some 
 form or other, is a necessity of thought. If the appetite 
 for it is frustrated in one place it will break out in 
 another. It is implicit in the very dilemmas of the 
 systems that have repudiated it. 
 
 But, to be just to Pragmatism and Humanism, they 
 have deserved well of philosophy in reminding it of 
 things it is apt to forget ; little things, like Will and 
 action and moral conduct, which Idealism really renders 
 little or no account of. 
 
 And I do not think either pragmatists or humanists 
 claim to have established a metaphysic. Concerned as 
 they are with the human will and with action, and with 
 moral conduct, they aim at something which they believe 
 devoutly to be nobler and better and more useful — they 
 conceive themselves to be much more profitably engaged 
 in laying the ethical foundations of the Universe. They 
 do not worry about the foimdations of Ethics ; they 
 worry about the ethical behaviour of the Universe. 
 Whatever the Universe does or does not conform to, it 
 must conform to human and pragmatic ideas of morality. 
 
 But the Universe is nothing if not ironic. And in 
 the fate of Pragmatism and Humanism there is a peculiar 
 and a perfect irony. They have been taken at their 
 word ; and, as they have insisted on putting conduct 
 first, and Ethics first, or Ethics, if anything, a little 
 after conduct, and on ignoring everything in the Universe 
 that does not square with conduct, or account for 
 conduct, or presuppose conduct, that is not related to 
 conduct, or referable in some way to conduct, they are 
 left, in consequence of their vast repudiations, without 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 171 
 
 fcny ethical ground for Ethics; and therefore without 
 any ethical ground for conduct at all. " Thought- 
 relations " are irrelevant to conduct, therefore " thought- 
 relations " must go. Relativity is fatal to ethical 
 conduct, therefore relativity must go. The Infinite and 
 the Absolute are indifEerent to ethical conduct, therefore 
 the Infinite and the Absolute must go. Monism will 
 not account for ethical conduct. Monism is even in- 
 compatible with ethical conduct, therefore Monism 
 must most emphatically go. So that, though Pragmatic 
 Humanism does not claim to have established a meta- 
 physic, it does claim to have destroyed one, which is 
 to be metaphysical with a vengeance. 
 
 And it does not seem to have occurred to either 
 Pragmatism or Humanism that a dead metaphysic 
 could revenge itself in its turn. It did not and it could 
 not occur to them that in this clean sweep of non- 
 moralities. Morality itself must go. The pragmatist's 
 eyes are fixed on conduct and the useful, the paying 
 results of conduct ; and the humanist's eyes are fixed 
 on the origins of conduct and the end of conduct, and 
 neither have paused to ask themselves the one question 
 that is vital and crucial for Ethics : Is there anything 
 that is good in itself, apart from its results or its origin, 
 or its end ? The logical outcome of Pragmatism is 
 that the good is what pays ; the logical outcome of 
 Humanism, with its evolutionary Ethics, is that the 
 good is the pleasant or the desirable or the beneficial. 
 
 With all their air of brand-new modernity, neither 
 Pragmatism nor Humanism have added anything to 
 the Utilitarianism of the middle nineteenth century, 
 nor to the Hedonism of the year 400 B.C. Pragmatism 
 wears a Quaker's hat, and Humanism has vine-leaves 
 in its hair. Their quest is not for Ultimate Reality, 
 but for steam-engines and motor cars and synthetic 
 
 J 
 
172 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 chemistry ; or for Tango, if that is pleasant, desirable, 
 and beneficial. 
 
 But it is only fair to add that their dilemmas are of 
 the unconscious kind, and that they have made no 
 specious promises. They say : I find this Dualism or 
 this Pluralism, and I leave it at that. It does not make 
 a tidy universe, but I can't help it. It's not my job to 
 tidy up the Universe. And I prefer things left like that 
 with their ends hanging all loose ; it is more picturesque, 
 more like Nature and like real life. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 178 
 
 jaRrihai7rtft<WBMiii 
 
VI 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 We have seen that, after heroic struggles, neither 
 Pragmatism nor Humanism succeeded in shaking itself 
 wholly free of the abhorred unity. In their exclusive 
 concern with conduct and morality both betray a strong 
 subjective bias fatal to the pretensions of a philosophy 
 that is out against subjectivism in all its forms. We 
 have seen that their too great zeal for goodness and 
 the ultimate triumph of goodness defeated its own end, 
 and left them with a universe on their hands in which 
 Goodness had neither metaphysical sanction nor logical 
 ground, and, so far from being a reality, is not even 
 that which to every pragmatist and humanist is a 
 miserable makeshift for reality — an idea. 
 
 I had got so far when it was pointed out to me that 
 to deal faithfully with those philosophies is to slay the 
 slain, and that my time would be very much better 
 employed in considering the New Realism, which has 
 nothing in common with them but its abhorrence of 
 unity. It was also pointed out to me that the claims 
 of the New Realism are so well founded that there is 
 no likelihood or even possibility of Monism raising 
 its head again, and that the mysterious Snark, " ultimate 
 reality," has disappeared from the universe. I gathered 
 
 175 
 
 ^.Kfc-^**s-*rWiii«B.a,B«ta««fe^->-..i-^*^^ 
 
176 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 177 
 
 that, this time, there can be no more temporizing, no 
 more fooling about with relativity ; no more fencing 
 and dodging, and no more playing fast and loose with 
 the law of contradiction ; no more sheltering of reality 
 behind appearances ; no more conjuring with the unity 
 of consciousness ; in short, that all the little games of 
 Monism are played out. It is a case of either swallowing 
 the New Realism, or being swallowed, with no possible 
 doubt as to the actual issue. 
 
 There is nothing for it but to approach the monster 
 with as bold a front as is possible for a devout monist 
 inwardly quivering with fear. It must be confessed 
 that he is in some danger. For the New Realism is 
 before all things a mathematical method ; and it cannot 
 be said that every monist is as strong in mathematics 
 as by the nature of his case he ought to be. Still, he 
 will do himself no good by ignoring the gravity of his 
 position. He has got to look the thing squarely in the 
 face, or go for ever quivering with fear of what mathe- 
 matics may do to him. 
 
 Now he cannot look it squarely in the face until he 
 has stripped himself of every prejudice that clings to 
 him, until he has got rid of the traditions he has been 
 born and bred in (for the monist is usually born, not 
 made) ; until he has cleared his mind of Kant, whether 
 he spells it with a small c or a big K. 
 
 He must, I think, acknowledge that his real, live, 
 and formidable enemies are, not the Dualism of " Messrs. 
 Dewey and Schiller," nor yet the Pluralism of Mr. 
 William James, but the Pluralism of Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell, Mr. G. E. Moore, Mr. Alexander, and the new 
 realists of the United States. 
 
 At the same time, it would have argued a most un- 
 reasonable negligence to have ignored the brilliant and 
 powerful work of Mr. James and Mr. Schiller. By 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 their very brilliance and their power, and the grace 
 of their appeal to the thought and feeling of the plain 
 man, they are likely to hold their own, if not after the 
 New Realism has been forgotten, at any rate long before 
 it has begun to be remembered by the plain man. The 
 chances are that it is neither Pragmatism nor Humanism, 
 but the New Realism that will succeed in establishing 
 itself as the dominant philosophy of the twentieth 
 century. Still, they prepared its way before it ; they 
 anticipated it to some extent in their criticism of abstract 
 intellectual Idealism, and in their insistence on those 
 irreducible elements of will, feeling, and action which 
 abstract Idealism leaves out of its account. 
 
 And the New Realism has not been grateful to the 
 two pioneers. It comes triumphantly and relentlessly 
 into its own, and you may say its first act of power is 
 to give both of them the coup de grace where it finds 
 them, loitering contentedly on the very road they had 
 made smooth for it. 
 
 Well, the plain man is not going to think the worse 
 of Pragmatism for Mr. Bertrand Russell's attack on it, 
 even if Pragmatism is not hereafter to be counted 
 among serious philosophies, and if Humanism is m no 
 better case. 
 
 To what does the New Realism owe its deadly force ? 
 
 Mainly, I think, if not entirely, to its method. Not 
 to its newness, for it is not by any means so new as 
 would appear from its claim to have revolutionized 
 Philosophy, much as Copernicus revolutionized astro- 
 nomy, by taking the sun as the centre of the solar 
 system instead of the earth. Indeed, the New Realism 
 has gone one better than Copernicus. It has decentral- 
 ized Philosophy altogether. 
 
 And it has done this by applying the method of 
 
178 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell's " atomistic logic " to the universe 
 without and to the universe within ; that is to say, to 
 the sum total of experience. 
 
 The first result of this searching and implacable 
 analysis is to demonstrate that the two are by no means 
 conterminous. On the contrary, you are led, step by 
 step, through a series of unwary admissions to the 
 conclusion that there is no universe within ; but that 
 the sum total of the within is, in a rigorous and un- 
 debatable sense, part (and a very small part at that) 
 of the universe without ; while of the universe without 
 there is no sum total, but an infinite number of kinds 
 or classes of existences and an infinite number of exist- 
 ences within each class or kind. The extreme pluralistic 
 conclusion follows wherever and whenever the analytic 
 method is applied. There is no escaping it, because, in 
 the last resort, it rests upon a limited set of incontro- 
 vertible axioms of mathematical logic. There is no 
 escaping the extreme realistic conclusion, because it 
 also rests on an incontrovertible law of pure mathe- 
 matics. All mathematics in their turn flow from a 
 score of premisses of Symbolic or Formal Logic (33). 
 
 ■ This fact, that " all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic," 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell declares to be " one of the greatest 
 discoveries of the age " (34) ; and he shows that it is 
 impossible to exaggerate its importance to Philosophy 
 and its influence on the fate of Monism. 
 
 " The Philosophy of Mathematics has been hitherto as contro- 
 versial, obscure and unprogressive as the other branches of 
 philosophy. Although it was generally agreed that mathematics 
 is in some sense true, philosophers disputed as to what mathe- 
 matical propositions really meant : although something was true 
 no two people agreed as to what it was that was true, and if 
 something was known, no one knew what it was that was known. 
 So long, however, as this was doubtful it could hardly be said 
 
 r 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 179 
 
 that any certain and exact knowledge was to be obtained in 
 mathematics. We find, accordingly, that ideaUsts have tended 
 more and more to regard all mathematics as dealing with mere 
 appearances, while empiricists have held everything mathe- 
 matical to be approximation to some exact truth about which 
 they had nothing to tell us." (Principia Mathematica, i. p. 4.) 
 
 The strength of Idealism has hitherto lain in the 
 poverty of Formal Logic, the impossibility of bringing 
 the sacrosanct deductions of mathematics into line 
 with deductive logic as it then existed. Philosophers, 
 when they looked for the cause of this mysterious divorce 
 and contradiction between two orders of truth supposed 
 equally incontrovertible, so far from suspecting that 
 the machinery of formal logic might be at fault, were 
 apt to throw the entire blame on mathematics. Mathe- 
 matics was accused of relying on axioms which were so 
 many unproved and unprovable hypotheses. They 
 might depend on an a priori intuition, or they might 
 not ; in either case their boasted logical certainty was an 
 illusion. What was much worse, so far as pure mathe- 
 matics could be said to be certain, they had no valid 
 application to the world of experience, the world of 
 space and time. 
 
 All Idealisms, constructive or destructive, are based 
 on the ultimate inability of mathematics to defend its 
 own position. And it is claimed that with the reform 
 of Symbolic Logic, the perfecting of the formal machinery, 
 the bottom is knocked out of Idealism. 
 
 For it follows that if all mathematics is symbolic 
 logic, if *' all the entities that occur in mathematics 
 can be defined in terms of those that occur in the above 
 twenty premisses," we have no longer got two orders of 
 truth, but one order of truth. Pure mathematical truth 
 will not be purer than any other ; it will not constitute 
 a different, a higher, holier, and more certain kind of 
 
180 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 181 
 
 truth. Any unmathematical proposition that follows 
 faithfully from the same laws of symbolic logic will be 
 as certainly true, as high, and holy as mathematical 
 truth. 
 
 And lest the monist should take heart and see in the 
 Great Discovery a confirmation of his theory that all 
 logic, that is to say, all thought, all truth, and therefore 
 all existence is one, it should be broken to him at once 
 that he is doomed to disappointment. 
 
 This unity of supreme logical law is not a unity in 
 which he can hope to recognize his own. It is a purely 
 formal and provisional unity. So far from being any 
 good to him, it is the thin end of the wedge by which 
 his universe is prised open, torn asunder, and scattered 
 to the infinite. This logic is not his logic. Instead of 
 the twelve comfortable categories which he could wrap 
 round his universe like twelve woolly blankets, with the 
 one vast eider-down of the Absolute on top, it gives him 
 a plurality of logical indefinables, as hard as marbles, 
 which hurt him in all his tender places ; instead of the 
 rhythmic and dynamic throb of the Triple Dialectic, 
 with its rich, rolling song of unity in difference, it gives 
 him vibrations as multitudinous, as discordant, and 
 irrelevant as the noises in a Futurist symphony. 
 
 The New Realism is before all things a method, 
 and a mathematical method. For, if there is to be any 
 philosophy — any discussion as to the nature of the 
 known, of knowing and the knower — at all, you must 
 begin somewhere ; some axioms, or at any rate one 
 axiom, must be accepted as certain, if there is not to be 
 an infinite going back upon all propositions whatever. 
 And the only certain axioms are the axioms of pure 
 mathematics ; that is to say, of Symbolic Logic. If 
 we start anywhere, we must start with these. 
 
 Starting with these, Pluralistic Realism stands or 
 
 falls by mathematical logic. Its four vital theories are 
 based on it : its theory of the mathematical infinite ; 
 its theory of relations ; its theory of concepts or univer- 
 sals ; its theory of immediate perception, or of our 
 knowledge of the external world. It ought not to matter 
 which of these we take first ; for from each Pluralistic 
 Realism will follow. Each leads us safely to its source 
 in some incontrovertible law of mathematical logic. 
 But, as it happens, we cannot consider the realistic 
 theory of perception apart from the theory of the Infinite 
 and the theory of relations, on both of which it depends. 
 
 Say, then, that we begin with immediate experience, 
 the perception of an object in space. 
 
 (It is, to say the least of it, extremely debatable 
 whether the perception of an object in space is in any 
 sense an immediate experience ; but I must leave this 
 crucial point for consideration later on. I want to 
 state the position of Pluralistic Realism, as far as I 
 understand it, with the greatest possible clearness and 
 cogency, and for present purposes we may very well 
 assume that the perception of an object in space is an 
 immediate experience. We must start somewhere ; 
 and it is important for a proper understanding of the 
 " new " position that we should start with an experience 
 into which these three terms, " object," " space," and 
 " perception," enter.) 
 
 Whatever consciousness may be supposed to have 
 done or not done originally with its sense data, there 
 comes a point when those data are " referred " to an 
 object perceived as in a space external to the perceiver. 
 We know what Idealism makes of this, and with what 
 plausibility. It makes of it something like this : — 
 
 Let us grant that the only space in which objects 
 are immediately known (otherwise perceived) is a 
 ''private space " (35), which the perceiver carries about 
 
182 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 with him, and that the shapes, sizes, lights and shades, 
 and positions of objects in this space are not absolute, 
 but relative to the position of the perceiver. Let us 
 grant that the nature of pure or mathematical space has 
 laws of its own and a nature of its own such that it is 
 not and cannot be known in immediate perception. 
 On these two points Monists and Pluralists are, I believe, 
 agreed. Now, as long as it could be supposed that pure 
 mathematical space was as much infected by illusion 
 and relativity as any '' private " space of yours or 
 mine, and that it was therefore a perfect hotbed of 
 contradictions and dilemmas (what applied to space 
 applying equally to time) ; then, though the truth of 
 all the intermediate laws of physics rested on the truth 
 of the assumption that their space and time are " real " 
 and contain no contradiction. Idealism was still within 
 its rights in denying absolute and independent reality 
 to space and time. The more contradictions and 
 dilemmas Idealism could find in relations, above all in 
 the relations of space and time, the better it was pleased. 
 For, since there is nothing known that is not known as 
 standing in relation to something or other (except the 
 Absolute), it coidd then charge the whole multiplicity 
 of outer and inner experience with unreality and set up 
 its Absolute, which is One, as the only Real. Physical 
 science could not lift a finger to prevent this annihilation 
 of its universe, as long as the pure mathematical laws, 
 on which it rests, themselves involved the very worst 
 contradictions and dilemmas. Its universe of space 
 and time, matter and motion, was infected at its source. 
 The most destructive of those dilemmas turned on 
 the nature of the Infinite and its relation to the finite. 
 It was argued that finite events such as motion or any 
 other change simply could not happen because of the 
 infinity they involved. And if they are perceived as 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 183 
 
 happening, if they are, in fact, knoim to happen, that 
 fact goes to prove that all our perceiving and all our 
 knowledge is of appearances and not of realities, and that 
 the only real object of a real knowledge is the Absolute, 
 the motionless and unchanging One. 
 
 This relativity on which Monism battens is found 
 not only in the changes and motions of things, but in 
 things themselves. Their being is to be related. Take 
 the simplest of static relations, the relation of the thing 
 and its qualities. It seems obvious that, if there are 
 qualities, they must be qualities of something. There 
 must be something that holds them together. (At least 
 so it seems to the Idealistic Monist.) The thing and its 
 qualities will then stand to each other as the two terms 
 of a relation. But it is evident (the Monist thinks) 
 that the relation must depend upon what the thing is, 
 and what qualities it has ; that is to say, upon the nature 
 of its two terms. The relation itself will be related, and 
 doubly related. 
 
 We have, then, instead of the single chaste and simple 
 relation that we started with, a relation of dependence 
 holding between the relation itself and each of its two 
 terms ; that is to say, the relation that we thought so 
 innocent has itself given birth to two terms and a 
 relation ; and that relation, being likewise dependent 
 on the nature of its terms, will be likewise related ; and 
 so on for ever and ever, the terms and the relations 
 multipl5dng, like generations, in geometrical proportion. 
 You will find all this maddening behaviour of relations 
 described in Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, 
 pages nineteen to thirty-four. 
 
 We started with a thing and its qualities and the 
 relation between them, and we have got an infinite 
 regression. But, by the very fact that it possesses 
 quality and that the qualities are possessed by it, the 
 
184 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 185 
 
 thing is finite, the qualities are finite, and the relation 
 between them is finite. So that we have again the 
 contradiction and dilemma of a finite set of terms and 
 relations involving an infinite series of terms and rela- 
 tions. A contradiction and dilemma which can only be 
 avoided by taking both term and relation, the thing 
 and its qualities and whatever it is that makes them its 
 qualities, as appearances and not as realities. 
 
 Apply the same argument to the supreme relations 
 of subject and object, of the self and its consciousness, 
 and the entire universe of the without and the within 
 is revealed as an illusion and a contradiction. And 
 once more our flight is to the Absolute as the only 
 Reality. 
 
 This conclusion is revolting to the intellectual con- 
 science of men of science and to the common sense of 
 the plain man, however much it may delight the Monist 
 and the mystic to be thus driven into the bosom of his 
 God. 
 
 We have seen how Vitalism and Pragmatism have 
 tried to escape it and wherein they have failed. It 
 must, I think, be owned that the New Realism is more 
 successful. ' 
 
 Neither Vitalism nor Pragmatism had a logic and a 
 method. Vitalism took its stand on immediate percep- 
 tion and the facts of life. It observed them, as the 
 biologist or the psychologist observes them ; it found 
 that neither what it called Realism nor what it called 
 Idealism provided or accounted for the most important 
 data of perception and the most vital of the facts of life. 
 But it had no logic whereby to test the apparent contra- 
 dictions and dilemmas of immediate perception ; it 
 attempted to solve them uncritically and by rule of 
 thumb, trusting to the plain man's common sense to 
 find no fault with its pronouncement : The problem 
 
 V 
 
 of Life is solved by living, as the problem of walk- 
 ing solvitur ambulando. And although Mr. William 
 James has dealt very faithfully indeed with Abstract 
 Idealism, his method is, on the whole, so akin to M. 
 Bergson's want of method that it consists mainly in an 
 open appeal to the imagination and the common sense 
 which Vitalism satisfies and Abstract Idealism does 
 not. It is hard to resist Mr. James when he is quoting 
 Fechner, almost as hard as it is to resist Fechner himself. 
 Fechner appeals with fervour and without shame to the 
 desire of God and the hope of immortality that still 
 stirs the hearts of some of us outside the Universities of 
 Cambridge and Harvard. But so long as there is left 
 in this hospitable pluralistic universe a single stickler 
 for the rigour of the game, one solitary professor whose 
 ht.irt remains impervious to the desire of God and the 
 hope of immortality, the appeal of philosophies which 
 have no Logic is urged in vain. 
 
 For it should be remembered that this is not a 
 question of who thinks closest to life, Mr. William 
 James or Mr. Bertrand Russell, but of what guarantee 
 we have that when we think our thinking is true. We 
 cannot dash in and snatch at a highly complex ready- 
 made reality like Life and test our thinkings by their 
 correspondence with it, even if we knew what life is and 
 what thought is (which we are very far from knowing). 
 For life, anyhow, is a highly specialized and subordinate 
 part of the whole context of experience, which includes 
 many more things than immediate perception can lay 
 its hands on ; and, as for thought, it may have no higher 
 or more comprehensive place in the total hierarchy 
 than life ; and philosophy cannot test thought by its 
 correspondence with reality, when the reality of ex- 
 perience is the question before us to be solved. 
 
 We owe it to Mr. Bertrand Russell that Logic has 
 
 illiillliiliiiiiiiiiiiiMliilMli 
 
186 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ▼I 
 
 been restored to its proper place as the organ of philo- 
 sophy. We also owe it to him that Synthetic Logic 
 has been succeeded by Analytic Logic, if it is only for 
 a time. The result is the most drastic criticism of pre- 
 ceding philosophies that has been known since the 
 Critique of Pure Reason smashed the systems that were 
 before it. If the conclusions of Atomism hold good all 
 along the line, it means the complete break-up, not only 
 of Absolute Idealism, but of all the great syntheses that 
 ever ruled in Philosophy — ^with some revolts and re- 
 volutions — since Philosophy began. 
 
 The synthetic systems were based, one and all, on 
 criticism, more or less drastic, of the assumptions of 
 immediate perception. Where the axioms of pure 
 mathematics were held to be true they were also held 
 to be inapplicable to the objects of immediate perception. 
 Every attempt to reconcile the two orders of assump- 
 tions led to contradictions and dilemmas. The truth 
 of the mathematical axioms themselves was considered 
 to be open to doubt. Though the most tremendous 
 consequences flowed from them, there were no axioms 
 more ultimate and more simple from which they them- 
 selves flowed. The validity of every generalization 
 and every deduction of physical science hung on them. 
 They hung unsupported in a world of their own. Mathe- 
 matics had thus a peculiar and mysterious existence. 
 No valid conclusion about the actual physical world 
 could be reached without them. Yet the objects they 
 defined had no existence in the actual physical world. 
 
 That position remains unaltered. 
 
 " As a branch of pure mathematics Geometry is strictly de- 
 ductive ; indifierent to the choice of its premisses and to the 
 question whether there exist (in the strict sense) such entities 
 as its premisses define." (Prindpia Mathematical p. 372.) 
 
 '* Until the nineteenth century Geometry meant EucUdean 
 
 ^- 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 187 
 
 Geometry, i.e. a certain system of propositions deduced from 
 premisses which were supposed to describe the space in which 
 we live." 
 
 Then there were only two alternatives : 
 
 " Either we must be certain of the truth of the premisses on 
 their own account, or we must be able to show that no other 
 set of premisses could give results consistent with experience." 
 
 Kantian Idealism held out for the first alternative. 
 Empiricism for the second. 
 
 " But objections were raised to both. For the Kantian view 
 it was necessary to maintain that all the axioms are self-evident, 
 a view which honest people found it hard to extend to the axiom 
 of parallels. The second alternative . . . could only be tested 
 by a greater mathematical abiUty than falls to the lot of most 
 philosophers. Accordingly the test was wanting till Lobat- 
 chewsky and Bolyai developed their non-Euchdean system. It 
 was then proved with all the cogency of mathematical demonstra- 
 tion that premisses other than Euclid's could give results empiric- 
 ally indistinguishable, within the Umits of observation from 
 those of the orthodox system. . . . Geometry has become 
 (what it was formerly mistakenly called) a branch of pure mathe- 
 matics, in which assertions are that such and such consequences 
 follow from such and such premisses, not that entities such as the 
 premisses describe really exist. That is to say, if Euclid's axioms 
 be called A, and P be any proposition implied by A, then, in the 
 Geometry which preceded Lobatschewsky, P itself would be 
 asserted since A was asserted. But nowadays the geometer 
 would only assert that A implies P, leaving A and P themselves 
 doubtful. And he would have other sets of axioms Aj, Ag, . . . 
 implying Pj, Pg, respectively, and the implications would belong 
 to Geometry, but not A, or P, or any of the other actual axioms 
 and propositions. Thus Geometry no longer throws any direct 
 light on the nature of actual space. . . . Dimensions, like order 
 and continuity, are defined in purely abstract terms, without 
 any reference to actual space." (Ibid. pp. 372-376.) 
 
 Now the former state of mathematics suited the 
 
188 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 189 
 
 idealistic monist admirably, for it provided all the 
 contradictions and dilemmas that he wanted. And 
 he may have still drawn consolation from the assurance 
 that Geometry is farther than ever from throwing " any 
 direct light on the nature of actual space." But he has 
 now to learn that ''indirectly, the increased analysis 
 and knowledge of possibilities resulting from modern 
 Geometry has thrown immense light upon our actual 
 space." 
 
 If Pluralistic Realism can show, in spite of the high 
 irrelevance of its mathematics, that there are definitions 
 and there are axioms that hold good of the universe of 
 space and time, matter and motion ; if it can remove 
 the contradictions and dilemmas which have been held 
 to attach to the conceptions of space and time, matter 
 and motion ; if it can show that the relations of finite 
 and infinite contain no contradiction or dilemma, it can 
 then go on to prove the continuity of space, the absolute 
 reality of space and time, matter and motion, and of that 
 curious collection of qualities we call an object in space. 
 That is to say, it undertakes to show that the existence 
 of the external world is independent of our consciousness 
 and of any consciousness whatsoever. 
 
 We shall see that those conclusions do not exhaust 
 the possibilities of Pluralism. It claims to have estab- 
 lished the external and independent reality of such 
 things as concepts and " thought -relations " and the 
 external and independent reality of sensations, which 
 even philosophers hostile to Monism have for long 
 enough surrendered to the inner world. 
 
 It makes out its case, first, by dealing with all mathe- 
 matical laws and all mathematical reasoning as laws and 
 reasoning of Symbolic Logic ; secondly, by giving the 
 entities defined by pure mathematics — points, lines, 
 and planes — an external reality peculiar and apart ; 
 
 I • 
 
 thirdly, by cutting away the ground from under the 
 monist's most cherished contradiction, the contradiction 
 involved in the very idea of mathematical space. As 
 long as you were compelled to think of pure space as 
 a mysterious continuity made up of discrete elements 
 either infinitely divisible, or indivisible and infinite in 
 number, the idealist was within his rights in denying 
 the reality of space and time, and of matter and motion 
 and everything else that depends on space and time. 
 
 The New Realism admits, I think; that he was within 
 his rights. Things cannot move, that is to say, cannot 
 change their positions, in an unreal space, nor real 
 events happen in an unreal time, nor real things be tied 
 together by unreal relations, nor real parts be contained 
 in unreal wholes. 
 
 So the first thing that Mr. Bertrand Russell shows 
 is that the laws of pure mathematics are the laws of 
 Symbolic Logic. They have no superior cogency, but 
 they have all the cogency that Formal Logic can confer 
 on them, and there arise no contradictions or dilemmas 
 in them anywhere. 
 
 This could not be shown as long as the axioms of 
 mathematics can be held debatable ; and they can be 
 held debatable as long as finite and infinite are affected 
 by each other's behaviour ; and finite and infinite could 
 be very seriously affected by each other's behaviour as 
 long as pure mathematics dealt with quantity and 
 magnitude. But pure mathematics no longer deals 
 with quantities or magnitudes, but with pure numbers. 
 Pure numbers are reduced to " classes " or terms, the 
 simplest elements of purely logical formulae ; they can 
 therefore be treated like any other terms in purely 
 logical propositions. 
 
 We have seen that the mutual compromising of finite 
 by infinite and of infinite by finite is the root of the 
 
190 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 191 
 
 contradiction by which Idealism stands. But their difier- 
 ences have been adjusted for ever, we are told, since, 
 some time in the 'eighties, George Cantor, the mathe- 
 matician, made a certain interesting discovery as to the 
 nature of the Infinite. He found, and proved, that to 
 or from an infinite series any number, even an infinite 
 number, can be added or taken away without either in- 
 creasing or diminishing the series. That is to say, finite and 
 infinite are not affected by each other's vagaries. They 
 neither negate nor limit nor do they define each other. 
 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell contends that this discovery 
 has made secure the whole ground of mathematical 
 philosophy, and with it all the foundations of applied 
 mathematics, and with them all the laws of physical 
 science that depend on the laws of space ; and with 
 these, again, the ground of the reality of the external 
 world is made secure. 
 
 For the reality of motion depends on the continuity 
 of space, and the reality of change on the continuity of 
 time. Before Cantor's discovery it could be argued 
 that change and therefore motion, which is change of 
 position, were relative and unreal ; that real motion 
 could not take place, for the simple reason that there 
 was no place for it to take, and that no real event could 
 happen in time because there never was a quiet, steady 
 instant for it to happen in. As long as space and time 
 were held to be discontinuous, to consist in a finite or 
 infinite number of separable points or instants, these 
 dilemmas, so distressing to Realism, followed. For 
 progress of bodies and succession of events will always 
 be from one point to the next beyond it, and from one 
 instant to the next beyond. Always between points 
 the body said to be occupying space will be out of space, 
 and between instants events said to be occurring in 
 time will be out of time. M. Bergson does not cause 
 
 H 
 
 ; 
 
 these dilemmas to disappear by calling space the net 
 that intellect spreads out under matter to catch it as 
 it tumbles, and by using time to stuff the gaps in space. 
 For there is nothing to stuff time's gaps with, except 
 duree which is not time. There is no space and no time 
 that can cover the awful, the unthinkable jump from 
 next to next. 
 
 Therefore, in Zeno's problem, Achilles never can 
 overtake the tortoise ; because, however fast he runs, 
 he can do no more than jump from next point to next 
 point ; and the tortoise, however slow he is, can do no 
 less. Neither of them can skip a point, so that Achilles 
 can't settle it by jumping over either the tortoise or the 
 ground that he has travelled. Swiftness and slowness 
 are irrelevant to the problem. Time, which is all im- 
 portant to it, suffers from the same discontinuity as 
 space ; from instant to instant is on all fours with from 
 point to point. 
 
 Into this dreadful gulf between point and point, 
 instant and instant, the modern mathematician shovels 
 in — ^the Infinite. 
 
 Continuity, for the modern mathematician, is not 
 an affair of infinitesimals, but of infinitely divisibles. 
 More than all, it is an affair of order in a series. From 
 Cantor's discovery it follows that there never is a next 
 point, a next instant, a next number ; there never is any 
 n£xtness at all. The next point, the next instant, the 
 next number, are finites. And as the Infinite is neither 
 increased nor diminished, nor limited, nor in any way 
 affected by any behaviour of the finites, it follows that, 
 start at any finite point, or instant, you will, between it 
 and the next point, the next instant, there will be an 
 infinite number of points and instants, and between 
 any two numbers an infinite number again, and so on 
 to infinity, the gaps filling up before your eyes. 
 
192 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ▼I 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 193 
 
 You will find the entire proof set forth in the chapters 
 on Infinity and Continuity in the Principia Mathematica. 
 Meanwhile Mr. Russell simplifies the problem by an 
 illustration. 
 
 "... Let us imagine a tiny speck of light moving along a scale. 
 What do we mean by saying that the motion is continuous ? . . . 
 If we consider any two positions of the speck occupied at any 
 two instants, there will be other intermediate positions occupied 
 at intermediate instants. However near together we take the 
 positions, the specks will not jump suddenly from the one to the 
 other, but will pass through an infinite number of other positions 
 on the way. Every distance, however small, is traversed by 
 passing through all the infinite series of positions between the 
 two ends of the distance." (Our Knowledge of the External World, 
 pp. 133-134.) 
 
 It is obvious that this feat would be impossible if 
 time could not be treated in the same way. 
 
 So there is no nextness anywhere. And if there is 
 no nextness there is continuity. And if mathematical 
 space and time are continuous, then all spaces and all 
 times are continuous ; and if continuous then real. 
 This conclusion, which is by no means self-evident, 
 is the result of further logical constructions and corre- 
 lations. What holds good of actual space will hold good 
 of matter occupying space. What holds good of actual 
 time will hold good of change and motion occupying 
 time ; change and motion will be absolute and real, and 
 unselfcontradictory in the sense that there is no state 
 of change, and no state of motion. And since all material 
 things are continuous, that is to say extended, extension, 
 and with it the primary qualities of matter, will be 
 absolute and real. 
 
 There were, as we have seen, three outstanding 
 objections to the older Realisms : the alleged hypo- 
 thetical character of the axioms of pure mathematics ; 
 
 ). 
 
 i 
 
 the supposed fact that sense-perceptions are illusory ; 
 the supposed dependence of a relation on its terms. 
 
 We have seen how the New Realism deals with the 
 first. We shall see, later on, in another context, how it 
 deals with the third. Its business, at the point where 
 we are now, is with sense perception. 
 
 When it comes to sense -perception it betrays a 
 certain consciousness of difficulty. The appearances of 
 an object in space do certainly differ according to the 
 point of view and the optic apparatus of the perceiver. 
 Its size, shape, colour, and relation to other objects in 
 space vary with the position and distances of the per- 
 ceiver. If a humorous creator had given to the lens 
 of the eye the extravagant convexity and concavity of 
 the little mirrors placed at the doors of Pierce's restaur- 
 ants, the world of creatures would appear as a world of 
 grotesques. 
 
 But suppose that the New Realism accepts as the 
 standard lens the lens of the normal human eye, 
 appearances presented to the normal human eye will 
 not rank as appearances, but as real objects normally 
 perceived, and all variations from the normal will be 
 attributed to flaws in the mechanism of perception. 
 
 (This question of the standard is crucial for the New 
 Realism. It raises difficulties which I will not dwell 
 upon at present.) 
 
 ■ Still, the variations, which we may call objective 
 variations due to the perceiver's objective changes of 
 position, will remain. Also the fact that to one object 
 of perception there will be a considerable, not to say an 
 infinite number of perceivers, each bringing to the 
 problem an individual angle or point of view, which 
 itself will change with each change in his position. So 
 that the New Realism has to assume at least three kinds 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
194 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 of space to begin with, and as many more kinds as may 
 be necessary : Pure space, the space of the mathema- 
 tician ; private space, the space which every individual 
 perceiver carries about with him ; and public space 
 which is the same for everybody, and to which each 
 separate private space has to be added and adjusted as 
 a system of private cubicles is adjusted to a public 
 dormitory. 
 
 All these spaces, purged from the uncleanness of 
 contradiction and relativity, are real and outside con- 
 sciousness. Even private space is real and outside. It 
 is, indeed, in its own mysterious way, not perhaps part 
 of public space, as the cubicle is part of the dormitory, 
 but one of the infinite, sliding, interpenetrating planes 
 of the pluralistic Real. On this system private spaces 
 may be imagined as being like so many transverse inter- 
 secting beams subsisting in public space, cleaving their 
 way through it and through each other (as rays of light 
 pierce their unique and untroubled paths through so 
 many sheets of thin glass), and constructing with public 
 space a system of most indubitable outsideness. 
 
 I must leave it to Mr. Bertrand Russell to describe 
 the manner of their adjustment. 
 
 " If two men are sitting in a room, two somewhat similar 
 worlds are perceived by them ; if a third man enters and sits 
 between them, a third world, intermediate between the two 
 previous worlds, begins to be perceived. . . . The system con- 
 sisting of all views of the universe, perceived and unperceived, I 
 shall call the system of ' perspectives * ; I shall confine the 
 expression ' private worlds ' to such views of the universe as 
 are actually perceived. Thus a ' private world ' is a perceived 
 * perspective' ; but there may be any number of unperceived 
 perspectives. 
 
 " Two men are sometimes found to perceive very similar per- 
 spectives, so similar that they can use the same words to describe 
 them. ... In case the similarity is very great, we say the points 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 195 
 
 of view of the two perspectives are near together in space ; but 
 this space in which they are near together is totally different 
 from the space inside the two perspectives. It is a relation 
 between the two perspectives, and is not in either of them ; no 
 one can perceive it, and if it is to be known it can be only by 
 inference. Between two perceived perspectives which are similar, 
 we can imagine a whole series of other perspectives, some at least 
 unperceived, and such that between any two, however similar, 
 there are others still more similar. In this way the space which 
 consists of relations between perspectives can be rendered 
 continuous, and (if we choose) three-dimensional. . . . There 
 are as many private spaces as there are perspectives ; there are 
 therefore at least as many as there are percipients. . . . But 
 there is only one perspective space, whose elements are single 
 perspectives, each with its own private space. . . . 
 
 " These private spaces will each count as one point, or at any 
 rate as one element, in perspective space. They are ordered by 
 means of their similarities. Suppose, for example, that we start 
 from one which contains the appearance of a circular disc, such 
 as would be called a penny, and suppose this appearance, in the 
 perspective in question, is circular, not elliptic. We can then 
 form a whole series of perspectives containing a graduated series 
 of circular appearances of various sizes : for this purpose we 
 have only to move (as we say) towards the penny or away from 
 it. The perspectives in which the penny looks circular will be 
 said to lie on a straight line in perspective space, and their order 
 on this line will be that of the sizes of the circular aspects. . . . 
 
 " In order to explain the correlation of private spaces with 
 perspective space, we have first to explain what is meant by 
 * the place (in perspective space) where a thing is. . . .' We 
 can form another straight Hne of perspectives in which the penny 
 is seen end on and looks like a straight line of a certain thickness. 
 These two lines will meet in a certain place in perspective, i.e. 
 in a certain perspective, which may be defined as ' the place 
 (in perspective space) where the penny is. 
 
 5 >» 
 
 " Having now defined the perspective which is the place where 
 a given thing is, we can understand what is meant by sapng 
 that the perspectives in which a thing looks large are nearer to 
 
196 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 the thing than those in which it looks small : they are, in fact, 
 nearer to the perspective which is the place where the thing is. 
 
 " We can now also explain the correlation between a private 
 space and parts of perspective space. If there is an aspect of a 
 given thing in a certain private space, then we correlate the 
 place where this aspect is in the private space with the place 
 where the thing is in perspective space." (Our Knowledge of the 
 External World, pp. 87-92.) 
 
 We are meant to see at once that such a space 
 bequeaths its own reality and peculiar outsideness to 
 the things that occupy it. Given that the adjustment 
 ot private to public space is an outside affair, it is possible 
 for New Realism to proclaim boldly the outsideness 
 and publicity of sense-data. There is no sensation so 
 elementary and so immediate that it cannot rank as 
 perception of an outside real thing. Only from the 
 private point of view of the perceiver can it be regarded 
 as a private object enshrined in private space. Sensa- 
 tions : red, hot, loud, rough, hard, heavy, are not my 
 internal and private response to an external nerve 
 stimulus, nor are they yours ; they are planted out in 
 the object ; or rather, they subsist in the object by its 
 and their own right. They are objects. 
 
 It follows that for Realism, as for Idealism, there will 
 be no difference between the so-called primary and 
 secondary qualities. If position, extension, size, shape, 
 weight and impenetrability are real, we have no reason 
 for supposing that the secondary qualities of matter, 
 colour and sound and taste and smell, are not real too. 
 
 This point is too important to be passed over with a 
 summary reference. 
 
 Again it is a question of logical construction and 
 correlation, and the inferences we make therefrom. 
 Such sense-data, whatever else they may be, are to be 
 classed among what Mr. Bertrand Russell calls '' hard " 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 197 
 
 facts. They are given, not inferred ; they are irreducible 
 to anything simpler than themselves. We infer that 
 they have an objective or " independent " reality from 
 the fact that they enter obediently into the context of 
 objective or "independent" realities; they can be 
 correlated with them so as to form part of the same 
 logical construction ; they show themselves as belonging, 
 not only to the same universe, but to the same order of 
 reahty within the universe. For the thorough-paced 
 realist and thorough-paced idealist alike the distinction 
 between the illusions and realities of sense is irrelevant. 
 They are distinguished only by their respective contexts. 
 
 But it is a distinction which makes all the difference 
 between Realism and thorough-paced 'Idealism. 
 
 Thus Mr. Bertrand Russell in Our Knowledge of the 
 External World : — 
 
 " The first thing to reahse is that there are no such things as 
 * illusions of sense.' Objects of sense, even when they occur 
 in dreams, are the most indubitably real objects known to us. 
 What, then, makes us call them unreal in dreams ? Merely 
 the unusual nature of their connection with other objects of 
 sense. I dream that I am in America, but I wake up and find 
 myself in England without those intervening days on the Atlantic 
 which, alas ! are inseparably connected with a ' real ' visit to 
 America. Objects of sense are called ' real ' when they have 
 the kind of connection with other objects of sense which ex- 
 perience has led us to regard as normal ; when they fail in this, 
 they are called illusions. But what is illusory is only the in- 
 ferences to which they give rise ; in themselves, they are every 
 bit as real as the objects of waking life." (Pp. 85-86.) 
 
 Thus Mr. Edwin Holt, in The Pkux of Illusory 
 Experience in a Realistic World, taking up the idealistic 
 challenge : — 
 
 " Not the illusory or hallucinatory image as such, it was 
 rightly said by our opponent, but such an image when it asserts 
 
198 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 itself to he J or when the realist asserts it to he a. real object, is the 
 crux for realism." (The New Realism, p. 356.) 
 
 " Now the secondary qualities present interrelations, both 
 fixed and intelligible, so that those persons who seriously study 
 them begin to see that they form a system Uke the systems dis- 
 covered in mathematics ; and this fact alone, as some one has 
 said, already sets them off from the purely ' subjective,' in- 
 dividual, and incalculable." (Ihid. p. 331.) 
 
 JVIr. Holt's argument is too closely and elaborately 
 knit to bear quotation of any single passage. This is 
 the gist of it : Take a whole class of so-called sense- 
 illusions (errors of space), the diminution, duplication, 
 and distortion of an object. A suitable apparatus can 
 produce mechanically and objectively the perfect 
 counterpart of these effects. There is a certain 
 mechanical focussing of the eyes by which, when our 
 eyes are shut, near things can be made to seem nearer 
 and smaller. There is a certain mechanical focussing 
 by which a machine for manufacturing shoe-lasts copies 
 its model. " The machine at work has quite the air of 
 seeing its model." So much so that the nearer. the 
 centre of the last is brought to the cutting edge of the 
 machine, the smaller the model that the machine turns 
 out. Again, '* The stereoscopic camera habitually sees 
 double," as human eyes will if their several perspectives 
 are divided. A roughly cut lens distorts as badly as 
 an astigmatic eye. 
 
 And the realist argues thus : As in these cases there 
 isn't any question of the self-subsistent reality either of 
 the single, undiminished, undistorted object, or of its 
 doubling, reduction, and distortion, so there should be 
 no question in the case of the human apparatus which 
 is equally mechanical. Both affairs are of the same 
 order. 
 
 As for the so-called subjective hallucinations, for 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 199 
 
 instance, of dreams, they are precisely on the same 
 footing as " objective " sensations. 
 
 *' The nervous system, even when unstimulated from without, 
 is able to generate within itself nerve-currents of those frequencies 
 whose density factor is the same as in ordinary peripheral stimula- 
 tion." (/6icZ. p. 352.) 
 
 And Mr. Alexander is no less explicit. For him sense- 
 data are on precisely the same footing as an " object of 
 thought," and equally independent of the mind that 
 thinks or senses. 
 
 " For us, both the sensum and the so-called object of thought 
 are equally objects, non-psychical ; they are equally objects 
 meant, though they are not equally important. 
 
 " Doubtless it is difficult enough, without natural and philo- 
 sophical prepossessions, to treat the sensum as an object in- 
 dependent of the mind, for which the mind with its sense organ, 
 through its act of sensing, is the mere vehicle of reception. 
 Partly this arises from our theoretical ignorance of what exactly 
 in the object the sensum is as compared with the percept. To 
 call the sensum blue, as I have done, using a Leibnizian metaphor, 
 a f ulgaration of the quaUty blueness is admittedly but a metaphor. 
 And I am not yet prepared to supply the defect in theory. The 
 sensum is so fragmentary and elementary. But at least we can 
 say that, whatever it may be, it is that which exists in the thing 
 at the moment and place to which it is referred, and that it is 
 equally and identically appre lensible by me and another person 
 who should put himself into the same situation of place and 
 time as I, and who is supposed for simpHcity to be equally normal 
 with me, and to be suffering from no special subjective condition 
 different from mine which might differently affect his suscepti- 
 bihty to the sensory object." (The Basis of Realism, pp. 16, 17.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 "I see the table in different perspective according to my 
 position. But this does not prove the visual object psychical — 
 a mere content, but only that the object looks different from 
 different angles . . . the appearances are real characters of 
 
200 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW EEALISM 
 
 201 
 
 the thing. And so when the stick is seen bent in water, its 
 visual character is bent because of the refraction of the light ; 
 the illuminated outUne is bent. But of course the touched 
 stick is not bent. 
 
 " These facts . . . point to the superior value of touch-ex- 
 perience and the greater importance of primary qualities, as in 
 the first place apprehended by touch, over the secondary ones 
 . . . the primary qualities are in precisely the same position 
 with regard to our minds as the Secondary ones. Either both 
 of them are mental or neither." (Ibid. pp. 17, 18.) 
 
 The plain man ought to rejoice at this rehabilitation 
 of the world he takes for granted ; the irreducible real 
 world outside consciousness, resonant as a drum, hard as 
 marble, bearing all the heraldry of its colours in its own 
 right ; the world that Dr. Johnson believed in ; the 
 world that Reid and Wolf— the Wolf who sent Kant 
 into a dogmatic slumber — took for granted without any 
 aid from analytic logic. 
 
 Consider what has happened. This world was badly 
 shaken when Berkeley melted down the primary objec- 
 tive qualities of matter into secondary subjective 
 qualities, and declared their esse to be percipi, when 
 Hume reduced causation to fortuitous sequences of 
 sensation, and Mill defined the result as " a permanent 
 possibility of sensation.'' And when Objective Idealism 
 proved that consciousness is considerably more than a 
 stream of sensations, when it raised up the world again 
 out of the flux and stuck the broken bits of it together 
 with " thought-relations," its indubitable *' outside " 
 reality was still " inside " universal consciousness. And 
 it is this universality of consciousness that the New 
 Realism has laid its hands on. 
 
 So far Idealism and Realism can get along fairly 
 comfortably together : they can, at any rate, both agree 
 that all the qualities of matter are in the same boat : 
 
 * 
 
 there is no difference on either theory between primary 
 and secondary qualities. It is over the " thought- 
 relations '' that the decisive battle is to be fought. 
 
 The New Realism abolishes the entire system of 
 thought-relations which IdeaUsm has built up. It 
 repudiates the idealist's theory of " internal " relations, 
 relations snugly yet inscrutably housed in their " terms." 
 For Realism there are terms and there are relations. 
 But, though relations are concepts, they are not '* the 
 work of thought." And in no case is a relation de- 
 pendent on its terms, or grounded mysteriously in their 
 secret inner nature. Every relation is an outside and 
 self-subsistent reality, independent both of the relater 
 and the related. There is, properly speaking, no relater. 
 A relation is a thing devoid of secrecy or mystery, plain 
 as a pike-staff or the nose on your face, and offering not 
 the smallest foothold to Idealistic Monism. Useless to 
 enquire how a relation and its terms come together. 
 They are together, for shorter or longer periods ; that 
 is enough : that is the beginning and the end of — ^the 
 relation. 
 
 And, as sense-data — the greenish-gold, the loud, the 
 cold, the smooth, the heavy, the acrid-smelling, the 
 bitter-tasting, all the secondary qualities that I sense, 
 say, in a brass trombone — are outside and self-sub- 
 sistent objects of sensation ; and as percepts, such as 
 the brass trombone itself, localized, for me, in close and 
 intimate relation to my sense organs as I play it, and in 
 more or less distant relation to the concert hall I play it 
 in, to the other instruments in the orchestra, and the 
 other things in the hall, as the brass trombone, the per- 
 cept, is the outside and self-subsistent object of percep- 
 tion, so the concepts, brass trombone, greenish golden- 
 ness, loudness, coldness, smoothness, heaviness, acridity 
 
202 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 and bitterness, are outside and self-subsistent objects 
 of conception. But they are no more " in " the object 
 of sense-perception than they are " in " or " of " the 
 perceiving consciousness. They would have given con- 
 siderable trouble, and raised the most disconcerting 
 dilemmas if they had been ; so they, too, are planted 
 out ; not in space, not in time ; but in a world of their 
 own ; the world of the changeless and eternal Ideas. 
 If there be any world of the Absolute it is theirs and 
 theirs alone. 
 
 Here, after twenty-three centuries, Platonic Idealistic 
 Kealism has come again into its own. 
 
 There must be no misunderstanding about the position 
 of ideas, concepts, or " universals " in the New Realistic 
 scheme. 
 
 " No sentence can be made up without at least one word which 
 denotes a universal. The nearest approach would be some such 
 statement as 'I Uke this.' But even here the word ' hke ' 
 denotes a universal, for I may like other things and other people 
 may like things. Thus all truths involve universals, and all 
 knowledge of truths involves acquaintance with universals."' 
 
 The universal cannot be a so-called "abstract" 
 idea ; an idea seated firmly in particulars and picked 
 out of them by the mind. Take, for example, the idea 
 of whiteness or the idea of the triangle that Bishop 
 Berkeley argued about, the triangle which must be 
 "neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither equilateral, 
 equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at 
 once," an unqualified triangle, a triangle tout pur. 
 
 *' A difficulty emerges as soon as we ask ourselves how we know 
 that a thing is white or a triangle. If we wish to avoid the 
 universals whiteness and triangularity, we shall choose some 
 particular patch of white or some particular triangle, and say 
 that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of 
 
 I 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 203 
 
 resemblance to our chosen particular." (Bertrand Russell, The 
 Problems of Philosophy, pp. 146, 150.) 
 
 But this is only putting ofi the evil day when we have 
 to recognize the presence of the universal. For 
 
 " the resemblance required will have to be a universal. Since 
 there are many white things, the resemblance must hold between 
 many pairs of particular white things ; and this is the char- 
 acteristic of a universal. It will be useless to say that there is 
 a different resemblance for each pair, for we shall have to say 
 that these resemblances resemble each other, and thus at last 
 we shall be forced to admit resemblance as a universal. The 
 relation of resemblance, then, must be a true universal. ..." 
 
 " Consider such a proposition as Edinburgh is north of London. 
 Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain 
 that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. 
 . . . The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands 
 would be north of the part where London stands, even if there 
 were no human being to know north or south, and even if there 
 were no minds at all in the universe." {Ibid. pp. 151, 152.) 
 
 This follows, as we have seen, from the realistic 
 theory of perception, so that, before we go on to consider 
 the doctrine of universals, we may assume it to be true 
 that 
 
 " nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is 
 north of London. But this fact involves the relation ' north 
 of,* which is a universal, and it would be impossible for the 
 whole fact to involve nothing mental, if the relation * north of,' 
 which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything 
 mental." 
 
 (Idealists will again agree heartily with this view. 
 It would, indeed, be impossible.) 
 
 " Hence we must admit that the relation, hke the terms it 
 relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the 
 independent world which thought apprehends but does not 
 create . ... 
 
204 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 ' If we ask, ' Where and when does this relation exist « ' the 
 answer must be ' Nowhere and nowhen.' There is no place or 
 time where we can find the relation 'north of.' . It is 
 neither m space nor in time, neither material nor mental • yet 
 It IS something. ..." ' ' 
 
 " Thoughts and feehngs, minds and physical objects exist. But 
 umversals do not exist in this sense ; we shall say that they 
 ^bsist or have being, where being is opposed to ' existence ' as 
 bemg timeless. The world of universals, therefore, may also be 
 described as the world of being. 
 
 "The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, dehghtful 
 to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical 
 '^ 153'l56 '^^° '°^^ perfection more than Ufe." (Ibid. 
 
 Thus Mr. Edward Spalding in Ms Defence of Analysis : 
 
 "The concept is not the printed or spoken sign, the word. It 
 would subsist, did the signs not exist. ... It is not the know- 
 ledge or Idea of the state of affairs." [The concept or group of 
 concepts.] . . " It is not identical with the individual cases 
 whatever these be. Number is not any one number, man is not 
 a man etc. It is not necessarily even physical or mental, even 
 when the individual cases are physical or mental existents." 
 (i/ie New Realism, p. 233.) 
 
 Thus Mr Cecil Delisle Burns in William of Ockham 
 on Universals : 
 
 /n" ■ :*•■ ^^^ ^*v!f °^ ^^«"«ii<=e necessitate the supposition of 
 (1) particulars diifenng numerically and not as collections of 
 difierent quahties, and (2) likenesses implying the existence of 
 some sort of reahty which is different from the reaUty of the 
 particulars^ . . " The Ukeness ' between ' particulars has to be 
 explained by reference to a third thing which we may call a 
 universal. Nor can the mere addition or blurring of particulars 
 thisnesses) produce a likeness (whatness). The universal 
 therefore, must be a kind of reality in relation to which the 
 particulars are alike.' Thus it exists beside, and, if you Uke 
 It, above or beyond the particulars." ..." We may say that 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 205 
 
 universals are ' in mente' but that they are and are independently 
 of our knowledge of them there is no doubt. Therefore they 
 exist in some other way than the way particulars exist ; hence 
 we say that the likeness ' in ' things is not the universal but 
 indicates the universal^ (Pp. 13-19.) 
 
 The italics are mine. They emphasize the most 
 important point of all. 
 
 The reason for this planting out is not far to seek ; 
 it follows from the law of analytic logic, which postulates 
 the independence and the reality and the infinite number 
 of its universals. 
 
 For the validity of all reasoning, both inductive and 
 deductive, depends on the presence, somewhere in the 
 chain, of a universal proposition, either arrived at or 
 assumed, either expressed or implied. In deduction, 
 which proceeds from the universal to the particular, 
 it is obvious that this is so. But it is no less imperative 
 in all induction, which proceeds, at its logical peril, 
 from the particular to the universal. Logical peril : 
 for, consider, that by no possible conjuring can you obtain 
 a universal proposition from the simple enumeration of 
 particular cases. Not if you went on enumerating for 
 ten thousand years, untold generations of observers 
 taking up the tale. For the peculiar, indefinable, 
 indestructible validity of a universal law is not born of 
 tireless and vociferous repetition. 
 
 But deduction must obtain its universal somewhere. 
 You must therefore assume the existence of as many 
 universals as there are possible propositions if there is 
 to be any reasoning at all. 
 
 It follows that, if reasoning is to hold good of the real 
 world, universals must be as real, as independent of 
 consciousness as any of the realities which analytic 
 logic has shown to be firmly established in space and 
 time. 
 
206 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Universals, then, are concepts ; but concepts are not 
 " thought-relations " in the idealist's sense ; nor are 
 they in any sense constructed or constituted by thought. 
 They are entities ; objects of conception, independent 
 of the conceiver, standing on their own feet in their own 
 spaceless and timeless world, as objects of perception 
 stand in space and time. 
 
 There is a concept or universal, not only of every 
 number and quantity, and every thing and every quality, 
 but of every possible relation that obtains between all 
 or any of them ; and of every proposition that can be 
 made concerning all or any of them ; (36) so that the 
 world of the universals is as infinite as the world of 
 space or time. If you ask how, apart from their logical 
 functions, they may be said to be, the answer is that 
 they are as objects of conceptual contemplation. 
 
 Now it is clear that on this theory the role of con- 
 sciousness is reduced to the very narrowest margin, 
 and that the Self will be nothing more than the spectator 
 of existence. 
 
 As Mr. Joseph Conrad says : '' This is purely a 
 spectacular universe." There is nothing in it which 
 can be said to have arisen in consciousness. Thus, a 
 magnificent spectacle has been provided, at the expense 
 of consciousness, by the ruthless planting out on to a 
 distant stage of everything once held securely within it. 
 
 If we ask whether, within the Self's narrow border, 
 there remains anything at all that is the work of con- 
 sciousness, we are told : Yes, besides the primary and 
 secondary qualities of matter there are certain tertiary 
 qualities that cannot be planted out with them. Such 
 are the aesthetic feelings and values, the moral feelings 
 and values ; delight, charm, and their opposites, all that 
 Mr. Alexander calls " the richness of mind," and all 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 207 
 
 that is creative in the objects of creative art. These 
 are purely subjective. They have no home anywhere 
 but in the Self that feels them. It is interesting to see 
 that Mr. Alexander includes among them beauty and 
 goodness, which to Mr. G. E. Moore and Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell are essentially objective realities, universals; 
 and that Mr. Ralph Perry recognizes what he calls 
 " content patterns," as determined exclusively by the 
 agency (selective and combining) of the subject of 
 consciousness. Mr. Perry also admits that 
 
 " higher complexes, such as history, society, Ufe, or reflective 
 thought, are dependent on consciousness " ; 
 
 but whether he would get any backing here from his 
 brother realists is open to doubt. < 
 
 The emotions and the passions, which might have 
 loomed so large, are left out of the accounts I have 
 referred to, probably as too glaringly subjective for 
 
 special notice. 
 
 Personally, I do not see how, on the theory, the Self 
 can be justly credited with the work of its imagination. 
 For imagination deals with universals, and has its home 
 in the eternal. Therefore one would have supposed 
 that creative Art was the least subjective of entities. 
 Its works are planted out for ever in the spaceless and 
 the timeless world. 
 
 I do not know whether this conclusion would be held 
 to follow strictly from the premisses of the New Realism. 
 But I think it should follow. There is, however, I 
 believe, considerable divergence of opinion on this point. 
 
 I think it must be allowed that the New Realism has 
 made out a strong case for itself, and that where Prag- 
 matism and Humanism have failed it has succeeded. 
 
 I do not think that the idealistic monist will gain 
 
208 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 anything by refusing to concede to it the full measure of 
 its success. I believe that, if he meets it courageously, 
 so far from driving him out of the bosom of the Absolute, 
 it will fold him more securely in. If he thrives on what 
 Walt Whitman called *' the terrible doubt of appear- 
 ances," if there is nothing terrible to him in that doubt, 
 it is because to him the terrible thing would be to be 
 shut up for ever in this prison of space and time and 
 matter, and to know nothing for ever but appearances, 
 when it is reality for which he hungers and thirsts. 
 
 To begin with, whatever Pluralistic Realism does 
 to him, it does not shut him up in any prison. On the 
 contrary, to borrow Mr. Bertrand Russell's phrase, it 
 " gives him wings." It proves to him that the bosom 
 he desires, the barren bosom of the Absolute, is a prison 
 indeed. The universe it opens to him has no walls, 
 not even the walls of all-containing deity. It is only 
 to be conceived, so far as it can be conceived at all, 
 -as an infinite number of infinitely intersecting planes 
 of reality, each one of which is infinite. Each plane 
 represents a different kind or order of reality, and 
 maintains an infinite number of realities within or on it. 
 Time and space and matter are not prisons ; for time 
 and space and matter are infinite, and there is an infinite 
 number of times and spaces and matters and motions. 
 Time and space contain an infinite number of separate 
 planes, as it were, of spatial and temporal and material 
 realities ; of these there are an infinite number of objects 
 of sensation, an infinite number of objects of perception, 
 and an infinite number of their relations in time and 
 space. 
 
 There is also an infinite number of " universals," 
 the objects of conception, out of time and out of space, 
 corresponding with every class of object in time and 
 space : and, again, an infinite number of relations out 
 
 ▼I 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 209 
 
 of time or space, and an infinite number of universals, 
 or class-concepts corresponding with each relation. And 
 as every single member of this infinity of infinities is a 
 real thing, an entity, the monist cannot justly complain 
 of any lack of reality. 
 
 But while the New Realism gives him reality, more 
 reality than he asked or dreamed of, reality in embarrass- 
 ing, overwhelming quantities, it does not give or profess 
 to give him the kind or quality of reality he wants. 
 The New Realism, in its turn, complains of his bad taste 
 in wanting any other reality and of his impudence in 
 asking for it. But there is no reason why the monist 
 should not admire this largely spectacular universe 
 Realism has provided. What he has reason to complain 
 of is its lack of unity. ^ 
 
 Then the pluralist tells him that unity, except in 
 the peculiar and limited form of a Whole, is precisely 
 what he cannot have. And since the Whole was, after 
 all, what the monist performed nearly all his monistic 
 tricks with, he may seek to bargain with his adversary 
 and say : You may keep all your infinities, for all I care, 
 if only you will give me back my Whole to do what I 
 like with (for he thinks he may yet succeed in packing 
 all those infinities inside it in some supreme synthesis). 
 And then he will learn to his bewilderment that it is no 
 longer his to do what he likes with. 
 
 In fact, he will not recognize his Whole by the time 
 analytic logic has done with it. 
 
 To begin with, it raises all over again the apparently 
 
 innocent but really formidable question which Monism 
 
 has hitherto answered with an unhesitating affirmative : 
 
 Is the relation between whole and part such that, given 
 
 the concept of the whole, the concept of the part follows ? 
 
 That is to say : Is it a relation of logical priority ? If 
 
 it is, it ought to follow as strictly as the two proposi- 
 
 p 
 

 210 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 *r 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 211 
 
 j> 
 
 tions, " B is greater than A," and " A is less than B 
 follow from and imply each other. 
 
 " Then we should be able to define the relation thus : A is 
 said to be part of B when B is implies A is, but A is does not imply 
 B is." (Princijf>ia Mathematica.) 
 
 Now at first sight this looks a very straightforward 
 and satisfactory definition of the relation between whole 
 and part. And it looks as if it might favour Monism 
 by attaching the whole inseparably to the part, and 
 the part inseparably to the whole in a " miity." But 
 not a bit of it. Mr. Bertrand Russell rejects the defini- 
 tion on the groimds that this relation of logical priority 
 cannot be made to run on all fours with the relation of 
 simple mutual implication between " B is greater than 
 A " and " A is less than B " ; that it is not a simple 
 but a highly complex proposition ; inasmuch as it 
 implies other propositions asserting the being of A, 
 and the being of B, and the being of the relation, each of 
 which is simpler than itself ; and that it rests, not only 
 on the proposition ^* B implies A," but on the further 
 proposition, " A does not imply B." 
 
 The invalidity of the definition by logical priority 
 will be seen at once if we introduce an element of another 
 kind and value. 
 
 " For example, ' A is greater and better than B ' implies ' B 
 is less than A " ; but the converse impHcation does not hold : 
 yet the latter proposition is not part of the former." 
 
 Again, from " A is red," it follows that A is coloured. 
 
 " Yet the proposition * A is red ' is no more complex than 
 * A is coloured.' . . . Redness, in fact, appears to be a simple 
 concept which, though it impHes colour, does not contain colour 
 as a constituent." 
 
 I 
 
 And Mr. Russell argues that, " having failed to define 
 wholes by logical priority, we shall not, I think, find it 
 possible to define them." 
 
 Now, I think, the monist would agree heartily that 
 if the relation of whole and part is not to be defined by 
 logical priority, it is not to be defined at all. He would 
 not be at all so certain that the definition he thinks so 
 satisfactory should be flipag aside because analysis finds 
 that it is less simple than it looked at first. He would, 
 I think, protest against propositions, that is to say, 
 judgments covering concrete complexes being ruled 
 out because it can be shown that they will not hold good 
 when reduced to the strictly abstract terms of formal 
 logic. He defies the analyst to discover any flaw in 
 the definition : A is said to be part of B when " B is " 
 implies " A is," but " A is " does not imply " B is." 
 And Mr. Russell admits that " this state of things is 
 realized when A is part of B." It seems to him, then, 
 sheer wantonness to infect this still comparatively simple 
 relation by complicating it with irrelevant elements 
 drawn from other sources ; and then to argue that, 
 because " worse " is very far from being part of " better," 
 and because colour, implied by red, is not a part of 
 red, therefore logical implication must not be allowed 
 to infect any definition of whole and part, when it has 
 been admitted that it holds good when, that is to say, 
 whenever and wherever A is part of B. 
 
 But Mr. Russell is out to prove that this particular 
 relation of whole and part is an indefinable and ultimate 
 relation, a concept as irreducible as goodness or badness, 
 redness or colour, and that there is no question of the 
 whole holding its parts together in a unity, or of the 
 parts as existing only in and for a unity. Correlation, 
 for the logical atomism of the pluralistic realist, does not 
 involve either " higher synthesis," or mutual dependence 
 
212 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 of relations on terms, or of terms on each other. Con- 
 cepts are hard, irreducible, mutually repellent entities, 
 and relations are hard, irreducible, mutually repellent 
 entities ; and when propositions are broken up they are 
 broken. What analytic logic hath put asunder, let no 
 man join. 
 
 But this is not the end of the matter. Besides this 
 indefinable and ultimate relation there are others. And 
 we are now told that the nature of the relation will 
 depend upon " the nature both of the whole and of the 
 parts." For it would appear that, though a relation 
 is not allowed, on pain of an infinite regress, to depend 
 upon the nature of its terms when this dependence suits 
 the monist, it may do so for the convenience of the 
 pluralist, who in this case blinks the dilemma with 
 tolerance and bonhomie. 
 
 Thus three kinds of wholes may be distinguished : 
 (1) Collections, or aggregates of single terms. (2) 
 Collections, or aggregates of terms that are themselves 
 aggregates. (3) Collections of propositions which relate 
 or qualify. 
 
 It is only when we reach the third and last kind of 
 whole that we arrive at unity. 
 
 As this whole always consists of propositions in which 
 something is related to something, or something is quali- 
 fied by something else, it must be regarded as radically 
 and irreducibly different from any whole which is simply 
 a collection or aggregate, whether of single terms or 
 aggregates. And the relation of whole and part in any 
 unity will be radically and irreducibly different from 
 the relation of whole and part in any collection or aggre- 
 gate. So much so that we may say that there are not 
 three kinds of whole but two kinds : Collections (or 
 aggregates) and unities. 
 
 And the radical and irreducible difference between 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 213 
 
 these two kinds is this : that in a collection, whether 
 of single terms or aggregates, 
 
 " such a whole is completely specified when all its simple constitu- 
 ents are specified : its parts have no direct connection inter se, 
 but only the indirect connection involved in being parts of one 
 and the same whole.** 
 
 Whereas wholes containing relations or predicates 
 ' ' are not specified when their parts are all known. ' ' (Ibid, p . 1 40.) 
 
 For, take the simplest instance, " A differs from B," 
 and let A and B be as simple as you please, you cannot 
 reduce this whole to anything simpler, i.e. to fewer terms 
 than *' A," " B," and " difference." Simple as it seems, 
 " A differs from B " is really a very complex synthetic 
 statement. Under analysis it yields, as we have seen, 
 "A, B, and difference " as a subordinate aggregate of 
 three terms, and the whole involved in its implication, 
 " B differs from A." " A," " B," and " difference " 
 must be thought of as three single and irreducible terms 
 before ever the business of joining up A to B in the 
 relation of their difference can begin. The relation 
 itself is a new thing that will not be found in the analysis, 
 and is *' not even specified by specifying its parts." 
 
 So that the only unity which Analytic Logic allows 
 him, so far, is a unity that doesn't peld an inch of ground 
 to the struggling monist. In fact, he is, if anything, 
 worse off with it than he was with the whole as a " collec- 
 tion " ; since the collection at least collected, and the 
 whole could be specified by its terms when the terms were 
 known. We have got to realize that always 
 
 " the whole is a new single term, distinct from each of its parts 
 and from all : it is one, not many, and is related to the parts, 
 but has a being distinct from theirs." {Ibid., he. cit) 
 
214 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 And the pluralist argues that, since this is so, we can 
 no longer talk about identity in difference, or about 
 the whole being present in its parts, or about the parts 
 existing in the whole. 
 
 And as the monist surveys the ruins which Analytic 
 Logic has made of his neatly ordered and closely articu- 
 lated world, several things are bound to occur to him. 
 I think he will say : All this may be true of finite things 
 and of finite wholes. I have never denied the plurality 
 of finites. But my Whole is Infinite. 
 
 Let us see, then, what the pluralist's account is of 
 Infinite Wholes, and whether they are in any better 
 case. 
 
 " We must then admit infinite aggregates. It remains to 
 ask a more difficult question, namely : Are we to admit infinite 
 unities ? . . . Are there any infinitely complex propositions ? 
 ... A unity will be infinite when the aggregate of all its con- 
 stituents is infinite ; but this scarcely constitutes the meaning 
 of infinite unity. . . . 
 
 " An infinite unity will be an infinitely complex proposition : 
 it must not be analysable in any way into a finite number of 
 constituents. . . . Now, for my part, I see no possible way of 
 deciding whether propositions of infinite complexity are possible 
 or not, but this at least is clear that all the propositions known 
 to us (or probably all that we can know) are of finite complexity. 
 . . . Thus the question whether or not there are infinite unities 
 must be left unanswered, the only thing we can say on this 
 subject is that no such unities occur in any department of human 
 knowledge, and therefore none such are relevant to the foimdation 
 of mathematics." {Principia Mathematica, pp. 145, 146.) 
 
 There is no comfort for the monist here. The only 
 sort of infinite whole that Pluralism wiU allow him is 
 an infinite collection ; and an infinite collection, so far 
 from being any good to him, carries on the business of 
 plurality for ever and ever, world without end. 
 
 II 
 
 So far, it must, I think, be admitted that, where the 
 logic of the new realist meets the logic of the monist, 
 the encounter has been apparently to the disadvantage 
 of the monist. Hitherto the monist has either neglected 
 mathematics altogether, or he has seized on them 
 greedily to nourish his appetite for dilemmas. Thus 
 his position becomes vulnerable from the first moment 
 when the mathematician cuts off his nourishment at its 
 source by solving the dilemmas. 
 
 It remains to be seen whether his Idealistic Monism 
 has sufficient vitality, or sufficient command of other 
 resources to survive the blockade. 
 
 His ultimate and complete overthrow must follow 
 if he has no other resources than the slender synthetic 
 methods he has employed hitherto ; if, that is to say, 
 he stands or falls by the entire epistemology of the past. 
 It must follow, in any case, whatever his unexplored 
 resources, if the New Realism succeeds in its attempt to 
 make the laws of pure mathematics binding on a universe 
 which, as known and experienced, is anything but pure ; 
 and if it succeeds in keeping those laws secure from the 
 assaults of any countering analysis which may reveal m 
 them a secret contradiction and dilemma. 
 
 I do not say : if its doctrine of Pluralism, and its 
 account of knowledge in general, and of immediate per- 
 ception in particular, should hold water ; for I think it 
 
 215 
 
216 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 will be found that, so far as these do not follow as 
 corollaries from its mathematical arguments, they have 
 been deliberately arranged to correspond. 
 
 Now, there is no doubt that the idealist's habit of 
 rash synthesis has laid him open to attack. Whatever 
 happens to the constructions of the New Realism, much 
 of its critique of the older Idealism must remain as 
 perhaps the most vitally important and necessary work 
 that any philosophy has yet done. This is why I shall 
 consider this part of it in rather more detail than the 
 slight form of these essays warrants. Readers who 
 have no taste for abstract thinking will do well to skip 
 the next thirty pages or so; for I warn them they will 
 be taken over a very dry and difficult piece of ground. 
 At the same time they should remember that we despise 
 abstractions at our peril. There never was an abstrac- 
 tion so abstract that it or its kind was not at some time 
 or other the burning centre of man's passion ; and, even 
 now, it may be that our hope of God and heaven and 
 immortality, and the present existence of our very selves 
 hang on as thin a thread. 
 
 We will begin with Mr. Bertrand Russell's criticism 
 of the Monistic Theory of Truth, for it amounts to a 
 criticism of the Monistic Theory of Reality. 
 
 The monist says that the Truth is the Whole. And 
 Mr. Russell argues that, if this is so, no part of the truth 
 can be true. When Mr. Joachim says that " the truth 
 is one and whole and complete " it means 
 
 " that nothing is wholly true except the whole truth, and what 
 seem to be isolated truths, such as 2+2=4, are really only true 
 in the sense that they form part of a system which is the whole 
 truth ... the truth that a certain partial truth is part of the 
 whole is a partial truth, and thus only partially true ; hence we 
 can never say with perfect truth this is part of the Truth. Hence 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 217 
 
 there can be no sense of truth which is completely applicable to 
 a partial truth, because everything that can be said about a 
 partial truth is a partial truth . . . thus the complete truth 
 about any part is the same as the complete truth about any other 
 part, since each is the whole truth " (37). 
 
 I do not know whether every monist would accept 
 this statement of his position. He ought not to admit 
 the very first construction which Mr. Russell has foisted 
 on him, as it stands, but he would, I think, amend it 
 thus : Nothing is wholly true of things that are wholes 
 except the whole truth ; by which he will secure his 
 position when he defines Reality as the Whole. He 
 would distinguish between isolated truths and isolated 
 facts ; and while admitting that truths, artificially 
 isolated by logical analysis, may be " wholly true " as 
 far as they go, he would insist that if facts could be 
 isolated, torn from the living context in which they are 
 born and by which they continue, if they could be 
 stripped bare, that is to say, of their " relations," no 
 truth could be known about them at all ; thus he would 
 deny that '' isolated facts " and " the whole truth " can 
 be made to run logically on all fours. For instance, 
 though it may be wholly true that water consists of 
 H„0, in chemical combination, it is not the whole truth 
 about water ; it is not the whole truth about hydrogen 
 or oxygen. And by this time he would begin to see 
 that the trap that was laid for him is a logical quibble 
 turning on the " whole truth " and " wholly true." 
 
 The only construction that he would accept without 
 reservation is the last, " the complete truth about any 
 part is the complete truth about any other part since 
 each is the whole of truth." The point which Monism 
 and Pluralism will contest for ever is ih£- point at which 
 the complete truth may he said to have been reached. For 
 
218 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 the pluralist, if he is logically consistent, there can be no 
 such point, since the parts of his universe are infinite. 
 For the Monist, it cannot be reached anywhere short of 
 the Absolute. 
 
 We shall see, later on, that the pluralist reaches it 
 everywhere by the erection of an infinity of independent 
 absolutes. 
 
 To go back to the assault on Mr. Joachim. My 
 monist has accepted the first and the last construction 
 put on him. It is in the intermediate propositions that 
 he would be likely to suspect a humorous parody of 
 his position : '' What seem to be isolated truths, such 
 as 2 + 2 = 4, are really only true in the sense that they 
 form part of the system which is the whole truth. ..." 
 " The truth that a certain partial truth is part of the 
 whole is a partial truth and thus only partially true ; 
 hence we can never say with perfect truth * this is part 
 of the truth.' " The monist who believes that nothing 
 is wholly true, in his sense, except the whole truth, is 
 not bound to deny that 2 + 2 = 4 is part of the truth ; 
 he is only bound to deny that it is the whole truth about 
 2 and about 4, and that the whole truth about 2 and 
 about 4 is the whole truth about number, and that the 
 whole truth about number is the whole truth about 
 reality. He would insist that if you isolate that appar- 
 ently self-evident proposition about 2 and 2 in such a 
 way as to ignore the other '' isolated truths " about 
 number, for instance, that 16 + 16 = 32, or 4-1-2 = 2, or 
 even that 7 x 7 = 49, you have only a partial knowledge 
 of 2 + 2. And again he would protest against the quibble 
 that turns on taking a partial truth as equivalent to 
 partially true. 
 
 But the sterner problem for the monist arises when 
 you isolate all the truths you know about number from 
 all the truths you know about quality, and find that. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 219 
 
 although within their own wholes none are completely 
 true when torn from their respective contexts, yet the 
 whole set of arithmetical truths, and the whole set of 
 qualitative truths stand apparently on their own feet, 
 and in the most perfect isolation and independence. If 
 it were not true that 2 + 1 =3, it would still be true that 
 water consists of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen. 
 That in this case we should have considerable diSiculty 
 in measuring the parts is not any argument from the 
 pluralistic realist's point of view. Wherever water is 
 there will be Hfli whether you measure and number 
 them or not. In the same way the numbers two and 
 one and three, and all the relations between them, would 
 persist as eternal realities, and all the truths about them 
 would be eternally true, whether there were any thing 
 to be numbered in the universe or not. (In this case 
 the numbers would still have the resource of numbering 
 each other.) 
 
 And yet, without quantity, so much hydrogen to so 
 much oxygen, without proportion which can be expressed 
 by number, the qualities of water cannot be. You 
 cannot, except by an artificial logical analysis, tear those 
 two wholes apart. Therefore they are not wholes ; 
 they are only complexes, knit together, with all their 
 several complexities, into the structure of the imiverse. 
 Isolate them, not from each other, but from that greater 
 Whole, and what independence and what reality will 
 they have ? 
 
 That is the crux. The pluralistic realist says they 
 have their own reality and that is enough. The monist 
 says that in that state of dismemberment they have no 
 reality ; they are only appearances ; Reality is the 
 Absolute whole of Spirit (or of some consciousness) 
 which alone holds them together. Both agree that 
 somehow or other they are together. The monist says, 
 
220 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 or ought to say, that they can only be separated by an 
 arbitrary process of abstraction. 
 
 It looks as if the realist, rashly supposing that the 
 idealist is always talking and thinking about ideas, had 
 taken for granted that he could be floored by an argu- 
 ment that rests on an unreal abstraction ; whereas the 
 world the monist is considering is the same real and 
 related world, the world of intricate connections, and 
 mutual dependencies and correspondences, of things 
 linked and platted together and interwoven, and separ- 
 able only in thought. Nobody is contending that the 
 truth 2+2 = 4 is an unreal abstraction, or that it is not 
 a holy and eternal truth, if all the other truths about 
 number are holy and eternal too ; or that a partial truth 
 is not true as far as it goes. The idealist is, I think, 
 well within his rights in protesting against Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell's use of the terms " the whole truth " and " a 
 partial truth " as equivalent to wholly true and partially 
 true. 
 
 The destructive force of Mr. Russell's argument rests 
 on this dubious equivalence and on nothing else. 
 
 Let us take things as they are, in the concrete. It is 
 wholly true that Mr. Bertrand Russell is a brilliant 
 mathematician, but it is not the whole truth about Mr. 
 Bertrand Russell. Mr. Bertrand Russell is more than a 
 brilliant mathematician, he is a brilliant logician, he is 
 a brilliant writer, he is (unfortunately at the present 
 moment) a pacifist, and he is a number of other things 
 besides. He is a pluralistic universe in himself. 
 
 But he is a universe, a whole. 
 
 And that he is a brilliant mathematician is so far 
 from being the whole truth about him that it is not the 
 whole truth about the brilliance of his mathematics, 
 which is inseparable from the brilliance of his logic. 
 If we knew the whole truth about Mr. Bertrand Russell, 
 
 ▼I 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 221 
 
 we should know why he is a brilliant mathematician and 
 logician. We should even know why he is, at this un- 
 fortunate moment, a pacifist. What we do not know 
 about all this brilliance is its inevitableness as a quality 
 of Mr. Bertrand Russell. 
 
 Mr. Russell would point out that our proposition can 
 perfectly well stand alone ; that it is wholly true and 
 sufficiently significant in itself. And I do not see that 
 the monist is pledged to deny this, even while maintain- 
 ing that we are as far as ever from the ultimate truth, 
 the ultimate reality of Mr. Russell. 
 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell, and his mathematics and the 
 rest of it, is an instance that serves the monist very well. 
 For the personality of Mr. Russell is precisely that sort 
 of spiritual whole he has in mind when he declares that 
 the Whole is present in its parts, and that the parts have 
 no complete significance apart from the whole. Whether 
 he has grounds for maintaining that the Reality of the 
 universe is of that nature remains to be seen. 
 
 Meanwhile, when Mr. Joachim, the monist quoted 
 by Mr. Russell, says, " The erring subject's confident 
 belief in the truth of his knowledge distinctly char- 
 acterizes error and converts a partial apprehension of 
 the truth into falsity," he certainly lays himself open 
 to the attack of Mr. Russell's brilliant logic. But he 
 is deserting the game of Monism, and stating a private 
 theory of truth. All that his metaphysical theory 
 commits him to is the statement that, if a man believes 
 a partial truth to be a whole truth, he is in error. And 
 he is in error precisely in Mr. Russell's sense. His error 
 consists in a false judgment about reality. The con- 
 fidence of his belief has nothing to do with it except so 
 far as it is calculated to keep him in his error. 
 
 According to Mr. Bertrand Russell, the unfortunate 
 monist has no means of distinguishing between truth 
 
222 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ▼1 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 223 
 
 and error. The two propositions " Bishop Stubbs was 
 hanged for murder," and " Bishop Stubbs used to wear 
 gaiters," are, for him, on the same level of truth and of 
 reality. The monist who looks beyond the partial truth 
 that Bishop Stubbs used to wear gaiters to that whole 
 episcopal phenomenon of which gaiters are but a part, 
 has no logical grounds for denying that Bishop Stubbs 
 was hanged for murder. 
 
 And yet the monist's groimds are the same as any- 
 body else's grounds, and he has the same right to them. 
 If he were defending Bishop Stubbs from a charge of 
 murder, he would appeal, not only to the integrity of 
 the episcopal phenomenon, but to the whole of the 
 evidence, the whole sequence and conglomeration of 
 facts by which it is established beyond doubt that 
 Bishop Stubbs did not, as a matter of fact, commit 
 murder. 
 
 That murder and Bishop Stubbs are in no possible 
 way connected cannot be said with perfect truth ; since 
 Bishop Stubbs shares the common humanity of all 
 the murderers that ever were. In their hypothetical 
 ultimate reality as immaterial beings, there is no differ- 
 ence, except a numerical difference, between all those 
 murderers and Bishop Stubbs. And in their hypo- 
 thetical oneness in the Absolute (with which numerical 
 identity has absolutely nothing to do), there would be 
 absolutely no difference between them. All the same, 
 as an apparition (wearing gaiters), in space and time. 
 Bishop Stubbs could not, or did not, conmiit murder. 
 
 So far Mr. Russell's arguments have been destructive 
 only to a Monism of logical abstractions, the quantitative 
 finite whole which is the sum of its parts, the numerical 
 one, the abstract absolute. They have no grip on the 
 hypothesis of a real, living whole, a real Absolute, a real 
 
 unity of finite and infinite, a real Spirit immanent or 
 transcendent. 
 
 But Mr. Russell has another and more formidable 
 argument. He deduces the whole doctrine of Monism 
 from the axiom of internal relations : '' Every relation 
 is grounded in the nature of the related terms." 
 
 Mr. Russell says that Monism stands or falls by this 
 axiom, and tries to show how impossible it is that it 
 should be stood by. The discreet monist will therefore 
 think twice before he gives his assent to it, for it is the 
 weapon Mr. Russell is coming out to slay him with. 
 
 Perhaps he will think of certain obvious relations 
 between subject and object, cause and effect, the thing 
 and its qualities ; between premisses and conclusion, 
 subject and predicate ; or between positions in space and 
 sequences in time, and will say without a moment's 
 hesitation : Yes, of course the relation is grounded in 
 the nature of its terms. For surely the terms of a 
 relation imply each other. That the subject A perceives 
 the object B, implies that it is in the nature of A to per- 
 ceive B, and of B to be perceived by A ; even though 
 nobody knows what that nature is, and though the 
 relation remains for ever mysterious. That A is the 
 cause of B implies that it is the nature of A to cause B, 
 and of B to be caused by A ; it is the nature of such and 
 such premisses to lead to such and such conclusions, 
 and of such and such conclusions to follow. If it were 
 not the nature of A to have the quality B, it would not 
 have B, and B must be such a quality that it can belong 
 to A. The same will hold of subject and predicate in 
 every statement made with regard to truth. If A is 
 eternally to the left of B, and therefore B eternally to 
 the right of A, there is something eternally in their 
 natures which makes these positions eternally possible 
 (they must, that is to say, be material objects occupying 
 
 It 
 
 jii^imiai^iaiiiSiSiSaaH 
 
224 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 225 
 
 space, and conditioned so as to occupy it in that par- 
 ticular relation) ; or, if these positions are only tempor- 
 ary, then there is something in their natures, a tendency 
 to move or a tendency to perish, which makes these 
 positions tenable only temporarily. In sapng all this, 
 the monist may think that he has stated both the correct 
 and the common-sense view of relations. Remember, 
 he has not yet committed himself to any explanation 
 of their mystery. 
 
 And all the time he is playing disastrously into Mr. 
 Russell's hands. 
 
 First of all, it is assumed that he does not distinguish 
 between the terms and the nature of the terms. In this 
 case he is floored with the same arguments which were 
 brought to bear against his theory of the whole and the 
 parts. On that theory he cannot make a true statement 
 about any relation between two terms without knowing 
 all the relations in which each term stands to all other 
 things, and without knowing all other things which enter 
 into that relation. Say it is the relation of perceiving 
 subject to object perceived, he cannot say with perfect 
 truth that A perceives B without knowing how many 
 other subjects B is perceived by. And then he hasn't 
 got further than the two terms. There is still the relation 
 of perceiving. He must therefore know all perceiving 
 wherever perceiving occurs. He must therefore know 
 all subjects perceiving and all objects perceived. 
 
 I have taken a relation which by its very simplicity 
 and comprehensiveness is most dangerously exposed to 
 Mr. Russell's attack ; but it is clear that his argument 
 applies with equal ferocity to all the other instances that 
 have been given. 
 
 Again, if relations are grounded in the nature of their 
 terms, there can be no diversity of things. Consider 
 the relation of diversity. A is different from B, therefore 
 
 B is different from A. Simple unqualified difference 
 cannot be predicated as a common adjective of both. 
 They must be different in some way. (Mr. Russell does 
 not say so, but his argument requires us to consider that 
 A and B differ in some way.) They have, then, different 
 predicates. In what way do the predicates differ ? 
 They have different predicates. In what way do these 
 different predicates differ ? They have different predi- 
 cates. In what way 
 
 But, as it is clear that the process must stop some- 
 where (for even Mr. Russell's Pluralistic Universe would 
 not provide the differences necessary to follow up the 
 infinite regression), we are driven to the conclusion that 
 A and B are not different from each other Neither are 
 C or D or E or F. In fact, there are no two things that 
 are different from each' other. 
 
 " It follows that there is no diversity and that there is only 
 one thing. Thus the axiom of internal relations is equivalent to 
 the assumption of ontological Monism and to the denial that 
 there are any relations. Wherever we seem to have a relation, 
 this is really an adjective of the whole composed of terms of the 
 supposed relations." (Philosophical Essays, p. 163.) 
 
 In other words, things are predicates of one Thing. 
 It follows that 
 
 " the one final and complete truth must consist of a proposition 
 with one subject, namely, the whole, and one predicate. But 
 as this involves distinguishing subject and predicate, as if they 
 could be diverse, even this is not quite true." {Ibid. p. 164.) 
 
 And this is assuming that the monist does not dis- 
 tinguish between his terms and their nature. If, with 
 a misguided subtlety, he does distinguish them, then the 
 same pitfall awaits him. For then, not only do we 
 have the same trouble that we had just now with A 
 and B, but the terms and their nature will enter the 
 
 Q 
 
 ^'11 
 
 J -^■ ■T 
 
226 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 yi 
 
 relation of diversity with all its consequences of infinite 
 regression. 
 
 If he sticks to it that the " term " and the '' nature " 
 
 are one term, then 
 
 " every true proposition attributing a predicate to a subject is 
 purely analytic, since the subject is its own whole nature and the 
 predicate is part of that nature . . . ; in that case, what is the 
 bond that unites predicates into predicates of one subject ? 
 Any casual collection of predicates might be supposed to compose 
 the subject if subjects are not other than the system of their own 
 predicates." (Ibid. p. 167.) 
 
 Finally, Monism is challenged to account for 
 
 " the apparent multipUcity of the real world. The difficulty is 
 that identity in difference is impossible if we adhere to strict 
 Monism. For identity in difference involves many partial 
 truths, which combine, by a kind of mutual give and take, into 
 one whole of truth. But the partial truths in a strict Monism 
 are not merely not quite true ; they do not subsist at all. If 
 there were such propositions, whether true or false, that would 
 be plurality." (Ibid. p. 168.) 
 
 On the other hand, if we accept the realist's proposal 
 and give up the axiom of internal relations (if we give 
 up Monism), 
 
 " * Identity in difference ' disappears : there is identity and 
 there is difference, and complexes have some elements identical 
 and some different, but we are no longer obUged to say of any 
 pair of objects that may be mentioned that they are both identical 
 and different — * in a sense,' this sense being something which 
 it is vitally necessary to leave undefined. We thus get a world 
 of many things, with relations which are not to be deduced from 
 a supposed ' nature ' or scholastic essence of related things. In 
 this world, whatever is complex is composed of simple related 
 things, and analysis is no longer confronted at every step by an 
 endless regress." (Ibid. p. 169.) 
 
 These passages, I think, show that Mr. Kussell has 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 227 
 
 not really grasped the monist's position. The endless 
 regress is the very last thing that the monist desires to 
 give up. His insistence on the endless regress is suffi- 
 cient proof that he is no more out for a supposed 
 '' nature," or " scholastic essence," than the pluralist. 
 The " sense " in which he declares two things to be 
 both identical and different is something which it is 
 '' vitally necessary " to his theory to define. He has 
 no earthly interest in shirking the definition. His 
 sense is not the pluralist's sense, and they are therefore 
 arguing at cross purposes. His multiplicity, his differ- 
 ence, refers, or should refer, always to appearances, to 
 the manifestations of reality. For him, identity in 
 difference does not mean that two manifestations are 
 one manifestation, but that there is one reality in two, 
 or, if you like, in an infinite number of manifestations. 
 His Monism may be wrong or it may be right, but it is 
 not self-contradictory. 
 
 Challenged to account for the apparent multiplicity 
 of the real world, his answer must be that it is apparent, 
 and not real, and that the world of appearances is not 
 the real world. When he is told that partial truths, 
 in a strict Monism, do not subsist at all, because " if 
 there were such propositions, whether true or false, 
 that would give plurality," the retort is obvious : Pre- 
 cisely ; it is incompleteness that gives plurality. 
 Plurality is the expression of partial truth. 
 
 As for " the bond that unites predicates into predi- 
 cates of one subject," he might ask, in his turn, how 
 there can be such a bond without identity in difference ? 
 And, talking of casual collections, how does the pluralist 
 propose to make his collections stick ? We shall see 
 later on that he cannot do it without recourse to the 
 very principle he repudiates. 
 
 Still, it cannot be denied that a great deal of this 
 
228 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 229 
 
 critique is formidable. It is the heavy artillery of a 
 ferocious enemy out to slay. And I think it must be 
 owned, in humility and contrition, that Idealism has 
 brought it on itself, by its increasing " thinness," its 
 more and more exclusive cultivation of epistemology. 
 Hegel, as William James admitted, has "thickness" 
 (as Fechner has thickness), but his followers have per- 
 sisted in following the very path he warned them off — 
 the narrow way of abstract intellectualism that leadeth 
 to destruction in the barren Absolute. They have 
 tried— as if their master, and Kant before him, had 
 lived in vain— they have tried to build up a universe 
 out of those very categories of the imderstanding which 
 Hegel himself had told them were unfruitful. They have 
 stopped at the Third Book of his Ijogic, where all the 
 categories are roimded up in the Absolute Idea, and 
 have not pursued the game of the Triple Dialectic any 
 further. It does not seem to have occurred to them 
 that in the Logic Hegel is only getting into his stride, 
 and that, if they are to play the game, they must go on 
 till Nature and Thought together are rounded up in 
 the Absolute Spirit which is God. An Absolute as thick, 
 as concrete as the universe itself. Thought itself, which 
 in Hegel's hands is alive and kicking, becomes sterile 
 and motionless under their treatment (38). 
 
 Now it may turn out that there is no such thing as 
 Spirit ; or that if there is it cannot play the all-embracing 
 part assigned to it. But, anyhow, Hegel's assumption 
 of Spirit made all the difference to the successful working 
 of his Dialectic ; whereas his followers distrust the 
 Dialectic, and their tendency has been to drop it, and 
 to drop the assumption in the interests of what they 
 believe to be a sounder logic. And it is at least a question 
 whether their logic, though far simpler, is really sounder. 
 
 Hegel's " thought -relations," by whatever unsafe a 
 priori process he arrived at them, really did relate, 
 because they are themselves related, because they are 
 moments in the manifestation of Spirit, links between 
 its immanent and transcendent life. His followers have 
 turned them into logical abstractions, and abstractions 
 are hard, unyielding things, unsuited to the rhythmic 
 and elastic play of Spirit. And so, having stopped short 
 where the Hegelian plot is thinnest (though Hegel's 
 '' Logic " is still considerably thicker than, say, Mr. 
 Bradley's), they fall an easy prey to any philosophy that 
 takes account of such things as nature, and life, and will, 
 and sense, and passion, and moral behaviour. Their 
 organic whole is not a whole, and cannot by any manipu- 
 lation of the terips be made to do duty for the whole. 
 Their " internal relations " are so far from being internal 
 that at the first touch of analysis they seem to fall 
 away from the " things " they are supposed to con- 
 stitute, or at any rate to hold together. Their unity is 
 not a real unity, for the simple reason that the supreme 
 and ultimate form of it, their Absolute, is not a real 
 Absolute. 
 
 As abstractions, " thought -relations " are specially 
 vulnerable to Analytic Logic, which can be trusted to 
 produce off its own bat as many more as may be wanted 
 and to deal with them after their kind. When the 
 monist asserts that all relations are grounded in the 
 nature of their terms, he starts with a rash generaliza- 
 tion ; and when he stakes all his hopes of his Absolute 
 on the dilemma of the infinite regress which ensues, 
 his Absolute is in a perilous state. The position is 
 attackable from above and from below. You have 
 only got to show him one relation, equally abstract, 
 which is not grounded in the nature of its terms, and 
 you have mined the very foundations of his dilemma. 
 
 "«r 
 
230 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 231 
 
 Or, if he takes his stand on a relation that is so grounded, 
 then, with the first step of his regress, he is again in the 
 thin air of abstraction ; and the superstructure of his 
 dilemma is exposed to any opponent who presses on 
 his attention some irreducibly uncontradictious defini- 
 tion of the terms. Thus the ingenious analyst " has " 
 him either way. For it is clear that, if the relation is 
 grounded in the terms, and the terms are irreducible, 
 the relation itself is irreducible ; while, if the relation 
 is not grounded in its terms, it is irreducible to begin 
 with. And this irreducibility of the whole complex 
 holds up his regress at the start. 
 
 Yet, so far is Monism from being vanquished that 
 this game of abstractions has one great and glorious 
 advantage for the monist — two can play at it. And, 
 as we shall see, it is a game at which ultimately the 
 realist stands to lose. 
 
 That both sides are dealing in abstractions is evident 
 from the realist's theory of the monist's theory of 
 " relation." 
 
 '' Philosophers," Mr. Bertrand Russell says (and by 
 philosophers I think he means monists), " seem really 
 to assume — ^though not, so far as I know, explicitly — 
 that relations never have more than two terms : and 
 even such relations they reduce by force or guile to 
 predication. Mathematicians, on the other hand, almost 
 invariably speak of relations of many terms " (Principia 
 Mathematica, p. 212) ; and Mr. Russell both assumes, 
 quite explicitly, and argues that a relation of many 
 terms is incompatible with any monistic theory of 
 relation. You would have thought that, the wider and 
 more complex the ramification of any one relation, and 
 the more terms you could rope into it, the more unity 
 would triumph. But no, you have only to abstract your 
 mind from the relation and fasten it on the terms to see 
 
 at once that it is Pluralism that scores. And so it does, 
 if you have given in to the proposition that a relation 
 can exist apart from and independently of its terms. 
 
 And when the realist has shown that this separateness 
 and independence is found in the most intimate and 
 sacred of all relations, the relation of subject and predi- 
 cate, the conclusion is apparently forced on you that 
 the game of Monistic Idealism is up. Idealism, seeking 
 unity before all things, is supposed to have assumed 
 faithfulness in the union of subject and predicate. 
 Realism, on the look-out for plurality, finds, on the 
 contrary, that subjects are polygamous and have many 
 predicates, while there never was a predicate yet that 
 could remain faithful to one subject for very long. The 
 rose is red ; but so is the dawn and so is Bardolph's 
 nose. And, unless y6u adopt the realistic theory of 
 universals, you are in danger of arguing that the nose 
 and the rose are not red, because redness is not a rose nor 
 a nose. In short, the relations of most subjects and 
 most predicates are temporary and fortuitous, and their 
 behaviour, from the point of view of monism and 
 monogamy, an open scandal. Therefore, the pluralist 
 argues, you had much better agree with him that rela- 
 tions are irreducible and independent entities, and that 
 so are their terms. , 
 
 But there is no reason why Monism should be assumed 
 as banking on the permanence of these imions, except 
 on the further assumption that it stands or falls by the 
 theory of internal relations. // the relation of subject 
 and predicate is grounded in their nature, clearly the 
 relation must be permanent; subjects and predicates 
 must not chop and change. 
 
 Now, though the statements of certain monists may 
 have given some grounds for the assumption, it is not 
 justified by Monism itself. Monism does not stand or 
 
232 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Yl 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 233 
 
 fall by the doctrine of internal relations. It stands or 
 falls by the dilemma. 
 
 That is to say, it stands or falls by the dilemma 
 involved in the opposite theory, the realistic theory of 
 external relations ; or rather, by the dilemma inherent 
 in the very idea of the thing and its relations. No pre- 
 dicament, short of the double dilemma, will really serve. 
 Given the double dilemma, you are confronted with the 
 plain illusion of all relative existence. 
 
 In chapter ii., page 21, of Mr. Bradley's Appearance 
 and Reality you will find Mr. Russell's argument against 
 the doctrine of internal relations turned in precisely the 
 same way, with precisely the same plausibility against 
 the doctrine of external relations. 
 
 Thus, even at this apparently profitless game of 
 abstractions, the monist scores ; seeing that the double 
 dilemma, so advantageous to him, is disastrous to his 
 opponent. For Realism stands or falls by its freedom 
 from dilemmas and from contradictions. 
 
 So what are we to say when on one page of the 
 Principia Mathematica we read, " The whole doctrine 
 of subject and predicate ... is radically false and must 
 be abandoned" ; and on another page, in that chapter iv. 
 to which the context refers us for the definition of 
 thing " : " Every term " (which is here equivalent to 
 every thing ") "to begin with is a logical subject. . . . 
 Again, every term is immutable and indestructible. 
 What a term is, it is and no change can be conceived in 
 it which would not destroy its identity and make it 
 another term." So that, as some terms, on Mr. Russell's 
 admission, are also predicates, every term must be what 
 it isn't, contrary to the definition. 
 
 If a monist had made a statement like that he would 
 never have heard the last of it. And there is no reason 
 why he should not have made it, since the contradiction 
 
 (( 
 
 ii 
 
 involved would help him rather than not. But it is very 
 far from helping Mr. Russell. 
 
 And if we go on we shall find him involved in con- 
 tradictions that would make the fortune of a monist. 
 Thus: 
 
 " We shall say that Socrates is human is a proposition having 
 only one term ; of the remaining components of the proposition 
 one is a verb, the other is a predicate." 
 
 It is implied, then, that a predicate is not a term ; 
 yet in the preceding paragraph terms are divided into 
 *' things " and '' concepts," and concepts into adjectives, 
 or " predicates," and relations or verbs. There may be 
 terms that are not predicates, but how on earth can 
 there be any predicate that is not a term ? 
 
 " Predicates, then, are concepts other than verbs, which 
 occur in propositions having only one term or subject." 
 
 For if two terms were allowed in subject-predicate 
 propositions there would be unity in difference. There- 
 fore, contrary to the definition, it is not to be. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " When a man occurs in a proposition (e.g. I met a man in the 
 street) the proposition is not about the concept a man but about 
 something quite different — some actual biped, denoted by the 
 concept. Thus concepts of this kind have meaning in a non- 
 psychological sense : And in this sense when we say ' This is a 
 man ' we are making a proposition in which a concept is in 
 some sense attached to what is not a concept." 
 
 We are, that is to say, involved in what, on a theory 
 of immutable and indestructible terms, is a contradic- 
 tion, but is not a contradiction on any other theory. 
 
 But, after all, the analyst has some uneasiness about 
 this most crucial question of the subject-predicate 
 relation. 
 
234 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 235 
 
 " If we were right in holding that * Socrates is human ' is a 
 proposition having only one term, the is in this proposition cannot 
 express a relation in the ordinary sense. In fact subject-predicate 
 propositions are distinguished by just this non-relational char- 
 
 acter. 
 
 >> 
 
 You see the realist's implacable hostility to the 
 subject-predicate relation ? Just because in it there 
 lurks a secret danger to his Pluralism. Still, Mr. Russell 
 is a most honest and honourable logician, and he owns 
 very handsomely that 
 
 " nevertheless, a relation between Socrates and humanity is 
 certainly implied, and it is very difficult to conceive the pro- 
 position as expressing no relation at all. We may perhaps say 
 that it is a relation, although it is distinguished from other 
 relations in that it does not permit itself to be regarded as an 
 assertion concerning either of its terms indifferently, but only 
 as an assertion concerning the referent." 
 
 That is to say, '' humanity " is not exemplified in 
 Socrates, otherwise it would be implicated as a term. 
 
 " But it is so hard to know what is meant by relation, that 
 the whole question is in danger of becoming purely verbal." 
 (Princijna Mathematica, p. 49.) 
 
 Hard, indeed, if you are a pluralistic realist bent on 
 eliminating unity at all costs. 
 
 One more admission of the analyst, a propos, this 
 time, of organic imities, the existence of which he 
 strenuously denies. 
 
 " It is said that analysis is falsification, that the complex is not 
 equivalent to the sum of its constituents and is changed when 
 it is analysed into these. In this doctrine . . . there is a 
 measure of truth when what is to be analysed is a unity. A 
 proposition has a certain indefinable unity, in virtue of which it 
 is an assertion ; and this is so completely lost by analysis that 
 no enunciation of constituents will restore it, even though itself 
 be mentioned as a constituent. There is, it must be confessed, 
 
 a grave logical difficulty in this fact, for it is difficult not to 
 beUeve that a whole must be constituted by its constituents." 
 
 He comforts himself with the reflection that 
 
 " for us, however, it is sufficient to observe that all unities are 
 propositions or propositional fimctions, and that, consequently, 
 nothing that exists is a unity." (Ibid. p. 467.) 
 
 It is, the monist may observe, not sufficient for him ; 
 and he would point out that the consequence is not so 
 rigorous as Mr. Russell seems to think. 
 
 Also, I think he would suggest that the whole 
 question of how Knowledge is possible hangs on this 
 admitted unity of the proposition and propositional 
 function. How does the amazing multiplicity of the 
 real outside universe get itself expressed in propositions 
 or in propositional functions, if, in that miiverse, there 
 is no unity to correspond ? If the pluralist is allowed 
 to assume that every logical atom discoverable by his 
 atomistic logic tallies with or constitutes an atom there, 
 why may not the monist just as well assume his logical 
 unity to be there also ? 
 
 And to the whole atomistic critique he might reply : 
 All this is mere analysis ; and you yourself admit that 
 " analysis of a whole is in some measure falsification." 
 Is it likely, then, that, after the damage you have in- 
 fficted on my universe, I shall not hold you tight to that 
 admission and to all that it implies ? If the parts of 
 the whole are really its parts, if they are, as you admit, 
 presupposed in it, " in a sense " in which it is not pre- 
 supposed in them — for I grant you that " in a sense " 
 the whole is a " new " thing, though not that it is ever 
 a new *' single term," except provisionally, as part or as 
 one of many aggregates in a larger whole — ^then the 
 relation of the whole to its parts will still be more 
 intimate, more vital, than anything that analysis can 
 
236 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 show ; and it is precisely this intimacy and vitality that 
 analysis destroys. And surely it is this intimacy and 
 vitality that logic itself discerns and acknowledges when 
 it is driven to the conclusion that, in the last analysis, 
 the analysis of collections, when the whole is only com- 
 pletely specified by its parts, the relation is peculiar and 
 undefinable ? So peculiar and undefinable that, when 
 the precious collection consists of but a single term, we 
 are still compelled to think of that term as contained in 
 a whole. Does it not look as if the whole were as neces- 
 sary to the part as the parts are to the whole ? 
 
 As for your arguments drawn from multiple relations, 
 from propositions containing many more terms than 
 two, and from many subjects with one predicate and 
 many predicates with one subject, I do not see that they 
 necessarily make more for your ultimate Pluralism than 
 for my ultimate Monism. I am not obliged to look for 
 my unity anywhere short of the Absolute. Therefore 
 it really does not matter to me how many terms a pro- 
 position contains, nor how you distribute and arrange 
 the relations of subject and predicate. 
 
 Anal3rtic Logic, then, has not entirely smashed up 
 even his system of abstract Thought-relations. But 
 supposing that it had, the monist's only legitimate 
 concern is not abstract relativity but concrete related- 
 ness, the bare fact that the universe is contextual, that 
 all things in it, that is to say, all things within the range 
 of immediate perception and of logical induction and 
 deduction, are in some way connected, interdependent 
 and related. His claim that each is related to the 
 Absolute in one way, the way of the appearance to the 
 reality, is a just claim. The further claim that they 
 should all be related to each other in one way is the suicidal 
 mania of Monism. It is to ignore their place in the 
 
 I 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 237 
 
 relation. It is to tear them from the context in which 
 they appear and are known, in which we are obliged to 
 perceive them and to think them ; it is to isolate them 
 and thus turn them into abstractions which at once 
 become the prey of Analytic Logic. 
 
 For every abstraction set up within the sphere of the 
 related is a little tin-pot absolute. 
 
 The monist is even worse off with his claim that 
 every lesser whole should have the clear, illuminating, 
 penetrating, truthful quality of the Whole. For this is 
 to create a series of little tin-can wholes, which are none 
 the less isolated, and none the less abstract for being set 
 up inside the relation. 
 
 Nevertheless, since two can play at this game, it is 
 with a plurality of such little tin-pot absolutes and such 
 little tin-can wholes that the New Realism builds up its 
 universe. Or, to be strictly correct, it is such a universe 
 of little tin-can wholes and little tin-pot absolutes that 
 it claims to have discovered. 
 
 Now, there is no reason why the monist (when he is 
 not a Subjective Idealist) should not take a hand in this 
 game of discovery too. There is, in fact, every reason 
 why he should claim to have discovered, for his part, a 
 universe where nothing is isolated, nothing is absolute, 
 and where nothing is contingent and conditional that 
 is not related in some way to something other than 
 itself. He would do well to accept and acknowledge 
 the frank plurality of such a universe, instead of patch- 
 ing up little unities and wholenesses inside it where 
 unity and wholeness are not, and creating little infinite 
 regressions and supererogatory dilemmas for himself as 
 he goes along. 
 
 Then, in the face of the infinite regression — the end- 
 less chain of contingencies — ^that he finds and does not 
 create, he has every reason to plead that in such a 
 
238 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 universe there is no moment of self-subsistence ; that it 
 escapes, from moment to moment, the diamond-net of 
 Thought ; that terms should be every bit as dependent 
 on relations as relations are on terms ; and that this 
 relativity is proved rather than disproved by the 
 pluralisms ability to play ducks and drakes with sub- 
 jects and predicates. He will maintain that " this is a 
 purely spectacular universe," in the sense that it has 
 every appearance of being an appearance rather than a 
 spontaneous and automatic reality; that, in short, its rela- • 
 tivity cries aloud for the Absolute and its multiplicity 
 for unity. He will define his rich and concrete Absolute 
 as that which is not related to anything other than itself. 
 
 Such an Absolute can only not " enter into relations " 
 because it is all relations and all terms, and is more than 
 the sum of all terms and all relations. Only such a Whole 
 is absolute, and 'only such an Absolute is the whole. 
 
 Thought is perhaps the thinnest and the poorest 
 predicate of this Ding-an-sich. It is quite clear that 
 such an Absolute escapes the net of thought by so much 
 as it is more than thought. 
 
 Eealists, will, of course, deride the suggestion that it 
 escapes the net of Analytic Logic by so much. For, in 
 one sense, it does not escape. Logic can dislocate and 
 lay out in fragments the whole world of its appearances ; 
 and I confess I do not see how the monist is to stick it 
 together again with thought-relations, or to round it up 
 into one whole of Thought. He cannot conjure the 
 universe out of such feeble propositions as that Thought 
 is unity and Unity is thought, or that Absolute Spirit 
 is Thought because Thought thinks it. For on the same 
 showing a pluralistic universe would be a universe of 
 thought. The monist's only chance is to abandon his 
 Epistemology ; even if the alternative has to bear the 
 dreadful and dishonoured name of Spiritualism. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But even with the complete abandonment of Epis- 
 temology, the monist's position is untenable if the New 
 Realism can make good its claim at all the other points 
 along its admirably defended line ; if, that is to say, 
 it can prove its own hypothesis of the independent, self- 
 subsistent reality of the world as external to any and 
 every form of conscichisness. For that hypothesis, if 
 made good, rules out his as, to say the least of it, 
 superfluous. 
 
 Why look behind the veil of appearances for ultimate 
 reality when there isn't any veil, when realities as 
 ultimate as you are ever likely to get are spread out 
 under your nose, and absolute being is planted out all 
 round you in embarassing quantities ? 
 
 But are the foundations of Atomistic Realism, after 
 all, so very sure ? 
 
 It is just possible it may prove, after all, more vulner- 
 able than it looks. For, to begin with, it gains an 
 immense advantage from the fact that, in spite of the 
 influence of Mr. Bertrand Russell, it is not a one-man 
 philosophy as Hegelianism and Kantianism were one- 
 man philosophies. It is difficult to bring criticism to 
 bear on a theory that is not yet built up into a system. 
 You know where you are in the Critique of Pure Reason 
 by merely looking at the headings of the Parts and 
 Sections. You can find your way from Kant's base- 
 
 239 
 
 J 
 
_alS V- ^«^ ,i^,^<^. 
 
 240 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ▼I 
 
 merit, through all his floors, to his Transcendental attic 
 by a process as simple as going upstairs. But the New 
 Kealists, though no doubt they all have the same 
 architectural plan in their heads, are not yet housed 
 . under one roof. The American " Symposium of Six " 
 suggests a colony of Young Men's Christian Association 
 Huts rather than a solidly built and many-storied house 
 of thought. The stain is not yet dry on their walls, and 
 the corrugated iron is very new. So far, not even the 
 mathematical philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell is 
 completely systematized. The timid monist, wandering 
 among their scattered habitations, never knows what 
 disaster may lurk for him behind some door or window. 
 The critic of the New Realism has to arrange it according 
 to his own plan, and it is open to any new realist to com- 
 plain that his arrangement is wrong. 
 
 But at any rate it falls into two main divisions : its 
 Critique and its Construction. 
 
 It must be owned that its critique has accomplished 
 something, if not quite all that it set out to do. It has 
 completely shattered Subjective Idealism or Solipsism. 
 Not a very difficult or a much-needed enterprise ; and 
 its particidar success would be hardly worth mentioning 
 but for our new realists' very evident and very naif belief 
 that certain arguments fatal to Subjective Idealism are 
 equally destructive to idealisms that are not subjective. 
 
 It has destroyed a great deal of the abstract Epis- 
 temology that superseded Hegelianism, and it is hardly 
 likely that there will ever be any return of Idealism in 
 precisely that form. It may even be conceded that in 
 all probability there will be no return of Idealism at all 
 for another generation, imless the excesses of the realists 
 produce a violent reaction. It has, in short, swept 
 away so much old rubbish that any future Idealism must 
 reap the benefit of the space cleared for it. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 241 
 
 Its constructive half lends itself to five subdivisions : 
 The Organon, or Atomistic Logic ; the Mathematical 
 Foundations ; the Theory of Space and Time, Matter 
 and Motion ; the Theory of Universals ; the Theory of 
 Sense-Perception . 
 
 For reasons which will appear I shall consider these 
 in their reverse order. I do not think this is taking an 
 unfair advantage of a philosophy which has not yet got 
 itself systematized ; since the new realists have declared 
 their position to be impregnable at all points. In justice 
 to them, however, it should be remembered that their 
 theory of sense-perception rests on the mathematical 
 foundations, which, again, rest on their Atomistic Logic. 
 Hence the impregnability. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that Atomistic Logic, the 
 bed-rock of the entire philosophy, is purely formal. 
 
 Now, since the mathematical foundations are pure, 
 and sense-perception admittedly is not, is it impertinent 
 to ask how the one can be based upon the other ? Mind 
 is not more different from *' matter " than mathematical 
 points are from a point perceived in an extended surface, 
 let alone that they are not and cannot be perceived at 
 all. Neither are they the causes of sense-perception. 
 If anything is a " cause " in the external world it is the 
 behaviour of the ultimate constituents of matter in 
 " public " space. And it is difficult to see how mathe- 
 matical space in its purity and absoluteness can be in 
 any sense a condition of the behaviour of matter. 
 Further, on the theory, there has to be, in any case, an 
 adjustment of '' private " spaces to " public " space. 
 Surely this is pretty active and constructive work on the 
 part of a perceiver who, on the theory, is supposed to 
 be a passive spectator of ready-made realities outside 
 himself ? 
 
 Again, if all atomistic realities, even when they are 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 relations, are such very absolute, and, ontologically 
 speaking, self-repellent entities, it is difficult to con- 
 ceive how they come together in one undivided act of 
 perception. 
 
 The realist will, no doubt, say that they come together 
 because they are together, and that they are never 
 " in " perception at all ; so let us put the problem in 
 another form : How are they in their absoluteness and 
 plurality related to that single and undivided act ? 
 When, on the theory, the relation of these relations is 
 itself an outside entity ? In vain the realist decentral- 
 izes the entire performance. He has got his problem 
 at the periphery instead of at the centre, that is all. 
 
 We know that his is not " naif realism," like the 
 realism of the honhomme Eeid. It is, indeed, realism 
 of the most highly sophisticated sort. But all its sophis- 
 tications do not disguise the essential naivete and diffi- 
 culty of its problem. Things aren't as easy as all that. 
 The New Realism leaves that problem precisely where the 
 old Realism left it, for Idealism to solve as best it can. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that my monist is a " naif " 
 idealist : he does distinguish between subjective hallu- 
 cinations and objective phenomena ; or, if the realist 
 likes, between subjective and objective realities. But 
 this distinction is for the moment beside the point. We 
 are dealing now with objective realities — to give them 
 their courtesy title — with independent, outside things ; 
 with the carpet which exists in the room, and the room 
 which exists in space, whether I (or my neighbour for 
 that matter) are or are not in the room beholding these 
 existences. The new realist is mistaken if he imagines 
 that any idealist, who is not also a solipsist, supposes 
 for one moment that these appearances cease by his 
 absence and are revived again by his presence. What 
 he does suppose is that, if all sense-perceptions changed 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 243 
 
 or ceased, all sensible qualities would change or cease 
 also, and that if his ultimate and absolute Reality, which 
 he calls absolute Consciousness or Thought or Spirit, 
 were to cease, the whole universe of its appearances 
 would cease with it. But as, on his theory, he cannot 
 conceive of it as ceasing, the question has no more 
 significance for him than for the realist. That is to say, 
 on his theory, the universe will not and cannot abate one 
 pulse of the energies, one atom, or one shade of the 
 qualities that for the realist constitute its claim to be 
 considered real, until it or any one of its essential con- 
 stituents are annihilated. Idealism does no violence to 
 the dignity and decency of science, or to the plain man's 
 sense of reality. It leaves all these matters precisely 
 where they were. 
 
 But what does Realism do ? 
 
 It divides what for science and the plain man's sense 
 were never yet divided. It joins what for them were 
 never yet joined. It talks about irreducibles and un- 
 definables where science and the plain man see palpable 
 unities and relations. It gives to the abstractions of 
 its own logic a reality as august and far more permanent 
 than the solar system. It perpetuates the old fallacy 
 of arguing that what is outside a human body is outside 
 all consciousness, and that what is inside human con- 
 sciousness is therefore inside the human brain. It 
 swears by Psycho-physical Parallelism ; yet it regards 
 consciousness as a mysterious and unnecessary spectator 
 of external events, a spectator who only departs from 
 the purely passive role to manufacture '' tertiary " 
 psychic qualities which have no physical parallel. 
 
 Still, let us suppose that it gets its backing from the 
 higher mathematics and that it is irrefutably true. 
 
 Philosophy is then in an even worse position than 
 it was before Kant ; faced with a universe of realities 
 
 ,1 
 
 M 
 
244 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 of which an infinite number are harder and more irre- 
 ducible than brickbats, utterly different from and 
 independent of consciousness ; a universe which has 
 contrived to exist by itself for infinite ages without 
 being known, and superlatively indifierent as to whether 
 it ever is known or not ; which, at some moment of 
 finite time, is suddenly confronted with an infimte 
 crowd of finite knowers, utterly unnecessary to its exist- 
 ence, utterly mysterious in their origin, yet demanding 
 an origin by reason of their finiteness. 
 
 The fact of Knowledge becomes once more the 
 intractable problem of philosophy, with no hope of 
 tackling it, as Kant tried to tackle it, at the knowing 
 end. It is as if Kant had been shut up with Wolf in 
 Wolf's library, and had gone to sleep there with nobody 
 to wake him from his dogmatic slumber. When the 
 new realist in his realism says that Kant's slumbers, if 
 everlastingly prolonged, would have been no misfortune 
 for the human race, since Idealism has had no effect 
 on physical or mental science, he is confusing physical 
 and mental science with philosophy. It may be doubted 
 whether the Eealism of the twentieth century is going 
 to have any effect on physical and mental science either, 
 seeing that these have hitherto managed to get on very 
 well without it; whereas ReaHsm owes much of its 
 alleged security to the support it professes to receive 
 from physics and applied mathematics. 
 
 But, before considering its security, we must look 
 closer at its treatment of the problem of immediate 
 
 perception. 
 
 It is no longer Berkeley's question of how realities, 
 hard as brickbats, contrive to penetrate from an outside 
 world into an inside consciousness which is tenuous and 
 tender, since on the theory they do not penetrate into 
 consciousness at all. 
 
 a 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 245 
 
 Nor is it Kant's question of how synthetic judgments 
 are a priori possible, since it is not for judgment to make 
 any synthesis at all, but only to look on and constater. 
 So far as there is any synthesis at all, the synthesis is 
 performed with efficiency by realities themselves. 
 
 Now, unless we remember that this theory has a high 
 mathematical backing, this part of it looks almost too 
 simple and easy to be true. And we must admit that 
 there is something fascinating and even plausible in its 
 simplicity and easiness. It also looks (stated thus 
 without reference to the higher mathematics) as if it 
 were a question -begging theory. Still, it would be 
 unfair to press that point, as idealists may claim an 
 equal right to isolate a theory for observation. 
 
 But the realist is dodging the issue when he argues 
 that the existence of hallucinations — of red carpets in 
 consciousness that are not in the room — is no objection 
 to his theory. It is an objection, as we shall see, and a 
 fairly formidable objection, but it is not the crucial one. 
 Hallucinations, on any theory, may be supposed to 
 arise from a flaw or a kink in the apparatus of per- 
 ception ; from something, that is to say, abnormal. 
 But the true crux is the normal and permanent memory 
 image, the faithful reproduction of the spectacle that 
 arises as the spectator's subjective response to the 
 stimulus of those nerve and brain cells that were associ- 
 ated so mysteriously with this uninterrupted view of 
 the original performance. The realist cannot say that 
 this repetition of the spectacle is taking place in public 
 space, nor in that private space which is adjustable to 
 public space (39). Red carpets are in his consciousness 
 now, at any rate ; that is to say, they are subjective 
 in the sense that his memories are not my memories or 
 anybody else's memories. But, though subjective, they 
 are spatial, they are extended, and they are red. To 
 
246 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 be spatial, then, to be extended, to be red, are not hall- 
 marks attaching to things that exist only outside con- 
 sciousness. They are, after all, properties also of things 
 that arise in consciousness. 
 
 I think the new realist can hardly argue that 
 memories arise anywhere else. But if he does, he will 
 get an infinite regressus of outside simulacra and no 
 genu! e memory at all. Genuine memory should, one 
 would imagine, be saturated with subjectivity, and in 
 the experience of most of us genuine memory is. I do 
 not ask him how he distinguishes between the memory 
 of the spectacle and the spectacle itself ; he distinguishes 
 precisely as the idealist distinguishes, by the difference 
 of the complexes in which each occur ; for one thing, 
 he distinguishes by the very saturation which he ignores 
 as being of the essence of memory. But I do ask him 
 how he reconciles the fact of their common share in all 
 so-called primary and secondary qualities with his theory 
 that these qualities only exist independently of con- 
 sciousness and outside it. 
 
 This objection cannot be met by simply saying that 
 the original sense-data, their images in memory, and 
 what he may call dream-spectacles and hallucinations, 
 are all equally realities, but of different orders. It is 
 their likeness and not their unlikeness that is the problem. 
 
 Hallucinations are important. In psychology, over 
 and over again, abnormal occurrences have been our 
 guides to the laws and the significance of normal be- 
 haviour. Hallucinations, the new realist says, can be 
 referred entirely to some kink or flaw in the apparatus 
 of perception. The apparatus of perception can then 
 produce of its own initiative a very tolerable imitation 
 of reality ; a power which it really ought not to have 
 if the realist's account of perception is the true one. 
 Still, dream-consciousness can do as much or more. 
 
 I 
 
 ( 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 247 
 
 and in neither case is perception of a real outside object 
 involved. 
 
 But take hallucinations of the lesser sort, the tempor- 
 ary distortions and duplications of perception which 
 we are all familiar with — perception, mind you, of a 
 real outside object. These also are due to some kink 
 or maladjustment of the apparatus — easily corrected, 
 the new realist says, by readjustment or by reference to 
 the real object. The error is in the false judgment of 
 the perceiver. No doubt ; but the possibility of correc- 
 tion is really not the point. The point is that the 
 apparatus is important. We have here not the simple 
 affair of spectator and spectacle that Realism supposes. 
 There is a go-between, a medium. And the medium 
 can distort ; it can duplicate. 
 
 We would not be aware that there was a medium 
 if it were not for its occasional aberrations. And its 
 abnormal behaviour is the clue to its normal functions. 
 
 The medium, then, distorts or duplicates — what ? 
 The realist says. Not the real object. An image of the 
 object ? Realism has no use for images in immediate 
 perception ; it has ruled them sternly out. The appear- 
 ance of the object, then ? Realism says that in per- 
 ception the appearance is the reality. Agree that it 
 is the apparatus, the medium itself, that is duplicated 
 or distorted, and we are where we were before. Percep- 
 tion is still as much the thrall of its apparatus as of its 
 object. If its duplication — for the experiments or acci- 
 dents which yield duplicates amount to its duplication, 
 and I am giving Realism the benefit of any doubt there 
 may be on this point — if the duplication of the medium 
 can make one perceiver perceive two objects ; and 
 if its distortion can make him perceive the real object 
 as if it were distorted, if its correct adjustment is 
 essential to his correct perception of the object, it is 
 
 ?I 
 
248 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW EEALISM 
 
 249 
 
 clear that his perception of objects, correct or incorrect, 
 is not precisely what you might call immediate. How 
 can he then be sure — as cock-sure as the realist is — that 
 he is perceiving a reality and not an appearance ? 
 
 And when we consider the pure sense-data, those 
 secondary qualities which Realism declares to be, not 
 warm, intimate sensations, but objects of sensation, 
 planted out, and no more at home in consciousness than 
 the north pole is, the old problems turn up again as 
 persistently as if the New Realism had never arisen to 
 solve them. 
 
 For if, disregarding the apparatus of perception, we 
 take the New Realism's primary, secondary, and tertiary 
 qualities as simply as it would have us take them, we 
 shall not find the tertiary qualities, which it admits to 
 be subjective, divided off from the secondary or objective 
 ones as sharply as we should expect on a theory which 
 distinguishes between realities dependent on conscious- 
 ness and realities not so dependent. 
 
 On the contrary, starting with the tertiary qualities 
 and working outwards from the subjective centre, we 
 pass through a reaction zone of tertiary qualities merging 
 into secondary, in a gradation of shades so subtle as to 
 defy the arbitrary division that Realism has set up. 
 The aesthetic feelings, wonder, admiration and awe, 
 the passions and emotions, love, desire, fear, pleasure 
 and displeasure, and disgust are not qualities that 
 Realism would dream of planting out in the objects that 
 excite them ; and it requires some stretch of imagination 
 on Idealism's part to realize sound and colour, hardness 
 and heaviness, as sense-data rather than as sensations. 
 And it requires a bigger stretch still to plant out tastes 
 and odours in the particles of matter that excite them. 
 
 But what about heat and cold ? Supposing the 
 idealist agrees that it is the fire that is hot and the air 
 
 that is cold, and not the idealist. Then, when by im- 
 perceptible gradations the fire grows hotter and hotter 
 and the air colder and colder, and pain is his reaction to 
 the higher intensities of the same stimulus, is he to plant 
 out the pain into the fire and the air ? I suppose the 
 realist will say he need plant it out no farther than his 
 own body ; but even that is too far for the intimately 
 subjective thing that pain seems to be. Besides, you 
 have now left it unsettled whether the heat is in the fire 
 or in his body. If the new realist says that, obviously, 
 it is in both, then how about the pain ? 
 
 How are you to distinguish as secondary and tertiary 
 between the heat that is outside consciousness, and 
 independent of it, and the pain which is in conscious- 
 ness, which without consciousness would not and could 
 not be ? 
 
 And you can take all the secondary qualities and 
 increase their intensity with the same result. Intense 
 light and sound, taste and odour will bring about violent 
 reactions, your objective secondary sensations merging 
 into subjective tertiary agony. 
 
 What is more, your sensation of primary qualities 
 will behave in the same way. Increase the heaviness 
 of your suit-case, or the impetus of your contact with 
 the table, and heaviness and hardness will pass into 
 sensations that are not sense-data at all as the realist 
 defines them. The problem is not affected by the con- 
 sideration that in all these instances (notably in that 
 of the suit-case and colliding table) your body is the 
 medium of the reaction. Realism cannot get over the 
 damning fact that somehow, at some point, the transition 
 from primary or secondary to tertiary, from outside 
 consciousness to inside consciousness, has been made. 
 
 Realism allows for the transition from secondary to 
 primary qualities by its theory that extension is coloured 
 
 h 
 
250 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 251 
 
 and can be perceived as a sense-datum. What it refuses 
 to admit, and cannot account for, on any theory (either 
 of Psycho-physical Parallelism or of reality independent 
 on consciousness), is that all these unbroken transitions 
 taken together constitute a very considerable haul for 
 consciousness ; while the performance is fairly expli- 
 cable if we suppose that consciousness takes over the 
 whole show. 
 
 We must now consider the realist's doctrine of 
 universals, when it will be evident that there was good 
 reason for taking his theory of sense-perception first. 
 From their place in the logical programme of Realism 
 it might be supposed that the theory of sense-perception 
 followed from the doctrine of universals, as the doctrine 
 of universals followed from the atomistic logic. But 
 the consequences are the other way about. (Thus in 
 the chapter on " The World of Universals " in Mr. 
 Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy, you find the 
 theory of sense - perception relied on to support the 
 theory of the independent existence of a relation which 
 is a universal.) 
 
 It is true that Realism finds its universals and does 
 not create them. It is also true that if its universals 
 did not exist it would have had to invent them. With- 
 out them its theory of sense-perception will not hang 
 together for a moment. For, assume a consciousness 
 that brings no bridges with it, whose sole business is 
 to find and to constater, there can be no logical passage 
 from one atom of reality to another. Perception of 
 outside reals cries aloud for conception of outside reals 
 in order to make both memory associations and judg- 
 ments possible. So the one is used to bolster up the 
 other. 
 
 To constater is impossible without concepts. And 
 
 concepts must be universals in order to ensure that the 
 reality perceived at this moment and in this space is 
 the same reality which was perceived the moment before, 
 or at any period of time before, or in another space, 
 supposing it to have changed its position. 
 
 The universal, therefore, must be out of time and 
 out of space. It is that which has the same meaning in 
 all contexts in which it occurs, 
 
 Universals thus serve as standards or tests of the 
 identity of reals ; they are Plato's " patterns laid up 
 in heaven." 
 
 Now I think Idealism ought to acknowledge that 
 it has no grounds for quarrelling with the New Realism 
 here. It ought rather to be grateful to it for restoring 
 universals to their ancient place of freedom and purity 
 and splendour. There is something about a universal 
 that has always provoked the derision of the playful 
 empiricist. Bishop Berkeley thought there was some- 
 thing downright funny about a triangle that was neither 
 oblique nor rectangle nor equilateral nor equicrural 
 nor scalenon, but '' all and none of these at once." 
 
 But it remained for M. Anatole France to extract 
 the full delicious flavour of its humour. According 
 to the fallen angel Nectaire in his Discours sur Vhistoire 
 universelle de Bossuet, there were only two Schools of 
 Schoolmen : '' L'un des camps soutenait qu'avant qu'il 
 y eut des pommes il y avait la Pomme : qu'avant qu'il 
 y eut des papegais, il y avait le Papegai ; qu'avant qu'il 
 y eut des moines paillards et gourmands il y avait le 
 Moine, la Paillardise et la Gourmandise ; qu'avant qu'il 
 y eut des pieds et des culs en ce monde, le Coup de pied 
 au cul residait de toute eternite dans le sein de Dieu. 
 L'autre camp repondit que, au contraire . . . le coup 
 de pied au cul n'exista qu'apres avoir ete dument donne 
 et re9u " ('' Revolte des Anges "). 
 
 t 
 
252 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Now the New Kealism certainly saves its universals 
 from this ridiculous predicament. There can be no 
 question of a kick in the ribs dwelling to all eternity in 
 the bosom of the Absolute ; because, for the new realist, 
 there is no Absolute and no bosom. The universal kick 
 in the ribs is itself an absolute ; and of its dwelling 
 nothing can be said but that it is not in consciousness, 
 and not in space or time. And of universals out of their 
 context nothing can be said but that they are realities. 
 
 But observe that the peculiar outsideness of their 
 reality, their independence on consciousness, hangs even 
 more on the realist's theory of perception than his 
 theory of perception hangs on it. Concepts, that is 
 to say, have been brought into line with percepts. 
 Like percepts, they are realities over against conscious- 
 ness. On the theory, consciousness is simply confronted 
 with them, and in their presence it ought to be able to 
 do nothing but stare at them and constater. And each 
 constatation is a recognition. 
 
 So that, in order to constater, it has need of another 
 universal, confronted with which it can do no more 
 than recognize and constater ; and so on, in as beautiful 
 an infinite regress as ever delighted the heart of Mr. 
 
 Bradley. 
 
 There is only one way in which to arrest that infinite 
 regress at the start, and make the universals do the logical 
 work required of them ; and that is, not to drag them 
 down from their high place in heaven, but to recognize 
 that their heaven, the eternal Kingdom of these blessed 
 ones, is within ; that they are, as Idealism should have 
 always held them to be, the work of Thought. They 
 are none the less august, and none the less real, on that 
 account. It is Thought that' is exalted, and not they 
 that are abased. 
 
 The New Realism has revived a Realism very old, 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 253 
 
 older than Scholasticism. It will have none of Aris- 
 totle's development of the Platonic philosophy. It 
 refuses to admit that when Aristotle objected that the 
 elSr] were alaO-rjTa dtBia, eternalized sense-data, he was 
 playing Plato's game for him. It will not see that 
 when he said Ideas are not idle, they have hands and 
 feet, he was again playing Plato's game and playing it 
 better, getting a " move on " to the Ideas, so as to make 
 them do the twofold work required of them, the work 
 of logic and reality. 
 
 And consider what happened later. After Scholastic 
 Realism, Nominalism, the inevitable reaction ; after 
 Nominalism, Conceptualism, the forerunner of modern 
 Idealism. It is just possible that history may repeat 
 itself, and that after the New Realism of the twentieth 
 century 
 
 But I am reminded that our Realism is in a very 
 different case. It is so securely based on a mathematical 
 discovery unknown to Aristotle, unknown to the Schol- 
 astics, unknown to the Idealists of the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, that it defies avenging time. It 
 follows (or should follow) in one unbroken logical 
 sequence from Cantor's discovery of the behaviour 
 of the Infinite, through the desired proof of the con- 
 tinuity of space and time, resolving their antinomies. 
 It is thus linked up with the physical sciences. It has 
 contrived to do what Vitalism vainly attempted, 
 '' faire tomber I'insurmontable barriere " and 
 
 re- 
 
 joindre la science." 
 
 " Rejoindre la science ! " To join hands with Science, 
 physical science that has always looked askance at it, 
 that will have none of its " thinness " — that (between 
 its Idealisms) has always been Philosophy's passion 
 and its dream ; the passion and the dream which have 
 
254 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 255 
 
 produced Materialism and Agnosticism, Psycho-physical 
 Parallelism, and all the naif empiricisms and realisms. 
 
 You would suppose, then, that the space and time 
 it receives from the mathematician, purged of all the 
 contradictions and dilemmas of discreteness, would have 
 something in common with the space in which extension 
 occurs and the time in which things happen. For the 
 truth of Realism hangs, in the last resort, on the mathe- 
 matical solution of the contradictions and dilemmas 
 of space and time. Realists are never tired of reminding 
 us that we have now got a continuous space and time 
 to work with, and that idealists cannot any longer insist 
 on the impossibility of the passage from point to point 
 and from instant to instant ; for, as we have seen, in 
 infinite space there are no next points, and in infinite 
 time there are no next instants, and consequently no 
 gaps. 
 
 From an infinite series any number of members can 
 be taken and to an infinite series any number can be 
 added without either diminishing or increasing it. 
 
 Does it not follow, then, that a finite series is not, in 
 any sense, part of an infinite series ? 
 
 This is a question for mathematicians, and for all 
 I know it may be either so obvious or so irrelevant that 
 no mathematician woidd dream of asking it. Therefore 
 I suggest it with the utmost diffidence and some mis- 
 giving. It does seem to me to follow, not only from 
 Cantor's law, but from the definition of part and whole, 
 combined with the axiom, that there are no infinite 
 >vholes ; from the impossibility of arguing from finite 
 to infinite ; from the realist's assumption of the absolute- 
 ness of space and time, and the plurality of absolute 
 spaces and of times ; and from the atomistic theory of 
 the intransigeant and mutually repellent character of 
 absolute entities. 
 
 And if it follows, the bearings on our problem would 
 be very relevant indeed. For, consider. Pure space 
 and pure time are continuous, in the sense that between 
 any two points and any two instants there is an infinite 
 number of points and of instants ; nor is there any other 
 sense in which they could be continuous. So that, in 
 an infinite series there are no two consecutive points 
 or instants. 
 
 Now " between any two points " is surely just as 
 much a relation of finites as is the relation of two con- 
 secutive points ; and as such it has no business in an 
 infinite series ; so that you cannot speak of an infinite 
 number occurring between any two points. And from 
 this it would seem to follow that an infinite series is not 
 a series at all, and that there can be no infinite order of 
 any sort. Yet, though a point has no magnitude, it 
 has, or should have, position. But how can it have 
 position in a series (or any other order) that isn't a series 
 (or any other order) ; where, that is to say, there are 
 no positions that do not presuppose the space they are 
 said to constitute ? 
 
 So that we are back again in the dilemma of the 
 infinite regress. If you say that the point that has 
 position is the Euclidean point, and that the points in 
 question do not have positions, but that they are posi- 
 tions, I do not see that that helps you out of the diffi- 
 culty. For if points cannot have positions where there 
 are no positions to have, neither can they be positions 
 where positions cannot be. The contradiction is simply 
 shifted from the discrete or consecutive continuity to 
 the pointless point or positionless position. 
 
 Again, a point, on any definition, has no magnitude ; 
 therefore it is indivisible, therefore " between any two 
 points," or any two instants, will mean between any two 
 indivisibles. And between any two indivisibles there 
 
 < <i 
 
s*'«steiSNfe»^ mmsims^mmis^. 
 
 256 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 must be seme hiatus which, perhaps, we cannot call 
 spatial or temporal, since space and time are continuous, 
 but which must surely be held to exist ; so that in space 
 composed of an infinite number of points there must be 
 an infinite number of non-spatial gaps. And the same 
 will hold good of time. And if this isn't discreteness, 
 I do not know what is. It is also, by the axiom, 
 
 continuity. 
 
 It must be so, if these points and these instants are 
 neither to overlap or coalesce, or otherwise behave like 
 
 magnitudes. 
 
 And, again, any two indivisibles thus separated will 
 
 be finite. -, n • t_- 
 
 So that in the Infinite two fine and flourishmg 
 
 contradictions have broken out, making six in all : (1) 
 the contradiction of the infinite regress ; (2) the con- 
 tradiction of the non-serial series ; (3) the contradiction 
 of the positionless position; (4) the contradiction 
 of the non- spatial spaces and non- temporal times 
 (already considered) ; (5) the contradiction of discrete 
 continuity; and (6) the contradiction of the fimte 
 infinite ; contradictions which are only to be avoided 
 
 by dilemmas. 
 
 Lastly, on this system, perception of the world of 
 Becoming is an act of reporting, divisible into an infinite 
 series of reports, corresponding to the infinite series of 
 moments constituting the process of change. Each 
 atom in the moving show of Becoming, is an absolute 
 entity, reported as such. It follows that there can be 
 no justifiable anticipation of events ; no reason why, 
 of the connections and sequences reported, one should 
 obtain rather than another. 
 
 I have not seen any refutation of Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell's mathematical metaphysics, and I can only 
 dimly imagine the lines it would be likely to take. But 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 257 
 
 I think my idealistic monist, with his back against the 
 wall, might put up some such defence as this. 
 
 If my monist is right, he is better furnished with 
 dilemmas now than ever he was under his own ontological 
 scheme. For if motion was a contradiction on the old 
 theory of the infinitely discrete, rest is a contradiction 
 on the new theory of the continuous infinite. For 
 with this sort of continuity you can indeed go on ; but 
 you can never, never stop. 
 
 Positionless position affords no rest for either Achilles 
 or the tortoise. 
 
 And with discrete continuity there can be neither 
 motion nor rest. What could an idealistic monist wish 
 for more ? 
 
 And when it comes to finite space his hope does not 
 fail him. What about the mile-long line that contains 
 no more points than the inch-long line ? The thousandth 
 part of the inch-long line that contains no fewer points 
 than a thousand mile-long line ? Both, indeed, contain- 
 mg an infinite number. It looks as if the finite contained 
 infinity. 
 
 But no— that would be too good to be true. The 
 monist does not really want that seventh contradiction. 
 His cup is already fairly running over. 
 
 Now it may be said that, even supposing these 
 contradictions and dilemmas were genuine and not 
 solvable by Cantor's law, non-mathematical monists 
 have no right to assume that they cannot be solved by 
 mathematics in some way, probably by calculations 
 involving the fourth dimension. But, as the new 
 mathematical logic does not stop at four, but provides 
 an infinite number of dimensions, the monist may not 
 unreasonably hope to reap a second crop of contradic- 
 tions and dilemmas from these. For the series of the 
 dimensions is apparently obtained by every term in the 
 
 r 
 
 \ 
 
l«**«^*!&««*«ftW|!»™B3^* 
 
 1 
 
 258 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ▼I 
 
 series of one dimension itself giving birth to a series, 
 every term of which again gives birth to another series, 
 and so on for ever and ever, a new dimension being 
 generated with each series. But the whole process of 
 generation has its rise in the series of one dimension, 
 in which my monist was supposed to find his six fine 
 contradictions ; each series therefore will bear within 
 it some taint of the original infection. And, in any 
 case, if no finite number of points is any part of an 
 infinite series of points, mathematical logic itself appar- 
 ently gives him the right to stick to it that no finite 
 number of dimensions (as might be three) can be any 
 part of an infinite series or order or arrangement or 
 collection of dimensions. So that three-dimensional 
 space will be no part of infinitely dimensional space. 
 Thus, from the very start, he can catch sight of his 
 contradictions of the non-serial series, the non-ordered 
 order, the non-collective collection, with the dilemma of 
 the finite infinite ; and, on the far horizon of dilemmas, 
 on all fours with his positionless positions, the non- 
 dimensional dimension. 
 
 But suppose my monist does not reap his second crop 
 of contradictions, or his first crop either. Suppose he 
 really has no business to insist that " between any two 
 points " in any series is a relation of finites. Suppose 
 there are grave mathematical reasons (as for all I know 
 there very well may be) why " between any two points " 
 in an infinite series is to be held, contrary to all apparent 
 reason, as a relation of infinites, without begging the 
 question of the series and its infinity. Suppose there 
 is no mathematical sense in which the discreteness he 
 discovers is to be thought of, and that his harvest fails 
 in consequence. Is he therefore obliged to abjure his 
 Monism and his Idealism ? Kemember the unique 
 
 ▼I 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 259 
 
 raisond'are of his strange passion for contradictions 
 and dilemmas. He does not wallow in contradiction 
 for contradiction's sake, out of sheer perversity He 
 desires that the contradiction may be solved. Therefore 
 he flies to his Infinite and Absolute. 
 
 In spite of Hegel and Mr. Bradley, he must have 
 wondered how in the world it was going to perform its 
 conjuring trick. Well, if the higher mathematics really 
 do all that they are said to do, they will have shown 
 him how. 
 
 " Das Unbeschreibliche, 
 Hier ist's gethan." 
 
 They may pile universe on universe and multiply 
 infinities by infinity (on their own showing an impossible 
 operation . He will hold to his Monism, maintaining, 
 as I tJiink he has every right to maintain, that these 
 purely mathematical operations have every mark and 
 sign of ideality, of being " the work of Thought," of some 
 sort of a God who " geometrizes eternally" If the 
 constructions are infinite in number, from the sheer 
 monotony of the mathematical obsession, he gathers 
 that their constructor, their builder and maker is one 
 When pragmatists have twitted him with the thinness 
 and poorness of his ultimate principle he may have 
 wondered how thought could be infinite and absolute 
 Now It has been proved to him that it is so. If challenged 
 to show how the foundations of a material universe 
 can be immaterial, he has only to refer his opponent 
 to Mr. Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica 
 
 Above aU, he profits by the reahsfs happy thought 
 of rehabilitating universals. 
 
 For these primordial entities, whose serious and 
 indubitable reahty mathematical logic compels him 
 to believe m, on whose reahty the material universe 
 
 < ifl 
 
t 
 
 I 
 
 260 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 depends, are immaterial. He has only got to fetch them 
 *' in " from " outside " to prove that the unseen reality 
 of every mortal and material thing is immaterial and 
 immortal, having its habitation out of space, out of time. 
 Not out of thought ; for its presence there is the ground 
 of all thinking, the reason why things are recognized and 
 known. Really, universals are a priceless haul for the 
 idealist. For they justify his distinction between 
 appearance and reality. 
 
 (If realists mil revive Plato, they must abide by the 
 consequences of his resurrection.) 
 
 And when you have said that they are spaceless and 
 timeless, formless and immaterial, they remain delight- 
 fully undefined and undefinable. The least that can be 
 said of them is that they are immaterial. The most 
 that can be said of them is that they endure. 
 
 For the New Realism, after criticizing Aristotle so 
 severely for his handling of Plato, condescends to adopt 
 his emendation of the doctrine of the Ideas. It very 
 properly refuses to see in them eternalized duplicates, 
 patterns of the things of sense, or any common " pro- 
 perty " shared by things. Every thing, every quality 
 and relation has its own universal ; and there are univer- 
 sals of unique and solitary things, when, clearly, there 
 can be none to share. For the New Realism white things 
 do not partake of whiteness ; the relation is not and 
 cannot be that of whole and part, nor yet of possession 
 as Plato maintained. Whiteness is not white. It is 
 not the whiteness of white things : it is the whiteness, 
 the universal €tBo<; of the whites. Now Realism does 
 well in thus improving on the Platonic doctrine of ideas. 
 You might suppose, from the important distinction that 
 it makes, that it regards the relation as something in- 
 comparably more subtle, more intimate, and more 
 strong- 
 
 ▼I 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 261 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, it does nothing of the kind. 
 It makes the distinction, not that it may establish 
 mtimate relations which would argue a secret unity, 
 but that it may put asunder the reality of whiteness 
 from the reality of white, and bring plm:alistic atomism 
 into the world of the universals. 
 
 I think that in this it has defeated the ends of logic, 
 which are, after all, its own ends. Its failure is the 
 monist's opportunity. 
 
 The conception of that sacred communion in which 
 alaevrd partook of e'iSv was Plato's solution of the 
 everlasting problem ; it was an attempt to escape from 
 his own Dualism, the logical consequences of which he 
 saw clearly. The New Realism, in resuscitating Plato, 
 makes everything of his Dualism and nothing of his 
 escape. Its interpretation of Plato is peculiar. It 
 takes from Plato what suits its Pluralism, and every- 
 thing that will not fit into the programme it dismisses 
 as a poet's fancy or the agreeable jest of a literary diner- 
 out. Surely Plato's desperate attempt to round up all 
 the ideas in the one supreme Idea of the Good might 
 have served as a reminder that it is easier to interpret 
 him than to appreciate his drift ? 
 
 And Atomistic Logic has prepared the ground for the 
 first idealist who comes along and resuscitates the 
 Absolute. Its really great discovery— that there is 
 necessarily a imiversal of unique and solitary cases- 
 turns against Atomism from the moment that the 
 idealist lays his hands on it and converts it to his own 
 use. 
 
 For by no logic can you get over the fact that things 
 m this universe of ours have relations and that relations 
 relate. If particulars are related, so are universals. 
 Their atoms cannot be kept apart. They gather 
 together to form logical molecules, which form bodies. 
 
262 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 which form worlds, which form the universe of thought. 
 Because thought can analyse this universe into atoms 
 again, it does not follow that its universe is not one. 
 The fact that your logical atoms are free to enter many 
 combinations is no disproof of their ideal or spiritual 
 unity. You may be pleased to ignore the incurable 
 tendency of atoms to form a universe ; but you do 
 not destroy unity by calling it a collection ; though 
 apparently you thus make Atomistic Logic an easier 
 game to play. 
 
 But only apparently. For when you insist, as 
 Realism insists, on taking the spectacular view of 
 imiversals by divorcing their reality from the reality of 
 thought, you have made it impossible to use them in 
 your thinking with any spectacular effect. And when 
 you do use them, it is as logical counters which have 
 every appearance of being inside conventions rather than 
 outside realities. 
 
 And it will not only be their absoluteness and separate- 
 ness that lands you in this impossibility of thinking. 
 You might, indeed, get over that difficulty by saying 
 that you do not think, you only look on at a spectacular 
 process of thinking ; and there every idealist who is not 
 a solipsist would agree with you. But what, in Heaven's 
 name, are realities, defined as independent of any and 
 every thought, of any and every consciousness, doing in 
 a process of thinking which is nothing if not conscious ? 
 What sort of spectacle will universals treated as in- 
 dependent realities provide ? Not only is whiteness 
 not white, and a universal kick in the ribs not a kick 
 in the ribs, but they have no content and no more con- 
 ceivable relation (not even the relation of likeness) to 
 white or to a kick in the ribs than they have to 
 consciousness. 
 
 The New Realism has provided another contradiction 
 
 ^ 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 263 
 
 for the idealist to rejoice in — the imconceived and 
 unconceivable concept. 
 
 And yet another. For there is a universal, both of 
 every actual proposition and of every possible pro- 
 position. And the mmiber of propositions is infinite. 
 For there is a universal of everything that exists and 
 has existed and will exist ; and of everything that is 
 and was and will be — from the infinite number of 
 physical atoms to the infinite number of numbers and 
 of mathematical points and instants ; and about every 
 one of these a true proposition may be made. And for 
 every true proposition, made or unmade, there is a false 
 proposition that denies its truth. Therefore there will 
 be an infinite number of false propositions denying the 
 existence or the being of these things. It is also an 
 axiom that from even one false proposition an infinity 
 of consequences will follow ; and for every one of these 
 consequences there is also a universal. Therefore, there 
 will be an infinitely infinite number of universals stand- 
 ing for an infinitely infinite number of lies, all equally 
 exalted to the high and holy estate of reality ; all, in 
 fact, horribly real, ineradically planted out, since (on 
 the theory), as concepts, they are, whether any irrelevant 
 person comes along to make the propositions or not ; 
 all much more assured of immortality than any person. 
 
 So that the realist's pluralistic universe is thick with 
 the infinitely infinite numbers of the non-existent. 
 Even allowing for the necessary distinction between 
 being and existence, I do not see how reality can be 
 claimed for these objects of conception if reality has any 
 meaning. Yet real they are, since they endure in utter 
 indifference as to whether there will ever be a conceiver 
 to conceive them. The realist can't say : " Somebody's 
 telling a lie." He can only say : '' There's a lie. Some- 
 body's looking at it." And the idealist may add to his 
 
 r 
 
 m 
 
1 
 
 1.1 
 
 264 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 collection of contradictions this infinity of unreal realities, 
 which is worth all his other harvests put together. 
 
 Contradictions are fatal to the realist who prides 
 himself on not having any. But, as we have seen, they 
 are meat and drink to the idealist, who does not exalt 
 them to the position of realities. He has no use for the 
 things of sense eternalized ; but he can take over the 
 whole show of universals in a bunch, purified from all 
 taint of the particular and the finite. He can treat 
 them as the mysterious entities he needs to build up his 
 universe. Like so many absolutes they are definable 
 only by negation. They are not definable ontologically 
 by their logical functions. They make known, but they 
 themselves have no content by which they are known. 
 They are not knowers, they are not in any sense selves. 
 Yet through their logical function they serve as carriers 
 of the invisible and impalpable secret of identity. 
 
 All this is exceedingly important for Idealistic 
 Monism. 
 
 The monist must have had moments of awful insight 
 when he realized that the relation of whole and part 
 was not quite equal to the strain he was putting on it. 
 He must have been aware that a contradiction and a 
 dilemma here would wreck him. But he has not got 
 to stand or fall by that incompetent relation now that 
 Realism has restored universals to their ancient place 
 and power. They have solved for him what must, if 
 he had finished his thinking, have become a dilemma 
 that would have finished him. 
 
 For, if he is honest, he must have asked himself how 
 a logical function can at the same time be an objective 
 reality. Now he knows. 
 
 From the relation of the whole and part it was not 
 quite possible for him to prove that things to be known 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 265 
 
 perfectly must be known as they are in the Absolute. 
 But he has only got to read his three fat volumes of the 
 Hegelian Logic again in the light of the Logic of Mr. 
 Bertrand Russell to find his proof staring him in the face. 
 To be sure, the Logic of Hegel has a thickness you could 
 cut with a knife, and beside it the Logic of Mr. Russell 
 has the consistency of fine dust or of a thin gruel. But 
 no matter. He can make out for himself that universals 
 are the absolute reality of things. They, if anything 
 is, are things as they are in the Absolute. We do not 
 know them. We only know their appearances; yet 
 it is through them that the things we do know are 
 known. 
 
 The idealist has now got most of the things he wanted. 
 If his mathematics are right he has found seven contra- 
 dictions in his opponent's theory, making nine in all. 
 If they are wrong, he has got two fairly crucial ones. In 
 any case, his appearance and his ultimate reality are as 
 secure as they were before the new realists attacked 
 them ; he has got them tight. White is the appearance 
 of whiteness, and whiteness is the ultimate reality of 
 white. And he has got what he never could be quite 
 sure of before— their relation. And if he has not got 
 all the unity in multiplicity he wanted he has enough 
 to satisfy any reasonable monist. A universal is most 
 undeniably one in many, and its appearances are un- 
 deniably many in one. 
 
 It is true that Analytic Logic rules out all hope of 
 ascension to a highest universal, on pain of the con- 
 tradiction of the One Subject-Predicate combination. 
 It is true that there can be no rounding up of an infinite 
 number of realities in one Ultimate Reality on the lines 
 it lays down ; and that ultimate reality is, for it, a 
 contradiction in terms; or rather, every reality is 
 immediate and ultimate. 
 
266 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Tliis is where the ways of Pluralism and of Monism 
 
 part. 
 
 But I think that it is here that the monist scores 
 with his theory of universals and his theory of appear- 
 ance and reality. For you can conceivably round up 
 an infinite number of appearances in one Reality if your 
 one reality is the one and only Absolute. And if, as he 
 maintains, imiversals are not realities outside Absolute 
 Spirit, but owe their reality to the very fact that they 
 are in it, that they are spiritual, there need be no infinite 
 number of them ; that is to say, no infinite progress 
 that removes his highest universal for ever from his 
 grasp. His highest universal will be Spirituality. 
 
 He can now maintain without any contradiction that 
 Spirit is all things, and that all things are Spirit. You 
 cannot floor him with his own distinction between 
 appearances and reality. There is appearance and there 
 is reality. But if the spiritual universal truly is the 
 reality of appearances ; if there is no other reality but 
 Spirit, the appearances cannot assert an independent 
 unspiritual reality of their own over against that uni- 
 versal. Appearances and reality are not mutually 
 exclusive opposites. They are correlatives ; and the 
 distinction between them falls inside the " spirituality " 
 that includes them both ; so that there will be no con- 
 tradiction in the statement that Reality is its own 
 appearance, and that appearances are reality. But the 
 realist who denies the unity must also deny the dis- 
 tinction, since he maintains that Reality appears as it 
 is. Whereas the monist not only does not deny the 
 distinction, but has every interest in affirming it ; and 
 he merely says that appearances are Reality as it 
 appears, and that Reality does not appear as it is. 
 
 The new realists, like M. Bergson, aspire to join 
 hands with Science. They should remember their 
 
 VI 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 267 
 
 ambition when they charge the idealist with arrogance. 
 It is not he but they who overstep the modesty of 
 Science. What they call "realities" Science and 
 Idealism have agreed to call " phenomena." Nobody 
 accuses Science of reducing its universe to one vast 
 spectral hallucination or infinity of hallucinations. 
 Appearances have this much of hallucination about 
 them that they exist, but they do not subsist. To say 
 this is not to deny the power and the glory of existence. 
 
 It was suggested in the beginning of this essay that 
 if the idealistic monist would only walk humbly and 
 acknowledge and renounce his errors all might yet be 
 well with him. Hope was even held out that if he 
 would only face the New Realism fairly and squarely, 
 without any absurd depreciation of its strength, by 
 surrendering certain positions he might still hold others 
 better worth keeping. 
 
 I have supposed him to have put up his defence, I 
 have even imagined him advancing on the enemy's 
 positions. I might have made him show a more furious 
 impetus in attack, but not, I think, a greater discretion 
 in retirement. It is quite clear what Idealistic Monism 
 must surrender if it is to hold its own in Philosophy. 
 
 It must give up its narrow philosophy of Thought. 
 It must give up looking for unities and identities and 
 ultimate realities where they are not. It must give up 
 its faith in the incompetent relation of the whole and 
 part. It must admit that Metaphysical Logic is in 
 need of reform. And it must admit that Mr. Bertrand 
 Russell has reformed it. It must admit the existence 
 of a Pluralistic Universe. It must admit that as far as 
 human consciousness is concerned this universe is very 
 largely "spectacular." But it need not accept the 
 Pluriverse that Realism has thrust upon it. 
 
268 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VI 
 
 Above all, it must not say that its righteous sup- 
 positions are ontological certainties. 
 
 If it observes these precautions it can hardly lay 
 itself open to the charge of arrogance. 
 
 All philosophers are a little arrogant. But which is 
 the more arrogant, the one who says, either dogmatically 
 or critically : This is a spectacular universe ; but the 
 spectators do not count ; and there is no reality behind 
 the scene ? Or the one who says : This universe appears 
 to be largely spectacular ; therefore it would be rather 
 odd if there were not a reality behind it 1 
 
 If he goes beyond this modest speculation it is 
 because he finds himself intimately and mysteriously 
 mixed up with the spectacle, like one of Mr. Eussell's 
 ultimates, in '' a peculiar and undefinable relation." He 
 is, in fact, part of it. He finds an immaterial reality 
 for ever behind precisely that portion of the spectacle 
 that he constitutes ; as if a rent had been torn in the 
 scene just there. 
 
 He is not considered arrogant or rash when he con- 
 cludes that untold millions of spectators, also mixed up 
 with the spectacle, intimately and mysteriously, in a 
 peculiar and undefinable relation, constitute likewise 
 so many spots, as it were, of immaterial reality discerned 
 behind the scene. He finds that these spectators are 
 mixed up with each other in an intimacy and a mystery 
 more peculiar still. Is he, then, so very rash or so very 
 arrogant if he concludes that the immaterial realities 
 discerned through those untold millions of rents are 
 spots of one immaterial reality that is continuous behind 
 the scene ? 
 
 VII 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 269 
 
 i 
 
VII 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 There are certainties and certainties. There is the 
 blessed certainty that two and two make four. There 
 is the still more blessed certainty that if X is greater 
 than Y and Y is greater than Z, then X is greater than Z. 
 There is the certainty that the sun will rise to- 
 morrow. 
 
 So far as this last certainty is based on repeated 
 experiences of sunrises, it is not a certainty at all. All 
 you can say is that what has happened a thousand 
 million times will happen again if there is the same 
 reason for its happening ; if, that is to say, the cause 
 or causes of its happening continue to work ; which, 
 again, can only happen so long as the conditions of 
 their working hold good. Causation applied to sequences 
 is a pure hypothesis, and an hypothesis that will not 
 work. And mere sequences provide no grounds for 
 assuming causes. Still, fenced round with conditions, 
 the certainty that the sun will rise to-morrow is a 
 reasonable certainty. 
 
 It cannot be said that at the end of our metaphysical 
 quest we have reached any such certainty as this. We 
 have not even established our contention that all 
 metaphysical quests seek the same end. Pluralism 
 
 271 
 
272 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 gives the lie to our complacent assurance that their 
 goal is unity. 
 
 Still, we made out that all, with the one exception 
 of Pluralism, are out for imity of some kind, if it be only 
 the unity of utter negation. And Pluralism, in declaring 
 that immediate reality is ultimate enough for it, is out 
 for ultimate reality. It even pays its tribute to the 
 Absolute in regarding all its realities as absolute. 
 
 Unity, then, or Ultimate Keality, or both, are the 
 objects of the metaphysical quest. And in the contest 
 between the sticklers for the One and the sticklers for 
 the Many, we found that Spiritual Monism has reason 
 on its side only if it lowers its claim to something less 
 than certainty. The spiritual monist plays high, and 
 he stands to lose more, if he should lose ; but he is still 
 within the rigour of the game. 
 
 But outside these certainties, outside the rigour of 
 the game, and outside the paths where reason leads so 
 cautiously, there is a region of so-called certainties which 
 we have not yet explored. It would be easy to say of 
 these certainties that they are true for those for whom 
 they are true, but that the claimants are all agreed both 
 about their truth and about the way by which it is to 
 be found ; and but that the object of their quest is the 
 object of the metaphysical quest. Ultimate Reality. 
 They are so unanimous, that, divided as they are by 
 centuries and continents, there is less distance between a 
 Christian mystic of the thirteenth century and a Bud- 
 dhist mystic of the present day than there is, say, between 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. 
 
 They are the real plungers. They stake their lives 
 upon the game and their souls upon the end of the 
 adventure. Though they are many they go alone, on 
 a dubious and dangerous way, to the " quiet place," 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 273 
 
 the " untravelled countiy," the " City of God " " The 
 Sorrowless Land." 
 
 The region of their certainty is not a region where 
 the laws of mathematics, and the laws of nature, and the 
 laws of thought are suspended ; where two and two 
 do not make four, but something else; and where 
 miracles happen. Miracles are not by any means an 
 essential part of the mystic's game. Still, he can give 
 no rational account of his procedure. Reason does not 
 reject him more than he rejects reason-in the wrong 
 place In the place where his adventures happen two 
 and two do not exist, and their behaviour is irrelevant. 
 But, if It comes to that, there is no reason why two 
 and two should make four. They simply make it. 
 There is no reason why the mystic should perceive 
 Ultimate Reality. He simply perceives it. Extremes 
 meet. The pluralist's perception of ultimate reality 
 IS immediate. So is the mystic's. But, if the mystic 
 IS right, the pluralist's reality is not ultimate. 
 
 Now, it cannot be denied that Mysticism is suspect. 
 It has a bad history. In fact it has two histories, an 
 ancient and a modern history ; and it would be hard 
 to say which of them is the worse. 
 
 Mysticism goes back to the most primitive of primitive 
 times ; it is part of our ancestral heritage, of our sub- 
 merged and savage past. This past is the skeleton in 
 the momst s cupboard ; for Monism itself is involved in 
 this ancient history. That is why healthy pluralists 
 and healthy pragmatists will have none of it Thev 
 abhor the taint. The monist is always suspected of 
 some mystical parti pris. He is like a man with a history 
 of drink m his family ; he cannot escape the damaging 
 imputation. Yet ,t by no means follows because every 
 mystic is a momst, that every monist is a mystic It 
 
274 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 does not follow because the mystic gets at his Ultimate 
 Reality by way of passion and vision, that the monist 
 is implicated in his orgies and hallucinations. At this 
 rate Mr. Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica 
 should be gravely compromised by the ancient history 
 of Sacred Numbers. 
 
 But let us say that Monism is the lineal descendant 
 of Mysticism, or that the two are collaterals and have 
 the same ancestry. If Mysticism has had an ancient 
 history, it must have been evolved. It must have 
 become what it once was not. It cannot now be what 
 it once was. All the same, the stages of its evolution 
 must be linked together by one and the same thread. 
 
 That thread is the same thread that we found in 
 tracing the evolution of the psyche — it is the Will-to- 
 live, the Desire to have life, and to have it more abund- 
 antly. As the psyche grows this desire grows with it, 
 or rather it would seem to be the very mainspring of 
 its growth ; anyhow it grows ; it grows into a con- 
 suming passion ; it passes beyond physical bounds ; 
 and the Love of Life becomes the Love of God. 
 
 The primitive and savage form of it is the desire 
 for fertility, the desire to live and to make live ; primi- 
 tive and savage Magic (the humble origin of Mysticism 
 with which it is reproached) is fertility magic; the 
 earliest rites, the rites de passage, the rites of tribal 
 initiation, of adolescence, of marriage, the funeral 
 rites of death itself have one and the same object, to 
 bring life, to ensure the virility of the tribesmen. The 
 ghosts of the dead must be appeased with sacrifices 
 that they may bring fertility to the earth. For ghosts 
 (Miss Jane Harrison is my authority) were conceived 
 first of all as underground things, as " germs from the 
 grave " (40) ; the very earliest Greek vase paintings show 
 them as diminutive psyches, or winged Keres fluttering 
 
 VII 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 275 
 
 in a grave- jar. The savage placates the ghosts of his 
 forefathers first of all that he may obtain their strength, 
 their mana ; he drinks the blood of human sacrifices, 
 or of the sacrificial animal, that he may get their life. 
 Later on, he divines a god in the dead hero, and in the 
 form of the sacrificial animal. In partaking of the flesh 
 and blood of the animal, he gets the life of the god. 
 
 So far we seem to have hardly advanced a step beyond 
 savagery. But presently Magic becomes Mystery. The 
 initiate aspires to union with the God ; union, first of 
 all, for the sake of fertility. The Lesser Mysteries seem 
 to have had, frankly, no other aim. It is in the Greater 
 Mysteries of Eleusis, in the Sacred Marriage and the 
 Sacred Birth that the conception of fertility broadens 
 and deepens, and that the Life-Force appears as the 
 stupendous and the divine thing it is. It does not 
 matter whether the Sacred Marriage was an actual 
 physical union between priest and priestess, hierophant 
 and initiate ; or whether, as Miss Jane Harrison assures 
 us, it was an entirely spiritual and symbolic rite ; or 
 whether, again, it was originally actual and physical, 
 and became spiritual and symbolic afterwards ; or 
 whether it was originally spiritual and was afterwards 
 debased. Miss Harrison seems to me to have proved 
 her case ; the Sacred Marriage that began, there can be 
 little doubt, as a fertility rite, ends in the adoration of 
 Life itself ; and becomes itself a rite de passage from the 
 Lesser Mystery of the body to the Greater Mysteries 
 of the soul. And by the time the Orphics have taken 
 the thing in hand there is no doubt as to what has 
 happened and is happening. The last and greatest 
 initiation is accomplished. The dangerous passage 
 from the physical to the spiritual life has been made. 
 No matter if the Orphic mystic covered himself from 
 head to foot with white clay, like his descendant the 
 
276 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Pierrot and like his ancestor, the savage " white-clay 
 man " of tribal rites of adolescence. His whiteness is 
 now symbolic of the New Life. It does not matter 
 whether the Orphic always was or was not the utterly 
 spiritual person his whiteness proclaimed him to be. 
 The spiritual life now appears as the object of desire 
 and ambition ; and desire and ambition we have seen 
 to be always in advance of actual achievement. When 
 Magic becomes Mystery we are on the threshold of 
 Ultimate Eeality. Henceforth there is no doubt as to 
 the meaning of the words *' New Birth " and " Union 
 with God." 
 
 Now it is possible to read into the Orphic Mysteries 
 more of Plato than they will bear ; but this much seems 
 certain, that before Plato's time the sense of life had 
 widened so far as to make way for Platonism, for Neo- 
 Platonism, and for Christianity. And the sense of life 
 becomes more and more the sense of the Unseen ; the 
 love of God becomes more and more the passion for the 
 Absolute. 
 
 I am quite willing to give up Neo- Platonism to 
 anybody who wants to go for it on the grounds that 
 it carried the passion for Godhead to drunken excess. 
 Neo-Platonic Mysticism is a psychological phenomenon 
 like any other. It was the phenomenon you might 
 expect when East and West were violently flung together 
 in the great melting-pot of Alexandria. 
 
 What I want to point out is that, at the very finest 
 period of Greek civilization, Philosophy was turning 
 from the doctrines of the Many : from the doctrine of 
 the flux, and from the doctrine of Atomism, from the 
 Pragmatic Himianism of the Sophists to the doctrine 
 of the One ; and that the distinction was then made 
 between appearance and Reality, and that the passion 
 for God and the metaphysical quest of the Absolute ran 
 
 VII 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 277 
 
 I 
 
 together. Or rather the metaphysical hunt was fore- 
 most. Thought led and passion did its best to follow. 
 Those people who will have it that Monism is the off- 
 shoot of Mysticism, a disease of thought reverting to a 
 savage ancestry, should really read their Plato all over 
 again, and Aristotle on the top of him, and Plotinus and 
 Philo and Porphyry on the top of Aristotle ; when it 
 may become clear to them that Mysticism owes more 
 to philosophy than philosophy could ever owe to it. 
 Plato gives a point now and then to pluralistic realism ; 
 but if they are going to stretch that point, and insist 
 that Plato was a Pluralist, and that Aristotle, the 
 detestable Aristotle, was the accursed thing, all the 
 better — they will have some difficulty in bringing home 
 a charge of Mysticism against him ! 
 
 I would also suggest that the primitive savage had 
 no monistic prejudices ; the more ghosts bestowed on 
 him their mana, the more sacrificial animals gave him 
 their life to drink, the more everything all round him 
 increased and multiplied, the better he was pleased. 
 
 You cannot get away from it. The quest of Ultimate 
 Reality is as much a necessity of thought as it is a 
 passion of the soul. And the idea of the Absolute is not 
 primitive. It is a very late and highly " sublimated " 
 idea. 
 
 Because Greek art has preserved for us the earliest 
 origins of Greek religion, and because Greek literature 
 and Greek philosophy are still alive among us at this 
 day (thank Heaven !), we are able to trace the stages of 
 this development and the links of these connections. 
 But if you will read those Sacred Books of the East 
 which the robust (the almost too emphatically robust) 
 pragmatist regards as so much Benger's Food for sick 
 souls, because he has lost his mature and healthy 
 appetite for unity, if you will read the Vedas and the 
 
278 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Upanishads, and the commentaries of the Vedanta, and 
 the Buddhist Suttas, and the Texts of Taoism, you will 
 find the same development and the same connections. 
 Here, again, thought leads and the passion for the 
 Absolute follows ; imtil thought overthrows the thinker ; 
 and thought and passion, and the desire of Life are 
 consumed (or consummated) in Nirvana, or in the 
 " Emptiness and Nothingness " of the Great Tao. 
 
 But the Old Testament gives you pause. The links 
 between primitive fertility magic and mysticism, be- 
 tween tribal initiations, rites de passage, sacrificial ritual 
 and redemption, between the desire for physical life 
 and the desire for sj)iritual life, are as apparent as you 
 would expect them to be. But the lead of thought, 
 the metaphysical flair, is entirely wanting. The 
 Hebrew's thirst for God was a consuming thirst. 
 
 " Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my 
 soul after Thee, God. 
 My soul thirsteth for God, even for the living God : when shall I 
 come to appear before God ? " (Psalm xlii.) 
 
 But the philoprogenitive Jew thought of God as 
 the Creator, the Father. He never rose to the meta- 
 physical conception of the Absolute. To the very 
 last, Jehovah preserved some of the old ways of the 
 tribal deity. He was a struggling and a batthng God ; 
 full of mercy when he got his own way, and of vengeance 
 when he didn't. In his milder moods he was very like 
 the pragmatic God of Humanism. The first Jew who 
 developed a passion for the Absolute was cursed by his 
 people and driven out of their synagogues. And if 
 Baruch Spinoza had lived in the first century instead 
 of the seventeenth they would have crucified him. 
 
 Still, though the God of the prophets is not and never 
 can be the Absolute, he is One. Religion that begins 
 in the fear of the supernatural and ends in the consuming 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 279 
 
 love of it, is the historic witness to the passion for unity. 
 Polytheism, which might be supposed to prove the con- 
 trary, is a case in point. Ancestor-worship, which seems 
 to have been at the bottom of the whole business (fathers 
 being fertile), gives way to hero-worship. When the 
 pantheon is inconveniently crowded, the merging of the 
 gods takes place. The gods make a fine show of multi- 
 plicity when they are all gathered together in one 
 heaven; but apparently (41) there is none of them that 
 did not start as a more or less single tribal or local hero. 
 The most ancient of all, the underground gods of fertility 
 and life in death, were so indeterminate in person, and 
 60 universal in power and function, as to count as one. 
 When the gods multiply by migration of local heroes, 
 their mysterious godhead diminishes with their multi- 
 plicity ; until ultimately they are gathered up again 
 into one : one Jehovah, one Zeus, and practically one 
 Ormuzd, one Mithra, one Shang Ti, and, where ancestor- 
 worship has persisted, one Mikado. 
 
 On any theory with a pluralistic bias it is remarkable, 
 to say the least of it, that where polytheism is most 
 rampant, as in India, the reaction to Pantheism and to 
 Mysticism has been strongest ; and that in Japan, 
 where ancestor-worship has persisted into civilized times, 
 the great refuge is Buddhism. Does it not look as if 
 the inappeasable passion was, and is, this longing to 
 escape from multiplicity and from the importunity of 
 ancestors, this refusal to have the eternal spaces be- 
 wilderingly thronged ? The same uneasiness is at the 
 root of the craving for the mystic union with God ; 
 and it is fiercest in a religion like Christianity, which 
 is based on a metaphysical and moral dualism, an- 
 tagonism between soul aiid body and separation between 
 God and man. It tries in vain to bridge the gulf with 
 its makeshift doctrine of Incarnation and Atonement. 
 
280 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 Tn 
 
 It would be absurd to say that Christian asceticism 
 was worse than any other, but none has been more 
 unclean and more profane in its repudiation of the 
 earth. Christianity took to itself the ritual of the 
 . world it conquered; but it refused the one thing in 
 that ritual which was necessary to its own salvation— 
 the simple, sacramental attitude to life. In spite of its 
 beautiful doctrine of love and mercy and pity, it was 
 instinct with the spirit's cruelty to the flesh. 
 
 And it is precisely this atonement manque, this failure 
 of a spiritual religion to be spiritual enough, that is at 
 the root of half the evil and the sickness and the suffering 
 of the modern world. A religion spiritual enough to 
 have made a genuine atonement between God and man 
 would have conquered, not Europe and America only, 
 but the whole world. 
 
 But if such an ideal can be conceived without a 
 metaphysic, it could not be born from the ruins of 
 Paganism and of a Eoman Empire, and from the con- 
 quests of half-savage Goths and Visigoths. It was the 
 secret thing conceived in the soul of Christ, that has 
 Its dwelling in the prophetic need and in the dreams 
 and m the heart of man. But it is still waiting to be 
 born. 
 
 That other profoundly mi-Christian Christianity is 
 important for our assumption ; for it is the unique source 
 of the moral argument which is the most serious objection 
 the pragmatic humanist has brought against the monist. 
 By a peculiar irony that argument bears hardest upon 
 Dualism's own god, the absconding Deity of historic 
 and popular Christianity ; and we have seen that there 
 is no solution of his moral problem that does not land 
 the humanist in Monism again. 
 
 And, by yet another irony, the Christian dogma 
 of the Atonement is the most powerful indictment of 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 281 
 
 the absentee Almighty, and an implicit confession that 
 the God of Pantheism is our only refuge. 
 
 Monism, I think, has shown itself to be imperishable 
 under some form or other, and to be about as much 
 tainted with primitive savagery as, say, the higher 
 mathematics. 
 
 But what about Mysticism ? 
 
 Mysticism may be no more tied to its ancient history 
 than any other of our instincts and aptitudes, but it 
 does betray a shocking tendency to revert. At least 
 Western Mysticism has betrayed that tendency. 
 
 And its modern history is every bit as bad as its past. 
 
 I know that one of the most distinguished authorities 
 on Western Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill, has assured 
 us that this is not so ; that, though Magic and Mysticism 
 have a common traffic in the supernatural, their interest 
 and their object are essentially different. 
 
 " The fundamental difference between the two is this : magic 
 wants to get, mysticism wants to give — 
 
 . . . We may class broadly as magical all forms of self-seeking 
 transcendentahsm. . . . The object of the thing is always the 
 same : the dehberate exaltation of the will, till it transcends its 
 usual hmitations, and obtains for the self or group of selves 
 something which it or they did not previously possess. It is 
 an individualistic and acquisitive science. , . ." {Mysticism, 
 pp. 84, 85.) 
 
 This is no doubt true in a sense. It is also true that 
 the object of Mysticism is to get something, and that all 
 its giving is a means to getting. The mystic wants to 
 get illumination, to get peace, to get deliverance, to feed 
 on life and drink life— to eat His flesh and drink His 
 blood — to get spiritual sustenance, the mana of the God. 
 The parallel is very close indeed. 
 
 But there is this prodigious difference : primitive 
 
282 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 man desires to get by magic physical tilings that, without 
 it, would come to him of their own accord, in due season ; 
 only he does not yet know that : the mystic desires to 
 get spiritual things. And still the parallel holds so far 
 that both are ensuring against possible failure. 
 
 And between these two regions of desire and expecta- 
 tion there is a dubious borderland : the region of the 
 so-called supernatural powers, of which the mystic 
 himself cannot say whether they are magical or spiritual : 
 the power of healing, of vision, of clairvoyance and clair- 
 audience, of control over matter. This is the region 
 where '' miracles " are said to happen ; though neither 
 the believer in magic nor the mystic know what is really 
 happening. '' It," whatever '' it " is, happens in the 
 East and West wherever magic and mysticism are known 
 and practised. 
 
 The Taoist, the " Perfect Man," says Kwang-zze, 
 '' is spirit-like. Great lakes might be boiling about him 
 and he would not feel their heat ; the Ho and the Han 
 might bfi frozen up, and he would not feel the cold ... 
 he moimts on the clouds of the air, and rides on the sun 
 and moon, and rambles at ease beyond the four seas." 
 '' If," says the Buddhist Sutta, " a Bhikkhu should 
 desire to exercise one by one each of the different mysti- 
 cal powers, being one to become multiform, being multi- 
 form to become one ; to become visible, or to become 
 invisible, to go without being stopped to the further side 
 of a wall or a fence or a momitain, as if through air ; 
 to penetrate up and down through solid ground, as if 
 through water ; to walk on the water without dividing 
 it, as if on solid ground ; to travel cross-legged through 
 the sky, like the birds on wing ; to touch and feel with 
 the hand even the sun and moon, mighty and powerful 
 though they be ; and to reach in the body even up to 
 the heaven of Brahma ; ... to hear with clear and 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 283 
 
 I 
 
 heavenly ear, surpassing that of men, sounds both human 
 and celestial, whether far or near," there is nothing to 
 prevent him ; he has only got to " fulfil all righteous- 
 ness," to be " devoted to that quietude of heart which 
 springs from within," and not to " drive back the ecstacy 
 of contemplation." He must " look through things " ; 
 he must be " much alone " (42). 
 
 Anybody with the smallest knowledge of abnormal 
 psychology will see that this is the region of telepathy, 
 and of suggestion and auto-suggestion, and of " psychic 
 phenomena " generally. And nobody with the slightest 
 intellectual caution will deny that it is a region of the 
 utmost uncertainty and danger. 
 
 Now there is not one of the mystic's claims that is 
 not under serious consideration at the present day. 
 They cannot be settled with and dismissed at sight as 
 palpable absurdities. The things he calls spiritual and 
 the things other people call psychic are too closely platted 
 together to be easily disentangled. What is more, the 
 belief in the supernatural, even Magic itself, have never 
 died out of human history. Mysticism itself, in some 
 form or other, has never died. All the philosophy and 
 all the science of the nineteenth century have been 
 powerless against it. So far from being near its death 
 in this century, it seems to be approaching a rather 
 serious revival. 
 
 The modern psychologist and the psycho-analyst 
 will tell you that there is nothing mysterious about this 
 indestructibility and persistence. Mysticism is as in- 
 destructible as the human libido, and as persistent as 
 human folly ; and its revival iii the twentieth century 
 is precisely what you might expect in an age in which 
 neurosis is the prevailing malady. The specialist in 
 morbid psychology will tell you that the histoi:y of 
 
284 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Mysticism is a history of neurosis (43). He will point, 
 not in imdue triumph, to the saints and mystics of the 
 Salpetriere. He will assure you that the great saints 
 and mystics are in no better case ; but that, on the 
 contrary, the life of the religious recluse provides in a 
 supreme degree aU the conditions of the hysterical 
 neurosis ; its repressions are the classical repressions ; 
 its results the classical results. He will ask you to 
 consider dispassionately the awful record of ill-health 
 revealed in the lives of the Saints, and, piling proof 
 upon proof, he will show you in their visions and phan- 
 tasies a perfect correspondence with the visions and 
 phantasies of the neurotic and the insane. 
 
 And the sting of his observations will be in their 
 truth. 
 
 What is to be said of these utterances of Saint Teresa 
 herself ? She speaks of '' the great shocks I used to 
 feel when our Lord would throw me into these trances." 
 And agam, " it is like a person, who, having a rope round 
 his neck tries to breathe." " On other occasions the 
 soul seems to be in the utmost extremity of need, asking 
 itself and saying, Where is Thy God ? " "I saw my- 
 self dying with a desire to see God, and I knew not how 
 to seek that life otherwise than by dying. Certain great 
 impetuosities of love, though not so intolerable as those 
 of which I have spoken before . . . overwhelmed me." 
 " This prayer is like the sobbing of little children, who 
 ceem on the point of choking and whose disordered 
 senses are soothed by giving them to drink." * " Some 
 slight mitigations may be had, and the pain may pass 
 away for a Kttle by praying God to relieve its sufferings : 
 but the soul sees no relief except in death, by which it 
 hopes to attain the fruition of its good. At other times 
 these impetuosities are so violent, the soul can do neither 
 this nor anything else ; the whole body is contracted, 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 285 
 
 and neither hand nor foot can be moved : If the body 
 be upright at the time it falls down, as a thing that has 
 no control over itself. It cannot even breathe ; all it 
 does is to moan— not loudly, because it cannot : its 
 moaning, however, comes from a keen sense of pain." 
 Again, an angel appears to her in a vision. " I saw in 
 his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's end there 
 seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to be thrusting 
 it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails : 
 when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and 
 to leave me all on fire with a great love of God " (44). 
 
 Of St. Catherine of Genoa it is said that " at times 
 she would seem to have her mind in a mill ; and as if 
 this mill were indeed grinding her soul and body." 
 '' She would at times, when in the garden, seize hold of 
 the thorn-covered twigs of the rose-bushes with both 
 her hands; and would not feel any pain while thus 
 doing it in a transport of mind. She would also bite 
 her hands and burn them, and this in order to divert, 
 if possible, her interior oppression " (45). 
 
 St. John of the Cross speaks of '' an intense and 
 amorous impetus," answering to St. Teresa's " im- 
 petuosities " (46). And what are we to make of his 
 confession that the ecstasies of the soul's union with 
 God are often so poignant that they interpenetrate the 
 body itself, so that it is awakened and partakes of the 
 soul's passion after its own kind ? (47) 
 
 Even Lady Julian of Norwich, that most exquisite 
 and lovable of all mystics, whose love of God was not 
 greater than her love of her neighbour, who saw " that 
 each kind compassion that man hath on his even- 
 Christen it is Christ in him," even Lady Julian was 
 tormented. Her beautiful soul was haunted by the 
 most horrible visions, the result of concentrated medita- 
 tion on the Passion. 
 
286 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 .u i T ;^f "^''^ '■8''* '^'*''^« °^ ^^"^ plenteous bleeding of 
 the Head The great drops of blood fell down from under the 
 Garland hke pellots, seeming as it had come out of the veins • 
 and in the coming out they were brown-red, for the blood was 
 full thick ; and m the spreading-abroad they were bright-red ■ 
 and wHen they came to the brows, then they vanished ; notwith- 
 standing, the bleeding continued till many things were seen and 
 understood. The fairness and the lifeUkeness is hke nothing 
 but the same; the plenteousness is hke to the drops of water 
 that fall off the eaves after a great shower of rain, that fall so 
 thick that no man may number them with bodily wit ; and for 
 the roundness, they were hke to the scale of herring, in the spread- 
 mg on the forehead. These three came to my mind in the time • 
 pel ots, for romidness, in the coming out of the blood ; the scale 
 of the herrmg, in the spreading in the forehead, for roundness • 
 the drops off eaves, for the plenteousness innumerable 
 
 "This Shewing was quick and life-like, and horrifying and 
 dreadful, sweet and lovely." (Revelations of Divine Love, pp. 
 
 She has this vision of Christ's thirst : 
 
 "For this word was shewed for the bodily thirst : the which 
 1 understood was caused by faihng of moisture. For the blessed 
 flesh and bones was left all alone without blood and moisture. 
 The blessed body dried alone long time with wringing of the nails 
 and weight of the body. For I understood that for tenderness 
 of the sweet hands and of the sweet feet, by the greatness, hard- 
 ness and gnevousness of the nails the wounds waxed wide and 
 the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging. And (there- 
 with was piercing and pressing of the head, and binding of the 
 Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair cUnging 
 and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh dr4g ' 
 and m the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding the 
 continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide And 
 furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh with 
 the hair and the blood, was all raised and loosed about from the 
 bone, with the thorns where-through it were rent in many pieces 
 as a cloth that were sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off' 
 for heavmess and looseness, while it had natural moisture And 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 287 
 
 that was great sorrow and dread to me : for methouglit I would 
 not for my life have seen it fall. How it was done I saw not ; 
 but understood it was with the sharp thorns and the violent and 
 grievous setting on of the Garland of Thorns, unsparingly and 
 without pity. This continued awhile, and soon it began to 
 change, and I beheld and marvelled how it might be. And then 
 I saw it was because it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight, 
 and set about the Garland. And thus it encircled all about, as 
 it were garland upon garland. The Garland of the Thorns was 
 dyed with the blood, and that other garland (of Blood) and the 
 head, all was one colour, as clotted blood when it is dry. The 
 skin of the flesh that shewed (of the face and of the body), was 
 small-rimpled ; with a tanned colour, Hke a dry board when it 
 is aged ; and the face more brown than the body." (Ibid. pp. 
 38, 39.). 
 
 But the Freudian psychoanalyst would be specially 
 interested in Lady Julian's Vision of the Fiend, who 
 visited her in her sleep. 
 
 " I lay still till night, trusting in His mercy, and then I began 
 to sleep. And in the sleep, at the beginning, methought the Fiend 
 set him on my throat, putting forth a visage full near my face, 
 like a young man's, and it was long and wondrous lean : I saw 
 never none such. The colour was red like the tilestone when it 
 is new-burnt, with black spots therein hke black freckles — fouler 
 than the tilestone. His hair was red as rust, clipped in front, 
 with full locks hanging on the temples. He grinned on me with 
 a malicious semblance, shewing white teeth : and so much 
 methought it the more horrible. Body nor hands had he none 
 shapely, but with his paws he held me in the throat, and would 
 have strangled me, but he might not." (Ibid. pp. 165, 166.) 
 
 And I am afraid pathologists will not be inclined to 
 accept Lady Julian's own interpretation of her Vision 
 of the Child and the dead body. 
 
 " And in this time I saw a body lying on the earth, which body 
 shewed heavy and horrible, without shape and form, as it were 
 a swollen quag of stinking mire. And suddenly out of this body 
 
288 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 289 
 
 sprang a full fair creature, a Uttle Child, fully shapen and formed, 
 nimble and Hvely, whiter than lily ; which swiftly glided up into 
 heaven. And the swollenness of the body betokeneth great 
 wretchedness of our deadly flesh, and the littleness of the Child 
 betokeneth the cleanness of purity in the soul. And methought : 
 With this body abideth no fairness of this Child, and on this 
 Child dwelleth no foulness of this body." {Ibid. pp. 160, 161.) 
 
 When you remember that these visions came to the 
 mystic in her little .anchoress's house in the graveyard 
 of the church of St. Julian, the wonder is, not that they 
 were so terrible, but that they were not much worse. 
 
 And besides being morbid and unbalanced the 
 mystics— not Lady Julian, but other mystics— show a 
 certain arrogance. For all their humility and self- 
 surrender they show arrogance. The saint is exalted 
 because she has won God's love, because she is chosen 
 above other women to be the Spouse of Christ. The 
 Blessed Angela of Foligno declared that the Lord had 
 told her he loved her " above any other woman in the 
 valley of Spoleto " (48). You seldom hear of the other 
 spouses, the other loves. The attitude is entirely self- 
 centred. It would be interesting to know what Saint 
 Teresa would have said to Lady Julian, or Saint Catharine 
 of Siena to the Blessed Angela. 
 
 We do know what Saint Teresa thought of her own 
 nuns when they had aspirations. In her normal state 
 the "undaunted daughter of desires" was one of the 
 wisest and strongest-minded of the saints, second only 
 to Saint Catharine of Siena in wisdom and strong- 
 mindedness and practical common sense. She was 
 suspicious of experiences, especially of other people's 
 experiences ; and she owns to a profound distrust of 
 " vision." There is often no sign by which the soul can 
 teU a vision sent by God from a vision sent by Satan (49). 
 She recognizes that in this very region of phantasy and 
 
 symbol there lie hidden the deepest pitfalls for the soul. 
 Therefore, whatever risk she herself was prepared to 
 take, she did not allow her nuns to seek these adventures 
 — ^passing on the discouragement she had received from 
 her own spiritual directors. Spiritual jealousy — the 
 last infirmity of saints — may have had something to do 
 with these prohibitions ; but it is far more likely that 
 they were meant as safeguards against the deadliest 
 perils of the monastic life. The spiritual directors were 
 the psychoanalysts of their day ; and when a great 
 mystic pleaded that his or her case was exceptional, we 
 can imagine them replying with all the finality of their 
 science : There are no exceptions. And the modern 
 psychoanalyst argues, with every show of reason, thus : If 
 in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand 
 the same symbolic phantasy has been found to stand 
 for the same thing, how, when the thousandth case 
 presents that symbolic phantasy, can we admit its plea 
 to be regarded as an exception ? You say that it 
 depends on the context ; and you are told ruthlessly 
 that the context is the same. There are no exceptions. 
 Out of their own mouths the great mystics stand 
 condemned. 
 
 So far from there being any way out and forwards 
 in this direction, it would seem that the Mystic Way 
 is the surest way backwards and in. For two reasons. 
 First, because in the mystic longing and the mystic 
 union Sublimation is still imperfect. The " libido," 
 although it is transferred from a human and bodily 
 object to a divine and spiritual one, is not transformed. 
 It is simply " carried over " in a more or less unsubli- 
 mated state. Secondly, because the mystic look is 
 essentially an inward one. The mystic seeks God, for 
 the most part, not in the outer world of art and science 
 and action, but in the darkest and most secret recesses 
 
 I 
 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 VII 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 291 
 
 of his own soul. And it is precisely this darkness and 
 secrecy that the psychoanalyst has the most reason to 
 mistrust. 
 
 If anybody could persuade me that all was and is 
 well with the mystics it would be Miss Evelyn Underhill. 
 She does not blink the patent, and indeed blatant, fact 
 of " mystical ill-health." 
 
 '* If we see in the mystics, as some have done, the sporadic 
 beginning of a power, a higher consciousness, towards which the 
 race slowly tends ; then it seems Hkely enough that where it 
 appears nerves and organs should suffer under a stress to which 
 they have not yet become adapted, and that a spirit more highly 
 organised than its bodily home should be able to impose strange 
 conditions on the flesh. ... It is at least permissible to look 
 on the strange psychological state common amongst the mystics 
 as just such a rebelhon on the part of a normal nervous and 
 vascular system against the exigencies of a way of life to which 
 it has not yet adjusted itself." {Mysticism, pp. 73, 74.) 
 
 This is, I think, broadly and roughly true. But it 
 would be more closely and finely true to say that the 
 mystic consciousness presents in a marked degree the 
 pathological phenomena of " dissociation." 
 
 M. Janet's account of the matter in his Etat mentale 
 des Hysteriques, leaves us in no doubt as to what is 
 actually happening here. He shows that the root of 
 the neuroses and psychoses, of all mental maladies in 
 fact, lies in dissociation : the break between one idea, 
 or group of ideas, and its normal context and logical 
 connections ; the cutting off of one psychic state, or 
 group of states, from the stream of consciousness itself. 
 This isolated and abandoned tract is the home of all the 
 obsessions, the fixed ideas, the morbid "complexes" 
 unearthed by the psychoanalysts, the day-dreams and 
 phantasies of neurotic and insane persons; it is the 
 home of lapsed instincts and memories, of things for- 
 
 gotten because of their dreadfulness or simply because 
 of their uselessness ; it is our ancestral and racial 
 territory, the place of our forgotten and yet undying 
 past, of what has been conscious once, and is no longer 
 conscious. Portions of our present that we have no 
 use for and that would only hamper us are continually 
 going to join this forsaken past. But if we are to keep 
 the image of consciousness as a " stream " we had better 
 say that they sink to the bottom and stay there until 
 some eddy in the deep stirs them up again. You can 
 reverse the image, if you like, and think of consciousness 
 as some city of the sea, raised on land partly submerged, 
 partly reclaimed from the sea ; a sea that threatens 
 perpetually to overflow the thresholds of its palaces. 
 
 But (without bothering about territories and streams 
 and bottoms and seas and thresholds), the point to bear 
 in mind is that all lapses and losses of a present memory 
 or aptitude (barring physical lesion or decay), all per- 
 versions of instinct and desire, all suppressions, obses- 
 sions and possessions, all cases of double or multiple 
 personality, are states primarily and essentially of 
 dissociation. And that detachment, which is the one 
 indispensable condition of mystical experience, is, 
 primarily and essentially, a state of dissociation. And 
 it is, as mystics themselves are perfectly well aware, a 
 very dangerous state. There is not one step of the 
 " Mystic Way," from meditation, through illumination, 
 introversion (contemplation and quiet) to deliverance 
 and to ecstasy, that is not a step further in the process 
 of dissociation. The mystic, deliberately seeking Ulti- 
 mate Reality, has left normal consciousness behind him ; 
 he has closed all the approaches in that direction ; and 
 he has opened doors (another image, but I can't help it), 
 he has opened doors to anything that may be waiting 
 for him below or beyond the threshold. 
 
 i« 
 
292 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VII 
 
 He is out or " in " for a dreadfully perilous adventure ; 
 and what happens to him will depend on whether this 
 region beyond normal consciousness is only the too well- 
 trodden territory of the past or also the " untrodden 
 country " of the future. In the one case his mystical 
 experience will be a sinking downwards or a turning 
 backwards : in the other it may be a rising upwards or a 
 going on. And there is a third alternative— it may be 
 both. Quite easily it may be both ; for we have now 
 to do with a more or less divided and disintegrated 
 personality. 
 
 I think that— still keeping the saints and mystics of 
 the Salpetriere well in sight>— we shall find that there 
 are some grounds for supposing that the country of 
 abnormal consciousness stretches forwards as well as 
 backwards, and belongs every bit as much to our future 
 as to our past. Our normal, everyday, present con- 
 sciousness lies between what has been and what shall 
 be ; it has been developed, as we have seen, by processes 
 of forgetting, that is to say of dissociation, carried to 
 perfection ; it exists as it is now by virtue of its defiance 
 and its rupture with the past that it suppresses but is 
 poweriess to destroy. So that, if it is to advance at all 
 beyond its normal state, it can only do so by a process 
 of detachment or dissociation ; by that letting go and 
 forgetting of the actual, by that renunciation and self- 
 surrender, that dying to live which is the secret of the 
 mystic life. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that in his abnormal state the 
 mystic has before him the entire range of the " Un- 
 conscious " and "Subconscious"; that his psyche 
 hovers between its old forgotten playground of the past 
 and its unknown playground of the future. It may be 
 the prey and the victim of powers, of instincts, and of 
 memories, which once served its development, and 
 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 293 
 
 which have dropped from it by disuse ; or it may be the 
 experimenter with undeveloped powers of which it is 
 by no means the master. At best it can only advance 
 a little way, a very little way along the path it is ulti- 
 mately destined to travel. But it can go back very 
 easily down that well-trodden path by which it came. 
 It can go a short way, or even a fairly long way and yet 
 return. But if it goes too far it is lost ; it is hopelessly 
 estranged from itself and from the life of the normal 
 living ; it is (not to mince matters) mad. 
 
 Or it may go up and down on the two paths. And 
 its tendency to go up and down, or to go downwards 
 most of the time, and seldom if ever to go upward all 
 the time, or even for very long at any one time, is re- 
 corded in the confessions of all the saints. 
 
 In the face of these confessions we might feel sus- 
 picious of our supposition but for two things : we have 
 personal experience of psychic " dissociation " every 
 night when we dream ; and we have authentic evidence 
 bearing on the existence of a fairly extensive borderland, 
 lying between Magic and Mysticism — ^the region of the 
 so-called " psychic powers." 
 
 Professor Freud has said two notable things about 
 dreams : " Dreams are a piece of the conquered life 
 of the childish soul," and " The dream is a disguised 
 fulfilment of a repressed wish " (50). He might have 
 said with equal truth : Dreams are a piece of the yet 
 unconquered life of the soul that is to be. Or : The 
 dream is a fulfilment of the repressed desire to transcend 
 our normal powers, seeing that in our dream-conscious- 
 ness we do transcend them. In every dream adventure 
 we make experiments with the soul that is to be. 
 
 If dreaming were not the common and accustomed 
 thing it is, we should be astounded at our own perform- 
 ances every time we dream. When people come down 
 
 fil 
 
 li 
 
294 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VII 
 
 ▼n 
 
 THE NEW ]\IYSTICISM 
 
 295 
 
 m the morning and teU you that they have had a very 
 remarkable dream, what they mean is that their dreams 
 are more remarkable than other people's dreams ; but 
 It does not occur to them how remarkable it is' that 
 anybody should have a dream at all. 
 
 It was no doubt a good thing for the race when it^ 
 definitely made up its mind that we are dealing with 
 realities when we wake and with unrealities when we 
 dream ; but it is mainly owing to this really very rash 
 assumption that an extraordinarily interesting and 
 significant form of consciousness should have been left 
 to the imaginative layman and the quack investigator 
 until the psychoanalysts took it over. I am not 
 forgetting the admirable work done by the Society for 
 Psychical Research. This has been mainly in collecting 
 and sifting material for Psychology to deal with ; but 
 recent discussion has tended towards recognition of 
 the dream's peculiar and profound reality (51). 
 
 Dream experiences are not explained by calling them 
 hallucinations; nor yet when we have named their 
 cause ' ' unconscious cerebration. ' ' Cerebration is always 
 unconscious, and it accompanies and perhaps in some 
 way conditions waking consciousness too. That there 
 should be inside excitements and reverberations, nerve- 
 cells and brain-cells keeping up their activity on their 
 own, after the outside stimulus has ceased, is not more 
 remarkable than any other physical event. But we 
 should expect the psychic events that correspond with 
 this activity to be the faded images, the fainter rever- 
 berations of waking states ; to be as broken, as con- 
 fused, and as fantastic as you please, but still to obey 
 the ordinary fundamental conditions of space and time. 
 So far as it accounts for anything, unconscious cerebra- 
 tion might account for such a dream-consciousness as 
 this; but not for the dream-consciousness we know. 
 
 The unaccountable things are the conditions of the 
 dream itself ; the dream-space, the dream-time, the 
 dream-unity of consciousness, the dream itself. No 
 amount of unconscious cerebration can explain the facts 
 that at one and the same time I am or seem to be several 
 other persons besides myself, while preserving my own 
 identity in theirs (52) ; that I can penetrate into walled 
 spaces without opening doors ; that I can arrive at 
 positions in space without occupying intermediate 
 positions in space ; that I can go through a continuous 
 series of performances, involving an expenditure of 
 time that may be anything between five hours and five 
 days, or, with suitable breaks, even five years ; all in 
 what proves to have been three seconds by the watch 
 at my bedside. In my nerve and brain records there 
 can be no memory of my ever having done these things ; 
 and they cannot well be explained as " compounds " 
 of fragments of the things I have done. Surely the 
 obvious inference is that I do them, not in the space of 
 waking consciousness, and not in three seconds of watch- 
 time, but in another space and in another time ; and that 
 in doing them " I " have been both the waking I and 
 another more marvellous I, and to some extent others ? 
 For the waking I remembers the dream experience, 
 though not always perfectly; and the dream I re- 
 members parts, at any rate, of the waking experience. 
 
 That is to say, while preserving selfhood, it has 
 transcended normal consciousness. 
 
 It is probable that racial consciousness is resurgent 
 in the dreams even of normal people, and that it plays 
 an enormous part in the dreams of neurotics and of 
 lunatics. It is probable that in dreams the psyche 
 goes backwards. It is no less probable, I think, that, 
 urged by its half-conscious and wholly prophetic need, 
 it goes forwards too, and grasps at and reaches 
 
 ^ 
 
296 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 297 
 
 powers that wiU ultimately be its normal, conscious 
 possession. 
 
 And besides the dream-powers, there are the other 
 powers of the Borderland, the " psychic " powers that 
 belong to the world of Mysticism and Magic and the 
 occult, and are claimed equally by scoundrels and by 
 samts. Until comparatively recent years they, and 
 the pecuhar form of consciousness they involve, were 
 m the same case as the dream-powers ; they were left 
 to the quack practitioner and the amateur investigator. 
 Most of us can remember the time when the existence 
 of telepathy was not admitted by persons who had a 
 scientific reputation to take care of, and '' suggestion " 
 was on its trial. As for faith-healing, palmistry, clair- 
 voyance, clair-audience, automatism, mediumship, and 
 the rest, they are still mixed up with such fraud and 
 humbug and silliness, and with persons so disgraceful, 
 so discredited, so absurd, that it is not easy to write 
 about them in a work that is, at any rate, trying to be 
 serious. I feel (to be disgustingly egoistic) that any 
 reputation I may have is already so imperilled by my 
 devout adhesion to the Absolute that I simply cannot 
 afford to be suspected of tenderness, or even toleration 
 for the professors of the occult. The Society for Psychi- 
 cal Eesearch may be trusted to deal appropriately 
 with unorganized imposture ; but the organized variety 
 is another matter. And there are at least two organiza- 
 tions which seem to be beyond the power of any Society, 
 or of any Government or State to control them— 
 Theosophy and Christian Science. 
 
 They are dangerous, not because they have had an 
 ancient history, but because they have had and are 
 having a modern one. Christian Science is by far the 
 more dangerous, though not the less dubious, of the 
 
 two. It is dangerous because of its successes. It is 
 dangerous because its best exponents are really sincere 
 and truthful and profoundly spiritual persons. But 
 these are not always its most successful practitioners. 
 For, when all is said and done, and its misses and its 
 failures are counted, its gains make quite a considerable 
 " show." Its traffic in the world of appearances is, 
 indeed, astounding, also its profit ; seeing that it ignores 
 the known methods of procedure, and the proved facts, 
 and the ascertained sequences and connections of that 
 world. With a mouthful of phrases and formulas, and 
 a few ill-assorted bits of popular " philosophy," picked 
 up haphazard, with an utter ignorance of what it calls 
 " Western Science," it is trpng to undo in a day the 
 work of centuries, the elaborate and patient work of 
 the most beneficent of all physical sciences. 
 
 And it is succeeding. Not long ago, in a country 
 village, I came on an innocent family of four persons. 
 They were trying to get well there. The father's and 
 the mother's health was impaired, and the two children's 
 quite efficiently shattered by the efiects of the scarlet 
 fever they had had a year ago. They had had it owing 
 to the view their neighbour held that, because Christian 
 Science can cure nervous headaches and hysterical 
 paralysis and take down inflammation, it can cure 
 scarlet fever too, or at any rate can allow children dis- 
 playing all the appearances of scarlet fever (scarlet fever 
 itself not being a reality) to run loose about a city 
 without damage to the public safety. And the neigh- 
 bour is probably of that opinion still ; and when his 
 children get diphtheria they will probably be allowed 
 to spread it abroad in the same way. But, though 
 Christian Science despises appearances in the form of 
 disease germs and the laws of nature, it does not despise 
 them in the form of dollars and of goods. It is too much 
 
298 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vu 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 299 
 
 messed up with appearances altogether. It does not 
 discnminate. It will not render unto Appearance the 
 things that are Appearance's, and unto Reality the 
 things that are Reality's. 
 
 I find it hard to write fairly of Theosophy, possibly 
 because I have suffered from theosophists. I do not 
 hke their way of handling the Sacred Books of the 
 ^ast. I object to having the Bhagavad-Gita and the 
 feutta ol all the Asavas thrown at my head, as if they 
 had been portions of Scripture appointed for the day 
 and specially applicable to my unspiritual case. I hate 
 It when a woman I disapprove of teUs me that if I would 
 only extinguish all my desires I should attain Nirvana 
 to-morrow. I know it. But I do not want to attain 
 Nirvana quite so soon. When I am eating chicken and 
 my host is eatmg lettuce, I resent his telling me that a 
 vegetarian cannot endure the presence of a flesh-eater 
 but that he conceals his repulsion because he is holier 
 than the flesh-eater. And I am really frightened when 
 I am introduced to a female " adept " who cannot walk 
 through a churchyard without seeing what goes on in the 
 graves, and who insists on describing what she has seen. 
 Surely there is something very wrong there ? 
 Now there are theosophical Societies like the Quest 
 Society that are innocent, and there are theosophists like 
 Mr. A. P. Sinnett and Mr. G. R. S. Mead who command 
 the greatest admiration and respect ; but I would rather 
 think of Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Mead as scholars and 
 experts m strange religions than as theosophists at all. 
 If I had to choose between Pragmatism and Theosophy 
 I would without hesitation choose Pragmatism. 
 
 But that there are ^'powers," some powers, is I 
 think, no longer in dispute. I am quite sure that, but 
 for my wiU-not-to-be-healed, a Christian Scientist could 
 heal me if I offered the appropriate disorder. I dare- 
 
 say the " powers " of Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Annie 
 Besant, or their Mahatmas, could blast my career if 1 
 came under their influence. If a Bhikkhu should desire 
 to ride cross-legged through the sky, I do not think 
 that he will be able to do it, but he will probably be 
 able to create an illusion of doing it, so strong that the 
 illusioned will see no difference between the appearance 
 and the reality. All these people are more or less 
 adepts in the art of suggestion and auto-suggestion; 
 they have more or less control over whatever powers 
 are involved in telepathy, clairvoyance, automatism, 
 and mediumship. But their powers are not more 
 interesting or wonderful than the powers of quite 
 ordinary people who have never heard of a Mahatma, 
 or else think it is the island New York City is built on. 
 
 For the most elementary power of telepathy and 
 suggestion (which, I believe, include all the others) is, 
 if you come to think of it, a very remarkable and signifi- 
 cant thing; almost as remarkable and significant as 
 dreaming. It means that the ordinary methods of 
 communication by speech and sign are " transcended " ; 
 that faith is literally " the substance of things not seen " 
 (a Bhikkhu riding cross-legged through the sky would 
 surely be a variety of such a substance) ; that if it cannot 
 move mountains, or even mole-hills, it can move mole- 
 cules ; it can, within limits, break up and alter their 
 chemical arrangements ; otherwise physical healing by 
 suggestion could not occur. It looks as if thoughts 
 flew about, and could be caught casually on the wing ; 
 only that things do not always happen in that haphazard 
 way. There are certain clear and steady sequences 
 that point to a definite and deliberate agency ; they 
 involve desire and design. The selves can apparently 
 exert an inward spiritual influence as strong as, or 
 stronger than, an outside or material stimulus. 
 
300 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 301 
 
 Suggestion, then, seems to be best dejined as the 
 power that immaterial beings have to make psychic 
 events happen. In this sense we may say that it covers 
 all the ground of Magic and of Mysticism and the Border- 
 land. It must have been used dehberately in primitive 
 ritual and in all the Mysteries. It accounts for all the 
 "psychic phenomena " of Mysticism : the miracles, the 
 visions, the ecstasies, the sense of Union. It probably 
 accounts for the efficacy of prayer. Prayer is one of 
 our oldest ancestral instincts and habits ; it is therefore 
 one of the strongest engines of suggestion at our service. 
 
 But though it covers all the facts it does not account 
 for all of them ; and it does not cover or account for 
 itself. It does not account for the supreme fact— 
 the choice of Ultimate Eeahty as the object of desire. 
 It does not account for the desire itself, the hunger and 
 the thirst for Life, for New Life and more abundant 
 Life, which is the driving motive of the mystic adventure. 
 It does not account for the gradual, steady sublimation 
 of that desire, nor for the corresponding changes in the 
 conception of its object. It does not account for the 
 means by which it is brought into operation ; for the 
 ascertained imiformity in the stages of the Mystic Way 
 all the world over; a uniformity which raises the 
 practice of Mysticism ' from magic to a science and an 
 art. It does not account— I know this statement will 
 be challenged, but I believe it does not account— for 
 the peculiar certainty that comes, not always through 
 illumination and contemplation, and not through vision 
 or ecstasy, but in spite of them ; a certainty that is not 
 part of the psychic phenomena at all, and that, so far 
 as I know, both psychic phenomena and the suggestion 
 that gives rise to them are powerless to produce. 
 
 And it does not account for itself. When we have 
 
 said that suggestion gives rise to psychic events, we do 
 not know why, or even how it does so. We have not 
 said from what centres or on what levels it is working. 
 Apparently it can work from all the centres and on all 
 the levels of our conscious or subconscious life. If we 
 say that its chief function is to create illusion, we are 
 very far from the truth. Its chief and highest function 
 is to create reality ; to heighten the sense and sharpen 
 the perception of reality ; to restore the links with 
 reality where they have been broken. Otherwise there 
 could be no healing by suggestion. And the most 
 important of its healing functions are the recovery of 
 the lost Will-to-live, and the joining up of psychic states 
 abnormally dissociated. 
 
 Now in detachment, the state of mystic dissociation 
 from normal consciousness, we said that two ways 
 were made open to the psyche : one looking backwards 
 and downwards, on which it can go a long way with 
 ease ; and one going forwards and upwards, on which 
 it can only go a little way with difficulty. 
 
 And the psychic powers of the borderland can go 
 up and down too. Suggestion can evoke the instincts 
 and memories of states past and forgotten. It can also 
 invoke the instinct and the premonition of a state not 
 attained. It cannot create Ultimate Reality, or the 
 perception of it. But it would seem that it can create 
 a state in which for moments of most uncertain duration 
 Ultimate Reality is discerned. 
 
 In Western Mysticism, above all, in Catholic Mysti- 
 cism, the lower and the higher forms of suggestion 
 alternate, and there is a dreadful tendency for the lower 
 form to hold the field. And if the great mystics had not 
 been the most marvellous analysers of their own states, 
 we should have had no possible means of distinguishing 
 in their case between the two. 
 
 1 
 
302 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Luckily their moments of certainty seldom, if ever, 
 came when they were deliberately sought ; they came— 
 as they come to every one who has ever known them — 
 unsought, and unexpected and with a shock of surprise. 
 In true mystic experience you may say the expected 
 never happens. 
 
 Still, remembering the saints of the Salpetriere, and 
 Lady Julian's morbidities, and Saint Teresa's "im- 
 petuosities," and all the terrifying and revolting amor- 
 ousness of the religious mystic, we might suspect this 
 certainty if these revelations were all the record that 
 we had of it. Not only all religious experience is full 
 of it, but every poet, every painter, every musician 
 knows the shock of contact with reality. The vision of 
 absolute beauty while it lasts is actually a laying hold 
 on eternal life. I would say every lover knows it, but 
 that sexual passion is the source of our most profound 
 illusion. Still, even the betrayed and disillusioned lover 
 may know that in loving he found his own innermost 
 reality ; illusion was not in him, but in the perfidious 
 heart of the beloved ; while he loved he truly lived. 
 Nothing can take from him that certainty. The wrong 
 of sexual treachery lies in the fact that it deprives the 
 lover (for the time being) of life. 
 
 And there is an even higher state of certainty than 
 these. Almost every other hero knows it : the exquisite 
 and incredible assurance, the positively ecstatic vision 
 of Keality that comes to him when he faces death for 
 the first time. There is no certainty that life can give 
 that surpasses or even comes anywhere near it. And 
 the world has been full of these mystics, these visionaries, 
 since August 1914. Sometimes I think they are the 
 only trustworthy ones. How pure, how absolute is their 
 surrender ; how candid and untroubled their confession ; 
 how spontaneous and undefiled their witness. 
 
 vn THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 And see how they back up all the Others- 
 
 303 
 
 This is the kind of certainty we want to tide us over 
 the straits where Western Mysticism often leaves us 
 floundering. 
 
 I say Western Mysticism, because in the Buddhist 
 Sacred Books and in the Upanishads and the Vedanta, 
 and in the Mysticism of Kabir you do not find anywhere 
 the same repulsive qualities. You enter a purer and a 
 subtler air, and the Light of Godhead, " das fliessende 
 Licht der Gottheit," does not flow ; it is strong and 
 very still. 
 
 There are reasons, as we shall see, for this difference. 
 The Western mind comes to Mysticism by a peculiarly 
 dangerous and difl&cult path. For one thing, it came 
 to it a bit too early. The art and science of it were 
 perfected in Asia, if not before the first principles had 
 . been discovered in Europe and Asia Minor, at any rate 
 long before they had had a chance to develop. The 
 Christian Mystics seem never to have quite perfected 
 the technique of the thing ; and seldom to have achieved 
 a perfect and a safe detachment. Admirable psycho- 
 analysts as they were, they lacked that minute psycho- 
 logical theory and practice which the Indian seems 
 undoubtedly to have possessed. They plunged into the 
 dangerous adventure without adequate preparation, as 
 one who should jump into the Atlantic without a safety- 
 belt. In the language of modern psychology, they had 
 not learned how to " sublimate their libidos." 
 
 And this apparently was what the subtle Indian had 
 learned before ever he set out on the adventure. The 
 Western Mystic did not know, or had forgotten, that 
 the desire of Life, even physical desire, is an inde- 
 structible and holy, though a dangerous thing. He sup- 
 pressed physical desire ; he stamped it down into the 
 
304 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Unconscious ; and then, in a state of passivity or trance, 
 he went down there after it, and was met by the re- 
 surgence of all his savage and ancestral memories. He 
 retrogressed. He did not know that this would happen 
 to him (he knew nothing at all or very little about the 
 Unconscious) ; and every time it did happen he was 
 agonized and astonished. But the Indian Mystic knew 
 very well what would happen, and why it happened ; 
 and when he went travelling in the untrodden country 
 he took good care to close the gates of the paths that led 
 downwards. Sometimes they swung to of their own 
 accord and the Christian mystic was safe. 
 
 Still, there is a great gulf fixed between Eastern and 
 Western Mysticism. Sometimes the Catholics bridge it, 
 when they are metaphysical, which is seldom. But 
 Julian of Norwich, for one, managed to get over. Her 
 First Revelation of Divine Love might have come 
 straight from the heart of Asia. 
 
 " In this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of 
 His homely loving. 
 
 " I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfort- 
 able for us : He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth 
 us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave 
 us ; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding. 
 
 " Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an 
 hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand ; and it was as round as a ball. 
 I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought : 
 What may this be ? And it was answered generally thus : It 
 is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought 
 it might suddenly have fallen to naught for httle (ness). ^d 
 I was answered in my understanding : It lasteth, and ever 
 shall (last) for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the 
 Being by the Love of God.'' (Revelatians of Divine Love, p. 10.) 
 
 Compare this with the well-known duologue in the 
 Khdndogya- Upanishad. 
 
 PS^W5!Sil 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 305 
 
 " * Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree.* 
 
 *' *Here is one, Sir.' 
 
 *' * Break it.' 
 
 " ' It is broken. Sir.' 
 
 " ' What do you see there ? ' 
 
 " ' These seeds, almost infinitesimal' 
 
 " * Break one of them.' 
 
 '*'It is broken, Sir.' 
 
 " * What do you see there ? ' 
 
 *' ' Not anything, Sir.' 
 
 " The father said : ' My son, that subtle essence which you do 
 not perceive there, of that very essence the great Nyagrodha 
 tree exists. 
 
 " ' Believe it, my son. That which is the subtle essence, in it 
 all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and 
 thou, Svetaketu, art it''' (53). 
 
 Observe what is happening. It is as if Mr. Barlow 
 were instructing Sandford and Merton in the Hegelian 
 Dialectic. Observe that it is said of Svetaketu that 
 " he understood. Yea, he understood.'' The Indian 
 takes to the Absolute like a duck to water. He may 
 attain Deliverance before he is sixteen, instead of having 
 to wait for it till he is sixty, when the passions cease 
 from troubling of their own accord. 
 
 In her clearest moments Julian is as devout a pan- 
 theist as any Indian mystic. She has even her pan- 
 theistic formula to match the " Thou art it " {Tat tvam 
 asi) of the Upanishad. 
 
 " I it am, I it am : I it am that is highest ; I it am that thou 
 lovest ; I it am that thou enjoyest ; I it am that thou servest ; 
 I it am that thou longest for ; I it am that thou desirest ; I it 
 am that thou meanest, I it am that is all." (Revelations of Divine 
 Love, pp. 54, 55.) 
 
306 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VII 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 307 
 
 n 
 
 We are very near the secret of the psychic backsliding 
 and spiritual torment of the Christian mystic. They are 
 due, not only to imperfect psychological technique, but 
 to imperfect metaphysics. In spite of the refinements 
 of the Schoolmen, the Christian idea of God was never 
 wholly sublimated by thought. It rests on a naif and 
 obstinate duahsm that resists the process. 
 
 It is to the East that we must turn to find the highest 
 and the purest form of Mysticism ; a Mysticism that has 
 passed through the fire of metaphysical thinking, and 
 is itself sublimated. 
 
 But before we compare Western with Eastern Mysti- 
 cism, as I am going to do, to the disadvantage of the 
 Christian variety, three things must be kept well in 
 sight. 
 
 First, that the final goal of Christian Mysticism is 
 not " experience," not vision, not ecstasy, but the Uni- 
 tive Life, the life lived in union with Reality. Life 
 lived, not merely contemplated ; a life of " fruition and 
 activity," lifted for ever above the powers of the Sub- 
 conscious. Of this state Evelyn Underbill says that in 
 it man's nature 
 
 "... has become conscious in all its parts, has unified itself about 
 its highest elements. That strange, tormenting vision of a perfect 
 peace, a joyous self -loss, annihilation in some mighty Life which 
 over-passed his own, which haunts man through the whole course 
 of his history, and finds a more or less distorted expression in 
 all his creeds, a justification in all his ecstasies, is now traced to 
 its source : and found to be the inevitable expression of an 
 instinct by which he recognised, though he could not attain the 
 noblest part of his inheritance." {Mysticism, p. 520.) 
 
 She denies on, I think, somewhat insufficient grounds, 
 
 that this state was conspicuously attained in Eastern 
 Mysticism. That is to say, in Eastern Mysticism that was 
 not influenced by Christianity (54). But the Christian 
 apologist has still to admit that in the West it was 
 usually reached late in life, and that certain physical 
 cessations may have contributed. However that may 
 be, it is the end of " mystical ill-health." 
 
 Again, the Christian saint brings to the quest for 
 Reality something that is not always found in mysticisms 
 that have been highly sublimated by thought. 
 
 Julian of Norwich says of her hazel-nut : 
 
 " In this Httle thing I saw three properties. The first is that 
 God madeth it ; the second is that God loveth it ; the third is 
 that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the 
 Keeper, and the Lover, I cannot tell." (Revelations of Divine 
 Love, p. 10.) 
 
 And she speaks for all her kindred. Her way is the 
 way of the mystic, Kabir, and of the Vaishnavists, the 
 Humanists of India. 
 
 " Few," says Kabir, " are the lovers who know the 
 Beloved. The devout seeker is he who mingles in his 
 heart the double currents of love and detachment." 
 
 Lastly, Mysticism itself is a thing of gradual develop- 
 ment, and the Eastern and the Western forms of it are 
 tending to approach, with the result that Pantheism is 
 absorbing Christian Humanism, to Humanism's great 
 gain. 
 
 This tendency is so conspicuous in the modern 
 literature of East and West, that it may be fairly called 
 the New Mysticism. It has been, I think, not only an 
 affair of influence, but of the slow yet inevitable maturing 
 of the Western mind. It is no food for sick souls ; it 
 has put the disease of asceticism behind it ; it is a robust 
 and joyous Mysticism, reconciled to the world. 
 
 il 
 
308 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 309 
 
 When Sir Rabindranath Tagore was over here, in 
 the years before the War, he told us that the destiny of 
 the East was " to spiritualize the West." Complacent 
 westerners smiled at the saying, as if the great poet 
 had been offering to teach his grandmother an art that 
 she had perfected before he was born. Yet his was 
 simply the calm statement of a truth. 
 
 Still, if some of our poets and mystics had not gone 
 before him, we should not have been as ready for him 
 as we were. 
 
 Before the publication of his translation of the One 
 Hundred Poems of KaUr, his own Gitdnjali stood almost 
 alone, representing for many of us all that is purest 
 and highest in Mysticism. Therefore I venture to repeat 
 here what I wrote of it four years ago. There is hardly 
 a word of it that will not apply equally to the work of 
 his forerunner, Kabir. 
 
 To the Western mind there is a gulf fixed between 
 the common human heart and Transcendent Being. The 
 European and the American, in their quest of Reality, 
 are apt to be taken in by appearances ; they do not 
 readily make the great distinction. That is partly why, 
 with the exception of the classics of Mysticism, the 
 devotional poetry of the West, Catholic and Protestant 
 alike, is so imsatisfying. Most of it is written by people 
 who are not poets. But the worst of it is that it is not 
 supremely devotional. It does not deal directly with 
 the Transcendent, but proceeds, fervently indeed, 
 but always by way of dogma and tradition, as it were 
 by perpetual makeshifts, and through the most horrible 
 tangle of material and carnal imagery, to a visionary 
 Throne of Grace. You never seem to arrive. Your heart 
 may be soothed by the assurance of atonement; but your 
 finer metaphysical hunger is left for ever unappeased. 
 
 But take these songs of Divine Love from the 
 Gitdnjali : 
 
 " In the deep shadows of the rainy July, with secret steps, 
 thou walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers. 
 
 " The woodlands have hushed their songs, and doors are all 
 shut at every house. Thou art the soHtary wayiarer in this 
 deserted street. Oh, my only friend, my best beloved, the gates 
 are open in my houses-do not pass by hke a dream." 
 
 " The day is no more, the shadow is upon the earth. It is 
 time that I go to the stream to fill my pitcher. 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 '* I know not if I shall come back home. I know not whom 
 I shall chance to meet. There at the fording in the little boat 
 the unknown man plays upon his lute." 
 
 In the poems of this mystic the world appears no 
 longer in its brutality, its vehemence, its swift, yet 
 dense fluidity ; it is seized in the very moment of its 
 passing, and fixed in the clarity and stillness of his 
 vision. It is always the same everyday world, the dusty 
 road, the deserted street, the solitary fording, " the bank 
 in the shady lane" where "the yellow leaves flutter 
 and fall." At the coming of the Unknown Traveller 
 " the leaves rustled overhead ; the cuckoo sang from 
 the unseen dark, and perfume of babla flowers came 
 from the end of the road." A world vivid to every 
 sense, yet the stage of a supersensual drama, the scene 
 of the divine adventure. So vivid and so actual is it, 
 that only its strange fixity stirs in you the thrill of the 
 supersensual. 
 
 And through this fixity, this stillness of rhythm and 
 of mood, there is a mysterious trouble and excitement, 
 an awful tension of expectancy. It is the stillness of 
 intense vibration, of life inconceivably living, the 
 ecstasy of supreme passion consummated and consumed. 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
310 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 There is nothing in the Western world to compare 
 with these poems but the writings of those mystics 
 who were also saints: St. Augustine, St. Thomas a 
 Kempis, St. Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Saint 
 Teresa, Saint Catherine of Genoa, who said, " My Me is 
 God, nor do I recognize any other Me, except my God 
 Himself." (Vita e dottrim.) Above all, St. John of the 
 Cross in The Dark Night of the Soul : 
 
 " Upon my flowery breast, 
 Wholly for Him and save himself for none, 
 There did I give sweet rest 
 To my beloved one ; 
 The banners of the cedars breathed thereon ! " 
 
 (Translation by Arthur Symons.) 
 
 All these impassioned lovers of the Godhead use 
 the same language, telling of the same unique experience ; 
 and it is invariably the language of human passion ; 
 for the simple and sufficient reason that there is no 
 other. At the same time, with the exception of Dante's 
 Paradiso and Vita Nuova, it would be hard to find in all 
 the poetry of Western mysticism a perfect parallel to 
 the passion of the Gitdnjali. There are few Western 
 mystics who do not somewhere betray the restlessness 
 that lies around their rest. Until the final attainment 
 of the Unitive Life, their peace would seem to have 
 been harder won, to be held more perilously, to be always 
 on the point of passing ; so vivid is the sense they give 
 of efiort, of struggle, of frantic desperation. There is 
 a corresponding vehemence and violence in their lan- 
 guage. St. Teresa says of the state of the enraptured 
 soul : "No consolation reaches it from heaven, and 
 it is not there itself ; it wishes for none from earth, 
 and it is not there either ; but it is, as it were, crucified 
 between earth and heaven, enduring its passion." 
 
 St. John of the Cross speaks of an " intense and 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 311 
 
 amorous impetus," answering to St. Teresa's " im- 
 petuosities." 
 
 For, as we have seen, the language of the Catholic 
 mystic' is often the language of sensuous, almost of 
 sensual emotion; so voluptuous that it lends itself 
 very easily to the interpretation of the profane. But 
 it is impossible to doubt the " spirituality " of these 
 Bengali songs of Divine Love. They are at the very 
 highest level of attainment in their kind. They have 
 the serenity and purity of supreme possession. Mystic 
 passion embraces while it transcends the whole range 
 of human passion. Like human passion, it works 
 through body, heart, and soul. It is the soul and the 
 heart of passion that you find in the Gitdnjali ; its secret 
 and invisible things, small and great ; all in it that is 
 superb, inviolate, undying ; all that is lowly and most 
 fragile; its impalpable, incommunicable moods, its 
 evanescences, its dreams, its subtleties, its reticences 
 and courtesies ; its fears and delicate shames. 
 
 " I asked nothing from thee ; I uttered not my name to thine 
 ear. When thou took'st thy leave I stood silent." 
 
 There is no querulousness and no grossness of im- 
 patience, no restlessness in this passion of the expectant 
 
 soul. 
 
 And on the part of the pursuing God there are none 
 of those impetuosities that overwhelmed Saint Teresa. 
 He comes " with silent steps." He is the lover waiting 
 in the shadows. He is the watcher by the bed, the 
 solitary wayfarer in the deserted street, the traveller 
 at the well ; he is Krishna, the lute-player, the "un- 
 known man " playing in the little boat at the fording. 
 I know nothing so persuasive as the glamour of this 
 Eastern stillness, nothing that evokes so irresistibly, so 
 inevitably, the sense of the Unseen. 
 
312 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 '' There, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul 
 to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. 
 There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and 
 never, never a word." 
 
 Before this austerity and restraint all foregoing 
 comparisons break down. There is, through all their 
 likeness, an unmistakable difference between those great 
 Western mystics and Rabindranath Tagore. 
 
 Their passion utters a more poignant lyrical cry. 
 They experience a more violent rapture in union, and a 
 deeper tragedy in separation. Nothing could well be 
 farther from his spirit than their emotionalism. In- 
 dividual temperament has no doubt something to do 
 with it ; but it is not the whole secret. This tumult 
 and tragic pain of theirs has its own law. It displays 
 itself in proportion to their asceticism, to the violence 
 of their rupture with the divine visible world. It is 
 the outcome of the dualism inherent in Christianity. 
 There never was a religion that promised so much and 
 gave so little ; that kept man's soul in such an awful 
 poise between heaven and hell ; that left his passion 
 for God so agonized and unappeased. Its dualism, its 
 asceticism, frustrates the longing of its saints. Their 
 holiest ecstasies are troubled with the resurgence of the 
 source it has polluted. 
 
 To the devotee of a Creator inconceivably difierent, 
 infinitely remote and separate from his creation, the 
 visible world is necessarily undivine, abhorrent, and 
 unholy. In renouncing the World the Eastern ascetic 
 denies its reality. But the Christian, in the very act 
 of renunciation, aflirms its shocking independent entity. 
 Thus his deliverance is never either physically or meta- 
 physically complete. That is the Christian's tragedy. 
 He cannot, without an agonizing struggle, get rid of the 
 world that weighs on him ; whereas it is comparatively 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 313 
 
 easy for the Oriental to divest himself, as it were, of his 
 cosmic clothing. It is doubtful if any Eastern ascetic, 
 Brahman or Buddhist, could feel the same furious hatred 
 and horror of the world ; seeing that to him the world, 
 the whole visible universe, is at its worst no more than 
 an illusion. You may refuse to become attached to an 
 illusion, you may withdraw from it with every circum- 
 stance of profound repudiation ; but you cannot furi- 
 ously hate and abhor a thing which, for you, has no real 
 existence of its own. 
 
 In the Gitdnjali you will find none of this hatred and 
 abhorrence, none, either, of this serene indifference and 
 denial. 
 
 " Deliverance is not for me in renunciation 
 
 jj 
 
 a 
 
 I will 
 never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight and 
 hearing and touch will bear thy dehght." 
 
 "What divine drink," he cries, " would' st thou 
 have, my God, from the overflowing cup of my life ? " 
 And again, echoing Kabir : 
 
 " The same stream of Hfe that runs through my veins night 
 and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. 
 
 " It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the 
 earth in numberless blades of grass, and breaks into tumultuous 
 waves of leaves and flowers." 
 
 " Is it beyond thee," he asks, " to be glad with the 
 gladness of this rhythm ? to be tossed and lost and 
 broken in the whirl of this fearful joy ? " To him the 
 life of God is an " abounding joy that scatters and gives 
 up and dies every moment." The whole complexity of 
 things, the veil of Maya, the illusion of the world, is 
 simple and translucent to him, so simple and so trans- 
 lucent that Reality is neither hidden by it nor obscured. 
 That wearing of the veil of illusion is the jest of the 
 
 1^ 
 
314 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 315 
 
 Divine Lover hiding himself from his beloved that he 
 may be the more passionately desired. 
 
 " It is he who weaves the web of this mdyd in evanescent hues 
 of gold and silver, blue and green, and lets peep out through 
 the folds his feet, at whose touch I forget myself." 
 
 Everjrwhere in these poems there is this acceptance 
 of humanity, this ecstasy of joy in movement and in 
 beauty, this adoration of life. 
 
 " Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song— the joy 
 that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, 
 the joy that sets the twin brothers, hfe and death, dancing over 
 the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking 
 and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its 
 tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws 
 everjrthing it has upon the dust, and knows not a word " (55). 
 
 It looks at first sight as if this all-embracing mysticism 
 were different in its very nature from the view of the 
 Catholic recluse prisoned in his cell. And it has appar- 
 ently even less affinity with Indian mysticism of the 
 Pantheistic type. And this is a little disconcerting. 
 Surely, you say, there must be things in the Upanishads 
 from which some at least of these poems are descended ? 
 You take down your Upanishads and hunt through 
 them excitedly for those things, but in vain ; unless 
 you are prepared to accept wholesale the interpretation 
 of the ingenious Eamanuja, who contended that even 
 in union with Brahma the individual self maintained its 
 separate identity. And it is only now and again in the 
 Gitdnjali that there comes any reverberation of the 
 mystic words, '' Tat tvam asi," '' Thou art it," of those 
 resonant and resplendent passages which proclaim the 
 absolute, inseparable identity of all things, of all selves 
 in the Great Self. 
 
 Now, the metaphysician may deny or affirm that 
 
 identity as his appetite or his instinct prompts him. 
 Nothing can be more certain than that, for some mystics, 
 the personal relation is an experience, a fact. All the 
 same it, and the separation it implies, is an experience 
 and a fact that begins and ends in their own individual 
 consciousness. It is irreducible, indescribable, incom- 
 municable. Metaphysically, it stands for nothing more 
 nor less than that moment in which the human soul 
 becomes conscious of itself in God. The thing is duplex 
 only in one aspect. Around it, continuing in it and 
 transcending it, are all the unity, all the identity you 
 can desire. The separation is not real ; not absolute ; 
 any more than death or birth is ; it is part of the 
 illusion ; part of the great game ; '' the hiding and 
 seeking of thee and me." 
 
 " It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the 
 world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky. 
 
 " It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night 
 from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in 
 rainy darkness of July. 
 
 " It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and 
 desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes ; and this it is 
 that ever melts and flows in song through my poet's heart." 
 
 To find Rabindranath Tagore's true sources and 
 affinities you must go back, first of all, to the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries ; to Kabir the mystic ; to the 
 great Vaishnavists who were the Humanists of India ; 
 to Chandidas the poet ; to Chaitanya Devi, the God- 
 intoxicated saint and seer. But going back farther 
 still, as far back as you can go, you find this naif personal 
 attitude in the Vedic Hymns. The ancient Rishis, as 
 lamentably as any Christian, felt " self " to be separated 
 from their deity or deities by the fact of sin. It was 
 those who came after them, the more philosophic Rishis 
 of the Upanishads, the Buddhists who came after them 
 
316 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 and the expert metaphysicians of the Vedanta, who 
 reversed this view and found sin in the illusion of separa- 
 tion.^ And all the later mystic poetry of India, from 
 Kabir onwards, springs from the conflict and recon- 
 ciliation between that immemorial feeling of separation 
 and that profound and supersensual certainty of oneness. 
 This indeed is the source of all the mysticism that ever 
 was. Only in India the feeling of separation is the 
 baffling thing. The supersensual certainty is taken for 
 granted, while in Christianity it is all the other way. 
 In India it is simply a question of whether you are going 
 to agree, say, with the ingenious Ramanuja that the 
 mdividual soul preserves its identity in union ; or with 
 the learned Sankaracharya that it has never had any 
 separate identity to lose ; or with the poets, who are the 
 seers of Reality, that it may have identity and lose it, 
 and recover it and lose it again. For there is always 
 . this third alternative. 
 
 It is clear that what the mystics are seeking is tran- 
 scendent identity. There are three who, by their double 
 genius of passion and of insight, have the right to speak 
 for all of them. 
 
 One is Juhan of Norwich. 
 
 " Till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full 
 rest nor very bliss : that is to say, till I be so fastened to him 
 that there is nght nought that is made betwixt my God and me." 
 (Revelations of Divine Levey p. 10.) 
 
 One is Rabindranath Tagore. 
 
 And one is the greatest of them all— Kabir. 
 
 Kabir is a test case. Before the appearance of the 
 One Hundred Poems (translated and edited by Rabin- 
 dranath Tagore and Evelyn Underbill), the only Kabir 
 that I could lay my hands on was a book of select 
 passages, translated and edited by a Christian missionary. 
 
 ▼n 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 317 
 
 I don't suggest that the missionary " did anything " 
 to Kabir. Still, the repudiators of Pantheistic Monism 
 have used Kabir freely as a proof that Christianity had 
 '' spiritualized " India ; and when this was all we had 
 of him, it was possible to admit that there might be 
 something in it. At least it was possible to give the 
 dualists the benefit of a doubt. 
 
 I find that I gave it them myself in 1913, when I 
 could write this sort of thing : 
 
 " Kabir, conscious of the separation, conceives union as a 
 minghng in which the soul is certainly [ ! ] not lost. ' The soul 
 (atma) and the Great Soul (Param Atma) for many ages remamed 
 apart ; the true Guru (teacher) came as a dealer (dallah, middle- 
 man) 'and made of them a beauteous mixture.' ' The power 
 that cannot be described, the form that imparts life, whoever 
 becomes one with him (as milk with water) that man, says Kabir 
 to Dharm Dass, KaU cannot destroy.' ' Thou art the ocean ; 
 I am the fish of the water,' he says, ' I dwell in the water, without 
 the water I am done for.' But he does not say he is a dewdrop 
 and that he slips into the shining sea. And though he protests 
 ' Whatever I did, you did ; I did nothing myself ; should naen 
 say I did it, it was in your strength that it was done,' he makes 
 it clear that he preserves his separate identity all the same." 
 
 The champions of Christian Dualism are welcome 
 to all they can get out of Kabir's fish, and his milk, and 
 his middleman ; and to all they can get out of any other 
 image he may use to express his relation to the Absolute. 
 I cannot conceive how they can read the rest of the 
 Hundred Poems and not see that India has absorbed 
 him body and soul. He has the true intransigeance of 
 the convert. He is closer-far closer than Tagore— to the 
 pure metaphysical Monism of the Svetasvatara-Upam- 
 shad His mysticism is only free from metaphysics 
 because it has passed through the last fires of thought. 
 It is utterly sublimated. 
 
 'I 
 
318 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 Take the least metaphysical and most purely poetic 
 of the Hundred Poems : 
 
 XII 
 
 « 
 
 (C 
 
 Tell me, Swan, your ancient tale, 
 
 From what land do you come, Swan ? to what shore will you fly ? 
 
 Where would you take your rest, Swan, and what do you seek ? 
 
 Even this morning, Swan, awake, arise, follow me ! 
 
 There is a land where no doubt nor sorrow have rule : where the 
 
 terror of Death is no more. 
 There the woods of spring are a-bloom, and the fragrant scent ' He 
 
 is I ' is borne on the wind. 
 
 There the bee of the heart is deeply immersed, and desires no other 
 joy." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The creature is in Brahma, and Brahma is in the creature : they 
 are ever distinct ; yet ever united. 
 He Himself is the tree, the seed, and the germ. 
 He Himself is the flower, the fruit, and the shade. 
 He Himself is the sun, the light and the lighted. 
 He Himself is Brahma, creature, and Maya. 
 He Himself is the manifold form, the infinite space. 
 He is the breath, the word, and the meaning. 
 He Himself is the limit and the limitless, and beyond both the limit 
 
 and the limitless is He, the Pure Being. 
 He is the Immanent Mind in Brahma and in the creature." (vii.) 
 
 '' He is immersed in all consciousness, all joys and all sorrows ; 
 He has no beginning and no end ; 
 He holds all within his bliss." (xxvi.) 
 
 " Before the Unconditioned the Conditioned dances. 
 ' Thou and I are one ! ' His trumpet proclaims." (xLV.) 
 
 " The water-filled pitcher is placed upon water, it has water within 
 and without. 
 It should not he given a name, lest it call forth the error of dualism:' 
 
 (XLVI.). 
 
 (What could possibly be plainer ?) 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 319 
 
 LXXX 
 
 " The true Name is like none other name ! 
 The distinction of the Conditioned from the Unconditioned is but 
 
 a word : 
 The Unconditioned is the seed, the Conditioned is the flower and the 
 
 fruit. 
 Knowledge is the branch, and the Name is the root. 
 Look and see where the root is : happiness shall be yours when you 
 
 come to the root. 
 The root will lead you to the branch, the leaf, the flower, and the 
 
 fruit : r 1 T -x • 
 
 It is the Encounter with the Lord, it is the attainment of bliss, it is 
 the reconciliation of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned." 
 
 Evelyn Underbill points out in her Introduction that 
 the mystic intuition recognizes " a universe of three 
 orders : Becoming, Being, and that which is ' More than 
 
 Being,' i.e. God." 
 
 It is well said. And yet I confess I don't see how the 
 haters of Monism can, v/ithout blushing, quote Kabir 
 any longer in support of their contention ; nor how the 
 apologists for Christianity can conjure a Trinity out of 
 him. His world of " Becoming " is surely the world 
 of Maya; of Illusion. And the world of Illusion, like 
 Dr. McTaggart's Absolute, is " not a Person." 
 
 As for " the error of Dualism "—it may have touched 
 the ingenious Ramanuja ; but it certainly does not seem 
 to have contaminated Kabir. In his world, discussions 
 as to individuality lost, or individuality preserved have 
 little meaning. 
 
 m 
 
 Now it is quite clear that in the classics of Mysticism 
 we are dealing not only with a peculiar kind of experi- 
 ence, but with a peculiar kind of genius. And, again, 
 having made all allowance for the influence of " mystical 
 ill-health," the lover of literature must protest against 
 
320 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 va 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 321 
 
 the grossness of the interpretations that have been 
 brought to these texts. The writings of the great 
 mystics are not all charged with " unsubhmated Ubido." 
 I do not see how we can deny that Julian of Norwich 
 has the imagination and the style of a great poet, as 
 wel as the temperament of a saint. Nobody but a poet 
 could have conceived such blending of loveliness in 
 horror. To bring nothing but the literalism of the 
 pathologist to bear on her Revelations is absurd Even 
 in the worst instances— I am thinking of certain utter- 
 ances of Gertrude of Eisleben (56), of the Blessed Angela 
 of Fohgno, and of Saint Teresa herself— there is a 
 perpetual stnving after something stronger than the 
 soul's passive blessedness, and higher than its voluptuous 
 spiritual ecstasy. This excess of feeling demands and 
 fands expression ; now and then it flashes into meta- 
 physical mtmtion ; again it crystallizes into some perfect 
 and transparent phrase ; and you have the beginning 
 of a naif art ; and where art is there is sublimation. 
 Ihus the Blessed Angela says that the Divine Love 
 came towards me after the manner of a sickle. Not 
 that there was any actual and reasonable likeness but 
 when first it appeared unto me it did not give itself 
 unto me in such abundance as I expected, but part of it 
 was withdrawn. Therefore do I say after the manner 
 of a sickle." The Blessed Angela may or may not be 
 deceived as to the spiritual nature of her experience • 
 however that may be, two things are clear : that she 
 IS usmg the language of poetic imagination, and that 
 she IS strugghng with almost fantastic honesty for 
 precision of language and of thought. It seems to me 
 that, whatever their spiritual value may be, such utter- 
 ances should be judged, not with the crude literalism 
 of her critics and of her admirers, but with the liberal 
 judgment accorded to works of the imagination 
 
 But no. Pro-3Ssor Jung finds megalomania in an 
 ancient Egyptian text, the Hymn of the ascending soul, 
 proclaiming its unity with God. 
 
 ce 
 
 I am the God Atum, I who alone was, 
 
 I am the God Ke at his first splendour, 
 
 I am the great God, self-created, God of Gods, 
 
 To whom no other God compares.*' 
 
 " My impurity is driven away, and the sin which was in me 
 is overcome. I washed myself in those two great pools of water 
 which are in Heracleopolis, in which is purified the sacrifice of 
 mankind for the great God who abideth there." 
 
 " Thou, who standest before me, stretch out to me thy hands ; 
 it is I, I am become one of thee. Daily am I together with my 
 Father Atum" (57). 
 
 He finds resurgent lust in the Brahman's vision of 
 the Absolute. 
 
 " The person (purusha) of the size of a thumb, stands in the 
 middle of the Self, as lo.^d of the past and the future, and hence- 
 forward fears no more. This is that. 
 
 " That person, of the size of a thumb, is like a light without 
 smoke, lord of the past and future, he is the same to-day and 
 to-morrow. This is that." (Katha-Upanishad, ii. 4.) 
 
 " The person (purusha), not larger than a Thumb, dwelling 
 within, always dwelhng in the heart of man, is perceived by the 
 heart, the thought, the mind ; they who know it become im- 
 mortal." (Svetdsvatara-Upanishad, iii. 13.) 
 
 Professor Jung's interpretation of these passages is 
 entirely Freudian (58). 
 
 At this rate there is no reason why he should not 
 find megalomania and resurgent lust in Dedekind's 
 and Cantor's theories of the Infinite, or in Mr. Bertrand 
 EusselFs pursuit of the Fourth Dimension, on the grounds 
 that they involve '' generation of series." 
 
 We have admitted that Psychoanalysis had much 
 
322 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vn 
 
 to say ; but when it has said it, the secret of mystic 
 passion and of mystic certainty remain alike insoluble. 
 Its criticism rests on the assumption that ends have 
 the same form as origins ; which is contrary not only 
 to evolution, but to the psychoanalyst's own pet 
 theory of sublimation. 
 
 But this arraignment of Mysticism need not concern 
 us any more. It only applies to those manifestations 
 that belong to the transition periods of its childhood 
 and its youth. Where they persist, they persist by way 
 of survival or reaction or disease, and they are doomed 
 to disappear. 
 
 For if we are right in supposing that what is super- 
 normal consciousness now will be normal consciousness 
 some day, we may expect its perfection to be reached 
 by forgetfulness of its old labour and effort, unconscious- 
 ness of the very practice that will have made it perfect. 
 Pantheistic Mysticism begins where Mysticisms that 
 are not pantheistic end. It takes for granted that, as 
 between God and the world, the Absolute and the 
 finite selves, there is no separation. For all her CathoHc 
 sympathies, Evelyn Underhill is a pantheist at heart. 
 Witness her " Immanence " and " Theophanies." J 
 
 " I come in the little things 
 Saith the Lord. 
 Yea ! on the glancing wings 
 Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet 
 Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet 
 Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes 
 That peep from out the brake, I stand confest. 
 On every nest 
 
 Where feathery Patience is content to brood 
 And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize 
 Of motherhood there doth my Godhead rest." 
 
 And M. Bergson, though his logic lands him some- 
 times in an upsetting Duahsm, is a good pantheist at 
 
 vn 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 
 323 
 
 heart. He sees as the mystic sees, that the Elan Vital 
 is the energy of one Being which makes matter its 
 means of manifestation, its vehicle, its tool. He sees 
 that the process of Becoming is a spiritual process of 
 ascension. 
 
 Thus, though we cannot say what the Mysticism of 
 the future will be, we may be pretty sure what it will 
 not be. It will not be sickly ; it will not be morbid 
 and hysterical, or sentimental. In exchanging God the 
 Father for God the Absolute Self, it will have lost that 
 irresponsible dependence which has kept men and 
 women for centuries in a pathetic infancy. Sooner or 
 later the mystic has to grow up like other people. He 
 will know that he fulfils the absolute purpose best by 
 trying to become, as far as possible, a self-determined 
 being. He knows already that, if " auto-suggestion " 
 is anything at all, it is self-determination. 
 
 And he will not be violent. " The Kingdom of 
 Heaven suffereth violence until now, and the violent 
 take it by force." That was where the imperfect mystic 
 made his great mistake. Just as primitive man desired 
 to get by magic physical things that would have come 
 to him without it of their own accord, in due season, 
 so the imperfect mystic desires to get spiritual things 
 by mysticism that will come to him without it of their 
 own accord in due season. The savage is trying to 
 force Nature's hand. The imperfect mystic is trying 
 to force God's hand. 
 
 Not so the accomplished lover of the Absolute. His 
 passion may be overpowering and importunate, but 
 not its method. He will not forestall its perfect con- 
 summation by one hour. The more certain he is, the 
 more he can afford to wait. 
 
 " Kabir says : . . . stay where you are, and all 
 things shall come to you in time." 
 
vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 325 
 
VIII 
 
 K 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 It is clear that we have to choose between some form of 
 PluraUsm and Monism. 
 
 There is nothing new in this. It is the old problem 
 and the old choice that has lain before Philosophy in 
 the beginning ; but with this difierence, that whereas 
 Philosophy had no valid grounds for a conclusion as long 
 as it traveUed on the " high priori road," it is now in a 
 rather better position for bringing its conclusions to the 
 
 test of experience. 
 
 It is not, and it cannot be, a question of certainty. 
 No reasonable person demands certainty at this time 
 of day. The utmost he is entitled to demand is a 
 certain balance of probabilities. Perhaps not even that. 
 Perhaps only here a balance and there a chance, and 
 there, again, an ofE-chance, a bare possibility. 
 
 So, instead of asking Which conclusion is the more 
 certain ? we may only ask Which hypothesis, Pluralism 
 or Monism, is the more likely, the more in keeping with 
 
 the facts ? 
 
 This is not a pragmatic question, nor is it a pragmatic 
 test. It is not to be confused with the demand that 
 metaphysical truth should square with the require- 
 ments of human conduct. By the ''facts" I do 
 not mean merely the facts of life. I mean the sum 
 total of our knowledge, or knowledges up to date. 
 
 327 
 
 T ^ / 
 
328 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vni 
 
 Our knowledge of consciousness and our knowledge of 
 knowledge must take their place in the collection 
 together with our knowledge of the so-called external 
 world. 
 
 The facts, therefore, will not all stand on an equal 
 footing The ultimate appeal must always be to the 
 knowledge of knowledge. 
 
 If the facts favour one hypothesis more than the 
 other then we may ask further, which hypothesis has 
 tne better metaphysical support? If we are lucky 
 enough to get a reasonable conformity on all heads, then 
 and not till then we may ask further which hypothesis 
 Pluralism or Monism, is on the whole more satisfying 
 to coUective human emotion and to the moral sense? 
 And we must be very careful that by these we do not 
 mean more satisfying to me." 
 
 At first sight it looks as if Pluralism had aU the facts 
 on Its side. It can point to a universe in which the earth 
 is a comparatively insignificant dot on a field covered 
 v^th several miUion heavenly bodies, a physical universe 
 of apparently unending multiplicity, of apparently 
 unceasing change and flux. It can break up the flux 
 Itself into an infinity of elements of which you can only 
 say that each is where it is at the instant when it is 
 bupposing matter to be made up of an infinite number 
 of atoms (or, if you like, of electrons), it cannot be said 
 with positive certainty that any atom yet discovered 
 IS ultimate and indivisible. Pluralism can refer us to a 
 world of selves, of psychic entities, whose chief distinc- 
 tion is that they repel and repudiate each other, besides 
 harbouring a host of conflicting instincts, desires, and 
 memories, whose presence makes for continual disrup- 
 tion ; consciousness itself abounding with irreconcilable 
 multiphcities. Foremost among these are pain and 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 329 
 
 evil, which outrage every just and compassionate and 
 holy instinct of the selves. 
 
 Pluralism can even insist with considerable plausi- 
 bihty on a final and irreconcilable dualism between these 
 two worlds. 
 
 And its very Logic, its knowledge of knowledge, is 
 atomistic. 
 
 And yet the Pluralist himself must admit that this 
 is an inadequate and superficial view of the facts. The 
 more we explore this multipUcity, 'the more it reveals 
 the secret of its unity. And this unity is not simply 
 imposed on multiplicity by immediate consciousness 
 and by the laws of thought. It is not only a question 
 of the way we are obliged to think things, but of the 
 way things behave. Every generalization of physical 
 science, and every correlation of physical laws, amounts 
 to a plain statement that within the range of the general- 
 ization the order of things is one. The law of conserva- 
 tion of energy is nothing if not a confession that, as 
 far as the physical world goes, incorrigible multiplicity 
 and difference do not obtain. It would even seem that, 
 ultimately, the entire physical world is definable in terms 
 of energy. And if the ultimate constitution of matter 
 is invisible, imponderable, impalpable to any sense (its 
 density disappeared long ago) ; if all the grossness, all 
 the heaviness and hardness, all the intractable lumpiness 
 of matter, all its so-called material qualities are not to 
 be found in it, but only in our consciousness of it, we need 
 no longer juggle with terms that are so interchacgeable. 
 The realist and idealist are both agreed that there is no 
 physical It behind those qualities. And unless we are 
 satisfied that he is right in contending that they exist, 
 '' on their own," we may as well say straight out that 
 these two worlds, anyhow, are one ; and that the ultimate 
 reality of " matter " is spiritual energy. 
 
330 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vin 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 331 
 
 We have seen that it is his implacable moral con- 
 sciousness that urges the Pragmatist to plant his Plural- 
 ism in the very heart of reality itself ; and to insist that 
 there is no ultimate spiritual energy, one in many 
 forms, but that there are as many energies as there 
 are forms, and that spiritual energy is only one of them. 
 I hope it has also been seen how his moral consciousness 
 goes back on him, and lands him in the oneness he 
 abhors. 
 
 And in the world of living organisms, before a moral 
 consciousness was ever heard of, we saw that the Life- 
 Force, the Will-to-live, revealed itself in the process of 
 evolution as one indestructible energy, and one desire 
 striving for fulfilment and for sublimation, an energy 
 made manifest in such forms and in such a manner as 
 to declare its spiritual source. We saw that the mere 
 physical process was only intelligible if we admitted 
 the psychic factors of desire and design. We saw the 
 growth and building up and shaping of the organism 
 by the psyche for its own ends. We saw that desire 
 and design and performance were only inteUigible if we 
 presupposed a self that is something over and above its 
 memory. We saw that biology, so far from merging 
 the individual self in its own ancestral heritage, pre- 
 supposes its independence and its supreme importance 
 as a factor in heredity itself. 
 
 We found confirmation of this view, where we least 
 expected it, in the facts of psychopathology and the 
 results of psychoanalysis. They showed us one in- 
 destructible primal energy at work in all the functions 
 of the psyche. They showed the persistent symbols 
 of its presence throughout the whole region of the 
 " unconscious." They showed that all aberrations and 
 perversions are reversions, the turning back of the 
 individual on the ancestral paths by which he came. 
 
 They also showed by what processes of sublimation he 
 asserts himself against the backward pull of the instincts 
 that tend to merge him with the race. 
 
 Again, Psychology, besides endorsing the biological 
 evidence, showed us that consciousness is a unity that 
 could hardly be if there were no self over and above 
 consciousness, unaffected by its multiplicity, its change 
 and flux. We found that the self is not passive, and 
 that thought has its own energetic way of dealing with 
 the stuff of consciousness ; that it multiplies and divides, 
 makes finite and makes infinite, and that of all that it 
 scatters it gathers again. Apart from the work of 
 thought, we found that the stuff of consciousness is not 
 divided ; that it is given in a continuous unity ; that 
 its sequences overlap ; and that states of consciousness 
 have more than sequence ; as William James says, they 
 have '' thickness." And we saw that if anything ever 
 was one it is this thickness. 
 
 We found that here our choice lay between Animism 
 and Psychophysical Parallelism. We saw how the 
 Dualism of the parallelist broke down under an examina- 
 tion of the psychophysical facts. 
 
 We also found that Psychology was powerless to 
 solve its own problems, and flung us back on Metaphysics. 
 We had then to choose between some form of Pluralism 
 and Monism. We were obliged to dismiss all a ^priori 
 arguments for Monism as worthless, so long as they re- 
 mained unsupported by actual experience, and so long 
 as they left whole tracts of experience out of their 
 account. But so far as they explain experience, and 
 so far as experience corroborates them, they are not to 
 be lightly set aside. After all, our way of thinking 
 justifies itself. Where the necessities of thought agree 
 with the necessities implied by the behaviour of con- 
 sciousness and the behaviour of things, they must count 
 
 /' 
 
332 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 as real necessities. Our problem then was : Is unity 
 or IS boundless multiplicity the supreme necessity of 
 thought ? 
 
 Comparing one philosophical system with another, 
 we thought we saw that the end and goal of the 
 metaphysical quest has been mainly one ultimate prin- 
 ciple, rather than two or more ultimate principles. 
 We found this secret passion for the Absolute and the 
 One breaking out in the very Dualisms that repudiated 
 It ; and we traced the root and the cause of all philo- 
 sophical dilemmas to the search for oneness and for 
 ultimate reality in the wrong place. Pragmatism and 
 Humanism stood out as the great exceptions. If you 
 cannot say that they have looked for ultimate reality 
 in the wrong place, since they were not looking for it 
 at all, they have looked on at the usurpation of its place 
 and power. And Pragmatism betrayed its own inherent 
 dilemmas. 
 
 On the balance of the evidence before us, we were 
 driven to the conclusion that the ultimate reality of 
 things and the ultimate reality of consciousness are one ; 
 and that this one reality is Spirit. 
 
 We might have rested there, complacent and happy, 
 but for the New Realism whose violence took our 
 kingdom of heaven by storm. 
 
 And so our problem narrowed itself down. We had 
 to choose between our Spiritualistic Monism and this 
 particular brand of Realistic Plurahsm. 
 
 We distinguished between the premisses and the 
 conclusions of the New Realism ; between its science 
 and its system; and again between its construction 
 and its critique. We found that while much of its 
 critique must be of enduring value in philosophy, it 
 applied rather to the pseudo-monisms than to ours. 
 We found that, though its foundations were sure as the 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 333 
 
 axioms of pure mathematics and of Analytic Logic 
 could make them, the superstructures reared on this 
 imposing base were somewhat lacking in coherence and 
 solidity. We found that in applying the axioms and 
 conclusions of the mathematical and physical sciences 
 as a test of the reality of phenomena, it has brought us 
 no nearer to the root of the question in debate — the 
 nature of ultimate reality. And though we were pre- 
 pared to admit it was within its rights in renouncing the 
 quest of ultimate reality, we found that it failed to 
 establish its negative conclusions beyond the reach of 
 doubt ; and that its positive conclusions yielded con- 
 tradictions every bit as compromising (to it) as those it 
 undertook to solve. 
 
 We also saw that it was possible to state the principle 
 of Spiritualistic Monism in terms which at any rate 
 exclude contradiction. 
 
 Thus we conceded that, as a restatement of mathe- 
 matical and logical first principles, the New Realism 
 is almost as impregnable as it professes to be. But, 
 in spite of its combined air of certainty and scientific 
 caution, we could not admit that as a system of meta- 
 physics it justifies its existence better than other philo- 
 sophies that plunge. 
 
 Therefore my imaginary monist refused to relinquish 
 the principle he (perhaps rashly) stakes his all on. He 
 refused to be driven from his position by the multiplicity 
 of anything that Pluralism, or Science for that matter, 
 has to show. He is not going to be scared out of it by 
 the bluff of physical Atomism. He does not care how 
 many elements are involved in magnetic force, or how 
 many tricks the physicist's mysterious electrons play 
 him. Why should he ? Once his Absolute starts the 
 business of appearing, a little multiplicity more or less 
 cannot break it. He would not be greatly distressed if 
 
334 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 the law of conservation of energy were exploded to- 
 morrow, as it very well may be. It does not matter 
 to him how many appearances and laws of appearances 
 there may be— two or three million, or an infinite 
 number. If anything, he prefers an infinite number, 
 because it provides him with the reassuring contradic- 
 tions he is looking for. 
 
 It will be said of my monist that he cannot clear 
 himself of one reproach : from first to last he is only 
 juggling with the unity of consciousness, which his 
 opponents do not admit to be a unity at all. And he 
 must admit, not that he has helped himself to the unity 
 of consciousness, but that the unity of consciousness 
 has helped him considerably. It is only not a unity 
 if you adopt the extreme realistic theory of knowledge, 
 which he thinks he has shown good reason for repudiat- 
 ing. It is the only thorough-going unity he knows. 
 He finds this unity, not in or among his states of con- 
 sciousness, shaken about with them in the same bag; 
 as it were, but in the irreducible, ultimate fact of self- 
 hood. He finds that the Self resists all attempts to 
 analyse it into the separate states or stages of its own 
 consciousness ; that it is more than the sum of these 
 states ; more, that is to say, than consciousness. 
 
 To this Something More he gives the name of Spirit ; 
 for the reason that while, in ultimate analysis, matter 
 may be resolvable into terms of immaterial being; 
 spirit, or self, is not by any means so resolvable into 
 terms of matter. 
 
 Before Monism can work it must have a principle 
 which shall be both static and dynamic. But as long 
 as the monist was tied to his bare epistemology, he 
 could find no means of defining '' Thought " so as to 
 include in it things that are not " thoughts." To say 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 335 
 
 that " Thought thinks itself " is not enough. From 
 the imsubstantial forms of its thinking it can build no 
 bridge from its own world to the world where things 
 are and are done. But Spirit can be supposed to do 
 things. He can define it as that which thinks, and wills, 
 and energizes in one undivided act. His principle is as 
 static and dynamic as he pleases. 
 
 If he is asked whether he has any precise conception 
 of the principle to which he gives the name of Spirit, 
 he can at least answer that his definition amounts to 
 a fairly precise conception. 
 
 If he is asked if he has any conception at all of the 
 ultimate nature of Self or Spirit, he can retort that he 
 has no more conception of the ultimate nature of Self 
 or Spirit than the new realist has of the ultimate con- 
 stitution of matter, or of consciousness, or of universals ; 
 and he claims the realist's right not to go behind reality ; 
 but to regard it as itself ultimate and irreducible. 
 
 If he is asked how he proposes to justify his leap 
 from the presumably finite and relative self or spirit, 
 of which he has a more or less precise conception, to the 
 Self or Spirit he has declared to be absolute, he must 
 own that he is not justified in making any leap. He 
 can only say that in the unity of his own consciousness 
 the term spirit covers will and action and passion, as 
 well as thought and sense. He finds that love and 
 thought and will behave as energies, as motive powers, 
 or even as causes, within the unity of his consciousness. 
 He has every reason for concluding that they behave 
 as energies and motive powers, or even as causes in other 
 consciousnesses besides his own. And he sees no reason 
 why they should not behave with greater energy and 
 motive power and causal efficiency within greater con- 
 sciousnesses than his or other people's. He finds that 
 the behaviour of this finite and relative consciousness 
 
336 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 of his, its knowledge and its relation to its knowledge, 
 are inexplicable .without the assumption of an infinite 
 and absolute consciousness, as the ground of all its 
 knowing. He finds that the very existence of his self 
 is inexplicable without the assumption of an absolute, 
 self-subsisting Self, as the ground of its existence and his 
 real Self. And he sees no reason why the spiritual 
 energies of such a Self should not be equal to the evolu- 
 tion of such manifestations as this spectacular universe 
 and its spectators. 
 
 In the matter of manifestation he knows that, if his 
 own self is to know itself and to make itself known, it 
 must think and feel and will and act through forms and 
 forces that are called material. And so he sees no reason 
 why the Absolute Spirit, his real Self, desiring to know 
 itself, and to make itself known, should not manifest 
 itself also through forms and forces that are called 
 material. 
 
 He sees no reason why not ; and nobody has yet ad- 
 vanced any really valid and satisfactory reason why not. 
 
 If this is to juggle, he juggles. 
 
 No really valid reason why not. But one apparently 
 valid reason, which is the crux of Pantheism : the 
 alleged absurdity of a reality knowing itself and making 
 itself known through what is, a^ter all, an endless pro- 
 cession of spectacular illusions. At this rate, it may be 
 said, the Absolute is juggling, too. And there is a sort 
 of general feeling that it is beneath its dignity to juggle. 
 
 Now it is pretty certain, judging by appearances, that 
 if the Absolute had stood on its dignity it would never 
 have appeared at all. It is also certain that, so far as 
 there is any meaning in this objection, it is our sense of 
 dignity that is offended. And our sense of dignity is 
 part of the illusion. 
 
 vin 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 337 
 
 Still, a talent for producing endless illusions about 
 itself does seem incompatible with a veracious Reality. 
 We might, of course, credit Reality with the utmost 
 veracity of its absolute and transcendent Self, and charge 
 all the illusion to the account of the finite selves. • But 
 the trouble is that, on the theory, ReaUty is also sup- 
 posed to be appearing to itself, getting to know itself, 
 introducing itself to itself, as it were, through an endless 
 round of cosmic " At Homes.'' 
 
 If the round is really endless, it cannot, any more 
 than a finite self, succeed in completely making its own 
 acquaintance. And the pluraHst has every right to 
 ask the monist what he is going to do about it ? 
 
 Now, I think, it must be owned that this endless 
 procession or series of manifestations does land the 
 monist in a very awkward predicament, if he really 
 means that a complete knowledge of every single one 
 of its finite manifestations in time is necessary to the 
 Self's absolute knowledge of itself. The only thing 
 he can do is not to take that line. His only possible 
 reply is, that on Realism's own showing, knowledge 
 depends on universals, not on simple enumeration of 
 particulars ; and that, if it is not necessary for a finite 
 self to reel off a list of all the particulars it knows, before 
 it can be said to know anjrthing, it must be still more 
 unnecessary for an absolute and infinite Self to know 
 every single one of its manifestations before it knows 
 Itself. On the contrary, just because it is absolute, 
 as well as infinite, it must be supposed to know itself 
 completely at each instant of its manifestation. 
 
 There are, however, considerable difficulties about 
 an Absolute Reality that insists on pubhshing itself, 
 as it were, in serial instalments. But I think they 
 must be charged to the account of the finite selves, who 
 are obHged to '' take in " their Absolute in serial form. 
 
338 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 They arise from our persistent habit of regarding the 
 Self's knowledge of the finite as a finite knowledge, and 
 its passage through time as part of its eternity. 
 
 Practically the re\erse problem is presented by the 
 existence of evil. Ihe pragmatist complains that you 
 are *' taking a moral holiday " if you refuse to regard 
 such things as badness, and nastiness, and silliness, 
 and ugliness, and a kick in the ribs, as so many knock- 
 you-down arguments against Monism. 
 
 Well, you have not got to take a moral holiday to 
 see that they are staggering facers for the realist, who 
 regards them as eternal and immutable realities. The 
 reaUst having, apparently, no other outlet for his cosmic 
 emotion, grows almost lyrical over his incorruptible 
 world of the universals, enduring for ever and ever, 
 out of space, out of time, in their stainless, intangible 
 perfection. But, if goodness, and niceness, and wisdom, 
 and loveliness, and the absence of a kick in the ribs are 
 reahties that endure for ever and ever, so are badness 
 and nastiness and the rest of it. I do not know how 
 the realist contrives to have his emotion. I suppose he 
 just thinks of Beauty and Goodness sitting up there, and 
 tries to forget that his wife's temper and the kitchen 
 saucepan are sitting there too. He cannot conjure 
 them out of his universe by any juggUng. They are 
 absolute. He has said it. 
 
 What is even worse, every particular instance of 
 badness and nastiness and silliness is absolute too. 
 The reahst may say that silliness is not silly ; but what 
 he means is that it is something far silUer. 
 
 But the monist saves the essential cleanness and 
 sanity of the universe in denying that nastiness and 
 silliness and a kick in the ribs subsist, as such, and as 
 realities, in the transcendent Ufe of Spirit. He denies 
 that the Absolute is obUged to hsten for ever and ever 
 
 vni 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 339 
 
 to the stories that Brown tells Robinson when Mrs. 
 Robinson has left the room. If, in the infinite rever- 
 berations of the universe, there endure infinite echoes 
 of Brown's story, they are echoes that only finite and 
 incarnate spirits catch. 
 
 And if yoa insist that, as inunanent in the finite and 
 all too incarnate spirit of Robinson, the Absolute has 
 heard Brown's story and enjoyed it ; and that, as im- 
 manent in the finite spirit of Brown, it has also told it, 
 the monist will have no objection ; provided you add 
 that, as immanent in the person of Mrs. Robinson, it 
 has disapproved of it (and of Brown, and of Robinson) 
 severely. 
 
 He might go farther and affirm that there is justifica- 
 tion for the apparently incredible and inexcusable exist- 
 ence of Brown and Robinson. Light is thrown on their 
 mystery by the existence of Mrs. Robinson, whose 
 spiritual beauty is set off and made more desirable by 
 contrast, whose spiritual strength grows by exercise 
 in the gymnasium of spiritual adversity that marriage 
 to Robinson provides for her. 
 
 "Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should 
 be prized ? " 
 
 That — ^the dependence of goodness upon evil, the 
 endurance of evil for the sake of good — was the old Ideal- 
 ism's solution of the moral problem. Not a bad solution, 
 as far as it went, whenever you could get it to go. 
 
 " The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound." 
 
 Yes ; it is all very soul-stirring and upUfting ; but 
 it is not true in the world where its truth matters ; this 
 tragic world of space and time. The pleasant fancy of 
 evil as negation is no more convincing to a logical mind 
 than it is consoling and satisfying to the unreasoning 
 
340 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 heart. It won't work. It won't wash. Go to the 
 victims of war and pestilence, and tell them that their 
 torment is only the opposite of rapture. Tell a starving 
 population that its hunger is merely the absence of 
 satisfaction. Tell the sweated workers in the East End 
 that their poverty is purely relative to affluence, and 
 but subserves another's gain; tell a mother who has 
 just lost her only son that bereavement is simply the 
 negation of possession, and see how it washes and works. 
 
 Besides, if you are going to take it that way, goodness 
 will be null in itself, will be nought in itself, will be 
 sound implying silence, and depending on silence. 
 
 There is nothing to be said for pain and evil, thus 
 devitalized. You have robbed them of their only title 
 to existence when you have taken away their positive 
 and stimulating character, their antagonism, their brave, 
 stoic challenge to the fighter. They are not negative. 
 They are tremendous powers. They call forth all the 
 stern virtues and all the tendernesses that without 
 them could not have been. They make and remake 
 the souls of saints and heroes. By even sordid suffering, 
 decently borne, the humblest and most insignificant soul 
 may be exalted. 
 
 You may know that all this is true. You may know 
 that great suffering, great adversity, may be the greatest 
 and the best thing that can happen to anybody. You 
 may know that your own suffering, your own adversity 
 was the best thing that could have happened to you ; 
 and you would not, if you could, have spared yourself 
 one single pang of it. But you also know that there 
 are vast millions of other people for whom suffering 
 and adversity are not good at all ; for whom none of 
 these truths are true. And when all is said and done, 
 it is intolerable that these people should suffer. It is 
 intolerable that the heroic and tender virtues of a few 
 
 vni 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 341 
 
 superior persons should be nourished on the sufferings 
 of these millions. It is really paying too big a price 
 for individual virtue. Nobody has any right to be 
 either compassionate or heroic at his or her neighbour's 
 expense. And no theory can make it tolerable. 
 
 But it may be more intolerable on one theory than 
 on another. And it is most intolerable on the theory 
 that makes pain and evil real and absolute and eternal, 
 and that allows for no vision of any state of being in 
 which they cease to be. The one thing that helps us 
 to endurance is our sense that pain and evil have not, 
 after all, an immortal life. The one thing that makes 
 them intelligible is the assumption that the only life 
 they have is an unreal one. The one thing that would 
 make them bearable would be the unshaken conviction 
 that we have an immortal life in which they are over- 
 come ; in which we receive, or make for ourselves, or 
 give to others whom we have injured, compensation. 
 
 (The demand for compensation is a humanistic and 
 pragmatic demand, and belongs to another line of 
 argument altogether.) 
 
 Of purely metaphysical theories. Monism is the only 
 one that supports our sense of the illusion of evil and 
 the assumption of its unreality. 
 
 Now, true as it may be, his theory of the mere rela- 
 tivity of evil does not carry the monist very far. Still, 
 as long as he had no other solution of the problem, he 
 was glad enough to be deUvered from the horror of real 
 evil, eternalized and absolute, even at the cost of parting 
 for ever with real good, eternalized and absolute. 
 
 But this awful choice is no longer binding on him. 
 
 The New Eealism has taught him how he may raise 
 up the New Idealism on the ruins of the old. 
 
 He is dead right about the relativity of the e\dl that 
 we know. The goods and evils of our earthly life are 
 
 i 
 
342 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 343 
 
 purely relative both to each other and to human con- 
 ditions. They are even interchangeable. Goodness 
 may be sought for, now in this set of actions, now in 
 that. It may be attached to things once accounted 
 evil. Evil may be attached to things once accounted 
 good. Goodness itself remains as an eternal and im- 
 mutable Idea. 
 
 It may or it may not be real. The finite selves do 
 not know it as a reaHty. They only know it as a mysteri- 
 ous logical function by which its appearances are recog- 
 nized and known. What it may be in itself or " in the 
 Absolute " they do not know. 
 
 Badness also remains as an eternal and immutable 
 Idea. So that we do not seem to have gained much. 
 But we have gained this, that we are not compelled to 
 attribute reahty to badness. It also is, for us, the 
 mysterious and harmless logical function by which its 
 appearances are recognized and known. What it may 
 be in itself, or *' in the Absolute," the finite selves do 
 not know. 
 
 They only know (and this is our immense gain) that 
 in themselves, or in the Absolute, Goodness and Badness 
 are no longer relative to each other. 
 
 Therefore it will not follow that if one is real in the 
 Absolute Self, the other also is real ; and that if one is 
 the complete and perfect expression of the transcendent 
 nature of that Self, the other is its complete and perfect 
 expression. It will not follow that, if Goodness is all 
 powerful. Badness is all powerful too. It will not follow 
 that badness is more than the logical function of know- 
 ledge we already know it to be. 
 
 But all these consequences follow, rigorously and 
 inevitably, from the realistic theory of universals. The 
 New Realism closes the door to any possibility that the 
 lovers of Goodness can endure to contemplate. 
 
 ^ 
 
 The New Idealism leaves the door open to our vision 
 of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, eternal and real, 
 surpassing all goods and beauties and truths we know ; 
 incorruptible ; inassailable by evil. 
 
 It may be that some universals are only logical 
 functions, and that such Ideas will have no more than 
 a potential immortality, and that evil, ugliness, and 
 the rest may be such Ideas. So that, for a Self that 
 refused to know evil and ugliness, or had no longer any 
 use for such knowledge, evil and ugliness would literally 
 not be. 
 
 We have seen that the old Idealism, with its doctrine 
 of relativity, deprived us of our highest moral ideal, 
 without any compensation for the loss beyond its aca- 
 demic assurance of the illusory character of evil. We 
 have seen that Pragmatism and Humanism provided 
 no metaphysical ground for the ethical claim they make 
 paramount, and that Pragmatism, at any rate, sets up 
 a false and unethical criterion of the Good. We have 
 seen that the New Realism threatens us with the eternal 
 reality of evil. Where so much is uncertain, I do not 
 want to claim a superior certainty for this tentative 
 reconstruction that I call the New Idealism ; but I do 
 think that, more surely than any other theory, it opens 
 a way of escape from the worst entanglements of the 
 moral problem. 
 
 Meanwhile, it should be clearly understood that my 
 monist's distinction between appearance and reality is 
 not a distinction that robs one single appearance of its 
 own peculiar and relative reality. On the contrary, he 
 would not be a good monist if he did not contend that 
 the absolute Reality which is Spirit is its own appear- 
 ances. His principle is such that it confers more reality 
 on appearances than it takes away. There is no earthly 
 
 M 
 
/ 
 
 344 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 reason why lie should not call himself a Eealist, except 
 that the title has already been appropriated by his 
 opponents. He is only obliged to insist on his distinc- 
 tion in order to resist the conclusion they offer him as 
 an alternative. 
 
 What he says is : This multiplicity and change that 
 you find in the universe I also find. There is not one 
 sensible or intelligible fact in the whole collection to 
 which I should refuse the name of reality, provided it 
 be understood that not one of these is the Reality I am 
 looking for. There is no sort of necessity to go out and 
 look for multiplicity and change when you have got 
 them all around you. I want to know what, if anything, 
 lies behind or at the bottom of multiplicity and change. 
 You say there is nothing behind or at the bottom 
 of them, and that change and multiplicity are sufficient 
 unto themselves. And I repeat : Are they ? I ask 
 you how there can be multiplicity without something 
 that multiplies itself, or change without something 
 that persists throughout change. 
 
 It is not that you cannot conceive multiplicity with- 
 out unity, or change without the unchanging. You can 
 very well conceive them by a process of logical dis- 
 integration. It is that, that without the unchanging 
 One, the many and the changing cannot be. -Take 
 away the persistent reality underlying any process of 
 change, or any chain of changes; and both process 
 and chain split up into an infinite series, of which you 
 cannot say of any one moment that it constitutes a 
 change. Everything is at the infinitely divisible instant 
 when it is. You have, in fact, no change at all, but 
 the monotony of an endless series of absolute entities. 
 The one underlying reality, then, is the only means by 
 which a process of change can be carried on ; and this, 
 whether you regard a process of change, incorrectly, 
 
 345 
 
 as an unending chain laid qut along one straight line, 
 or, correctly, as an intricate system of apparently un- 
 ending chains. 
 
 Whatever charges can be brought against this form 
 of Monism, it cannot be taxed with ''thinness" or 
 barrenness or immobiKty. Nothing could well be 
 thicker, more multitudinous, and less monotonous than 
 the fife of a Self and Spirit that is one. But by every 
 retrenchment of its unity— that is to say, by cutting it 
 ofi from any section of the universe— you at once diminish 
 its multiplicity, and deprive your section of the possi- 
 biHty of change. By removing it altogether, the plural- 
 istic reahst knocks the bottom out of his pluriverse. 
 
 It is even more obvious that, if this Self or Spirit is 
 to be conscious of the change and multipHcity of its 
 own manifestations, it must be one. For if it ceased 
 to be one and the same self at each moment of change, 
 no moment of these momentary selves could be more 
 than one momentary monotone. Thus PluraKstic 
 Reahsm robs its spectacle of any continuous spectator. 
 And so, on a balance of considerations, my monist 
 refuses to relinquish his principle. 
 
 At the same time he must be prepared to relinquish 
 it the instant he receives proof positive of its untenability. 
 This is as good as a confession that he holds it provision- 
 ally, as a likely hypothesis, and not as an absolute 
 certainty. 
 
 He is painfully aware that the very existence of his 
 Absolute Spirit is problematical ; that, outside certain 
 extremely rare forms of mystical experience, it is not 
 discoverable by any experimental method known to 
 man. Neither is it provable by any strict deduction 
 from known laws of the existent. He cannot uphold 
 it either as a conclusion or as a necessary presupposition 
 of all thinking. All he can say is that his hypothesis 
 
346 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 does not conflict with any proved certainty, and that it 
 seems to him to cover more facts than any other that 
 has been put forth hitherto. He might even urge that 
 there are some facts the outer fringe of which no other 
 hypothesis so much as touches. 
 
 This brings us to the end of our reasoned arguments. 
 
 II 
 
 Throughout the foregoing metaphysical discussion 
 one point must have struck the unmetaphysical reader, 
 as it certainly strikes the mere writer : that a good half 
 of the problems under consideration arose solely from 
 the limitations of language. We can argue with perfect 
 propriety as to whether things are or are not out of time 
 and out of space ; and whether one body is or is not 
 outside another body ; and whether it is a part or a 
 whole ; and if a part, whether of this whole or that. Of 
 things occupying space we can argue as to whether they 
 run parallel to each other or not, or whether they stand 
 at the circumference or the centre. 
 
 But when it comes to discussing whether things are 
 inside or outside of consciousness; whether conscious- 
 ness is a part or a whole ; whether, if it runs, it runs 
 parallel with physical processes, or runs altogether in 
 some other manner ; whether, if it stands, it stands at 
 the circumference or the centre ; and whether conscious- 
 ness stands or runs at all, it seems almost obvious that 
 we are being made the victims of our own metaphors. 
 
 Ideahsts and realists seem to have suffered most 
 from the confusion that results. When the idealist 
 says that the world arises in consciousness, quite palpably 
 he lies. But when the realist says that consciousness 
 arises in the world he is no nearer to the truth. When 
 he says that the world exists outside consciousness, he 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 347 
 
 can only mean that it exists outside his body. When 
 he says consciousness is a part of his pluriverse and not 
 the whole, what he means, or should mean, is that his 
 body is a part of it. Again, when the idealist says that 
 consciousness is the centre of his universe, again, palpably, 
 he Ues ; not because he has said too much, but because 
 he has said too little. 
 
 For, when the reaKst swears by all his reahties that 
 consciousness stands at the circumference, he is perjured. 
 When he reveals his pluriverse as an infinite number of 
 entities, mutually repellent, yet co-existing, even inter- 
 penetrating, much as the infinite planes of space inter- 
 penetrate each other, he may be getting at the truth of 
 the matter as nearly as his spectacular methods will 
 allow him. But, when he invites you to consider 
 consciousness as only one of those entities, standing to 
 all the others in the relation of a spectator to a spectacle, 
 then, in spite of all the useful distinctions that he makes 
 between things in space and time, and things out of space 
 and time, it is clear that he is visuaKsing consciousness 
 as somehow occuppng both. 
 
 If we once grasp the utter irrelevance of all this 
 symboHc language as applying to consciousness and the 
 relation of subject to object, half the difficulties in accept- 
 ing some conscious principle as the ultimate reality will 
 have disappeared; and the pluralisms claim to have 
 decentralized Philosophy falls through. 
 
 After this, the unphilosophic reader will perhaps see 
 no reason why the idealist lamb should not he down 
 by the pluralist lion. But the reason is clear enough. 
 The lamb does not do the smallest damage to the Uon. 
 He does not interfere with any one of his adventures. 
 It is the Kon that will not consent to live and let five. 
 The prestige of Spirit is seriously endangered by the 
 restrictions ReaUsm has laid on it. But Reality is not 
 
348 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 349 
 
 one whit tlie worse because Idealism chooses to regard 
 Spirit as its source. It is no more a dance of bloodless 
 categories than it was before. Existence remains as 
 full-blooded and gorgeously coloured, as variegated and 
 multitudinous, as everlastingly exciting, mysterious, 
 and surprising whether you call it the manifestation of 
 Spirit or a collection of ultimate realities. 
 
 The only question that concerns us is : Which theory 
 is the more likely to be true ? 
 
 We found that on a balance of the reasoned evidence 
 we had some grounds for supposing Spiritualistic Monism 
 more likely to be true than Pluralistic ReaUsm, and no 
 valid grounds for supposing it to be false. 
 
 But, if the reasoned evidence had failed us so far as 
 to leave the balance even, we should not then have 
 despaired. For we found a mass of evidence over and 
 above ; which, whether we regard it as springing from 
 a higher and purer, or from a lower and more troubled 
 source than reason, is not altogether to be gainsaid. 
 We found that one of our oldest, deepest, and most 
 enduring possessions is the sense of the Unseen. We 
 saw it grow from a primitive sense, a blind and savage 
 instinct, to a transcendent spiritual passion. We dis- 
 tinguished between the higher and the lower forms of 
 Mysticism. We found that, when criticism had done its 
 worst, it was possible to separate the purer from the 
 baser elements of the same emotion ; and that after 
 the most implacable analysis there remained something 
 indestructible, irreducible, indefinable, bearing its own 
 peculiar certainty. 
 
 At the same time we acknowledged that the certainty 
 of spiritual instinct is one thing, and the certainty of 
 reason is another; and that the highest degree of 
 certainty can only be reached when at all points the 
 
 two corroborate and support each other. Such a degree 
 of certainty we are very far from having reached, 
 though at some points we may have found this corro- 
 boration and support. 
 
 in 
 
 We have now to find the bearing of our conclusions, 
 such as they are, on the question of Personal Immortality. 
 
 Before we can do this, however, we shall have to 
 consider certain evidence from other sources, sources 
 that we have left, so far, unexplored. 
 
 First of all, there is the huge mass of that so-called 
 " evidence," which the Society for Psychical Research 
 makes it its business to investigate and sift-; the evidence 
 drawn from the communications of mediums, from 
 automatic writing, from " cross-correspondences " ; the 
 alleged apparitions of the departed, " materiaUzations," 
 and veridical dreams. 
 
 I do not propose to investigate and sift this evidence 
 all over again. People who are interested in " Spiritual- 
 ism," critically or otherwise, should study the Kterature 
 of the subject for themselves. When they have read 
 and digested the Journals and Proceedings of the 
 Society up to date, and the records of foreign organiza- 
 tions devoted to the same adventure, together with 
 Mr. F. W. Myers on Human Personality and Sir OKver 
 Lodge's Raymond, they had better read Mr. Frank 
 Podmore's Studies in Psychical Research also. I shall, 
 therefore, be very brief. 
 
 Briefly, then, we shall do well to distinguish between 
 what are, broadly speaking, two kinds of evidence: 
 Indirect communications, made through mediums, with 
 their accompanying apparitions or materiaHzations, 
 and : Direct communications, made spontaneously and 
 
 W 
 
350 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 without any apparent machinery of suggestion, such as 
 " veridical " dreams and apparitions seen without the 
 help of mediums. Under both these heads there is 
 an enormous body of perfectly well - authenticated 
 testimony born by irreproachable persons. Some of it, 
 but only a very little, has even been brought forward 
 by sceptical and indifferent persons, persons without 
 any interest in the result one way or other. 
 
 Briefly, again, I think there cannot be a doubt in 
 the mind of any unprejudiced person that, both through 
 the agency of mediums and otherwise, things happen ; 
 things that are not explainable by any trickery ; things 
 interesting enough, and even uncanny enough to charm 
 the most fastidious lover of the occult. (Unfortunately, 
 lovers of the occult are very seldom hampered in their 
 researches by over fastidiousness.) 
 
 The question is : What happens ? 
 
 Take the regular Spiritualistic phenomena first. 
 Mrs. Piper, say, seems to be giving messages from the 
 spirits of Mr. Myers or Dr. Verrall. Their authenticity 
 seems to be sufiiciently attested by allusions to intricate 
 and subtle points of scholarship said to be known only 
 to Dr. Verrall and Mr. Myers. The automatic writer 
 writes words that she herself would never have dreamed 
 of, as if under an irresistible and supernatural com- 
 pulsion. What she has written tallies with something 
 said to be known only to the departed. Hands are 
 certainly seen to be waving where human hands are not. 
 Bunches of flowers, and even still more solid objects 
 materialize apparently from nowhere out of nothing. 
 
 It cannot all be fraud, all the time, though some of 
 it may be sometimes. Exposure in ninety-nine cases 
 afiords no absolutely valid grounds for denying that 
 the hundredth case may be genuine. 
 
 What, then, is going on ? 
 
 i 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 351 
 
 So far as psychical research has been carried yet I 
 
 cannot see that, even under the most carefully prepared 
 
 test conditions, there is an atom of evidence to show that 
 
 what IS gomg on is an actual communication, or effort 
 
 at commumcation, of the discarnate with the incarnate 
 
 It may be so. But until we have eliminated every 
 
 possible source of suggestion from the living we have 
 
 no right to assume an even remote suggestion from 
 
 the other side." And to ensure this test condition 
 
 we should have to exterminate the Hving. The test 
 
 will not be water-tight until the communicant is alone 
 
 with the communicator ; and then there will only be 
 
 his word for it. 
 
 On this side, whatever Spiritualism may be, telepathy 
 IS a fact; and whatever the precise hndts and possi- 
 bilities of telepathy may be, we have not yet discovered 
 them. 
 
 Can we be sure that the things said to be known 
 only to the discarnate are not among the subconscious 
 men^ones of the communicant or of some person present 
 at the seance ? Or that they are not known by any 
 hvmg mmd on earth ? Nothing in the annals of Psychi- 
 cal Eesearch is more astonishing than the series of 
 cross-correspondences in the case of Mrs. Holland Mrs 
 Verrall and others. Mrs. Holland in India, for instance^ 
 and Mrs. Verrall in England, produced independent and 
 complementary automatic scripts, neither of which 
 made complete sense by itself. The two writers were 
 unacquamted, and each was unaware of what the other 
 was doing. The perfect dove-taihng of the fragments 
 could not be accounted for on any theory of coincidence. 
 The two writers clearly dealt with the same context ; 
 for allusions to certain known poems, broken off or 
 garbled in one fragment, were completed or emended 
 by the other. 
 
352 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 Here the test conditions were all that could be 
 desired. It was a manifest case of tapping a " wireless." 
 Yet who could say that the probabihty of wireless from 
 the living was ruled out ? The state of desire and ex- 
 pectancy, in which all these efforts to communicate 
 are made, renders the minds of the investigators pecu- 
 liarly open to suggestion. And — an extremely important 
 point — ^the more transparently honest the mind, the 
 more passive it will be, therefore the more open. 
 
 And if the messages are suspect, what shall we say 
 of the manifestations ? In these cases how can we 
 possibly rule out suggestion ? Certain experiments 
 have been made by Janet and his son on their patients 
 at the Salpetriere, which show that both positive and 
 negative hallucinations can be produced by suggestion. 
 The patient, that is to say, can be made, not only to see 
 things that are not there and to behave as if they were 
 there, but not to see things that are there and to behave 
 as if they were not there ; both hallucinations remaining 
 intact until the experimenter releases the enchanted 
 one from her enchantment. And not only eminent 
 alienists, but obscure amateurs have done as much. 
 Why then should not the magic of the medium be equally 
 efiective ? Why should not an expert suggestor create 
 both positive and negative hallucinations at will ? Is 
 it a question of pocketing the " sendings " and taking 
 them home with you, why should he not introduce into 
 the blankly innocent scene all the paraphernalia of 
 materiaUzation he requires, by simply inhibiting the per- 
 ception of them, until the moment comes for handing 
 round the evidential trophies ? This would account for 
 the indubitably solid objects, the plaster-casts of " spirit- 
 hands," the flowers, the Uttle girls, and the teaspoons 
 which have figured at certain twentieth-century seances. 
 
 However this may be, if psychical researchers are 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 353 
 
 not increasing their knowledge of " the other side," 
 they are preparing excellent material for psychologists 
 on this side. 
 
 The other sort of evidence, the direct and spontaneous 
 sort, is, I think, in rather better case. It would be 
 stupid to deny that there have been well-authenticated 
 apparitions and so-called veridical dreams, which appeal 
 to our belief because of their directness and spontaneity ; 
 by the fact that they have come to people who were not 
 looking for them, in many cases to people who would 
 have gone out of their way to avoid them if they had 
 known that they were coming. The sudden unexpected- 
 ness of these encounters through the veridical dream 
 and the valedictory apparition is in their favour. 
 
 But, here again, the possibility of telepathy between 
 the living is by no means ruled out. So far, if I am 
 not mistaken, most of the verified or verifiable instances 
 of apparitions have occurred, not after death but before 
 it, or at the actual moment of passing, and cannot be 
 taken as evidence of survival. The vision of the dead 
 body may be explained by suggestion from the living 
 attendants of the dead. So may the instance of the 
 dream that comes true. And there is always coincidence. 
 There remain certain (also well-authenticated) cases 
 of the continuous apparition, the ghost that haunts. 
 It seems hardly likely that they are all the products of 
 a disordered brain or a habit of mendacity. But I 
 have never come across any more satisfactory explana- 
 tion of them. We may invent hypotheses to accoimt 
 for them : for instance, that the impact of all visible 
 and audible events is continued in an infinite series of 
 finer and finer vibrations, the swing, as it were, of 
 infinitely divisible etheric particles ; so that, long after 
 the date of the original event, its ghostly simulacra are 
 seen or heard by senses pitched to their rates of vibration. 
 
 2a 
 
354 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 But even if some unforeseen discovery in physics were 
 to give encouragement to this theory, it would involve 
 a corresponding theory of an infinite series of finer 
 and finer senses, pitched to the finer and finer vibrations ; 
 and even if this received encouragement from psychology, 
 we should still be no nearer knowing why some of these 
 events should be perceived and not others. 
 
 And we should be as far as ever from any evidence of 
 survival. 
 
 There is yet another very ancient and widespread 
 belief, on which many people still found their hope of 
 personal immortality : the belief in Reincarnation. 
 
 If the belief itself were well founded it would be as 
 good a foundation as we could wish to have. If we have 
 lived many times before, there is, to say the least of 
 it, an antecedent probability that we shall live again. 
 There would even be no reason why we should ever stop 
 living. 
 
 Now there are three theories of Reincarnation, and 
 two of them are mutually exclusive. One is primitive 
 and savage ; one ancient and pseudo-metaphysical ; 
 one modern, and, if not scientific, fairly well founded 
 on scientific grounds. 
 
 According to the primitive and savage belief, we are 
 all reincarnations of the dead. Ghosts are germs and 
 germs are ghosts. As the flower and the corn return 
 to earth, we return. The ghosts of the newly dead 
 hang about, in woods and at cross-roads, for choice, 
 waiting for women to pass by that they may enter their 
 bodies and be born again. The places where they hang 
 about are haunted places. 
 
 According to the second and most fascinating form 
 of the beUef (which involves the doctrine of Karma), 
 we are born again and again as full-blown human 
 
 vin 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 355 
 
 individuals, breaking through the knitted chain of the 
 generations at points that may be divided by many 
 ages. 
 
 According to the third, we have been incarnate again 
 and again in the bodies of our parents and our ancestors, 
 in such sort that the chain of generation is never broken. 
 This, as we have seen, is the doctrine of Pan-Psychism. 
 
 Observe that both the primitive and the modern 
 theory are the most satisfactory and courageous in 
 tackling the crux of reincarnation— its modus operandi. 
 The theory of Karma leaves this essential part of the 
 problem altogether too vague. And I am bound to 
 confess that it is the savage who scores in simpUcity 
 and precision. 
 
 But it is the theory involving Karma that people 
 mean when they talk about reincarnation. It exerts 
 an irresistible fascination for certain temperaments 
 that would be repelled by the Pan-Psychism of Samuel 
 Butler or of anybody else. 
 
 The belief has been for ages the actual, living belief 
 of miUions in India, China, and Japan. In spite of its 
 inherent difiiculties it is still more or less sincerely held 
 by many perfectly sane people in Europe and America 
 at the present day. You used to meet them at the Ritz 
 or Rumpelmeyer's (it was in the days before the War), 
 when they would tell you as a matter of course that they 
 remembered being a dancer at the court of Amen Hotep 
 III., or the queen-consort of Assurbanipal, or a concubine 
 of Sennacherib, or a priestess in the temple of Krishna, 
 or a great hetaira of the age of Pericles. (The odd thing 
 is that the Reincarnated have always been something 
 royal or hieratic or improper; something sufficiently 
 afar from the sphere of their sorrow, eastern or Egyptian 
 preferred ; something, whatever it may be, that they 
 are not now.) And they expect you to believe them. 
 
 ■rje^siasissfc:' 
 
356 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 They are not content to have taken part in the 
 thousand or the million incarnations of their own 
 ancestors, in a thousand or a million experiences ; they 
 are not content with their thousandth or their millionth 
 share in the adventures of the dancer at the court of Amen 
 Hotep III. ; they want all the adventure to themselves. 
 It is the full-blown dancing individual they claim to have 
 been. And the plain facts of biology are all against 
 it. You cannot thus break through the unbroken chain 
 of the generations. The difficulty for the devotees of 
 this form of reincarnation is, not that there is no proof 
 that they have never lived before, but that there is too 
 much proof that they have never stopped living. They 
 have never escaped from the chain until the day when 
 they were born as the individual they are now. 
 
 Pan-Psychism is a theory, not of Keincarnation, but 
 of continuous Incarnation. And imless there are 
 grounds — and I have tried to show that there are grounds 
 —for supposing that the Self is something over and 
 above its own experience, its own memories, and its 
 own organism, the mere fact that we have never stopped 
 living so far is no guarantee that we shall go on living 
 after the final dissolution of that organism. But if 
 we have appropriated it rather than inherited it, our 
 previous existence becomes, I think, a very considerable 
 guarantee. 
 
 Now it may be objected that this self over and above 
 is a pure blank. Yet it seems to be all that is left to us. 
 And if the pure self is as pure as that, what good is it 
 to anybody ? If there is nothing in it, how is it going 
 to carry on and to carry us on ? 
 
 I own that it doesn't look as if the self-over-and-above 
 could give much support to the hope of immortality, or 
 that in its nakedness it is likely to appeal to the plain 
 man. The pure self is not looked upon with favour even 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 357 
 
 by ideaUsts. Kant, who as good as discovered it, fought 
 shy of it. Realists are fond of reminding you that you 
 cannot prove existence, you can only perceive it. Is 
 there, then, any reasonable sense in which it can be said 
 to exist ? If it isn't perceived, and if it isn't memory, 
 if it isn't consciousness, what is it ? My friend. Dr. 
 McTaggart, says it is nothing. And its blankness must 
 seem to many people every bit as terrifying as the 
 blankness of death. 
 
 Yet it is in this pure self that I am asking you to put 
 your trust. 
 
 For all these objections rest on the monstrous assump- 
 tion that what you cannot perceive does not exist and 
 is not real. And this is to claim greater authority for 
 finite and human perception than it can possibly possess. 
 Remember, it is only the purity of the seK that is so 
 universally objected to. And the self is not more pure, 
 more utterly beyond touch and sight than space and 
 time are. It is not more empty to perception than 
 matter is in the last analysis. And we saw what dangers 
 and dilemmas we avoided by putting selfhood where 
 the plain man (unaware of its purity) puts it — first. 
 
 Personally, I am not dismayed by this blankness 
 of the self behind me. Rather, because of it, I can 
 face the blankness before me without flinching. I can 
 conceive all my memory, that is to say, all the experience 
 I had acquired in this life, everything that makes me 
 recognizable and dear to myself and to other people ; 
 I cannot only conceive, but think of it as going from me 
 with my death and of myself as yet continuing. 
 
 I would rather keep that experience intact — I have 
 already lost much by simple, casual forgetting, and if 
 I have lived long enough I may have lost all that is 
 worth keeping of it — I had rather keep that memory 
 and carry it over with me, for the living interest of the 
 
358 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vrn 
 
 thing ; but if I am driven to conclude that I must lose 
 it, I do not therefore think of myself as lost. It may 
 be that, here again, a more perfect forgetting is, as it was 
 before, the condition of a more perfect consciousness. I 
 know that I could, and probably shall, embrace a wholly 
 new experience with the same eager interest with which 
 I have embraced the old. For, through forgetfulness 
 of my past hves, my present hfe began to all intents and 
 purposes as a blank, an experience that I knew nothing 
 of, and that knew nothing of me. 
 
 And supposing that no vehicle of individuality, such 
 as my body was, awaits me at the instant of death. 
 Supposing that no refined simulacrum of my body exists, 
 either as an inner or outer vehicle, or as an interpenetrat- 
 mg and energizing substance, inscrutably present with 
 my physical body and enduring after my death. (Many 
 quite sane people believe in such a vehicle, on evidence 
 I know nothing about except that it satisfies them.) 
 Supposing that no such vehicle is at my disposal, and 
 that I have to wait' untold ages before I can find one, or 
 the germ of one, in order to appear and to be conscious 
 again ; those untold ages will not trouble me. They 
 will no doubt exist as the time-schemes of other con- 
 sciousnesses, other thoughts, and other emotions. Other 
 selves, hving at another pace and with another intensity, 
 will beat out the measure and will keep the record of 
 those times, just as some superhuman and superorganic 
 consciousness must have kept the record and beaten out 
 the measure of prehuman and preorganic times. They 
 do not concern me. In the first instant that I am 
 conscious again my world arises, as if there had been no 
 age-long break, no break at all ; not so much as an 
 infinitesimally small interval, and I shall conceive my 
 world as without beginning and without end. 
 
 The actual break is the worst that can happen to 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 359 
 
 me, and whether it be long or short, I shall know nothing 
 
 of it. 
 
 It may be still objected that in cutting the self adrift 
 from memory I am burning the only ship that will bring 
 me safe to shore. But this implies that the under- 
 writers have insured that ship, and will continue to 
 insure her, which is very far from being the case. I am 
 leaving an unseaworthy vessel whose foundering, if she 
 does founder, will sink me with her to the bottom. I 
 might possibly be afraid to sink with the ship ; to drown, 
 battened down with the rats in the hold, but for the 
 probability that neither I nor the rats would know 
 anything about it. I am not in the least afraid to throw 
 myself into the open sea. 
 
 But this theory of Pan-Psychism provides another 
 and a stronger argument for human immortality. It 
 supposes that all Life and the evolution of every living 
 organism depends on the desire and the design of an 
 indestructible psyche ; and that, under favourable 
 conditions, when the desire and the design have been 
 strong enough and suitable, they have been fulfilled. 
 And as far as the living organism goes, design has 
 followed, slavishly, desire. So that, if the human psyche 
 has a strong desire for immortality, and if its design is 
 in accordance with that desire, immortality, in spite 
 of the fact that it is a large order, should follow. 
 
 There are few arguments for Personal Immortality 
 that have not some danger. And this argument from 
 human instinct and desire is imperilled by the objection 
 that this particular instinct and desire is by no means 
 universal, and that no psychic design, so far as we know, 
 in any way depends on it. It may be distinctly lacking 
 in highly civilized societies. The less instinctive and 
 the more intellectual man becomes, the more he is apt 
 
I 
 
 360 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 to repudiate both the belief in immortality and the desire 
 and the hope of it. 
 
 The behef apparently rests on instinct. But the 
 desire and the hope do not seem to be as instinctive, 
 or at any rate as primitive, as the belief. Where the 
 behef is practically universal, as among savages, the life 
 after death and all that belongs to it are dreaded rather 
 than desired. The savage may desire the dead man's 
 strength, his mana ; but the discarnate ghost itself is 
 a thing of terror. 
 
 And the behef is more a behef in survival than in 
 inomortahty. For the primitive mind is a child's mind. 
 It cannot grasp the idea of any long period of definite 
 time, much less the idea of immortality. 
 
 The hope and the desire are virile instincts. With 
 one apparent exception, they seem to have dominated 
 the youth of the race and its maturity ; to belong to 
 those stages of its development that lie between primitive 
 savagery and extreme civilization ; and to be intimately 
 associated with the rise and decline of personal rehgion. 
 
 The one exception, which is the stock argument 
 against the behef in personal immortahty, is of course 
 Buddhism. Buddhism, it is said, the ancient and 
 permanent rehgion of milhons of the human race, is a 
 rehgion founded on the negation of immortality. And 
 wherever it exists it is the rehgion, not of a handful of 
 metaphysicians, but of the priesthood and the common 
 people. 
 
 And as, with the progress of science and speculative 
 thought, the behef tends to disappear, so with the 
 progress of civihzation the desire itself weakens. It is 
 not only that the intellectuals doubt or disbelieve for 
 inteUectual reasons, and spread their doubt or disbelief 
 through all the circles that they influence. Other and 
 simpler people are indifferent ; and the root of their 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 361 
 
 indifference is moral and physical rather than intellec- 
 tual. The behef in immortahty is no longer popular ; 
 at any rate, it has no longer the vogue it once had. 
 
 And we have reason to be cautious in approaching it, 
 when we find the distinguished historian of the origin 
 of this behef regarding it with a half-amused and half 
 disdainful scepticism. 
 
 It must be confessed that the result of Sir James 
 Frazer's researches are not such as to make sensitive 
 people in love with the belief in human immortality. 
 They are not such as to make inteUigent people conclude 
 that there is anything in humanity that deserves to 
 endure even for a day. It is quite possible to bring 
 forward an array of facts to show that the whole history 
 of this pitiful race is one long record of cowardice and 
 uncleanness, cruelty and imbecility. 
 
 Listen to these two voices that debate the destiny 
 of man : 
 
 " Surely, they say, such a glorious creature was not born for 
 mortahty, to be snuffed out like a candle, to fade like a flower, 
 to pass away Kke a breath. Is all that penetrating intellect^ 
 that creative fancy, that vaulting ambition, those noble passions, 
 those far-reaching hopes, to come to nothing, to shrivel up into 
 a pinch of dust ? It is not so ; it cannot be. ..." 
 
 " Shall a creature so puny and frail claim to hve for ever, to 
 outlast not only the present starry system but every other that, 
 when earth and sun and stars have crumbled into dust, shall 
 be built upon their ruins in the long long hereafter ? It is 
 not so, it cannot be. . . ." 
 
 " Those who take this view of the transitoriness of man com- 
 pared with the vastness and permanence of the universe find 
 little in the behefs of savages to alter their opinion. They see 
 in savage conceptions of the soul and its destiny nothing but 
 a product of childish ignorance, the hallucinations of hysteria, 
 the ravings of insanity, or the concoctions of dehberate fraud 
 and imposture " (59). 
 
362 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 You see the historian trying to hold the balance 
 scrupulously even ; but there is little doubt as to which 
 of those two voices is the more insistent. He also re- 
 minds us that Buddhism is a conspicuous and extensive 
 and damaging fact. 
 
 And when we remember that our positive meta- 
 physical arguments rest on the slender foothold of 
 debatable hypothesis, and that we were obliged to fall 
 back on the biological and psychological arguments 
 from desire and design, and that these arguments 
 apparently cannot stand the light of an impartial 
 historical survey ; when we are reminded, further, that 
 William James prefaced his immortal essay on Immor- 
 taUty with the emphatic statement that he personally 
 had no desire for it whatever, it looks as if the prospects 
 for human immortality were black ; as if we should 
 have, after all, to content ourselves with the negative 
 encouragement we are at least sure of — ^the impossibility 
 of proving that it cannot be. 
 
 Yet we were in worse case a little while back, when 
 we tried to discover whether Mysticism had anything 
 in it that escaped the violence of its detractors. We 
 found then that, for all its dubious or disgraceful history, 
 and for all its elements of grossness and absurdity, there 
 was something intangible and invulnerable that escaped. 
 We found that you might as well judge poetry by the 
 practice of the worst poetasters as judge Mysticism by 
 the practice of its worst exponents or by the lapses of 
 its best. 
 
 And so I think that, if we look closer, we shall find 
 for one thing that, in spite of its savage history, there 
 is nothing either absurd or ignoble in the belief in 
 immortality itself. 
 
 To begin with, the belief has been evolved. It has 
 not remained in its primitive savagery. And even in 
 
 vin 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 363 
 
 I 
 
 .. 
 
 its primitiveness it was not, after all, such a very im- 
 becile beHef. It arose, in the first place, from a most 
 intelligent and reasonable desire for fertility. The 
 ghost, imagined as surviving, was, originally, the source 
 of rmna, the mysterious power of life (60). The savage 
 tribesman had no personal aspirations. He did not 
 think of himself as a person. Therefore he took short 
 views, and it did not occur to him that he might eventu- 
 ally become a spirit and the source of power. He 
 only aspired to get power, to get life, from season to 
 season, to be fruitful and to bring fruitfulness to his 
 trees and grain and to his flocks and herds. He buried 
 the seed, and he saw that it came up again as a green 
 blade. He buried his father, and he looked for him to 
 come up again in children born to the tribe. 
 
 There must have been an immense step between this 
 primitive idea of subjective immortahty and the idea 
 of the ghost's life as independent and continuous. 
 First of all, the ghost is a buried, underground thing ; 
 it is later that he moves about on the face of the earth 
 and becomes the dreadful supernatural thing, the 
 haunter, the watcher by the cross-roads and the sacred 
 tree (61) ; much later, then, he becomes the departed 
 who has journeyed to the Islands of the Blessed and 
 will not return. 
 
 Apparently it is not until this stage is reached that 
 it occurs to primitive man that he may very well Kve 
 again like his fathers, and that where they have gone 
 he may go. It is later still that he conceives the idea of 
 the spiritual dying and new birth ; and with it the passion 
 for God and the desire of immortality for its own sake. 
 
 Yet not altogether for its own sake. He wants to 
 be wherever his gods are. When he has once for all 
 placed his god in heaven rather than under the earth, 
 it is to heaven that he wants to go. 
 
 ■-:^pti^->{>:^fi;'^0^-^^ .:'_ 
 
364 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 ym 
 
 The desire of immortality is one thing, then, and the 
 primitive belief in a survival on earth is another. And 
 the desire of immortahty comes last, and comes with 
 man's consciousness of himself as an immaterial being. 
 Immaterial, therefore immortal. He desires to be what 
 he is not yet ; but he does not desire it until he is ready 
 for it, until he knows it to be possible. And in all this 
 his religion is not the driving and compelling power ; 
 it follows the lead of the developing and dominant 
 desire. It once centred round his natural and tribal 
 life, then around his social life. It now centres round 
 his individual and spiritual life ; that is all. The 
 individual is adapting himself to the wider reality that 
 his prophetic need discerns. 
 
 Presently he seeks metaphysical grounds for his 
 belief and ethical justification for his desire. 
 
 Last of all, in the decadence of over-civilized races, 
 when they are about to be conquered by the younger 
 and the stronger race, the belief and the hope and the 
 desire of immortality weaken and die. 
 
 This is where the passionate concentration on origins 
 would seem to be misleading. It diverts attention from 
 the fact that there are such things as ends. The study 
 of what has been is important ; it is interesting ; but 
 it is interesting and it is important chiefly as throwing 
 light on what is and what will be, which are even more 
 important and more interesting than it. 
 
 So that when we see the thing through, its history 
 does not show up this belief as ignoble, infantile, and 
 absurd. It shows the desire for immortality strengthen- 
 ing with man's youth and his maturity, and declining 
 and decaying only with his weakness and decay. 
 
 It has been said that wherever the belief has existed it 
 has proved harmful, therefore contrary to the design of the 
 psyche and its organism, therefore destined to disappear. 
 
 vm 
 
 Conclusions 
 
 365 
 
 This objection also ignores what has happened and 
 is happening. It is time that there has always been a 
 disastrous period of transition, when man has not yet 
 adjusted the claims of his natural and spiritual life; 
 when he has been so unaware of the metaphysical 
 grounds of his immortality that he has tried to bargain 
 with his God for it, to buy his soul's life with the sacrifice 
 of his body. The cruelties and violences of asceticism 
 proved that he was by no means sure that his passion 
 for God and immortality was requited. This period 
 may stand for the crisis of spiritual adolescence with 
 its uncertainty and disturbance and self-torture. The 
 passion for God and immortality are no more discredited 
 by it than human passion is by the physical crisis of 
 its coming. 
 
 It is also true that the nineteenth century was a 
 vigorous and virile century ; yet disbelief in immortality 
 was then almost de rigueur among people with any 
 pretensions to scientific training. But this was partly 
 because the first triumphs of physical science had 
 turned the heads of its professors. It may be observed 
 that Professor Huxley did not discover his " mechanical 
 equivalent of consciousness " ; he hved, in fact, to 
 recant so far as to confess that Nature could not possibly 
 have evolved the laws of Ethics which exist in violent 
 opposition to Nature's laws. And the twentieth century 
 is not imanimously backing the illusory by-product 
 theory of consciousness. 
 
 In any century the desire of immortality, or at any 
 rate of life after death, is a sign of youth and vitality 
 and vigour in those who feel it keenly. The strong man 
 wants to go on living, to have more and more outlet 
 for his energies, to do more, to feel more, to know 
 more. He wants it instinctively ; for the stronger and 
 healthier he is the less he is likely to think about it at all. 
 
366 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 When he is old and weak and worn out, or young and 
 weak, and bored to premature extinction with living, 
 he does think about it. He wants, not instinctively, 
 but consciously, to lie down and go to sleep, to stop 
 the intolerable nuisance of living. 
 
 On :;he whole, then, the argument from desire and 
 design holds good. It is the weak and inefficient, the 
 unwise in the affairs of life, the bunglers and the failures, 
 the bankrupts and the unhappy lovers who most want 
 to leave off living. Think of the number of suicides 
 that occur every year through bankruptcy and unhappy 
 love alone. Count in the suicides through poverty, 
 and remember that these are all people whose vitality 
 has been lowered by worry and frustrated passion and 
 starvation, and that their aim is to end Ufe, and not to 
 obtain it more abimdantly. 
 
 Count in the philosophers who profess a noble 
 indifference to the issue, and still a suspicion of lowered 
 vitality arises. 
 
 And if suicide is to be reprobated on the grounds 
 that it is dishonourable and selfish, the desire to go on 
 living cannot very well be reprobated on the same 
 grounds. Its motive may be, and often is, the passion 
 for metaphysical truth and for a righteousness not 
 obtainable on earth. It may be, and often is, in the 
 highest degree aesthetic. 
 
 For the universe as it stands is ethically and aesthetic- 
 ally incomplete. It has a certain significance for our 
 pecuHarly human consciousness, which never for one 
 moment, seize it where we may, tails off into insignifi- 
 cance. It appeals to us in an incalculable number of 
 intensely exciting sentences, which it hurls at our heads 
 and leaves provokingly unfinished. It has made us 
 spectators of its stupendous drama ; what is more, it 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 367 
 
 has honoured us with free passes as critics of the per- 
 formance ; worse still, it involves us personally in 
 important and dramatic situations, which it leaves 
 undeveloped. It involves itself in perpetual engage- 
 ments to us which hitherto it has not fulfilled. It 
 creates desires which certainly cannot be satisfied in one 
 life-time, or in the conditions of the only Hfe we know. 
 There is some evidence that it has created, or is creat- 
 ing, powers in us whose exercise demands another and 
 more extensive sphere. And we find it preposterous 
 that a universe which has unbent so far as to consider 
 us in this programme should leave us ultimately in the 
 lurch. 
 
 And when we look back on the long course of our 
 pre-human history, we judge that, if Life does turn 
 traitor at the last, it will be behaving contrary to all 
 precedent. There should be no arraignment of Nature 
 so sweeping as to obscure the fact that there has been 
 precedent. Organic forms, locked in the infernal struggle 
 for existence, have, after all, evolved, and the struggle 
 has been an important factor in their evolution. EKmi- 
 nate catastrophe : the wholesale fortuitous destruction 
 of hving forms by storm and flood and sudden changes 
 in environment, and the encounter with inorganic con- 
 ditions disastrous to any life; eliminate waste: the 
 careless handHng of the vehicle of life, the fate of the 
 germs that have never had a chance to develop ; elimi- 
 nate the struggle of the already evolved : the slaughter 
 accomphshed by one species on another and by in- 
 dividuals within the species ; assume, with Pan-Psych- 
 ism, that fitness is the expression of the individual's 
 desire to survive, and it will be seen that Nature has not 
 behaved unfairly to her organisms after all. She has 
 destroyed countless forms of the unfit, in whom we may 
 presuppose, no very keen desire to survive; she has 
 
 f 
 
!l 
 
 368 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 
 preserved at their original low level millions of humble 
 forms whose desire was chiefly that they might stay 
 there ; but she has rewarded greatly the great desires, 
 the great ambitions, the great accomplishments. She 
 has even more rewarded the small desires, the small 
 ambitions that were faithful and persistent. 
 
 Nature abhors incompetence. But apparently no 
 patient and efficient psyche ever desired the physical 
 vehicle or tool that it did not obtain. No appropriate 
 need was left long unsatisfied, no organ left to wither by 
 disuse as long as its function was appropriate and the 
 fulfilment of that function desired. 
 
 If we may assume with Pan-Psychism that need and 
 desire were prophetic ; that is to say, always a little in 
 advance of the actual conditions, without which advance 
 evolution would seem to have been impossible, the 
 analogy is complete, and we are justified in asking, 
 Why pursue this policy of indulgence to all the ambitious 
 animal forms and stop short at man ? May he not go 
 on doing what he did in his mother's womb, what he 
 has been doing ever since his psyche and the first speck 
 of protoplasm came together ? Why this sudden, 
 arbitrary prohibition now, just when he is beginning 
 to be interested in the universe around him, as well as 
 in his own performance ? 
 
 Now, if there is anything in Pan-Psychism, this 
 argument will stand whether we are pluralists or monists. 
 But I believe it will have most support from the theory 
 which presupposes that 
 
 " There is one ruler, the Self within all things, who makes the 
 one form manifold. . . . 
 
 " There is one eternal Thinker, thinking non-etemal thoughts, 
 who, though one, fulfils the desires of many. ..." {Katha- 
 Upanishady ii. 5.) 
 
 VIII 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 369 
 
 Buddhism alone, the Great Exception, stands, we 
 are told, in the way of the argument from desire. 
 
 But is Buddhism really so obstructive as it is said 
 to be ? Isn't it just possible that the Great Exception 
 may prove the rule ? Consider how it came by its 
 doctrine of Nirvana. (Granting, for the moment, that 
 by Nirvana it means what we mean by Extinction.) As 
 far as it is a theory and not a religion, Buddhism pre- 
 supposes the metaphysical doctrine of the Absolute 
 laid down in the Upanishads. So far as it is a religion, 
 it is founded on compassion and pity and the revolt 
 against the cruelty of caste. The revolt against caste 
 itself presupposes some influence from the doctrine of 
 Brahma, the Great Self, in whom all men and all things 
 are one. 
 
 On its metaphysical side the Nirvana of the Buddhist 
 is the state of union with the Absolute ; or, if you like, 
 the utter extinction of the individual as such. On its 
 religious side it is the ceasing from the sorrow of divided 
 life. Desire is the cause of Life, which is the cause of 
 sorrow ; therefore Nirvana, the state of blessedness, is 
 attained by simply ceasing to desire. Metaphysically, 
 Nirvana is the state of pure, absolute, unconditioned 
 Being. It is the very last and subtlest refinement of 
 the One of the Vedas, the Great Self of the Upanishads ; 
 defined by contradictions and negations. Nirvana is 
 defined only by negations. The mystic of the Upani- 
 shads says : " Who is able to know that Self who re- 
 joices and rejoices not ? " The Buddhist of the Suttas 
 goes one better. Who is able to know that he does not 
 know ? If the sixth stage of mental deliverance is to 
 think that " nothing at all exists," the seventh stage is 
 the passing '' quite beyond all idea of nothingness " to 
 " a state to which neither ideas nor the absence of ideas 
 
 is specially present " ; and that is topped by the eighth 
 
 2b 
 
 I 
 
370 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VUl 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 371 
 
 stage, in which nothing is affirmed and nothing is 
 denied, but " both sensations and ideas have ceased 
 to be." {Mahd-parinibbdna Sutta, iii.) 
 
 This is the mental discipline by which thought reaches 
 up to Nirvana, the state which transcends thought. It 
 is " ecstasy of contemplation." 
 
 You may say that Buddhism ends where Hegelianism 
 begins, with the statement that Being and non-Being 
 are the same ; that it reverses the movement of the 
 Triple Dialectic; that, instead of resolving the con- 
 tradiction in the synthetic affirmation of Becoming, it 
 proceeds by way of the negation of Becoming, the denial 
 of the world of appearances, to its definition of Being. 
 
 Buddhism is the denial of all the metaphysical systems 
 that were before it. You might think a metaphysical 
 system did not matter. But it matters horribly. A 
 metaphysical system is a deadly thing. It may bind 
 a man to the wheel of life by giving him wrong ideas 
 about reality. 
 
 In the Sutta of All the Asavas or Book of the Deadly 
 Things you will read of the six delusions of metaphysical 
 thought : 
 
 " I have a self : 
 
 " I have not a self : 
 
 " By myself I am conscious of myself : 
 
 " By myself I am conscious of my not-self : 
 
 " This soul of mine can be perceived ; it has experienced the 
 result of good and evil actions committed here and there : 
 
 " This soul of mine is permanent, lasting, eternal, unchange- 
 able ; it will endure for ever and ever " (62). 
 
 The delusion consists not in having these ideas, but 
 in ascribing truth and reality to them. 
 
 You may say that Buddhism lands you in utter 
 nescience, since it denies every conceivable statement 
 that can be made about reality. 
 
 But observe the nature of the denial in each case. 
 It is the negation of a negation. In the supreme interests 
 of the Absolute, Buddhism denies the reality of the 
 appearing world ; it strips Being bare of each unreal 
 quality one by one, till not one shred of illusion is left 
 clinging to it. Beyond this it makes no affirmation or 
 denial. As the qualities are expressly stated to be 
 unreal, the stripping process is anything but negation. 
 It is the affirmation of Reality carried to passion and 
 
 excess 
 
 So that the unreal individual life must therefore be 
 held to be utterly extinguished in Nirvana. But it is 
 hardly even an open question whether Nirvana is or is 
 not a state of Being ; of pure and perfect bliss, beyond 
 speech, beyond sense, beyond thought, beyond dream 
 and desire, or any form of consciousness we know. 
 To define it, as the Buddhist defines it, by a series of 
 negations, is simply a way of saying, with the utmost 
 metaphysical hyperbole, that where there is Nothing 
 
 there is All. 
 
 But whatever esoteric Buddhism might have said or 
 meant, it was not entirely with that seemingly unreal 
 glamour that it charmed the heart of Asia. For every- 
 thing that was lacking in Nirvana it made up by its very 
 robust and substantial doctrine of ReincarnalSon. To 
 disciples who had no fancy for extinction, it offered an 
 endless and exciting round of rebirths. Nobody forced 
 Nirvana on you if you didn't want it. You could 
 postpone your flight to the Absolute practically to all 
 eternity by a judicious system of backsliding. You 
 had only to neglect some obvious duty in each life as 
 you returned to it to ensure another return. 
 
 In fact, you had not even to do that. You had only 
 to desire to live again, and you lived. Your Karma 
 might indeed force you back again against your will ; 
 
 : 1 
 
372 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 VUl 
 
 but then you are responsible for your Karma. The 
 whole thing is in your own hands. Desire binds you to 
 the wheel of Life. Desire shapes your destiny for you 
 within the wheel. Your desire, not God's ; not anybody 
 else's. It is Pan-Psychism all over again. 
 
 You grow your own organism because you want to. 
 This amounts to Personal Immortality— as much 
 immortality as you want, and for as long as you want it. 
 So that Buddhism should really not be used by 
 sceptics to justify their scepticism. One imagines that 
 Buddhists who declare for Nirvana in preference to 
 reincarnation are the decadents, and the professors of 
 philosophy, and the mystics— who know what they 
 know. 
 
 But there is a third objection that may be made. 
 In the beginning we found the perfection of in- 
 dividuality in perfect adaptation to reality. And it 
 may be said that the argument from desire overlooks 
 the compulsion that is laid on the individual to conform. 
 Things are not in his own hands. The Will-to-live is 
 not his will. From step to step the psyche follows in 
 the lines set by a reality outside it, of which its physical 
 organism is part. The pan-psychist looks at the process 
 from the inside. Adaptation, he says, does not suggest 
 that the individual's will is coerced and determined by 
 the reality outside and beyond him, since it could not 
 have taken place at all but for the individual's inner 
 disposition or will. All the same, physical or spiritual 
 death will be the price of his utter defiance. The in- 
 dividual must adapt himself or go under ; and if that is 
 not coercion, I own it looks uncommonly like it. 
 
 Yet, consider what (on the pan-psychist's' theory) 
 has really happened : that the individual's psyche has 
 been present throughout the entire experience of the 
 
 vni 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 373 
 
 race, and that the individual could never have been what 
 he is at each moment of his ascension if he had not 
 needed, wanted, desired, and willed to be something 
 that he was not yet. Consider that he would never have 
 grown, never have developed at all, would be limited — 
 as many unambitious individuals are — for all time to 
 the companionship of the original speck of protoplasm 
 he first took up with. Even if he advanced to the cell 
 stage, without what strikes the outsider as his insane 
 ambition to grow another cell, he would have remained 
 a unicellular organism all his life. 
 
 Therefore, on the very supposition that his earliest 
 adaptations were to a reality as yet outside and beyond 
 him, his earliest developments must have entailed some 
 slight defiance of the existing order, and his earliest 
 need was a prophetic need. 
 
 And when we come to the human individual, his 
 latest and highest developments mean a very consider- 
 able defiance of existing order, a very considerable 
 prophetic need. And his latest and highest efforts at 
 adaptation show an audacity that still suggests defiance 
 rather than submission. Whatever it may look like 
 from outside, adaptation seen from within, as the pan- 
 psychist sees it, looks much more like the fulfilment of 
 desire than its coercion. 
 
 If the perfect individual is the self perfectly adapted 
 to reality through the successive sublimations of his will, 
 the monist will grant you the compulsion you insist on. 
 If the laws of nature are the laws of the appearance of 
 the Self, in whom all selves arise and have their being, 
 the compulsion that is upon the selves to obey them is 
 not an outside compulsion. It is the compulsion of 
 their own nature in its will to appear. 
 
 tr^-ti^t, '•-^BaaiagBi'a 
 
374 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 375 
 
 III 
 
 To sum up the metaphysical argument that we left 
 behind us. It supposes one infinite and absolute Spirit 
 manifesting itself in many forms to many finite spirits. 
 It supposes the selves of the many finite spirits to receive 
 and to maintain their reality in and through the one 
 infinite Self as truly as their organisms received and 
 maintained their life through Its appearance as one 
 Life-Force. 
 
 For though the finite selves may exist over and 
 above their organisms and their experience, and apart 
 from each other, they do not subsist ; they are not over 
 and above and apart from the one Self in whom they 
 have their reality. But the finite selves may be supposed 
 to be potentially infinite, since they have conceived 
 infinity. It would seem hardly worth while for the 
 infinite Spirit to have revealed himself so far if the 
 tremendous and significant process was not to be carried 
 on. Appearances may be unreal, but they are signifi- 
 cant. Why be at the pains of accumulating experiences 
 through countless generations if the whole is to be 
 squandered in one passionate instant of death ? 
 
 But — on the theory — it will not by any means follow 
 that if we survive we shall survive as the individuals 
 we are now, or even as individuals at all. Selfhood, as 
 we have seen, is not necessarily individuality. If our 
 selves existed at all before birth, they would seem to 
 have existed as members of a group-self, or as mysterious 
 partakers in the experiences of millions of indi\aduals ; 
 anyhow in a manner utterly incompatible with in- 
 dividuality as we understood it here and now. And yet, 
 on that theory, selfhood seemed to have been very 
 efficiently maintained. 
 
 Even in our experience here and now, though our 
 
 i 
 I 
 
 selfhood would seem to remain inviolable, our in- 
 dividuality holds its own precariously, at times, and with 
 difficulty against the forces that tend to draw us back 
 to our racial consciousness again. The facts of multiple 
 personality, telepathy and suggestion, the higher as 
 well as the lower forms of dream-consciousness, indicated 
 that our psychic life is not a water-tight compartment, 
 but has porous walls, and is continually threatened with 
 leakage and the flooding in of many streams. 
 
 It may be that individuality is only one stage, and 
 that not the highest and the most important stage, in 
 the real life-process of the self. It may be that a self 
 can only become a perfect self in proportion as it takes 
 on the experiences of other selves, just as it could only 
 become a perfect individual by taking on the experience 
 of millions of other individuals. 
 
 The individual, that is to say, may have to die that 
 the self may live. 
 
 On the theory, this sacrifice would not mean what is 
 called '' subjective immortality," but rather the very 
 opposite. In subjective immortality the individual 
 lives precariously in the memory of posterity which 
 may, after all, prefer to forget him. In any case it is 
 a form of consciousness to which, on this theory, he has 
 contributed but does not share. He has no consciousness 
 of anything any more at all. But the life after death 
 of the perfected self would mean an enormous increase 
 of consciousness, through a spiritual communion in 
 which all that is imperfect in passion, all that is tentative 
 in compassion and insight and inspiration is finished 
 and complete. 
 
 But the greatest objection to the acceptance of this 
 form of Monism turns on the difficulty, not to say the 
 impossibility, of conceiving how the selfhood of the finite 
 
 
 r^^S5)^;;^f|^if';^ 
 
376 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vm 
 
 selves is maintained in and through their fusion with 
 the infinite Self. 
 
 Now there are certain forms of dream-consciousness 
 m which precisely such a transfusion is apparently 
 effected and maintained. I can vouch for one authentic 
 dream which began in the most ordinary fashion by 
 the dreamer imagining a complex dramatic situation 
 mvolving three persons, not counting the dreamer 
 herself. The situation itself was normal, and imagined 
 m a perfectly normal way, without a single element of 
 phantasy. The dreamer, so far, was simply dreaming 
 the outline of a very ordinary novel or a play. 
 
 But no sooner did the outline and the parts to be 
 played by the three persons become clear, than the 
 dreamer became the three persons, and experienced, in 
 one and the same moment, three sets of emotions, all 
 distinct from each other, two of which were conflicting 
 and two downright contradictory; she accomplished 
 m one and the same moment, through the three persons, 
 three distinct and different acts, two of which were 
 mutually exclusive, besides maintaining three distinct 
 and appropriate attitudes to the total event. 
 
 While playing, with perfect difference, yet perfect 
 unity, these three parts in the drama, the dreamer also 
 stood apart and looked on, an unprejudiced and un- 
 moved, yet interested spectator. The actors, who 
 appeared as very vividly incarnate, bore no sort of 
 resemblance to the dreamer or to any person known to 
 her. From beginning to end, not only three distinct 
 experiences, but three distinct selfhoods were preserved 
 in one experience and one selfhood. 
 
 It may be objected that, as dreams are hallucinations, 
 we cannot argue from what happens in a dream to what 
 may happen in reality ; that under analysis this par- 
 ticular dream presents no more remarkable features 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 377 
 
 than any other dream ; and that the peculiar qualities 
 claimed for it are classic features of the Freudian hypo- 
 critical dream : multiplication of the dreamer's person 
 by substitution of other persons, and representation of 
 events consecutive in time by juxtaposition in space 
 
 (63). 
 
 The third objection, which might have been serious, 
 does not hold good of this dream. Emotions and moral 
 attitudes and the sense of personal identity, whether 
 simple and distinct or complex and transfused, are not 
 representations in space, either in dream-consciousness 
 or in any other. And in the dream they were not 
 symbolized, hut felt ; in the perfect, intimate immediacy 
 of feeling. 
 
 And the other objections are beside the point. It 
 does not matter whether dreams are or are not hallucina- 
 tions ; it does not matter what interpretation we put 
 upon this dream, or what elements it yields under 
 analysis. Dream consciousness is a form of conscious- 
 ness like another ; it has its own reality. It is not 
 claimed for this dream that a " real " transfusion of 
 consciousness and of selves took place in it, only that 
 it gave a perfect and indubitable sense of such trans- 
 fusion, of what it would feel like if the transfusion did 
 take place ; also that, as the dream was at least clear 
 enough and coherent enough to be remembered and 
 analysed by the dreamer, there remained in waking 
 consciousness a valid conception of the whole synthetic 
 event — a synthetic event which was said to be in- 
 conceivable. 
 
 Ruling out irrelevant objections, then, there are only 
 three points that need concern us. We have in this 
 dream-consciousness a plurality of illusory conscious- 
 nesses, a plurality of illusory selves, held together by 
 one '' real " self, and existing in and through and for 
 
378 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 vni 
 
 one real consciousness, and that without loss to the 
 integrity of one illusory item of the illusory complex 
 without any rupture of the unity of the one self. 
 
 The complex is illusory only by comparison with the 
 peculiar reality of waking consciousness. It, however 
 exists ; It has its own dream reality. It arises, pre- 
 sumably, because the dream consciousness is free from 
 those conditions of real space and real time which 
 determine the psycho-physical life of the individual 
 when awake. 
 
 For "iUusory" read "finite," and you have an 
 exact rendering of the situation assumed by pantheistic 
 Monism : a plurality of finite consciousnesses, a plurality 
 of fimte selves, held together by one Real Self, existing 
 in and through and for one Real consciousness ; and 
 that without loss to the integrity of one finite item of the 
 fanite complex, without rupture to the unity of the one 
 be f. You may say that the finite complex is unreal 
 only by comparison with the peculiar realitv of the 
 infinite Real. It has its own reality. And you may say 
 that the situation assumed by the monist presupposes 
 a corresponding transcendence of the conditions of finite 
 space and finite time. 
 
 TV, T\\ '"'^ ^°^""*^ ^P'"*' *lie°' i^ tte finite selves, 
 mat the selves are not conscious of this union is the 
 tragedy of their finitude. In our present existence we 
 are spirit ; but so hmited in our experience that we 
 know the appearances of Spirit far better than we know 
 bpint Itself. If we knew them all, and if, in order to 
 know them, it so happened that we increased the pace 
 of the rhythm of time as it is increased in our dream- 
 consciousness, only to an immeasurably more intense 
 degree, the chances are that we should know Spirit not 
 as It appears, but as it is (64). Appearances would be 
 whirled for us, as it were, into the one Reality, as the 
 
 vm 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 379 
 
 colours of the spectrum, painted on a revolving disc, are 
 whirled into one whiteness by the sheer rapidity of its 
 revolutions. 
 
 There are, after all, different kinds of certainty. And 
 all our certainties that count, here and now, come to us 
 after this fashion. Our inner states do succeed each 
 other at different rates of vibration, and what escapes 
 us on the slow, steady swing, we seize when the pace 
 quickens. Our perceptions, like our passions, maintam 
 themselves at higher and lower intensities. It is with 
 such rapid flashes of the revolving disc, with such 
 hurrying of the rhythm of time, with such heightening 
 of psychic intensity that we discern Reality here and 
 
 now. 
 
 No reasoning allows or accounts for these moments. 
 But lovers and poets and painters and musicians and 
 mystics and heroes know them : moments when eternal 
 Beauty is seized travelling through time; moments 
 when things that we have seen all our lives without truly 
 seeing them, the flowers in the garden, the trees m the 
 field, the hawthorn on the hillside, change to us in an 
 instant of time, and show the secret and imperishable 
 life they harbour ; moments when the human creature 
 we have known all our life without truly knowing it, 
 reveals its incredible godhead ; moments of danger that 
 are moments of sure and perfect happiness, because 
 then the adorable Reality gives itself to our very sight 
 
 and touch. 
 
 There is no arguing against certainties like these. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 381 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE PAN-PSYCHISM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 
 
 Pages 1-47 
 
 L Psycho-analysis and the problems it raises are the subject of 
 a sequel to this volume, The Way of Sublimation. 
 
 2. ''The neurotic, far more plainly than the normal psyche shows 
 us that ' Through the great Being that surrounds and interpenetrates 
 us stretches a great Becoming that strives for perfected Being.' " 
 (Dr. Alfred Adler, tJher den 7ierv6sen CharaUer, p. 195.) 
 
 3. See Freud, The Interpretatioyi of Dreams, On Dreams ; and 
 Jung, Analytical Psychology (translation by Dr. Constance Long) 
 and The Psychology of the Unconscious (translation by Dr. Beatrice 
 Hinkle, M.D., New York). 
 
 4. See The Way of Sublimation. 
 
 5. See Life a7id Habit, Unconscious Memory, Evolution Old and 
 New, Luck or Cu7ming ? God the Known and God the Unknown, and 
 The Note-Books of Samuel Butler. 
 
 6. See Unconscious Memory, translation of Professor Ewald 
 Hering's Address on " Memory as a Universal Function of Organized 
 Matter." ^ 
 
 7. Note-Books, p. 56. 
 
 8. It is worth while noting that consciousness of all these functions 
 may be partially restored through disease or disorder of the organs 
 involved, and that we have even in normal health a certain very 
 limited and temporary control over our breathing, while in illness 
 we " fight for our breath "—make an effort to breathe. We have 
 in normal circumstances a certain still more limited control over the 
 beating of our hearts ; that is to say, we can increase or reduce 
 palpitation by attention or inattention. This fact is so well recog- 
 nized by doctors that they will not always allow a patient to know 
 that he has "something the matter" with his heart. But by no 
 fighting and no effort can normal people, even in abnormal circum- 
 
 383 
 
384 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 stances, re-establish control over their digestive functions, which 
 are the oldest of all. 
 
 Abnormal people, however, can accomplish a good deal in this 
 line. The practisers of Yogi have so far organized control over the 
 " Unconscious " that they can lower the action of the heart and 
 lungs till both functions are apparently suspended ; they can reverse 
 the movements of the intestines ; inhibit the physical phenomena of 
 hunger, and play oth(ir tricks, more or less revolting, with their 
 organs. Persons suffering from profound hysterical neurosis can 
 do as much. Probably most instances of the ability to fast for 
 abnormal periods come under this head. So that it would seem 
 that the links between the Conscious and the Unconscious, between 
 reflex and voluntary action have never been completely lost. It 
 is even conceivable that, if we cared to pay the price, we could 
 recover them completely, and " by taking thought " become once 
 more mere breathing and digesting organisms, animated by a rudi- 
 mentary psyche. People who pride themselves upon the possession 
 of such abnormal powers should realize precisely what it is that they 
 are doing. 
 
 9. Life and Habit, p. 47. 
 
 10. "... We may assume it as an axiom with regard to actions 
 acquired after birth, that we never do them automatically save as 
 the result of long practice, and after having thus acquired perfect 
 mastery over the action in question." (Life and Habit, p. 53.) 
 
 11. " Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks (which 
 involves the whole principle of the pump and hence a profound 
 practical knowledge of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), 
 digests, oxygenizes its blood (millions of years before Sir Humphry 
 Davy discovered oxygen), sees and hears — all most difficult and 
 complicated operations, involving a knowledge of the facts con- 
 cerning optics and acoustics, compared with which the discoveries 
 of Newton sink into utter insignificance ? Shall we say that a baby 
 can do all these things at once, doihg them so well and so regularly, 
 without being even able to direct its attention to them, and without 
 mistakes, and at the same time not know how to do them, and never 
 have done them before ? " (Life and Habit, p. 54.) 
 
 Of course if you are going to be pedantic and literal about it, you 
 can say that the baby's action may indeed " involve " the " prin- 
 ciple " of the pump, but that it need not and does not involve a 
 " knowledge of the laws of pneumatics," etc. " Involving " is a 
 treacherous word in this connection ; but Butler's meaning is clear : 
 that the baby's instinctive and practical knowledge is superior (for 
 its purposes) to all other kinds of knowledge. 
 
 12. Life and Habit, pp. 55, 56. 
 
 13. Note-Books of Samuel Butler, pp. 53, 54. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 385 
 
 14. Life and Habit, p. 130. 
 
 15. Ibid. p. 131. 
 
 16. Ibid, p! 51. 
 
 The older physiology might have accounted for the coincidences 
 on the grounds that our visceral functions are controlled by that 
 system of reflexes which used to be known as the " sympathetic " 
 system, working " on its own." But now that the voluntary and 
 involuntary sensori-motor arcs are found to be connected, Butler's 
 coincidence remains as singular as ever from the purely physical 
 standpoint. 
 
 " The muscles of the visceral system are connected by sensori- 
 motor arcs principally with sense-organs that are embedded in the 
 viscera, and are stimulated by movements, pressures, and chemical 
 changes in the viscera ; and these arcs constitute a system of nerves 
 that was for long considered to be quite separate from, and in- 
 dependent of, the other larger system, and was known as the sympa- 
 thetic system. We know now, however, that the two systems of 
 sensori-motor arcs, the skeletal or voluntary" [involved in 'all 
 those movements of the limbs, trunk, head, and organs of speech by 
 which relations with the outer world are maintained '] " and the 
 visceral or involuntary are intimately connected." (William 
 McDougall, Physiological Psychology, p. 16.) 
 
 17. Note-Books, pp. 39-92. 
 
 18. For these extensions and confirmations of Butler"s theory, 
 see Life and Habit, pp. 166-197 and 220-251. 
 
 19. Dr. McDougall, in his one reference to Butler in Body and 
 Mind, supposes him to have declared that all memory and instinct 
 are merely habit, whereas Butler maintains the very opposite. 
 
 20. Life and Habit, p. 49. See also Luck or Cunning ? pp. 20-70. 
 
 21. Note-Books, pp. 47-55 ; Life and Habit, pp. 78-124 ; Luck or 
 Cunning ? pp. 23, 24, 25. 
 
 22. See Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 602. 
 Also infra, pp. 137, 138. 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Pages 75-121 
 
 23. " Feeling-tone, as the word implies, is in some way dependent 
 on the sensations. Nevertheless, the feeling-tone is in some degree 
 independent of sensation-quality ; for one quality of sensation may 
 be at one time pleasant, at another unpleasant, and at a third have 
 no appreciable feeling-tone." (William McDougall, Physiological 
 Psychology, pp. 79, 80. See also Body and Mind, pp. 312-313.) 
 
 2c 
 
386 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 24. See infra, pp. 87, 88, 129. 
 
 25. Body and Mind, pp. 211 et seq., pp. 215-220. 
 
 " . . . we may believe that the essential peculiarity of living 
 organisms is that they serve as channels of communication or of 
 transmission of energy or influence from the psychical to the physical 
 sphere ; and we may believe also that the evolution of organisms 
 has been essentially a process by which they have become better 
 adapted to play this unique role." {Body and Mind, p. 221.) 
 
 26. Ibid. pp. 151, 180. 
 
 27. See Fechner, Psycho- Physik, In Sache der Psyctw-Physik, 
 Uber die Seden Frage, Zend-Avesta. 
 
 28. Body and Mind, pp. 319-321, 340, 341, 343 ; also Physiologi- 
 cal Psychology, p. 146. 
 
 29. Certain experiments seem to show that it is possible to 
 measure the output of nervous energy by studying the influence of 
 fatigue in the curve of muscular work or in the reduction of sensitivity 
 to stimuli. And still we are as far as ever from a satisfactory demon- 
 stration of strict psycho-physical parallelism. For in the nature 
 of the case results, when obtainable, will be drawn, not from com- 
 parison of complicated experiences, involving an extensive psychic 
 output, but from single, simple operations, such as the raising of 
 a weight, or (in the case of stimulation of the optic nerve) the rapid 
 turning of a coloured disc. Even granted that these experiments 
 are successful, the proportion thus established between muscular 
 innervation and muscular fatigue, between nerve stimulus and nerve 
 fatigue falls within the nervous system ; that is to say, it holds 
 good only on the physical line. The psychic process (which is not 
 to be confounded with the neural process) eludes the test. As you 
 can never catch, as it were, your psychic total, psychic increment 
 can neither be proved nor disproved. 
 
 SOME ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICS 
 
 Pages 123-144 
 30. Swpra, '* Vitalism," pp. 52-55. 
 
 PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 
 
 Pages 145-172 
 
 31. Humanism and Riddles of the Sphinx. 
 
 32. F. C. S. Schiller, Preface to Humanism, p. xviii. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 387 
 
 THE NEW REALISM 
 
 Pages 173-268 
 
 33. " Sjmabolic," because the laws of Formal Logic concern 
 only the connections between propositions, and these propositions 
 can be stated in terms of " variables." For example : If x is greater 
 than y and y is greater than z, then x is greater than z. 
 
 The connection between the propositions holds good for every 
 value (variable) of x and y. X and y thus stand as " symbolic " 
 of everything to which the proposition can validly apply. 
 
 34. " The distinction of mathematics from logic is very arbitrary, 
 but ... it can be made as follows. Logic consists of the premisses 
 of mathematics, together with all other propositions which are con- 
 cerned exclusively with logical constants and with variables, but do 
 not fulfil the above definition of mathematics.^ Mathematics consists 
 of all the consequences of the above premisses which assert formal 
 implications containing variables, together with such of the premisses 
 themselves as bear these marks. Thus some of the premisses of 
 mathematics, e.g. the principle of the syllogism if p implies q and 
 q implies r, then p implies r, will belong to mathematics, while others, 
 such as " implication is a relation," will belong to logic, but not to 
 mathematics. But for the desire to adhere to usage we might 
 identify mathematics and logic, and define either as the class of 
 propositions containing only variables and logical constants." 
 {Principia Mathematica, p. 9.) 
 
 " The distinction between a variable and a constant is somewhat 
 obscured by mathematical usage. ... A constant is to be something 
 absolutely definite, concerning which there is no ambiguity whatever. 
 Thus 1, 2, 3, e, tt, Socrates, are constants, and so are tnan and the 
 human race, past, present, and future, considered collectively. 
 Proposition, implication, class, etc., are constants ; but a proposition, 
 any proposition, some propositions are not constants, for these 
 phrases do not denote one definite object." (Ihid. p. 6.) 
 
 " The connection of mathematics with logic, according to the 
 above account, is exceedingly close. The fact that all mathematical 
 
 ^ " Pure Mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form of p implies q 
 where p and q are propositions containing one or more variables, the same in 
 the two propositions, and neither p nor q contains any constants except logical 
 constants. And logical constants are all notions definable in terms of the 
 following : Implication, the relation of a term to the class of which it is a 
 member, the notion of such that, the notion of relation, and such further notions 
 as may be involved in the general notion of propositions of the above form. 
 In addition to these, mathematics uses a notion which is not a constituent of 
 the propositions which it considers, namely, the notion of truth." {Principia 
 Mathematical p. 3.) 
 
388 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 constants are logical constants, and that all the premisses of mathe- 
 matics are concerned with these, gives, I believe, the precise state- 
 ment of what philosophers have meant in asserting that mathematics 
 is a priori. The fact is, that when once the apparatus of logic has 
 been accepted, all mathematics necessarily follow." (Ibid. p. 8.) 
 
 35. Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, pp. 
 87 et seq. Also infra, pp. 194, 195, 196. 
 
 It should be borne m mind that the conclusion, so distressing 
 for the idealist, is not forced on him by the mathematical definition 
 of continuity. Physics, Mr. Russell tells us, accepts the ideal 
 elements of mathematics without enquiry into their reality. "It 
 is unnecessary, for the enunciation of the laws of physics, to assign 
 any reality to ideal elements : it is enough to accept them as logical 
 constructions, provided we have means of knowing how to determine 
 when they become actual." After all, the fact remains that mathe- 
 matical continuity is based on purely fictitious or " ideal " points 
 and instances, assumed for the purpose of constructing a self-consist- 
 ent definition. 
 
 " Les axiomes geometriques ne sont . . . ni des jugements 
 synthetiques a priori, ni des faits experimentaux. 
 
 " Ce sont des conventions ; notre choix parmi toutes les con- 
 ventions possibles, est guide par des faits experimentaux ; mais il 
 reste libre et n'est limite que par la necessite d'eviter toute contra- 
 diction . . . ; les axiomes de la geometrie . . . ne sont que des 
 definitions deguisees." (Poincare, La Science et VHypothese, p. 66.) 
 
 Since, further, mathematical space and time are absolute and 
 infinite, and actual space is an affair of relations and correlations, 
 you cannot argue from the continuity of mathematical space to the 
 continuity of actual space and of the things that occupy it. How, 
 then, are we to determine when the ideal elements " become actual " ? 
 All that Realism can hope to gain is the proof that its own logical 
 constructions— founded on a purely ideal '' convention "—can be 
 manipulated so as to exclude contradiction. The crucial problem 
 for Realism will be how to effect such constructions and correlations 
 as shall be equally self -consistent ; how, in short, to reduce " the 
 haphazard, untidy world of immediate sensation to the smooth, 
 orderly world of geometry and kinetics." In immediate experience 
 correlation is going on all the time. 
 
 " The first thing to notice is that different senses have different 
 spaces. The space of sight is quite different from the space of 
 touch : it is only by experience in infancy that we learn to corre- 
 late them. . . . The one space mto which both kinds of sensations 
 fit is an intellectual construction, not a datum. . . . The one all- 
 embracing space, though convenient as a way of speaking—" 
 
 (Still more convenient, one would imagine, as a way of thinking) 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 389 
 
 
 — " need not be supposed really to exist." {Our Knowledge^ of the 
 External World, p. 113.) 
 
 What could the idealist wish for more ? 
 
 However, Dr. Whitehead has invented a method " for the purpose 
 of showing how points might be manipulated from sense-data." It 
 amounts to this : You can, by an effort of attention, regard your 
 bit of finite space (volume or surface) as consisting of parts contained 
 in a whole. You obtain your points by a system or series of diminish- 
 ing enclosures converging to a point. The '' enclosure-relation " is 
 called a " point-producer." Again, I must leave the process to 
 Mr. Russell to explain. 
 
 " Given any relation of enclosure, we will call a set of objects 
 an enclosure-series. We require a condition which shall secure that 
 an enclosure-series converges to a point, and this is obtained as 
 follows : Let our enclosure-series be such that, given any other 
 enclosure -series of which there are members enclosed in any arbi- 
 trarily-chosen member of our first series, then there are members 
 of our first series enclosed in any arbitrarily-chosen member of our 
 second series. In this case, our first enclosure-series may be called 
 a ' punctual enclosure-series.' Then a ' point ' is all the objects 
 which enclose members of a given ' punctual enclosure-series.' In 
 order to ensure infinite divisibility, we require one further property 
 to be added to those defining point-producers, namely, that any 
 object which encloses itself also encloses an object other than itself. 
 The ' points ' generated by point-producers with this property will 
 be found to be such as geometry requires." (Ibid. p. 115.) 
 
 Yo '^ave got, that is to say, by logical manipulation, another 
 self -con&_^ cent definition ; but you are no nearer to solving the 
 problem of how ideal elements " become actual." All this " manu- 
 facture " and " manipulation '" and " construction " is far more 
 like the despised " work of thought " than that passive contempla- 
 tion of spectacular realities which atomistic Realism assumes. And 
 the entire universe of space and time depends on it ! 
 
 Again, Poincare : 
 
 " On voit que I'experience joue une role indispensable dans la 
 genese de la geometrie ; mais ce serait une erreur d'en conclure que 
 la geometrie est une science experimentale, meme en partie. . . . 
 
 " La geometrie ne serait que I'etude des mouvements des solides ; 
 mais elle ne s'occupe pas en realite des solides naturels, elle a pour 
 objets certain solides ideaux, absolument invariables, qui n'en sont 
 qu'une image simplifiee et bien lointaine. 
 
 " La notion de ces corps ideaux est tiree de toutes pieces de notre 
 esprit et I'experience n'est qu'une occasion qui nous engage a Ten 
 faire sortir. 
 
 " Ce qui est I'objet de la geometrie, c'est I'etude d"un ' groupe ' 
 
390 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 particulier ; mais le concept generale de groupe preexiste danc notre 
 esprit au moins en puissance. II s'impose a nous, non comme forme 
 de notre sensibilite, mais conmie forme de notre entendement." 
 {La Science et VHypothese, p. 90.) 
 Could anything be plainer ? 
 
 36. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 142, 157 ; 
 Cecil Delisle Burns, William of Ockham on Universals. 
 
 37. Bertrand Russell, " The Monistic Theory of Truth " in 
 Philosophical Essays. 
 
 Also Ralph Barton Perry, '' A Realistic Theory of Independence," 
 and William Pepperell Montague, " A Realistic Theory of Truth 
 and Error" in The New Realists: A Symposium of Six. (The 
 Macmillan Company, New York.) 
 
 38. It is on this narrow plot of thought that Hegel's critics and 
 his followers have joined issue, and to the unprejudiced spectator 
 of their conflicts they seem to have been leagued together to suppress 
 every word that Hegel ever wrote outside the three fat volumes of 
 his Logic. Of course if you take the Logic as the whole of Hegel, 
 and as the beginning and end of the Transcendental Philosophy, 
 there is no charge that his opponents ever brought against him, and 
 no travesty of his system that his followers ever perpetrated, so 
 absurd that it could not be justified. 
 
 And if this were all, Hegelianism would be, indeed, what some 
 unsympathetic person said it was, " a dance of bloodless categories." 
 I forget who was responsible for the pleasant fancy that when 
 German philosophies die their ghosts go to Oxford. It was certainly 
 the ghost of Hegelianism that inhabited Balliol in the 'eighties, till 
 its ceaseless hauntings provoked the healthy reaction of Pragmatism 
 and Humanism. Goodness knows why Hegel's disciples should 
 have conceived that it was their sacred mission to mutilate their 
 master so as to leave out of his system the one principle that made 
 it vital, and to whittle it down to a bare epistemology. 
 
 Epistemology — a metaphysic based on the sterile abstract 
 categories of the Understanding whose utter impotence he was 
 never tired of demonstrating. One can only suppose that the Triple 
 Dialectic was too much for the disciples, and that they thought they 
 were simplifjdng him. 
 
 There is, however, this excuse for them, that, though Hegel was 
 perfectly clear about what he meant, he was not always cautious 
 about what he said. What he meant — and said so often that there 
 should have been no possible doubt as to his meaning — was that 
 Spirit is the prius, and that Thought, is only part (an important part, 
 but still only part) of the whole gorgeous, concrete, and abundant 
 life of Spirit. But being a poet with an imagination, as well as a 
 philosopher with a system, he also said that Thought was the 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 391 
 
 diamond-net in which the universe is hung ; and all his opponents 
 and his followers took this saying literally. 
 
 Literally, and yet not literally enough. For the net is surely 
 not the thing it snares. However, as Thought was a thing both 
 critics and followers were fairly familiar with, and Spirit presumably 
 was not, wherever and whenever afterwards Hegel spoke to them 
 of Spirit, they refused to listen to him. Had he not said at the end 
 of the third fat volume of his Logic that the Idea, the Transcendental 
 Idea, was the Whole ? Had he not said that Thought was the 
 Ding-an-sich ? 
 
 What he did say, criticizing Kant, was that the Thing-in-Itself 
 is what the Absolute is, of which " nothing is known but that every- 
 thing is one in it." (Logik, Book I. p. 121. Berlin, 1841.) He 
 defined it, with ferocious asperity, as a " dead-head," the " utterly 
 abstract and entirely empty, only definable as the Beyond, the 
 negative of idea and feeling and of definite thinking." He said it 
 was surprising " how often we are told that we don't know what 
 the Thing-in-Itself is," and added sarcastically that " nothing was 
 easier than to know it." (Eificyclopddie, p. 67.) He said that 
 " the Logic was the setting forth of what the Thing-in-ltself in truth 
 is, of what is truly in it " ; and that " by ' In-Itself ' something 
 better than an abstraction is to be understood, namely, what some- 
 thing is in its concept," the concept being a very concrete and 
 definite affair. (Logik, p. 121.) And he certainly did say that the 
 Transcendental Idea was the Whole, meaning the logical Whole 
 that he was dealing with in the three fat volumes. Then he paused 
 to take breath before letting his system rip in the vaster Dialectic 
 of the Spirit. That pause was fatal to him. For whatever he 
 might say afterwards nobody attended to him. His followers had 
 got their catchword ! " Thought is the Ding-an-sich.'' 
 
 Yet it should be clear to every unprejudiced reader of the Encyclo- 
 padie and the Phdnomenologie that Spirit and not Thought is the 
 all-embracing term ; the beginning and end of Being and Becoming ; 
 the through-all and in-all ; the only principle that can be first in 
 thought and first also in existence. The whole course of the Triple 
 Dialectic depends on it. And he is explicit enough : 
 
 " The absolute Idea alone is Being, imperishable life, truth that 
 knows itself, and it is all truth " — as far as thought goes. {Logik, 
 Book III. p. 318.) 
 
 But Spirit is " that which is the truth and the end of Nature, 
 and the true Reality of the Ideal." {Encyclopddie, p. 211.) 
 
 For the " Logic " " this Idea is as yet logical ; it is shut within 
 pure thought ; it is the Knowledge only of the divine idea. The 
 systematic carrying-out of it is itself realisation — but contained 
 within this sphere " (p. 342). 
 
 >■*■ — »>1.4«i **!■ ,*iA**'«>r **" 
 
392 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 393 
 
 " At every stage of its wider determination it upheaves the whole 
 mass of its foregoing content ; and through its dialectic process it 
 not only leaves nothing behind, but it carries with it all that it has 
 won, it enriches and thickens itself in itself." 
 
 • •••... 
 
 " Every stage of the outgoing, of wider determination, is an 
 ingoing ; the greater the extension the higher the intensity. There- 
 fore, what is richest is also the most concrete and the most subjective ; 
 the mightiest and that which has the biggest stretch is that which 
 finds itself again in the depth of simplicity. The highest, the sharpest 
 point is pure Personality." {Logik, Book I. pp. 60, 61.) 
 
 It is the Absolute Spirit which at the end of the process is known 
 " as the concrete and the last highest truth of all Being." 
 
 " The essential thing for knowledge is not so much that it should 
 begin (as the Logic begins) with the purely immediate, but that its 
 whole of knowledge should be a circle returning into itself, in which 
 the First is also the Last, and the Last is also the First." (Logik, 
 Book L pp. 60, 61.) 
 
 39. Mr. E. B. Holt's argument, even if psycho-physically sound, 
 cuts both ways. 
 
 " And now I can reply to the anti-realist's question : How can 
 realism pretend to assert the reality of the odour, sound, and so 
 forth which are vividly present in the dreams of a person sleeping, 
 it may be, in a box no bigger than his coffin ? Realism, I say, can 
 assert this because the nervous system, even when unstimulated 
 from without, is able to generate within itself nerve-currents of 
 those frequencies whose density factor is the same as in ordinary 
 peripheral stimulation." {The New Realism, p. 352.) 
 
 The anti-realist may agree that he gets nerve-stimulation in 
 either case, just as he agrees that hallucinations can be distinguished 
 from " external realities " by their contexts. (For the matter of 
 that a hallucination may appear as externalized in public space.) 
 I do not see why he should be represented as worrying about " the 
 box no bigger than his coffin," since a box no bigger than his head 
 contrives to house the nerve-centres that are implicated. His 
 question is : What kind of reality, or of appe- ranee, is to be ascribed 
 to the objects of sense-perception ? His anti-ness would declare 
 itself rather in contending that if you will ascribe absolute outside 
 reality to all spaces and to all times and to all objects in space and 
 time, then, when you've proved that your nervous system is able 
 '* to generate within itself nerve-currents of those frequencies whose 
 density factor is the same as in ordinary peripheral stimulation,'' it 
 is, to say the least of it, a little odd that your motor experiences in 
 dream space are so very far from being " the same " as your motor 
 experiences in " ordinary " space. 
 
 i 
 
 The realist argues as if the nerve-currents had everything to do 
 with the " reality " of dream-experiences and hallucinations. Very 
 well, then. Establish the same conditions of " frequency," " density 
 factor," and the rest of it, and what you ought to expect from your 
 dream is a sober expedition in a space conformed in every way to 
 ordinary space, and the sober spectacle of objects behaving in an 
 ordinary spatial manner, and not expeditions and spectacles so far 
 from ordinary as to presuppose a dream-space and a dream-time and 
 a dream-behaviour that do not conform at all. 
 
 THE NEW MYSTICISM 
 Pages 269-323 
 
 40. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Edition, pp. 9 et seq., 
 32-76, 163 et seq. ; also p. 64. Themis, pp. 270, 275. 
 
 Sir James G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, pp. 201, 226, 239, 
 247, 259, 288, 289, 348, 367 et seq. ; also pp. 346, 371, 380. Adonis, 
 ' Attis, Osiris, pp. 45 et seq., 219 et seq. 
 
 41. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 21, 327 et seq. Themis, 
 p. 261 et seq. 
 
 42. Buddhist Suttas, translated hy Professor Rhys Davids. 
 Akankheya-Sutta, pp. 14, 15. {Sacred Books of the East, edited by 
 Professor Max Miiller.) 
 
 43. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, pp. 100 et seq., 260. 
 (Translated by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D., New York.) 
 
 Pierre Janet, U Automatisme psychologique. Etat mentnl des 
 hysteriques, vol. ii. Les accidents mentaux. The Major Symptoms 
 of HyHeria. 
 
 Anna Robeson Burr, Religious Confessions and Confessants, pp. 
 194-284. 
 
 44. Life of St. Teresa, Written by Herself, ch. xx. xxix. 
 
 45. Life of St. Catherine of Genoa, by Baron von Hiitten. 
 
 46. St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul (translation 
 by Gabriela Cunningham Grahame), pp. 235-237. 
 
 47. St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night, pp. 47-55, 100, 116, 120. 
 
 48. Anna Robeson Burr, Religious Confessions, p. 357. 
 
 49. Life of St. Teresa, ch. xxv. 
 
 50. Interpretation of Dreams ; On Dreams. 
 
 51. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, May, June, and 
 July 1916 ; and January 1917. 
 
 52. See infra, " Conclusions," pp. 376^ 377, 378. 
 
 53. The Upanishads, translated by Max Muller. Part I. {Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. i.) 
 
394 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 54. "It is right ... to state here that Oriental Mysticism 
 insists upon a further stage beyond that of union, which stage it 
 regards as the real goal of the spiritual life. This is the total annihila- 
 tion or reabsorption of the individual soul in the Infinite." (Mysti- 
 cism, p. 207.) 
 
 *' The tendency of Indian mysticism to regard the Unitive Life 
 wholly in its passive aspect, as a total self-annihilation, a disappear- 
 ance into the substance of the Godhead, results, I believe, from . . . 
 a one-sided distortion of truth. The Oriental mystic ' presses on 
 to lose his life upon the heights ' ; but he does not come back from 
 the grave and bring to his fellow-men the life-giving news that he 
 has transcended mortality in the interests of the race. The tempera- 
 mental bias of Western mystics towards activity has saved them 
 from such a one-sided achievement as this ; and hence it is in them 
 that the Unitive Life, with its ' dual character of activity and rest,' 
 has assumed its richest and its noblest forms." {Ibid. p. 520.) 
 
 In the East . . . the contemplative and world-renouncing 
 quest of the Absolute . . . which developed under the influence of 
 Hindu philosophy, has been from the first divorced from the warmly 
 vital and more truly mystic, outgoing and fruitful, world-renewing 
 attitude of Love. . . . 
 
 " . . . The search for transcendence, as we see it in orthodox 
 Hinduism and Buddhism, represents in its general tendency, not a 
 movement of expansion, not the generous industry of insatiable 
 love ; but a movement of withdrawal, the cultivation of an exquisite 
 and aristocratic despair. Inspired by the intellect rather than by 
 the heart, the whole mystical philosophy of the Hindus has as its 
 presupposition a strong feeling of the transitoriness and unreality 
 of existence." {The Mystic Way, pp. 21, 22.) 
 
 In the case of Siifi-ism, Miss Underbill admits that the inter- 
 pretations of European students may be incorrect, and that Al 
 Ghazzali's description of the Sufi's Eighth Stage of Progress " is 
 certainly more applicable to the Unitive Life as understood by 
 Christian contemplatives than to the Buddhistic annihilation of 
 personality." {Mysticism, p. 207.) 
 
 It would not be fair to quote Miss Underbill as claiming, in 1913, 
 a Christian influence for the mysticism of the Vaishnavists Rama- 
 nuja and Ramananda (see The Mystic Way, pp. 23, 24, 25), since 
 in 1914 she has admitted very handsomely that " this is a poiat upon 
 which competent authorities hold widely divergent views." (In- 
 troduction to One Hundred Poems of Kahir.) But I hope she will 
 forgive me if I take a mean advantage of her footnote referring to 
 Vaishnavism. 
 
 " The fact that this movement, on its lower and popular side, 
 gave support to the most erotic and least desirable aspects of the 
 
 » 
 
 I 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 395 
 
 Krishna cult, ought not to prejudice our judgment of its higher 
 and purer aspect. The wholesale condemnation of a faith on account 
 of its worst by-products is a dangerous principle for Christian 
 critics." {The Mystic Way, p. 23.) 
 
 It is, of course, a dangerous principle for anybody, as it cuts 
 pretty badly both ways. All the same, the sticklers for the '* Influ- 
 ence " are in a dilemma. Either Christianity really had nothing 
 to do with the Humanist forms of Eastern mysticism, or it was 
 responsible for their lowest and impurest aspect. 
 
 Perhaps the less said about eroticism the better. 
 
 55. " Dance, my heart ! dance to-day with joy. 
 
 " The strains of love fill the days and the nights with music, 
 and the world is listening to the melodies : 
 
 " Mad with joy, life, and death, dance to the rhythm of this 
 music. The hills and the sea and the earth dance. The world of 
 man dances in laughter and tears." (The Thirty-Second Poem of 
 Kabir.) 
 
 56. " To amuse and to delight Gertrude of Eisleben, He sang 
 duets with her ' in a tender and harmonious voice.' The same 
 saint writes of their ' incredible intimacy ' ; and here, as in later 
 passages of Angela da Foligno, the reader is revolted by their sensu- 
 ality." (Anna Robeson Burr, Religious Confessions and Confessants, 
 p. 357.) 
 
 57. Psychology of the Unconscious, pp. 97, 98. 
 
 58. lUd. pp. 130, 132. 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 Pages 325-379 
 
 59. Sir James G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, pp. 470, 471. 
 
 60. Ibid. pp. 371, 380. 
 
 61. Ibid., loc. cit. See also Jane Harrison on " The Hero as 
 Snake " and " The Snake as Well and Tree-Daimon," Themis, pp. 
 261 et seq., and pp. 430, 431, 432. 
 
 62. Sabhdsava-Sutta {Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. ; The 
 Buddhist Suttas, translated by Professor Rhys Davids). 
 
 In Professor Rhys Davids' translation the last sentence runs : 
 "... this soul of mine is permanent, lasting, eternal, has the 
 inherent quality of never changing, and will continue for ever and 
 
 ever. 
 
 >> 
 
 I do not offer the phrase " Deadly Things " as a rendering 
 of " Asavas." But it may pass as a picturesque and disorderly 
 
396 
 
 A DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 
 
 substitute. The Pali word appears to have no exact moral equivalent. 
 Professor Rhys Davids says : 
 
 " I am unable to suggest any good translation of the term itself 
 — simple though it is. It means literally ' a running or flowing,' 
 (thence) a leak ; but as that figure is not used in English in a spiritual 
 sense, it is necessary to choose some other figure, and it is not easy 
 to find one that is appropriate. ' Sin ' would be very misleading, 
 the Christian idea of sin being inconsistent with Buddhist Ethics. 
 A ' fault ' in the geological use of the word comes somewhat nearer. 
 ' Imperfection ' is too long, and for ' stain ' the Pali has a different 
 word. In the Book of the Great Decease I have chosen ' evil ' ; here 
 I leave the word untranslated." (Introduction.) 
 
 May I suggest that, though the original figure " running or flow- 
 ing " has no " spiritual " sense in English, it has in various languages 
 of philosophy a metaphysical sense, which is of the first importance 
 in this highly metaphysical Sutta ? We have " the flux of things," 
 the " stream of consciousness," so why not " The Book of All the 
 Life-Streams " ? 
 
 63. Freud : On Dreams : The Interpretation of Dreams. 
 
 64. See Bergson : Matiere et Memoire, p. 231. 
 
 '^ En realite il n'y a pas un rhythme unique de la duree, on pent 
 imaginer bien des rhythmes difEerents, qui, plus lents ou plus 
 rapides, mesureraient le degre de tension ou de relachement des 
 consciences, et, par la, fixeraient leurs places respectives dans la 
 serie des etres." 
 
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