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BOOKS BY BORDEN PARKER BOWNE 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HERBERT SPENCER, 1874. (Out of print.) 
 
 STUDIES IN THEISM, 1879. (Out of print.) 
 
 METAPHYSICS, 1882. 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY, 1886. (Out of print.) 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM, 1887. (Out of print.) 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS, 1892. 
 
 THEORY OF THOUGHT AND KNOWLEDGE, 1897. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION, 1898. (Out of print.) 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, 1899. (Out of print.) 
 
 THE ATONEMENT, 1900. (Out of print.) 
 
 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD, 1905. 
 
 PERSONALISM, 1908. 
 
 STUDIES IN CHRISTIANITY, 1909. 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION, 1910. 
 
 KANT AND SPENCER, 1912. 
 
/7^^u^ l/a/i^KcA. /^z/vt/j'^^ 
 
Studies in Philosophy 
 and Theology 
 
 By Former Students of 
 Borden Parker Bowne 
 
 Edited by 
 
 E. c. wi,:^.M 
 
 Profesaor of Philosophy, Boston University 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 XStlatafttK'HBI 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 

 Copyright, 1922, by 
 E. C. WILM 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
<? CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Editor's Introduction. E. C. Wilm 7 
 
 II. The Empirical Factor in Bowne's Thinking. 
 
 George A. Coe 17 
 
 III. Neo-Realistic Theories of Value. Edgar 
 
 Sheffield Brightman 22 
 
 IV. A Truly Catholic Spirit (Illustrated in 
 
 John Wesley). D. A. Hayes 65 
 
 V. Religious Apriorism. Albert C. Knudson. . . 93 
 
 VI. Bowne and the Social Questions. Francis 
 
 J. McConnell 128 
 
 VII. A Person ALisTic View of Art. Herbert 
 
 C. Sanborn 144 
 
 VIII. Some Epistemological Premises. Benjamin 
 
 W. Van Riper 206 
 
 IX. Democratizing Theology. Herbert Alden 
 
 Youtz 248 
 
 v3 
 
 O 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 The papers comprised in this volume are by a num- 
 ber of Professor Bowne's former students in Boston 
 University, and were intended for publication in 1920, 
 at the tenth anniversary of Bowne's death, as a slight 
 token of respect for a teacher whom they honor and 
 revere. It is a matter of regret to me that a number 
 of circumstances delayed the appearance of the vol- 
 ume a little beyond the time originally planned; never- 
 theless, the purpose of the book will still be served, 
 since, although another year has passed, the sentiment 
 toward Bowne of those who knew him remains the 
 same. 
 
 It is probably needless to say that it is not my in- 
 tention (and I imagine I speak also for those who 
 have cooperated with me in this enterprise) to seek, 
 through the publication of this volume, to add to the 
 reputation of Bowne, or to expound or defend the type 
 of philosophy for which he stood. Bowne's place in 
 the history of philosophy is pretty definitely known, 
 and cannot be enhanced by any eulogies which might 
 be pronounced. From what one gleans of his own 
 half-humorous, self-deprecating comments, such eulo- 
 gies would have impressed him but little. He seems 
 to have imbibed somewhere the healthy sentiment 
 
 7 
 
8 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 which every young beginner in philosophy would do 
 well to lay to heart, that "philosophy is an elegant 
 thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if he 
 is conversant with it more than is becoming, it cor- 
 rupts the man." 
 
 Nor would a mere defense of his system have pleased 
 him better. "The men who have helped philosophy 
 forward," he wrote shortly before his death, "have 
 seldom been men learned in the bibliography of the 
 science, but men who have grappled with the prob- 
 lems themselves." It was Kant's aim, we learn from 
 a passage in the Prolegomena to Every Future Meta- 
 physic, not to teach philosophy, but how to philoso- 
 phize — nicht Philosophie, sondern philosophieren. The 
 true teacher is not bent upon obtaining agreement 
 with his own opinions. He is most pleased when he 
 detects in his pupils the ability to grapple successfully 
 with the questions of philosophy, and a disposition to 
 reenter the fields in which he has labored, with what 
 partial success no one knows better than he. To seek 
 merely to preserve his teachings intact, and to hand 
 them down to the future unchanged, is to do philos- 
 ophy and philosopher small service. Intellectual pro- 
 gress results from the strife of systems, from the 
 contact and ferment of contrasting views, not from 
 the transmission, in unchanged form, of any set of 
 opinions, no matter how able or well considered. 
 "You cannot institute," said Emerson, "without peril 
 of charlatanism." 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 Bowne's relation to previous thinkers in the history 
 of modern philosophy is not a matter of doubt to any- 
 one conversant with the course of nineteenth-century 
 speculation. He belongs to that large school of think- 
 ers broadly classed together under the head of post- 
 Kantian idealism. Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, 
 Herbart, Green, Lotze — these names suggest the 
 philosophic tradition to whose influence he owes the 
 main direction of his own thought. Although, as said, 
 he set small store by the merely historical study of 
 philosophy, and made scanty reference to other phil- 
 osophers in his own writings, he has himself clearly 
 indicated his historical affiliations in a passage in the 
 preface to the Metaphysics, which he dedicated "in 
 grateful recollection to the memory of my friend and 
 former teacher, Hermann Lotze." 
 
 "Among the idols mentioned by Bacon," he writes, 
 "the idols of the cave, or den, are those which are 
 most likely to influence students. The loneliness of 
 the study and its distance from practical effort enable 
 such idols to practice their malign seductions with 
 eminent success. . . . Whether in the views herewith 
 presented I have grasped any truth; or whether, by 
 long brooding in solitude, I have fallen a prey to some 
 idol of the philosophic den, must be left to the reader 
 to decide. I am encouraged, however, to hope that I 
 have not gone wholly astray by the fact that there is 
 nothing unheard of in the results reached. Leibnitz 
 furnishes the starting-point, Herbart supplies the 
 
10 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 method, and the conclusions reached are essentially 
 those of Lotze. I have reached them, for the most 
 part, by strictly independent reflection; but, as far as 
 their character is concerned, there would be no great 
 misrepresentation in calling them Lotzian." The re- 
 examination and criticism of the fundamental philo- 
 sophical categories and concepts, somewhat after the 
 manner of Herbart, with an idealistic and theistic 
 outcome, this describes roughly the character and 
 trend of Bowne's life effort. 
 
 I have previously given a brief resume of the prin- 
 cipal ideas of Bowne's philosophical system, in a memo- 
 rial article published shortly after Bowne's death, ^ and 
 I shall therefore not attempt to go over the same mat- 
 ters here, except to indicate the most general metaphys- 
 ical position, upon which everything else depended. 
 
 Reality, according to the school to which Bowne 
 belonged, is not definable in the terms and categories 
 of mechanical physics, but in terms of consciousness. 
 Moreover, consciousness is not a mere collection of 
 passive and passing states, mere momentary and shift- 
 ing ideas, as Hume had taught; consciousness, when 
 adequately understood, can only be a conscious self, 
 the permanent and independent subject of experience 
 and of life. The universe is immaterial, conscious 
 and personal in its constitution: this is the sweeping 
 formula of personal idealism. 
 
 With an initial doctrine of such character and scope, 
 
 ^ American Journal of Theology, vol. xiv. No. 3, July, 1910. 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 numerous special problems of philosophy and religion 
 are solved in advance. Mechanistic naturalism, which 
 recognizes nothing in the world but mass, motion, and 
 unbending law, is seen to be nothing more than an 
 abstraction, useful for intellectual or practical pur- 
 poses, but having no metaphysical reality. The ab- 
 stract world of mechanics is a world from which all 
 eflSciency has been emptied out; the real world in 
 which we live is a world of living personalities, the 
 theater of purposive agency and will, of ideals and 
 moral imperatives and responsibilities. 
 
 Under such an interpretation of the world, the dis- 
 tinction between the natural and the supernatural, as 
 two mutually exclusive realms, is seen to be a spurious 
 one. It is not as if nature did the bulk of the world's 
 work, while God is reserved for interruptions, excep- 
 tions, and "things science cannot explain." If this 
 should be the case, the scope of God's activity would 
 be constantly restricted as the range of knowledge 
 widens with the progress of science, and these unex. 
 plained facts are one by one brought into relation with 
 a general system of law and order. No, the natural 
 roots in the supernatural, and the supernatural, in 
 turn, manifests itself in the facts and laws of our 
 everyday experience. 
 
 Bowne's central position is stated with characteristic 
 clearness and vigor in a letter written under date of 
 May 22, 1908, to Professor G. M. Duncan, which 
 Professor Duncan has kindly loaned for use in this 
 
12 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 connection. I take the liberty of quoting from Pro- 
 fessor Duncan's own account of his meeting with 
 Bowne on the occasion of the latter's visit to New 
 Haven for the purpose of giving an address before 
 the Yale Philosophical Club, as it gives an excellent 
 impression of Bowne, the man, whose simplicity and 
 personal charm impressed all who met him. "After 
 spending a delightful afternoon with me, and at din- 
 ner at my house meeting the other members of the 
 staflF of the Yale Department of Philosophy, Dr. 
 Bowne gave a most illuminating and inspiring ad- 
 dress before the Yale Philosophical Club on the out- 
 look in philosophy. He then spent the night as my 
 guest and the following forenoon we took a walk 
 together to the top of East Rock. We had much 
 delightful conversation and I was deeply impressed by 
 his simple, open, and engaging personality." 
 
 After his return home, Bowne wrote Professor Dun- 
 can a letter, from which the following is an extract: 
 "I meant to mention to you a work which you may 
 not have seen and which I think will prove to be 
 interesting. It is by Bergson and has the title 
 VEvolution Creatrice. I have not come upon it my- 
 self as yet, but I have seen notices of it, especially one 
 by Father Tyrrell, the Modernist who has recently 
 been banned by the Roman Church. It seems that 
 Bergson in this book sets forth very strongly the com- 
 plete failure of the mechanical doctrine of evolution 
 and on essentially the same grounds which are fa- 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 miliar to us, namely, that logical equivalence of cause 
 and effect in the impersonal scheme reduces every 
 such scheme to mere tautology and endless regress. 
 How much he makes out of the creative idea or how 
 he conceives it, I do not know. Of course nothing can 
 be done with it except on the plane of personality, but 
 in any case it is progress to have the mechanical idea 
 shown in its logical emptiness." 
 
 It is superfluous to say nowadays that Bowne's way 
 is but one of numerous ways of envisaging the universe, 
 and I believe Bowne was himself very willing to recog- 
 nize this. Still, a man cannot with equal conviction 
 champion diverse philosophical standpoints, unless, 
 indeed, he is a mere student of philosophical systems, 
 instead of being a philosopher himself, that is, a stu- 
 dent of the nature of things. And it is to Bowne's 
 credit that he taught with straightforward sincerity, 
 and without too much regard to the attitudes of other 
 men, whether friends or foes, the view of the world 
 which seemed to him on the whole the most adequate 
 and expressive. 
 
 It is perhaps worth while to say in conclusion that 
 a certain acrid quality, especially in Bowne's earlier 
 writings, and an air of dogmatic assurance, were per- 
 haps largely due to the controversial atmosphere of 
 the time in which he wrote, and were perhaps even a 
 sort of "compensation activity," or "defense mechan- 
 ism," as the modern psychoanalyst might say; that is, 
 really indicative of a sensitiveness and diffidence of 
 
14 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 character and disposition, which, however, conveyed 
 to the outsider, and the mere reader of his works, a 
 suggestion of intellectual arrogance and of a cynical 
 attitude toward those who differed with him. One 
 gathers from Professor Duncan's letter, and I have 
 corroborated this impression from conversation with 
 several persons who were personally acquainted with 
 Bowne, especially with Professor George Herbert 
 Palmer, who knew him well and esteemed him highly, 
 that this is an almost wholly erroneous opinion, and 
 that one of Bowne's most attractive qualities was a 
 quiet modesty and self-effacement, and an entire ab- 
 sence of that least amiable of human qualities, vanity 
 and self-importance.^ He was a man of unobtrusive 
 
 ' As this goes to press, the mail brings a letter from Professor Palmer 
 which is of such interest that I have asked him to permit me to make 
 it available to my readers. 
 
 11 Quincy Street, Cambridge. 
 Dear Professor Wilm: 
 
 I did say what you quote, and I have no objection to your printing 
 it. Only I think that much of a contrary character should also be said. 
 Bowne was ever a respecter of persons. When dealing with an individ- 
 ual he was most considerate, sweet even, keeping himself in the back- 
 ground, ready to listen. But he was also a man of profound and 
 ardent convictions who believed he had a message of great importance 
 (as I am sure he had) and when through writing he dealt with the un- 
 discriminated public he drove that message home with pungent insis- 
 tence and a superb scorn of all who were disposed to other views. 
 Philosophy was serious business with him, not to be taken lightly. 
 This tendency of truculence toward unbelieving sinners was much more 
 marked in his early writing. As time went on he attached more im- 
 portance to differing points of view, where there was seriousness, and 
 never, even in his most denunciatory writing, is there self-assertion. 
 Nobody could talk with him and fail to see how inherently modest, 
 almost self-distrustful he was. It was only when truth called on him 
 to be its vindicator against the triflers, the unthinking, or the irrev- 
 erent, that he put on his fighting robes. A man to love! Even those 
 who differed from him I think pretty generally recognized him to be a 
 truly great man, one from whom petty self-seeking was singularly 
 absent. 
 
 I am glad you are preparing this book, though he perhaps would 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 manner, a true friend and delightful companion, fine- 
 grained and courteous to all he met, a man "of singu- 
 larly pure and lovable character and a practical 
 Christian experience of the most convincing kind." 
 
 In the college classroom too he stood, I believe, the 
 acid test of the true teacher, since the effect upon his 
 students was to elicit and enlarge, not to oppress and 
 extinguish, the intellectual impulse of those who came 
 under his influence. The youth entering his class- 
 room or study not only found inspiration in the wide 
 and accurate scholarship and the critical acumen 
 evinced before him, but he found encouragement in 
 his own efforts at reflection, such as only a hospitable 
 attitude toward him could make possible. It is one 
 of the signs of greatness not to misuse the possession 
 of power from motives of egotism and self-aggrandize- 
 ment. "The imbecility of men," says Emerson, "is 
 always inviting the impudence of power. It is the 
 delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the be- 
 holder. But true genius seeks to defend us from it- 
 self. True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, 
 and add new senses. If a wise man should appear in 
 our village, he would create, in those who conversed 
 with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening 
 their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would estab- 
 
 have discouraged it. A pity you did not know him. He was too big 
 to be easily explainable. But the strong students you have gathered 
 together will do much. Each will illuminate some side of him, and the 
 resulting figure should stand out as a helpful stimulus to all teachers 
 of Philosophy. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 March 5. 1922. G. H. Palmer. 
 
16 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 lish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with as- 
 surances that we could not be cheated; as every one 
 would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. 
 The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the 
 poor their escapes and their resources.'* 
 
 I believe that Bowne deserved in no small measure 
 this superb encomium, so we leave him, where he 
 wished to be left, with his own life and philosophy to 
 do their work, without further praise or criticism here. 
 If any inquire, "What were his ideas and the argu- 
 ments for them?" the answer is, "Yonder are his 
 works; few men have been better able to speak for 
 themselves than he." 
 
 E. C. WiLM. 
 
II 
 
 THE EMPIRICAL FACTOR IN BOWNE'S 
 THINKING 
 
 George A. Coe 
 
 If I were to give a general estimate of my loved 
 and revered teacher. Dr. Bowne, I should have to 
 repeat much that I printed in the Methodist Review 
 in July, 1910. Instead of repeating, let me endeavor 
 to answer a single question: What seems to me now, 
 after the lapse of more than a third of a century since 
 I sat in his lecture room, to be the most certainly true 
 and important contribution that he made to the men- 
 tal habits and the mental furniture of us his students? 
 
 One's answer to such a question will reflect, of 
 course, one's response, during the intervening years, 
 to our rapidly changing world and to recent types of 
 thought. Bowne's views were formed at a period so 
 different from 1922 that, startling as the statement 
 may be, it is literally true that he did not and could 
 not conceive of most of the critical problems that are 
 characteristic of to-day. Of course it is possible to 
 generalize issues, and to say, with truth, that in one 
 form or another the old questions persistently recur 
 in human experience; yet there is change as well as 
 permanence in the issues. In a growing world we 
 start from different data; we are moved by different 
 interests; our tools are different, and our tests also 
 change. If, then, Bowne's definition of problems, his 
 methods, and his solutions are somewhat out of joint 
 
 17 
 
18 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 with our own reflection, this is but an instance of the 
 universal dynamics of thought in a changing social 
 world. A generation hence the critical thought of 
 to-day will have become equally remote from the 
 students who will then be finding their own way in 
 their own world. 
 
 Thus it is that our systems "have their day . . . 
 and cease to be." This is true of the greater as well 
 as of the lesser luminaries in the philosophical firma- 
 ment. Yet all through the history of philosophy, fac- 
 tors of permanent value, "broken lights" of the 
 inclusive truth, are embedded in the successive sys- 
 tems. The part of Bowne's thinking that seems to 
 live on in the greatest vigor in our minds to-day is 
 the empirical rather than the dialectic or speculative 
 factor. And the particular empirical content that 
 looms most significantly in the retrospect is the 
 observable facts of religious and moral life to which 
 he insistently called attention. He turned multitudes 
 of minds away from religious, theological, and meta- 
 physical conventionalities toward certain of the liv- 
 ing, dynamic realities of experience. In spite of his 
 strong liking for dialectic; in spite of the tendency of 
 many to estimate him in terms of a system, I believe 
 that we are nearer the truth, and nearer his own con- 
 ception of himseK, if we remember him most for the 
 eagerness and the pointedness with which he reverted 
 to primary data. 
 
 Who among his students and readers can have 
 failed to be impressed by his almost constant warn- 
 ings against "merely verbal thinking," the "fallacy of 
 the universal," "logomachies" or "logic-chopping," 
 and "taking the order of thought for the order of 
 
THE EMPIRICAL FACTOR 19 
 
 reality"? He who never tired of dialectical contest 
 nevertheless made "the field of life and action" his 
 supreme court of appeal as against "the arid wastes 
 of formal logic." 
 
 In the words last quoted there is reflected a second 
 persistent tendency, namely, the ethical valuation of 
 all experience. If, now, we contemplate these two 
 habits together — the empirical and the valuational — 
 we shall be able to see that he was working upon, or at 
 least toward, certain of the problems that have taken 
 acute forms among us since his own thinking reached 
 its maturity. If he did not enter the field of the psy- 
 chology of religion in any technical manner, he was 
 unquestionably moving toward it. If his psychology 
 was restricted to structural concepts, and was one- 
 sidedly a psychology of knowledge in the logical sense, 
 nevertheless his emphasis upon "life and action" im- 
 plied a correlative functional point of view. If he 
 never fully appreciated what one may call the his- 
 torical inevitableness of pragmatism, yet he himself 
 helped prepare the way for it! Finally, if he did not 
 apprehend the depth of the social factor in mind, 
 morals, and religion, nevertheless his metaphysics of 
 immanence and his own faith in a loving and lovable 
 God — these two taken together — make for hospitality 
 to a thoroughgoing recognition of the social in its 
 primordialness and its ultimateness. 
 
 This may not be evident to one who approaches 
 Bowne's mind through his metaphysics. But then 
 metaphysics was to him not the main thing, but, 
 rather, a sort of police force with which to defend the 
 life and the liberties that he prized. Turn to his Prin- 
 ciples of Ethics and you will see that he does not intend 
 
20 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 to deduce the moral life from a theory, but theory from 
 moral life. Note that he consciously endeavors to 
 unite "the intuitive and the experience school of 
 ethics." His affinity with utilitarianism is unmistak- 
 ably close, and he comes as near to an evolutionary 
 view as to assert that duty is not completely de- 
 terminate because what is good has to be found out in 
 part by this historical process. 
 
 Or turn to his writings that deal with the Christian 
 life. What gems of practical wisdom they are! And 
 they are gems, not because they are deductions from 
 his metaphysics, not because they are compacted sys- 
 tems, but because they are so simply and directly 
 objective. "We must fall back on good sense, that 
 general sense of reality and soundness without which 
 the moral life becomes a series of snares and loses 
 itself in silliness and fanaticism. We must point out 
 that the essence of religion lies in the filial spirit, in 
 the desire to serve and please God; and then we must 
 point out that our all-inclusive religious duty is to 
 offer up the daily life pervaded and sanctified by the 
 filial spirit, as our spiritual service and worship of 
 God" {The Christian Life, New York, 1899, p. 106). 
 
 He was probably quite aware of the fundamentally 
 empirical quality of his own primary procedures. His 
 dialectic was consciously secondary and defensive — 
 one might say disinfecting. It did not profess to dis- 
 cover or demonstrate the real, but only to remove 
 obstacles from the real and from the perception of it as 
 real. We are to find and know reality by action and in- 
 teraction, by giving play to our sense of need, by contem- 
 plating historical developments and judging values; by 
 revising thought and conduct and trying again. 
 
THE EMPIRICAL FACTOR 21 
 
 That he did not develop this view of experience, but 
 left it for the most part in the background of his 
 reasonings, is to be accounted for, no doubt, by the 
 thought-situations that confronted him through most 
 of his career. On the one hand, he beheld the rule of 
 dogmatic and muddy notions of evolution and of nat- 
 ural law, with an almost faddish agnosticism as prime 
 minister. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical forces 
 were mostly under bondage to traditionalism reen- 
 forced by another muddy metaphysics. His calling 
 was to help clear up the confusion. This he did in 
 part by his metaphysical "reworking of concepts," 
 but also in important part by direct appeal to ex- 
 perience. 
 
Ill 
 
 NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 
 
 Edgar Sheffield Brightman 
 
 Philosophers do not agree. It may be doubted 
 whether they desire to. The greatest philosophers 
 have ever been, like Royce, "rebels," not merely against 
 tradition and authority, but also against each other. 
 Meanwhile the innocent bystander, be he ordinary 
 citizen (the target of every philosopher's shafts), col- 
 lege student, or man of science, is inclined to regard 
 philosophy in general as fanciful speculation, and turn 
 skeptically to practical facts. But this skeptical mood 
 is even more obviously unsatisfactory than the com- 
 peting dogmatisms of philosophy. No human being 
 can utterly destroy his wonder and curiosity in the 
 presence of the mysteries of life; and everyone must 
 seek and find for himself some answer to the ques- 
 tions as to the meaning and value of his personality 
 and of the world in which he and his fellows live. 
 That men do not agree in their answers is not a re- 
 proach to philosophy; it is but a reflection of the 
 infinite inexhaustibility of life. "After all," as Pro- 
 fessor Bowne one day remarked, "it is not so desperate 
 a confession to make that the divine and supreme 
 Intelligence is to some extent beyond us — beyond W5." 
 Philosophy should not be blamed if the most interesting 
 and the most important things are the most perplexing. 
 
 Every honest attempt at philosophical construction 
 is therefore to be welcomed. Such an attempt may 
 
 22 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 23 
 
 contribute real insights; or, if there is no vision, will 
 at least serve as an example of what happens in the 
 end to those that start wrong. Most actual systems 
 are a blend of insights and wrong starts. It would be 
 most surprising if the New Realism, perhaps the most 
 talked about of contemporary systems of thought, did 
 not consist of such a blending. 
 
 The New Realism, in its American form, came be- 
 fore the public as an organized movement, a party or 
 creed, in 1910, when a group of philosophers printed 
 in the Journal of Philosophy ^ Psychology ^ and Scientific 
 Methods what they called "The Program and First 
 Platform of Six Realists." These philosophers were 
 Professors Holt, Marvin, Montague, Perry, Pitkin, 
 and Spaulding.^ In 1912 the same group of six pub- 
 lished a volume containing an introduction to which 
 all six subscribed, and an independent essay by each 
 member of the group. It cannot be denied that the 
 movement has shown unusual vitality. In addition 
 to many articles contributed to the periodicals, the 
 New Realists have written several books of import- 
 ance.^ Other philosophers have indicated a greater or 
 
 ' The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy. By E. B. 
 Holt and Others. Published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 
 1912. Reprinted by permission. See references in text below; foot- 
 notes 5, 9, 10, 12, etc. 
 
 ^ R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies. Longmans, Green 
 & Co., New York, 1912; rev. ed., 1916. (Hereafter referred to as 
 P. P. T.) 
 
 R. B. Perry, Present Conflict of Ideals. Longmans, Green & Co., 
 New York. 1918. (Hereafter referred to as P. C. I.) 
 
 W. T. Marvin, A First Book in Metaphysics. The Macmillan Com- 
 pany, New York, 1912. 
 
 W. T. Marvin, The History of European Philosophy. The Macmillan 
 Company, New York, 1917. 
 
 E. B. Holt, The Concept of Consciousness. G. Allen & Co., London, 
 1914. 
 
 E. G. Spaulding, The New Rationalism. Henry Holt & Co., New 
 York, 1918. (Hereafter referred to as N. Ra.) 
 
24 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 less degree of agreement with the views of the six, 
 notably McGilvary, Woodbridge, and Fullerton. If 
 we look abroad, we find a similar and older school in 
 England, headed by Bertrand Russell, the great 
 mathematician. This school, holding numerous tenets 
 in common with American Realism, along with sev- 
 eral characteristic differences, and exerting a strong 
 influence on it, will be left out of account in the present 
 study. It will be our purpose to examine and criticize 
 the most important utterances of the American real- 
 ists regarding one of the most fundamental philosophi- 
 cal problems, if not the most fundamental, the 
 problem of value. These utterances are found chiefly 
 in the writings of Professors Perry and Spaulding, and 
 we shall therefore confine ourselves chiefly to a study 
 of these two men. 
 
 What is the problem of value? That, we may reply, 
 is the problem. But at least we may assert that there 
 is such a problem, unless the only interest of the human 
 mind is that in having no interest, so that it regards 
 all knowledge as equally important and all ends of 
 conduct as equally good. There is an extreme of the 
 intellectualistic temper that appears not merely to 
 abstract from, but even to deny the validity of, value 
 distinctions in knowledge. If one feels moved to 
 count the grains of sand at Nantasket Beach, or meas- 
 ure with a footrule the inches from Hongkong to Rio 
 Janeiro, well and good. But human nature turns, and 
 philosophy herself rebels against that type of trivial 
 objectivity, inane disinterestedness. Prior, then, to 
 the performing of any task, theoretical or practical, is 
 the insistent but baffling question, Is this task worth 
 undertaking — is it of value .^ 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 25 
 
 The question is baffling for two reasons. First, be- 
 cause it is often impossible to know whether a thing 
 is worth doing until it has been done, not once merely, 
 but many times; secondly, it is baffling because it is 
 so difficult to define what we mean when we say that 
 a task is worth undertaking. What makes a task 
 worthy, a goal valuable? What is worth, or value? 
 To no more important problem can a philosopher ad- 
 dress himself. 
 
 The various possible solutions to the problem may 
 be classified from numerous points of view, according 
 to the interest of the classifier. A classification from 
 the point of view of the relation of value to conscious- 
 ness seems most promising for present purposes. Such 
 classification will be in a sense arbitrary in that it 
 does not attempt to group actually existing, or even 
 historical, theories of value. It is, rather, a logical 
 division of the subject with a view to showing the 
 possible relations of theory of value to the principle 
 of personality.^ 
 
 Any theory, then, must regard value as either extra- 
 mental in its nature, or as some activity or attribute 
 of consciousness. For short, we may speak of the 
 "extra-mental" and the "consciousness" theories. By 
 the extra-mental theory is meant one that regards 
 value as an entity that exists or subsists independ- 
 ently of any consciousness of it. Plato's theory of 
 ideas, as generally interpreted, would be an illustration 
 of this sort of theory. By a consciousness theory 
 would be meant any theory that makes value de- 
 pendent o n consciousness. But here we find that 
 
 ^ For an illuminating classification of the former type, see Professor 
 Perry's article, "The Definition of Value," Jour. Phil., 11 (1914), 
 pp. 141-162. 
 
26 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 notions as to what consciousness is, and what sort of 
 relation to or dependence on it constitutes value are 
 widely diverse. Let us therefore subdivide the con- 
 sciousness theories into subjective and objective — a 
 distinction ignored by the Neo-Realists. A subjective 
 theory makes the value depend entirely on and con- 
 sist of our individual, human consciousness of it. 
 Justice, on such a theory, has value because, and in 
 so far as, I value it. If I ceased to prize it, I could 
 rightly say that it had no value. My neighbor, who 
 still honors it, can with equal justification say that it 
 has value. Value, on a simon-pure subjectivist theory, 
 is as local and purely personal as toothache. An ob- 
 jective consciousness theory asserts that, while value 
 must be thought of as dependent on consciousness for 
 its quality as value, yet our valuations point to an 
 objectively real world of values, which our subjective 
 valuations are seeking to know, but which itself can 
 only be thought of as a realm of consciousness. A 
 pair of sub-subdivisions, and we have done with "logic- 
 chopping." Each type of consciousness theory may 
 assume either an impersonal or a personal form, the 
 term "personal" being used as Professor Bowne used 
 it, to characterize the unitary self. An impersonal, 
 subjective, consciousness finds value to consist in con- 
 sciousness, truly, but regards the self as a complex 
 product of impersonal elements, and denies that per- 
 sonality is ultimate. Here would belong any em- 
 piricist theory of Hume's type. A personal, subjective, 
 consciousness theory views value as consisting in con- 
 sciousness, regarded as belonging to a unitary per- 
 sonality. Here might be classified theories that regard 
 value as an a priori law of the activity of the mind. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 27 
 
 The impersonal, objective, consciousness theory would 
 be illustrated by some forms of absolute idealism; 
 whereas the personal, objective, consciousness theory 
 is theistic personalism. It is obvious that the terms 
 "objective" and "impersonal" also apply to all extra- 
 mental theories. 
 
 Expressing these results in tabular form, we have 
 the following: 
 
 Theories of Value 
 
 I. Extra-mental (impersonal and objective). 
 II. Consciousness. 
 
 a. Subjective. 
 
 1. Impersonal. 
 
 2. Personal. 
 
 b. Objective. 
 
 1. Impersonal. 
 
 2. Personal. 
 
 It is, as we have indicated, the purpose of the pres- 
 ent essay to formulate and criticize the theories of 
 value held by Professors Perry and Spaulding. We 
 are concerned with Neo-Realism in general only in so 
 far as it is essential to an understanding of the theory 
 of value held by these two men. It seems desirable to 
 this end to sketch a brief outline of realistic beliefs as 
 a background for the special investigation. The sys- 
 tem is peculiarly subtle, abstract, elusive, and revolu- 
 tionary. Any exposition from without the camp is 
 chargeable with bias or dullness of apprehension, or 
 both. Braving this charge, one may venture the as- 
 sertion that the doctrine of epistemological monism is 
 the fundamental tenet of the school. Those unini- 
 tiated into New Realism have generally held, following 
 
28 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Locke and Descartes, that we have ideas, not identi- 
 cal with objects, but somehow "representing," or 
 "knowing," or "describing," or "referring to" the 
 objects; and that ideas present to consciousness are 
 all that we immediately possess. The idea of a house 
 and the house itself are two numerically distinct facts 
 in the universe; my idea is not the house itself or any 
 part of it. This common view is called epistemologi- 
 cal dualism, or dualistic realism — the theory that 
 there are two entities essential to every case of knowl- 
 edge, the idea of the object and the object itself. The 
 idea is ours, present and possessed; the object is merely 
 "meant" or "referred to" by the idea. New Realism 
 regards this dualism as a heresy, foisted on an innocent 
 public by seventeenth-century philosophy. The "true" 
 epistemological monism is a return to "naive realism," 
 the theory that "objects are not represented in con- 
 sciousness by ideas; they are themselves directly 
 presented." What we call consciousness consists of 
 relations among entities which are themselves not 
 conscious, — the "relational theory of consciousness." 
 Ultimately reality is made up of "neutral entities," 
 neither mental nor physical, but capable of being so 
 related as to form either mental or physical complexes. 
 A complex of such entities (which we call an object) 
 in certain relations to another complex (which we call 
 a human organism) is knowledge. Objects are what 
 they are entirely independent of whether anyone 
 "knows" them or not; the self is not only not con- 
 stitutive of knowledge, but it — or all there is left of it 
 for New Realism — is epistemologically irrelevant and 
 otiose, a mere "predicament." These results are at- 
 tained by the employment of the method of analysis. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 29 
 
 whereby, according to the principles of mathematical 
 logic, the universe is reduced to terms and relations, 
 of various types. Since there is no one common term 
 or relation to which all are reduced, the theory is rather 
 strongly inclined to pluralism. Further, since the ulti- 
 mate terms are conceived as independent of their 
 relations, and capable of entering unchanged into 
 many different relations, it adopts the external theory 
 of relations. 
 
 Such are the bare outlines of the New Realism. At 
 first sight, a theory so arid and abstract, so frankly 
 contrary to the results of the history of philosophy, 
 avowed by Professor Perry to be a philosophy of dis- 
 illusionment, would hardly seem promising. How, 
 then, can its rise and popularity be accounted for.? 
 Several items enter into the answer to this question. 
 Its mathematical method and genius ally it with the 
 natural sciences, which are to-day so vigorous and in- 
 fluential. Its advocates are characterized by an 
 earnest desire to promote cooperation and discussion 
 in philosophy, and to define philosophical problems 
 with scientific accuracy; and they have dignified their 
 position by seriously relating it to all the major prob- 
 lems of philosophy and life. Professors Perry and 
 Spaulding even teach that this scientific philosophy is 
 theistic,^ offering a new and positive solution to the 
 problems of philosophy of religion. This avowal of 
 theism, a distinctly unfashionable belief among con- 
 temporary philosophers, is a bold and surprising ele- 
 ment in Neo-Realism. 
 
 Let us now examine Professor Perry's theory of 
 value. He has made it very easy for us to classify 
 
 * P. C. I., p. 379; N.'Ra., p. 520. 
 
30 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 him under one of our rubrics. Since he holds that 
 "value is dependent on consciousness,"^ specifically on 
 interest (for the unitary self of personalism is to him, 
 discoverer of the "ego-centric predicament," anathema) 
 his seems obviously to be what we have called an 
 impersonal, subjective, consciousness theory of value. 
 Herewith a veto is interposed on an immediate inves- 
 tigation of Professor Perry's theory of value; for if 
 value be dependent on consciousness, it becomes of 
 prime importance to know what is meant by con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 If philosophy and psychology up to recent times 
 have agreed on anything, it has been with reference 
 to certain facts about consciousness, such as, that it 
 is immediately felt, is indefinable, and is unique, that 
 is, is entirely different in kind from all of its "objects," 
 especially its "material" objects. Within this field of 
 agreement there have been sharp differences. The 
 associationalists have regarded the stream of con- 
 sciousness as a series of essentially passive awarenesses, 
 which combine and separate much as blocks may be 
 built up into toy mansions by a small boy, save that 
 in this case the boy himself was explained in terms of 
 the blocks, and the blocks had an annoying way of 
 disappearing. The opposing camp we may call per- 
 sonalists. Neglecting many shades of variation in 
 opinion, we may say that personalism has held that 
 consciousness was essentially active self -consciousness; 
 and that the self, as unitary agent, was the basal fact 
 of experience, making association possible, somehow 
 transcending space and time, and rendering moral obli- 
 gation intelligible. In lowest terms, according to the 
 
 ^ The New Realism, p. 140. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 31 
 
 one view, consciousness is fundamentally passive 
 awareness of sense qualities; according to the other, 
 it is a knowing, willing, feeling agent. 
 
 Both of these traditional views are the object of 
 neo-realistic attack. Professor Perry asserts that "the 
 nature of mental action is discoverable neither by an 
 analysis of mental contents nor by self -intuition:"^ 
 for him, then, consciousness is neither awareness nor 
 agency. 
 
 To do business without a self is by no means un- 
 heard-of in philosophy and psychology. But Profes- 
 sor Perry goes much further. Conspicuous English 
 reahsts, like G. E. Moore and B. Russell, find it in 
 their hearts to recognize consciousness, by admitting 
 that awareness is "a distinct and unique relation." 
 But it puzzles Professor Perry (as it had puzzled 
 James) to understand just what this awareness is, 
 since on Moore's confession it is "of such a nature 
 that its object, when we are aware of it, is precisely 
 what it would be, if one were not aware." If one, so 
 to speak, turns out the gas of awareness, it leaves 
 everything just as it was, on its good behavior. So 
 that, if such awareness is all there is to consciousness, 
 it is not surprising that Professor Perry is willing to 
 allow "Mr. Moore's distinction to lapse."^ The ob- 
 jects are there all the time. The awareness makes 
 no difference. Hence awareness has no function or 
 meaning. Such seems to be his thought. 
 
 It would be grossly unfair to infer from this that the 
 terms "consciousness" and "personality" in Professor 
 Perry's opinion refer to nothing whatsoever. But he 
 
 « P. P. T., p. 283. 
 
 ^ P. P. T.. pp. 321-322. 
 
32 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 does mean to teach that traditional conceptions of 
 consciousness are based on a radically false founda- 
 tion, namely, faith in the method of introspection. It 
 has for centuries been assumed that I, and I alone, am 
 directly conscious of my own experiences. I may give 
 another person a piece of bread or a piece of land; but 
 to give him a piece of my mind has seemed to be only 
 metaphorically possible. No one, so it has been 
 thought, can experience my neuralgia, or my love, or 
 my ideas, or even my sense perceptions. Others may, 
 indeed, on occasion diagnose my neuralgia, respond to 
 my love, understand my ideas, or perceive the same 
 sense object; but in so doing they refer to the objects 
 which my experience also refers to without actually 
 possessing my experience itself. Yes, even my most 
 social experiences are inalienably mine. "The monads 
 have no windows." 
 
 This traditional view has been based, as we said, on 
 the verdict of introspection, that I am aware of my 
 own consciousness; and on the belief that I am not 
 aware of anyone else's consciousness, nor is anyone 
 else of mine, in the same sense as I am of my own. 
 Introspection is inferred to be the only method of 
 knowing consciousness immediately: any knowledge of 
 consciousness other than by introspection is mediate 
 and inferred, not immediately given. The New Real- 
 ism, according to Professor Perry, seems to admit the 
 datum, that we do actually introspect, and to accept 
 qualifiedly the belief that no one else can be conscious 
 of my consciousness as I am; but to reject entirely the 
 inference that introspection is the only or even the 
 best method of knowing consciousness directly. The 
 supposed "unique accessibility of mind to itself" fun- 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 33 
 
 damental to the consciousness view is manifestly even 
 more vital to personalism. Here realism has an issue, 
 which Perry formulates with boldness. 
 
 He admits "that in certain respects and under cer- 
 tain circumstances, a mind can only with great diffi- 
 culty be known by another mind."^ But if mind be 
 regarded as belonging to "that same open field of 
 experience wherein all other objects lie," and if ideas 
 be objects in this sense, then there is indeed no reason 
 why two people should not have literally the same 
 idea, precisely as two may share the same friend, or 
 the same home. That is to say. Professor Perry's 
 argument at bottom means that if you will grant that 
 ideas possess the properties, or certain of the proper- 
 ties, of physical objects, it follows that the inaccessi- 
 bility of my ideas to you has no absolute basis. It is 
 true that any given physical object, such as the varie- 
 gated colors of the kaleidoscope, may perhaps be 
 accessible to observation only from a specific point of 
 view (in this case, the proper end of the kaleidoscope). 
 So too conversation in San Francisco is inaccessible to 
 me in Boston, unless I am listening at the telephone. 
 The interior of the earth or of the sun would be even 
 more inaccessible. In a similar manner, processes 
 occurring within one's own body cannot normally be 
 observed by others. But all physical facts are inher- 
 ently observable by more than one person; and if 
 ideas are of the nature of the physical, they too can 
 be seen, felt, shared. This, in rough paraphrase, 
 seems to be Professor Perry's argument. 
 
 Let us look around for a moment in the world of 
 
 8 Art., "The Hiddenness of Mind," Jour. Phil., 6 (1909), p. 30, etc. 
 Compare P. P. T., p. 287, and the context. 
 
34 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 realistic mind. We have been told to abandon the 
 introspective method, and even the very term "aware- 
 ness." Mind appears to become a physical object, or 
 a complex of physical objects in certain relations. 
 This situation tempts one to raise questions as to the 
 unity and identity of personality, the possibility of 
 error (regarding which, in particular, the whole realis- 
 tic school has had a very hard time), the meaning of 
 moral obligation, and other matters. But instead of 
 raising difficulties, it would be better for us to con- 
 tinue observations. 
 
 However this view may be related to the history of 
 philosophy, it is clear that it is thoroughly consistent 
 with contemporary behaviorism in psychology. Of the 
 alliance between realism and behaviorism, Professor 
 Perry is aware. American realists, he tells us, are in 
 accord with behaviorism (an assertion that is hardly 
 consistent with Professor Montague's position!), the 
 theory that means by mind "only the peculiar way in 
 which a living organism endowed with a central 
 nervous system behaves."^ Taken literally, this means 
 that mind is certain peculiarly organized motions of 
 "matter" in space, and is nothing else. The old dis- 
 tinction of subject and object is reinterpreted. The 
 subject is the activity of the organism, the object or 
 content is the parts of the environment "selected" by 
 that organic activity. ^° 
 
 Behaviorism has something in its favor, else it would 
 not be so widely held. It gives to psychology a sub- 
 ject matter open to general observation. It removes 
 
 ' P. C. I., p. 378. For Professor Montague's criticisms, see The 
 New Realism, pp. 270-272. 
 
 10 The New Realism, pp. 475f.: P. P. T., pp. 299. 300, 323, etc.; 
 P. C. /., p. 377. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 35 
 
 certain puzzles inherent in traditional dualism. It 
 employs the categories of biological science, which is 
 now in the ascendency. Objections to behaviorism 
 need not be urged at this point. But it is important 
 to emphasize the sharp line of distinction that must 
 be drawn between extreme behaviorists and believers 
 in consciousness. The failure to be conscious of the 
 distinction is productive of much confusion in recent 
 discussions. Behaviorism has rendered discussion pecu- 
 liarly difficult; for whatever a behaviorist says must 
 be taken in a Pickwickian sense. He uses the lan- 
 guage of consciousness, but refers to the objects of 
 biology. If his theory is correct, he is, of course, justi- 
 fied. But, justified or not, if he means by desire, for 
 instance, a certain tendency or group of tendencies of 
 a physical object, my body, to move in a particular 
 way, he cannot intelligibly use the term in conversa- 
 tion with one who regards it as meaning conative 
 consciousness. The two persons would simply talk 
 past each other. It must gloomily be confessed that 
 most contemporary philosophical discussion consists of 
 a series of mutual misunderstandings; it is all but 
 unprecedented to find a philosopher admitting that 
 his critic has understood him. And lo! — perhaps we 
 are even now misunderstanding Professor Perry and 
 behaviorism. 
 
 If, despite the danger of that misunderstanding, we 
 were to characterize Professor Perry's account of con- 
 sciousness in the light of the data before us, it would 
 be difficult to avoid regarding his behaviorism as an 
 instance of philosophical naturalism. "Mental action 
 is a property of the physical organism." Mental con- 
 tents are certain selected aspects of physical nature. 
 
36 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 related according to a peculiar pattern, it is true; but 
 they are "fragments of nature" that "find their way 
 into my mind."^^ More naturaHstic still is the allusion 
 to "minds and other bodily things"; and the assertion 
 that the independence of consciousness "of another 
 onlooking self is only a special case of the independ- 
 ence of physical events on the observation of them."^^ 
 When mind is thus treated as a bodily thing or a 
 physical event, the logic of behaviorism is carried out 
 into materialistic naturalism. 
 
 We are purposely emphasizing one current in Pro- 
 fessor Perry's thinking, without doing full justice to 
 all that he said. It is our present aim to show that 
 the naturalistic current is a very powerful one in his 
 view of consciousness. This becomes increasingly 
 clear if we observe his criticism of "the relational 
 theory of consciousness," which means, as Wood- 
 bridge put it, that "consciousness is only a form of 
 the connection of objects. "^^ Professor Perry feels a 
 certain inadequacy in this theory. But it seems to 
 me that his objection is not to the naturalism of Wood- 
 bridge's theory, but rather to its lack of definiteness. 
 For he complains merely that the relational theory 
 fails to show what kind of connection among objects 
 characterizes consciousness. He does not overlook the 
 idealistic answer that reference to a self or self- 
 intuition is the only key to the difficulty (whereby 
 also the naturalistic interpretation of the objects is 
 denied); but Hume and Bradley satisfy him that the 
 experience of self-activity can be analyzed into ele- 
 
 " P. P. T., pp. 298, 277. 
 " P. P. T., p. 301; The New Realism, p. 147. 
 
 13 P. P. T., p. 278. For the following argument, compare pp. 278- 
 280. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 37 
 
 ments, and hence is not ultimate. Professor Perry is 
 also dissatisfied with the answer made famous by 
 James, to the effect that self or "spiritual activity" is 
 "the feeling of some bodily process, for the most part 
 taking place within the head"; for he justly fails to 
 see how a process within the head could function as a 
 unity of consciousness that should weld together pro- 
 cesses within the head and movements of bodies out- 
 side the head.^^ Consciousness of those processes and 
 of those movements is contents that need still to be 
 unified. This insight is one which personalism has 
 found conclusive in favor of the self. 
 
 But Professor Perry's own solution remains true to 
 behaviorism. Question: what is the unity of con- 
 sciousness, the secret of mental action? Answer: it is 
 not a conscious self that acts, nor is it the feeling of 
 "intra-cephalic movements"; but it is "bodily action 
 itself,"^^ to which the question of whether it is "felt" 
 or not is quite accidental and indifferent. "Feeling" 
 still remains, as the last echo of a dying self, but it 
 doesn't explain anything, is utterly unimportant and 
 irrelevant to our understanding of mental unity. The 
 mental unity in listening (to use Professor Perry's 
 illustration) is not a unity of consciousness, but a 
 unity of bodily action, of "operation of a nervous 
 system." To this theory our author gives the name of 
 "the immanence of consciousness." His explanation 
 of that term strikes one as perhaps too metaphorical 
 to be exact. It is, he tells us, the theory that "mind 
 and the surrounding world interpenetrate and overlap 
 as the university interpenetrates and overlaps the 
 
 " P. P. T.. p. 284. 
 »5 P. P. T.. p. 285. 
 
38 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 other systems and groupings from which its com- 
 ponents are drawn. "^^ How else than physically, we 
 may inquire, does this occur? How can one, in short, 
 with the best will in the world, avoid regarding this 
 view as materialistic naturalism? 
 
 But, as above stated, we have hitherto been present- 
 ing only one side of Professor Perry's theory of con- 
 sciousness. If we turn to another side of his thought, 
 we are struck with his sincere refusal to be classified 
 as a naturalist. His first book^^ may be described as 
 an avowed polemic against naturalism, a polemic 
 which reappears in Present Philosophical Tendencies 
 and Present Conflict of Ideals. It is apparently 
 grounded in the fact that Professor Perry cherishes 
 the moral and religious values of life, whereas nat- 
 uralism is indifferent to value, is "equivalent to the 
 denial of optimistic religion. . . . Life is impotent, 
 and the aspirations and hopes to which it gives rise 
 are vain."^^ In rejecting naturalism he would by no 
 means affirm all that "optimistic religion" has affirmed. 
 But he is concerned to have his realism appear as 
 "theistic and melioristic." 
 
 It would almost seem that Professor Perry's reason 
 demands naturalism, his heart religion and value. But 
 this would not do him justice. Not only in his direct 
 criticisms of naturalism, but also in numerous signifi- 
 cant admissions with reference to his own (naturalis- 
 tic) theory of consciousness does it appear that there 
 are purely intellectual difficulties in naturalism. He 
 declines to accept the naturalistic account as the 
 
 " P. C. I., pp. 376-377. 
 
 " The Approach to Philosophy. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 
 1905. Compare p. ix. 
 " P. P. T., p. 85. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 39 
 
 whole truth; processes do, it is true, obey mechanical 
 laws, he tells us, but these identical processes also 
 obey laws of value, of "interest," as he calls it. 
 "Things take place because of the good they promote."^^ 
 Whether this is logically a rejection of naturalism will 
 depend on whether he supplies a nonnaturalistic defi- 
 nition of value. Meanwhile let us call attention to 
 certain respects in which he criticizes or modifies 
 naturalism. 
 
 Despite his behaviorism, he holds that the contents 
 of consciousness are not confined to the physical 
 environment. Not only remote^" regions of space and 
 time, but also abstractions and principles are included 
 in these contents. The extent to which this goes 
 beyond naturalism is debatable. Any theory must, 
 of course, admit the obvious fact of knowledge of the 
 remote in space and time. The more important ques- 
 tion would then be. What abstractions and principles 
 are real? Professor Perry's answer seems to be, Only 
 the abstractions of mathematics and logic, that is, 
 "Only the mathematical and logical part of Platonic 
 realism. "2^ This he regards as suflScient to contradict 
 materialistic metaphysics. But since he admits that 
 it is equally contradictory to idealism, and since the 
 real principles which he recognizes are precisely those 
 of significance to naturalism, its fundamental cate- 
 gories, this point cannot be regarded as carrying him 
 very far from naturalism. 
 
 The doctrine of "neutral entities" is a more thor- 
 oughgoing attempt to avoid naturalism in all its 
 
 " P. P. T., p. 342. 
 20 p. p. T., p. 304. 
 " p. C. I., p. 371, 373. 
 
40 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 forms (materialistic, agnostic, positivistic) . This doc- 
 trine may be summarized as follows: If I analyze 
 "consciousness" into elements (such as the quality 
 "blue," or hardness, or number), I find that I ascribe 
 these same elements to physical nature, and to other 
 minds. The elements of which the universe is made 
 up are themselves neither distinctively "physical" nor 
 distinctively "mental" ;^^ they are "neutral." This 
 theory does, it is true, avoid naturalism; it is dog- 
 matic, not agnostic; metaphysical, not positivistic (al- 
 though not without affinity with positivism, especially 
 in the denial of "substance"); and neutral, not ma- 
 terialistic. It attains this result by a double abstrac- 
 tion; for it abstracts not merely from reference to a 
 subject, but also from reference to an object. It 
 asserts "the indifference of the terms of experience 
 not only to their subjective relations, but to their 
 physical relations as well."^^ In themselves, the neu- 
 tral entities have no "home," are not "anywhere." 
 Each entity apparently exists as it is, eternally un- 
 changeable, with a nature independent of and unaf- 
 fected by the relations into which it may enter. This 
 perhaps avoids some of the difficulties of naturalism; 
 but whatever we may say of the logic by which this 
 new mind-stuff (which is neither mind nor stuff, but 
 capable of becoming both) is arrived at, we must say 
 of the entities themselves that they defy conception 
 in their unrelated, individual isolation. Even Pro- 
 fessor Perry admits that the minimum cognoscibile may 
 be a complex,^^ that we cannot know any entity by 
 
 22 p. p. T., p. 277. 
 
 23 p. p. T., p. 316. Compare The New Realism, pp. 128, 129. 
 
 24 The New Realism, p. 127. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 41 
 
 itself, but only in relations. The ultimate neutral 
 terms cannot then be conceived as they "really" are — 
 homeless, unrelated, unchangeable. Is this not ground 
 for suspecting that we must regard them as abstrac- 
 tions rather than as reality.'* To attribute ontological 
 reality to every abstraction arrived at by logical analy- 
 sis is not merely a return to scholasticism, as it has 
 been called; it is worse than scholasticism. 
 
 It must be granted, however, that Professor Perry's 
 theory of neutral entities affords foundation for a very 
 interesting interpretation of his theory of mind, with 
 reference to the differences between "mind" and "mat- 
 ter," as they are commonly called. These two words 
 point to different groupings of "neutral entities." In 
 these different groupings or relations is found room 
 for many of the traditional differences between the 
 two realms; nay, to the "mind"-complex are attrib- 
 uted so many powers that it begins to look almost 
 like personality. "Where my mind is the object to 
 be known," we are told, "I can embarrass the obser- 
 ver, because I can control the object. I can even make 
 and unmake my mind. ... I may accelerate [my 
 thoughts] or double on my tracks to throw you off the 
 scent. "-^ Such self-control and self -activity would 
 seem as difficult of attainment by neutral entities as 
 by physical objects; they would seem to be the ulti- 
 mates of self-experience. 
 
 In any event, the same Professor Perry who a few 
 pages back appeared as an exponent of naturalism, is 
 now very eager to avoid that appearance. He seeks 
 explicitly to prove that consciousness is not merely 
 
 ** P. P. T., p. 291. For further discussion of this criticism, see Pro- 
 fessor Lovejoy's review. Jour. Phil., 9 (1912), pp. 680, 681. 
 
42 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 mechanical. He does this in a series of essays, the 
 most important of which is entitled "Docility and 
 Purpose."^^ The problem is how, on behavioristic 
 principles, to account for purpose, as it is expressed in 
 such phrases as "in order to," "for the sake of." It 
 is noteworthy with what tenacity Professor Perry 
 holds to the category of purpose, which is Kar ^^oxnv, 
 the category of personality. Much of the language 
 used by behaviorists to express that category is, he 
 concedes, inadequate. Purpose, for instance, is not 
 mere adaptation (as complementary adjustment), 
 which "may be construed as complex cases of autom- 
 atism or mechanism"; not, then, the mere fact of 
 adaptation, but, rather, the fact that "the organism 
 acquires or learns" adjustments presupposes purpose; 
 for "the response is selected owing to its complemen- 
 tary character."^^ On this foundation Professor Perry 
 seeks to build up an account of purpose, yet without 
 any appeal to consciousness. He would not impute 
 "causal efficiency to mental states"; he does not find 
 it necessary "to believe that any mysterious psychic 
 force is at work"; indeed, "to explain this process by a 
 reference to what is commonly regarded as conscious- 
 ness would be to commit the fallacy of obscurum per 
 obscurius."^^ And here is the nub of the matter; 
 Professor Perry is after all unwilling to go outside the 
 categories of the physical sciences for his account of 
 consciousness, and yet does not wish to admit that 
 this logically shuts him up to naturalism. Instead of 
 conscious purpose, he speaks of "the selective or 
 
 26 Psychological Review, 25 (1918), pp. 1-20; Princeton, N. J., Psy- 
 chological Review Co. Compare P. C. I., p. 377. 
 ^ Loc. cit., pp. 1, 2. 
 28 Loc. cit., pp. 8, 9, 16. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 43 
 
 higher propensity," or (following Thorndike) of "the 
 learner's Set or Attitude or Adjustment or Determina- 
 tion," or of conation, or of something which drives the 
 animal and ceases when the end state is reached, or of 
 "the dominance of the general motor set over the 
 subordinate reflexes which are assimilated to it." 
 Purpose is present when "an organism not only does 
 something, but it learns how to do something; the 'how' 
 being selected and consolidated under the control of 
 the 'something to be done.' " 
 
 Let us make explicit what such a view of purpose 
 means. A physiological organism (quite free from any 
 obscure and mysterious conscious purposes, in the 
 familiar sense) is controlled by something to be done 
 that does not yet exist, or even by a generalized ob- 
 ject that never could exist physically, and then both 
 selects and consolidates the means of attaining this 
 something by which it is to be controlled. In our 
 author's own words, action is "determined by its rela- 
 tion of prospective congruence with a controlling pro- 
 pensity."^^ One is tempted to inquire. Which 
 language is more obscure: that which speaks of a 
 conscious self as having ideas, forming plans of ac- 
 tions, making choices, or that which employs the 
 terms just cited from Professor Perry and speaks of 
 objects that do not exist in the physical environment 
 as nevertheless stimulating my organism, which is a 
 physical object? It is not to be wondered at that 
 Professor Pitkin, speaking in another connection, says, 
 "I am aware that, in asserting planes, angles, num- 
 bers, ratios, and some other mathematical geometrical 
 characters to be stimuU of the peripheral sensory 
 
 » Loc. cit., p. 12. 
 
44 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 organs, in precisely the same sense that ether waves 
 are, I am exposing myself to ridicule."^" Professor 
 Perry's view may be true, but it is not because it is 
 more lucid than personalism; and personalism may be 
 untrue, but not because it involves metaphysical as- 
 sumptions of a theistic nature if the facts of purpose 
 in organic life are to be explained. 
 
 Significant, however, is not merely the difficulty of 
 Professor Perry's view, but also the fact that he is 
 driven to it by his dissatisfaction with contemporary 
 expressions of behaviorism. Watson, for example, he 
 criticizes as overlooking the fact that the learning 
 animal is driven by something that ceases when the 
 end state is reached. Holt he regards as neglecting 
 the dominance of general motor set over the subor- 
 dinate reflexes assimilated to it, and as narrowly limit- 
 ing the responses to facts of the environment. In 
 short, Professor Perry desires to do full justice to the 
 complexity, the genuinely teleological character, and 
 the nonphysical or ideal elements of purpose — pre- 
 cisely those elements in which personalism is chiefly 
 interested. In a moment of exceptional frankness, he 
 confesses that so simple a purposive activity as looking 
 for a pin "evidently requires an epistemological con- 
 struction beyond the scope of a strictly physiological 
 behaviorism."^^ We have found above that modern 
 realism and behaviorism had concluded an alliance; 
 they cried "Peace! peace!" but there is no peace. 
 And one may be pardoned a good deal of curiosity as 
 to this new behaviorism that is not strictly physiologi- 
 cal. It may turn out to be better to admit that, since 
 
 2° The New Realism, p. 425. 
 31 Loc cit., p. 7. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 45 
 
 a purely naturalistic behaviorism cannot explain pur- 
 pose, a mixed or seminaturalistic variety would prob- 
 ably not function much better, but would turn out to 
 be a mere hybrid makeshift. May it not be that the 
 bottom has dropped out of behaviorism uherhaupt? 
 Does it not seem more promising to return again to 
 consciousness — yes, to personality itself? 
 
 On this foundation of a modified behaviorism Pro- 
 fessor Perry would build his theory of value. In its 
 ultimate terms, that theory is very simple. "Value is 
 dependent on consciousness," "is a function of de- 
 sire."^^ What, then, is desire.'^ In human life "desire" 
 is synonymous with "interest"; and an "interest" is 
 "a unit of life," "an organization which consistently 
 acts for its own preservation."^^ "Life" and "organi- 
 zation" are fairly colorless terms, but seem to designate 
 biological life, biological organization. If this seeming 
 be fair to Professor Perry's intent, the fundamental 
 unit of value is a thoroughly naturalistic concept, 
 correlated with the corresponding view of conscious- 
 ness. That this interpretation is correct seems all 
 but certain from Professor Perry's statement that "I 
 use the term 'interest' primarily in its biological 
 rather than its psychological sense. Certain natural 
 processes act consistently in such wise as to isolate, 
 protect, and renew themselves."^* He tells us, in the 
 same breath, it is true, that "a physiological account 
 of the action of mind must be supplemented by a 
 moral account," and he is concerned to distinguish 
 the element of interest from "the merely physical and 
 
 32 The New Realism, pp. 140, 141. 
 
 33 The Moral Economy, p. 11. Compare P. C. I., pp. 368, 369. 
 3* P. P. T.. pp. 304, 301, 302. 
 
46 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 meclianical element." But if interest itself be a bio- 
 logical unit, it is hard to see how an account in terms 
 of interest is other than a physiological account. 
 
 The basic thesis of this theory of value seems to be 
 that*'the fulfillment of a simple isolated interest is good;" 
 "to like or dislike an object is to create that object's 
 value."^^ To be of value, then, means to be desired. 
 
 While the fulfillment of a single vagrant desire, 
 whatever it may be, is on this theory good or valuable, 
 it is not yet morally good. "Only the fulfillment of 
 an organization of interests is morally good." In a 
 vivid phrase, "morality is the massing of interests 
 against a reluctant cosmos. "^^ Now, this would ap- 
 pear to mean that there is nothing present in the 
 moral or other higher values that is not given in 
 interest as a biological unit, except quantity. That 
 all differences in value are capable of quantitative 
 measurement — "the more the better" — is one of the 
 main theses of the article on "The Definition of Value" 
 already referred to. Such are the foundations on which 
 Professor Perry's theory of value is based. With the 
 superstructure we do not need to concern ourselves, 
 for our interest is in the fundamental principles in- 
 volved. We may postpone further criticism of these 
 principles at present, while we give our attention to 
 Professor Spaulding's theory of value. 
 
 Professor Spaulding's most significant utterances on 
 our problems are found in his recent work. The New 
 Rationalism}'^ We shall confine attention to this book 
 
 ^ The Moral Economy, p. 15. Art., "The Definition of Value," 
 Jour. Phil., 11 (1914), pp. 157, 153. Compare also the art., "Reli- 
 gious Values," Am. Jour. TheoL, 19 (1915), pp. 1-16. 
 
 2* The Moral Economy, pp. 15, 14. 
 
 3' Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1918. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 47 
 
 in discussing his theory of value. As in the case of 
 Professor Perry (although for different reasons), we 
 shall look first at the theory of consciousness, then at 
 the theory of value. 
 
 Professors Perry and Spaulding alike regard the 
 problem of consciousness as fundamental in philoso- 
 p]jy 38 ^^Q have seen that the former based his view 
 on a criticism of the relational theory of consciousness, 
 which we have already discussed. The relational 
 theory is explicitly accepted by Professor Spaulding,^^ 
 who ascribes it to Woodbridge, Pitkin, and Holt, but 
 makes no mention of Perry's emended form of the 
 theory. Silence in this case would seem to give the 
 reverse of consent. 
 
 Professor Spaulding is aware of the historical (per- 
 sonalistic) objections urged against any theory that, 
 like the relational, explains personality in terms of 
 the impersonal, or neutral. They are (as he states 
 them) first, that "consciousness seems too tangible, 
 solid, and substance-like ... to be a mere relation," 
 and, secondly, that it involves "too much of a con- 
 tinuity and unity of personality. "^° It is not alto- 
 gether clear just how Professor Spaulding would 
 dispose of these two considerations. But one of the 
 main theses of his book is that substance is a category 
 modeled by Aristotle on the concept of a physical 
 thing, and that hence there is no room for it in a New 
 Realism that does not recognize "things" as ultimate. 
 It does not seem to occur to him that personality may 
 perhaps fulfill that category in a unique sense, nor 
 
 38 p. p. T., p. 227; N. Ra., p. 91. 
 » N. Ra., p. 89, n. 3. 
 « N. Ra., p. 90. 
 
48 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 that the ultimate subsistent entities of his own uni- 
 verse are in some sense an illustration of that category. 
 Indeed, his tone seems to imply that there is no sub- 
 stance; but that if there were, we should have to 
 admit that personality was an instance of it. At all 
 costs, the view that consciousness is a substance (or 
 "container") must be given up; not through any 
 defect in consciousness, but because of the rejection 
 of the category of substance.^^ He is thus in the 
 suburbs of the personalistic insight that true substance 
 is to be found not in "things" but only in active, cau- 
 sal, purposive personality. 
 
 With reference to the other matter, the unity of 
 personality, Professor Spaulding would doubtless point 
 to his belief that "knowing" cannot be "an absolutely 
 simple term, since such a term, illustrated by a point 
 and an instant, cannot appear and disappear,^- as 
 states of consciousness notoriously do. That is, he 
 rejects one abstraction out of personal life, the physi- 
 cal thing, as his model of "substance," and substitutes 
 for it a much higher abstraction, namely, the points 
 and instants of mathematical analysis. We may 
 agree that personality is not a substance like a phy- 
 sical thing, nor a unity like a mathematical point. 
 But that products of personal thinking, like mathe- 
 matics, can yield a deeper insight into unity than is 
 afforded by the experience of self, through which 
 alone mathematics is possible, is not established by 
 Neo-Realism. The purposes of the analyzing mind 
 are ultimately the only standard by which the results 
 of analysis may be tested. 
 
 " N. Ra., pp. 470, 492. 
 42 N. Ra., pp. 88, 89. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 49 
 
 Personality rejected, there remains the view that 
 consciousness is "a relational complex" that arises 
 "when the . . . entity that is to become known gets 
 into certain specific relations with ... an organism 
 having a nervous system. . . ." This is a mild behav- 
 iorism, which holds that in the case of certain behav- 
 ior, the knowing situation arises; that is, something 
 psychical, not merely physiological, occurs. The 
 general tenor of Professor Spaulding's book is to the 
 effect that consciousness exists. ^^ The mildness (soft- 
 ness, as James might put it) of his behaviorism is 
 further evidenced by his criticism of that theory itself 
 as subject to the error of (at least tacitly) assuming 
 that the study of "the *conditions,' 'elements,' organ- 
 izing relations (and the like) of any specific kind or 
 instance of consciousness, sensory or other, does away 
 with, nullifies, or makes a non-fact of the whole that 
 results from the organized elements, that is, the sen- 
 sation, memory-image, abstract idea, and the like."^^ 
 This seems to mean that consciousness must be 
 recognized as something uniquely different from its 
 "conditions" or "elements," possessing qualities that 
 cannot be stated in terms of these "conditions" or 
 "elements." Just this criticism appears to be valid 
 as against Professor Perry's theory, even in its 
 modified form. On the whole. Professor Spaulding's 
 theory is distinctly more inclined to accord an in- 
 dependent status to personality than is Professor 
 Perry's. The latter rejected awareness. Professor 
 Spaulding defines the knowing process in terms of 
 
 « Professor Pratt refers to A^. Ra., pp. 253, 356, 373, 447, 484-485, 
 490 as teaching this. See his whole article, "Professor Spaulding's 
 Nonexistent Illusions," Jour. Phil., 15 (1918), pp. 688-695. 
 
 « N. Ra., p. 478. 
 
50 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 awareness.'^ He also emphasizes "the nontem- 
 
 poral and nonspatial character of consciousness as 
 such."46 
 
 That Professor Spaulding is himself not satisfied 
 with his account of consciousness is evidenced by 
 numerous contradictions in his thought on the sub- 
 ject, contradictions that do honor to his love of 
 truth and willingness to face the problems. Professor 
 Pratt has called attention to those centering around 
 the theory of error. Here we shall mention only 
 Professor Spaulding's vacillating attitude to his rela- 
 tional theory of consciousness. His final view is that 
 consciousness is a dimension, "a linear series," but a 
 "new" dimension, "and, therefore, more than a mere 
 class."^^ Just as a series of points results in a new 
 dimension, length, so "a serial organization of ether- 
 waves, waves of air, physico-chemical processes . . ." 
 results in "one whole . . . , the sensation."^^ This 
 would seem to be a clear enough explanation of the 
 personal in terms of the impersonal, with the aid of a 
 figure of speech from mathematics; but since he fol- 
 lows this with the criticism of behaviorism in favor of 
 consciousness, and by the explicit rejection of the 
 (once accepted) relational theory of consciousness, it 
 would appear that he is more interested in the unique- 
 ness, novelty, independence of consciousness, after all, 
 than in its analysis. His argument that, since there 
 can be a relation between consciousness and its "ele- 
 ments" (and other "things"), consciousness itself can- 
 not be merely a relation, not only concedes much to 
 
 « N. Ra., p. 492. 
 « N. Ra., p. 492. 
 « N. Ra., p. 471. 
 
 "8 N. Ra., p. 477. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 51 
 
 personalism, but also cuts deep into the external 
 theory of relations.'*^ 
 
 For the purpose of understanding the realistic theory 
 of value, Professor Spaulding's account of conscious- 
 ness is significant chiefly as a domestic criticism of 
 Professor Perry's behaviorism. For, unlike the latter. 
 Professor Spaulding does not adhere to a fundamental 
 consciousness value-theory, but clearly accepts an 
 extra-mental view. He classifies theories of value as 
 
 (1) the (extreme subjectivistic) view "that all values 
 are wholly dependent upon a consciousness," and 
 
 (2) the view that "there are some values which can be 
 demonstrated to be independent of all consciousness." 
 On this latter view, says Professor Spaulding, the 
 Deity may be "that which is value in the universe," 
 "a Being supra-personal and perhaps supra-conscious. "^° 
 This second is his own view. 
 
 Professor Spaulding arrives at his "extra-mental" 
 theory of value somewhat as follows: He starts tenta- 
 tively with a definition of value as "anything that is 
 desired and accepted as an end to be attained."^^ In 
 the discussion of the "value-centric predicament" he 
 still uses the term "value" in the subjectivistic sense 
 of "desires, preferences, yearnings."^- But these ex- 
 pressions give no clue to his own theory, which he 
 describes as a "Neo-Realism of ideals." These ideals 
 are "discovered by reason," are a "command," and 
 are realized through our freedom "to go counter to 
 
 ^^ N. Ra., p. 482. Spaulding is here on the verge of the truth that 
 all terms and relations are relative to the purposes of some mind. 
 But this would lead us back to personality as unitary substance, and 
 the forbidden "ego-centric predicament." 
 
 60 N. Ra., p. 69. 
 
 " N. Ra.. p. 66. 
 
 62 N. Ra., p. 206. 
 
52 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the desires and impulses that are causally and instinc- 
 tively rooted in human nature. "^^ They are inde- 
 pendent of the physiological organism. Values, ideals, 
 do not exist in space and time; they are, or at least 
 moral values are, "serially organized," are "efficient," 
 "account for the appearance of consciousness," have 
 "agency," are "objective."^^ Professor Spaulding, in 
 short, avows himself a Platonist, a conclusion mani- 
 festly consistent with an important side of Neo- 
 Realism. Most members of the school are Platonic 
 realists with reference to the universals of mathe- 
 matics and logic ;^^ Professor Spaulding extends this 
 Platonism to the realm of values, its native element. 
 
 For any Platonism, old or new, there are at least 
 two very difficult problems: first, the problem as to 
 the relation between "ideas" and the phenomena of 
 experience; and, secondly, the problem as to the pre- 
 cise nature of the objective existence (or "subsist- 
 ence") of these ideas. Professor Spaulding's solution 
 of the first problem, summarized above, is in terms 
 of what Dr. Bowne would call a theory of meta- 
 physical causality, although Professor Spaulding has 
 condemned causation-philosophy as well as substance- 
 philosophy, and although he struggles to avoid using 
 the term "cause" of the relations between ideals and 
 the phenomena of consciousness. In any event, these 
 ideals produce results in life that merely mechanical 
 explanation cannot account for. Yes, even the very 
 world process itself, physical though it be, is somehow 
 dominated by value, for it has direction and is crea- 
 
 se N. Ra., pp. vi, 395, 507, 501. 
 
 " N. Ra., pp. 479-480, 515-516, 497-498. 
 
 " P. C. I., p. 371. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 53 
 
 tive.^^ Thus the entire realm of nature is in some 
 sense ruled by the agency of value. 
 
 To the second problem, as to the objective nature 
 of value, Professor Spaulding adumbrates various an- 
 swers. First, he tacitly assumes that the presence of 
 value in life must be due to a unitary cause. "There 
 is an efficient agent or power to produce all values." 
 Secondly, he further assumes that only value can 
 produce value, and concludes that the unitary cause 
 is therefore itself a value." There is, then, one su- 
 preme, objective value in this Platonic Neo-Realism, 
 a self -existent sovereign in the hierarchy of values; 
 yet not "existent" in realistic sense of being correlated 
 with space and time, but "subsistent," and transcend- 
 ing those limits. Professor Spaulding is aware of 
 being in the neighborhood of theism, and he speaks of 
 "God." But, strangely, having just argued for an 
 efficient power or agent that produces all values, he 
 proceeds to identify God, not with that power, but 
 with the "totality of values, both existent and sub- 
 sistent."^^ 
 
 This definition of God does not clear things up 
 sufficiently. Just what is this God, this realm of 
 values .^^ The "ideals" seem strangely like abstractions 
 endowed with life, like hypostasized concepts. How 
 can an hypostasized concept have efficiency.'' Does 
 God possess the agency of a personal will and purpose? 
 Professor Spaulding' s only answer, very casually given, 
 is: "Accordingly, if God is personality, he is also more 
 than personality, even as the moral situation among 
 
 66 N. Ra., pp. 512-514. 
 " N. Ra., p. 514. 
 68 N. Ra.. p. 517. 
 
54 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 men is more than personality. He is love and aifec- 
 tion and goodness, respect and reverence, as these 
 exist among men and in men, but he is these also as they 
 subsist by themselves, and act eflficiently upon men. 
 In brief, God is Value, the active, 'living' principle of 
 the conservation of values and of their eflSciency."**^ 
 The only comment on such a position must be one of 
 regret that a thinker usually so conscientious should 
 here speak so vaguely and loosely. The problem itself 
 is at once the most important and the most difficult 
 of all the problems that confront the human mind. 
 All the greater, then, the obligation to define our 
 terms as precisely as possible. Professor Spaulding 
 neither defines what he means by personality in this 
 connection, nor indicates whether God is a personality 
 for himself in any sense, in addition to his existence in 
 and for human personalities. At any rate. Professor 
 Spaulding uses the third personal pronoun masculine 
 of his God, and thus personifies him. But he bases 
 his claim to be theistic and not pantheistic not on the 
 personality of God, but on the reality of evil in the 
 world. '^° Professor Spaulding not only hovers on the 
 verge of personalism; he comes near to giving us a 
 God and a Satan too. It is significant that his extra- 
 mental, utterly objective, value-theory leads him to 
 thoughts of God and personality; and yet compels him 
 to remain in a view that seems to a personalist as 
 "romantic," "mystical," and "ineffable," as personal- 
 ism could well appear to its critics. 
 
 Professor Perry taught us to regard value as always 
 dependent on consciousness, and yet ventures to hope 
 
 M N. Ra., p. 517. 
 «« iV. Ra., p. 520. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 55 
 
 for the objective triumph of vakie in the world 
 (meliorism). Professor Spaulding asserts that some 
 (and the most important) values are objective and 
 extra-mental, and yet in formulating objectivity uses 
 terms that suggest a supreme personality, just, affec- 
 tionate, loyal, as the highest value, and source of all 
 value in the universe. Is not a personalist warranted 
 in feeling that his view represents the synthesis of 
 these two positions? For him, as for Perry, value is 
 always dependent on consciousness; yet not utterly 
 dependent on human consciousness, for subjective 
 value implies objective value, as Spaulding holds; 
 but the objectivity of value is identical with the per- 
 sonality to which religion gives the name of God. The 
 following series of considerations will show some of 
 the grounds for confidence in the personalistic syn- 
 thesis as opposed to the realistic theories that we have 
 been considering. 
 
 1. Professor Perry's unit of value, "interest," is dis- 
 dinctly impersonal. As a mere tendency to act for its 
 own self-preservation, it is an entity in the life of the 
 organism, considered by itself, apart from any ideal 
 or obligation or recognition of a unitary personality, 
 with its laws and its claims. 
 
 2. Where morality is (as for Professor Perry), a 
 massing of impersonal interests "against a reluctant 
 cosmos," interest being interpreted behavioristically, 
 morality becomes logically identical with physiological 
 efficiency. There is no doubt that Professor Perry 
 would repudiate this conclusion, but his attitude would 
 appear to be dictated rather by his fine moral sense 
 than by the logic of his theory of value. 
 
 3. A fundamental difficulty with Professor Perry's 
 
56 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 view is that "interest" in actual life is (contrary to 
 his theory) not made up by a massing of interest-units. 
 Interests massed give rise to new interests that stand 
 in no quantitative relation to their "constituent" 
 interests. He asserts that "in two of a given unit of 
 goodness there is more of goodness than in one."^^ It 
 would be difficult to mention a unit of which this 
 would be unconditionally true; two dinners, or wives, 
 or religions, or inches on the end of one's nose, or mil- 
 lions of dollars, are not necessarily better, in any 
 respect, than one of each of these units. "Units" of 
 interest are always relative to the total personal situa- 
 tion; and that situation, animated by some ideal, does 
 not aim to amass a certain quantity of units, but, 
 rather, to transform and organize all units under the 
 guidance of some supreme or unifying ideal. There is 
 an interest, let us say, in color. There is also an artis- 
 tic ideal. When an artist combines his colors so as to 
 produce a painting, the number of interests-in-color 
 satisfied is irrelevant, and entirely subordinate to the 
 question as to whether the combination of colors 
 embodies the ideal meaning that the artist was seek- 
 ing to express. If it be urged that interest in such an 
 ideal meaning is also an interest, it must be said that 
 such an interest is incapable of merely quantitative 
 comparison with others. 
 
 4. Interest-in-relation-to-object is not (as Professor 
 Perry holds) the unit of intrinsic value; it should be 
 regarded, rather, as an assertion of value, but an 
 assertion (or judgment, vs. Perry, again) that may 
 well be in error. Fulfilled interest is indeed value for 
 the purpose of mere adaptation; the object is valuable 
 
 " The Moral Economy, p. 56. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 57 
 
 in so far as it is adapted to fulfilling the interest. But 
 just such fulfilled interest is often enough judged to be 
 an element of disvalue, that is, fulfillment of interest 
 has neither intrinsic nor extrinsic value when the 
 object that fulfills the interest is judged to be in con- 
 flict with what one regards as a "higher" ideal: 
 "higher," not because it fulfills a larger number of 
 interests, but because it fulfills what are judged to be 
 more imperative ones, such as the laws of reason, 
 aesthetic preference (which Professor Perry recognizes), 
 obedience to conscience, or love. Mill is not the only 
 one to believe that "it is better to be a human being 
 dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." A few unfulfilled 
 interests may come nearer to fulfilling an ideal than 
 multitudes of fulfilled interests. 
 
 5. Value, that is to say, is always relative to an 
 ideal of what humanity ought to be, or at least to an 
 ideal of one's own personality, either implicit or ex- 
 plicit. Self-realization (as moral ideal) ought to mean 
 not mere complexity of functioning, multiplicity of 
 satisfied interests, but also, and more fundamentally, 
 the achievement of a particular type of human life, 
 and the discipline of impulse in the interests of that 
 type. The Stoic ideal of the sage, the Pauline concep- 
 tion of life "in Christ," the Kantian doctrine of the 
 dignity of the moral person, T. H. Green's teaching 
 that "our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of 
 personal worth,"^^ Diirr's Persdnlichkeitsideal, and 
 Bowne's "ideal of humanity"®^ are all attempts to 
 express this same concept. 
 
 The use of this principle in a theory of moral value 
 
 ^ Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 210. 
 
 " Principles of Ethics, pp. 97, 111, 116ff., 133. 
 
58 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 has been criticized. It has been said that the ideal of 
 humanity (which in T, H. Green's theory means that 
 human selves are the temporal manifestation of an 
 eternal self) "throws no ray of light upon the specific 
 problems of morality."^* While this is perhaps true 
 of our ideas of the "Eternal Self," it is hardly true of 
 our concrete ideal of what our own personality should 
 become. Professor Perry believes that Green's view 
 reduces to the maxim, "Fulfillment of interest as such 
 is good, therefore the more the better."^'' But it is 
 very doubtful whether such a reduction can be proven. 
 Interest in interests is different from obedience to a 
 self-imposed ideal of personality. The fact that it is 
 easier to count interests than to make or estimate 
 ideals of personality does not prove that the easier 
 theory is the truer. That ideal admittedly appeals to 
 the creative imagination for the ultimate test of all 
 values; but an imagination instructed by the growing 
 totality of life. It admittedly is not made up of rig- 
 orously calculable units. A philosophy based on this 
 conception of value cannot be either mathematical or 
 scientific, as Neo-Realists count science, for it regards 
 value as a whole that cannot be understood by analy- 
 sis. This theory, like Professor Perry's, emphasizes 
 the dependence of value upon consciousness; unlike his, 
 it affords a positive basis for the gradation of our 
 interests themselves, a system of values. 
 
 The Neo-Realist would doubtless object to the com- 
 plex and mysterious character of this ideal. But if it 
 be found that every valuation of every type — cogni- 
 tive, or aesthetic, or moral — presupposes that the true 
 
 "W. G. Everett, Moral Values, p. 2. 
 66 Jour. Phil., 11 (1914), p. 157. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 59 
 
 value in each instance is not what now satisfies me, or 
 what I now desire, but what conforms to the nature 
 of an ideally wise, appreciative, and good person, and 
 that I do actually judge my own value-assertions with 
 reference to my ideal of this person, it is difficult to 
 see why the complexity or even the mystical character 
 of the ideal is an objection to it. Perhaps ideal value 
 is complex and mystical. 
 
 6. Value is objective, as well as dependent on con- 
 sciousness. Professor Perry's subjective consciousness 
 theory found it to be objective, in the sense that our 
 desires are independent of our knowledge of them. 
 Professor Spaulding's extra-mental theory found it to 
 be objective as the Platonic ideas are, namely, inde- 
 pendent of all consciousness. Both realists agree in 
 the conviction that values not merely ought-to-be, but 
 in some sense actually are. We may add that so funda- 
 mental a fact as the experience of value may well be 
 regarded as revealing something about the structure 
 of reality. But just what does it reveal .^^ Professor 
 Perry replies that there are desires; Professor Spauld- 
 ing that there are impersonal and immaterial efficien- 
 cies dominating the universe; personalism, as well as 
 Green's idealism, that the ideal of humanity suggests 
 a perfect person who ought to be. And lo ! we are face 
 to face again with the ontological argument once more 
 in the history of thought, but in a much more modest 
 form. For the personalist does not regard the de- 
 mands of our nature for perfection as a theoretical 
 proof. He admits the impossibility of a "rigor and 
 vigor" demonstration of an objective order of value 
 in a supreme personality. He only contends that the 
 actual existence of this ideal personality is needed if 
 
60 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 his system of value- judgments is to have the objec- 
 tivity that it demands. It may be doubted whether 
 other objective truths regarding concrete matters may 
 be any more conclusively proved than this one. 
 
 7. The personalistic theory is not open to Professor 
 Perry's criticism of absolutism. "Absolute optimism,'* 
 the theory that reality is "the very incarnation of 
 value," reduces, in Professor Perry's judgment, to 
 coherence which "looks suspiciously as though it were 
 dictated by the facts of nature." ^^ Not so, in per- 
 sonalism. In its universe there is room for good per- 
 sons and bad ones, for real value, and equally real 
 disvalue. Instead of absolute optimism, personalism, 
 with Neo-Realism, offers a meliorism; instead of "the 
 monism of values" by which "all values are conceived 
 as of that one type which is represented by the uni- 
 verse as a whole,"" there is a pluralism of values, 
 represented by many attitudes toward the ideal of the 
 Perfect Person. Absolutism may perhaps "tend to 
 tolerance of evil"; personalism emphasizes personal re- 
 sponsibility both for and adhering to an ideal of 
 humanity. 
 
 8. Personalism affords a more rational basis for free- 
 dom than does Neo-Realism. That the latter recog- 
 nizes freedom in any sense is surprising. But Professor 
 Perry emphasizes what he calls "positive freedom," 
 the fact that "I can and do within limits act as I will." 
 He points out that this means that "in a measure life 
 is independent of mechanism" and "in a certain sense 
 the control of life by moral laws takes precedence of 
 
 " P. C. /., pp. 232, 241. He has in mind especially Pringle-Pattison 
 and Creighton. 
 6' P. C. /., p. 246. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 61 
 
 its control by mechanical laws."^^ This is doubtless 
 consistent with the realistic theory of external rela- 
 tions, as well as with the demands of real experience. 
 But Professor Spaulding's plea for freedom is much 
 more adequate to the facts as a personalist sees them. 
 "The very possibility," he writes, "of freeing oneself 
 from one universe of discourse, conditioned by one 
 set of assumptions, and of then putting oneself into 
 another 'universe' leads to the specific hypothesis that 
 any specific reasoning process is certainly not causally 
 related to all other 'things' and perhaps not even to 
 other conscious processes or even to other specific 
 knowing processes."^^ His dimensional theory of con- 
 sciousness doubtless entitles him to a more personalis- 
 tic conception than behaviorism would grant to Pro- 
 fessor Perry. But if freedom be a fundamental fact of 
 human consciousness (and both our Neo-Realists are 
 agreed that it is), if without freedom men could not 
 obey the commands of value to do as they ought to 
 do,^° it would seem that the realistic attempt to escape 
 from personality had broken down, so far as theory of 
 value is concerned. For whatever is thus capable of 
 free self-determination, on which all other "universes 
 of discourse" are admittedly dependent, is personality 
 in the personalistic sense, and may well be regarded 
 as an "entity" even though it be "complex" — though 
 the realistic highway of analysis as the one road to 
 truth be thereby blocked. Personalism makes the 
 basic fact of freedom frankly fundamental to its whole 
 view of consciousness; Neo-Realism in the presence of 
 
 ' P. P. T., p. 343. 
 
 ' N. Ra., p. 391. 
 
 ' N. Ra.. pp. 395, 451. 
 
62 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 values feels driven to smuggle it in, but neither in 
 behavior, nor in a new dimension does it have an 
 adequate "home" for freedom. Perhaps it needs no 
 home; it may float neutrally about nowhere like the 
 other "subsistents," but such a view would make 
 greater demands on imagination and faith than does 
 the view that the conscious self is real and is free. 
 
 9. Personalism gives a more reasonable account of 
 religious values than does Neo-Realism. Professor 
 Perry,'^ with his repudiation of every moral and spirit- 
 ual ontology, with his universe of neutrals, neverthe- 
 less makes "the hazard of faith" to a belief in a 
 "forward movement of life," and in "man's hope of 
 possessing the world in the end." "The narrow and 
 abstract predictions of astronomy" might lead us to 
 look with B. Russell for the ultimate ruin of all man's 
 achievement; but this is "provincial and unimagina- 
 tive"; we may as well hope, and greet "the residual 
 cosmos" "as a promise of salvation." Life is after all 
 too much for Professor Perry's rigid scientific method 
 and anti-romanticism. But the faith at which he 
 arrives is very mild in comparison with the real reli- 
 gious consciousness of mankind. If it is permissible 
 to hope, why not hope on a larger scale, and think 
 one's hopes through? Professor Perry's philosophy of 
 religion, if such it should be called, differs from that of 
 personalism, in that his refuses to become conscious of 
 its implications, its fundamental bearing on all of life 
 and science, its relations to ontology. That is to say, 
 such realism desires a moral world-view in a water- 
 tight compartment of utterly ineffable mystery; for 
 there is no reason, in a neutral universe, either for the 
 
 '1 P. P. T., pp. 344-347. 
 
NEO-REALISTIC THEORIES OF VALUE 63 
 
 fact of past progress or for the hope of future. There 
 is mystery enough, personahsm would grant. But the 
 hypothesis of moral and rational personality as the 
 key to ontology makes many facts intelligible that 
 realism leaves obscure. Personalism does not lay 
 claim to the apodictic certainty of realistic "dog- 
 matism"; but it may reasonably offer itself as a more 
 intelligible interpretation of religious faith than Pro- 
 fessor Perry has presented. 
 
 Professor Spaulding's idea of God, already dis- 
 cussed, comes dangerously near to being a moral and 
 spiritual ontology, so repugnant to other realists. But 
 it has already been shown how vague Professor Spauld- 
 ing's conception of God is in comparison with the 
 view of God as personality; and how inadequate is 
 his conception of value as impersonal, objective effi- 
 ciency, in comparison with the interpretation of it as 
 personal experience fulfilling our ideal of personality, 
 and deriving its efficiency from no mysterious prop- 
 erty of its own, but from our free response to it and 
 from the divine will in which it has its origin and 
 eternal being. 
 
 The present examination of Neo-Realism as a theory 
 of value has shown us that Professors Perry and 
 Spaulding each would evade the principle of personal- 
 ity as the home of value. The former seeks refuge in 
 the depths, the latter in the heights. Which, being 
 interpreted, means that Professor Perry's explanation, 
 although a consciousness theory, is subpersonal, reduc- 
 ing personality to behavior, and value to interest as a 
 biological unit. Professor Spaulding, on the supra- 
 personal heights, makes more numerous and more 
 
64 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 notable concessions to personalism than does his 
 fellow-platformist. But as the new movement in 
 philosophy fails to come to a satisfactory definition of 
 its attitude to value and religion, and even fails to 
 attain agreement within itself, personalists have little 
 reason to believe that a more comprehensive or intel- 
 ligible explanation of the facts than their own has yet 
 been found, or is very likely to be found. 
 
 I 
 
IV 
 
 A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 
 
 (Illustrated in John Wesley) 
 
 D. A. Hayes 
 
 In a democratic reorganization of Christendom it 
 will be recognized that a very extensive unity in belief 
 is neither necessary nor possible nor desirable. On 
 the contrary, the widest divergence of opinion on 
 many important themes will be recognized as con- 
 sistent with thoroughgoing unity in the Spirit. A 
 reunited and truly catholic church must rest upon the 
 basis of absolute freedom of thought and "liberty of 
 prophesying." The dogma of papal infallibility must 
 be set aside and no assumption of infallibility on the 
 part of any Protestant individuals or bodies must be 
 permitted to take its place. The unquestioned right 
 of private judgment must be acknowledged by all and 
 the toleration of any theological opinions consistent 
 with a holy and useful life must be practiced by all. 
 A universal church can neither be established nor 
 maintained on any other foundation than that of 
 loving liberty of thought and speech and action on 
 the part of all its members. We must be willing to 
 "think and let think," or we must be contented with a 
 disunited Christendom forever. 
 
 The Christian Church is to be a universal church, 
 and a universal church will contain, and must contain, 
 an almost infinite variety of racial, national, eccle- 
 siastical, and creedal types. Its motto ought to be, 
 
 65 
 
66 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and necessarily must be, that old motto of Meiderlin, 
 In necessariis unitas, in duhiis libertas, in omnibus 
 caritas. John Wesley saw this clearly enough in his 
 day. He said: "It is certain, so long as we know but 
 in part, that all men will not see all things alike. It 
 is an unavoidable consequence of the present weak- 
 ness and shortness of the human understanding, that 
 several men will be of several minds in religion as well 
 as in common life. So it has been from the beginning 
 of the world, and so it will be till the restitution of all 
 things."! 
 
 One sometimes hears it stated that the early Chris- 
 tians were all of one mind, but the Pauline epistles 
 and the book of Acts do not bear out the assertion. 
 We find the records of disagreements there. Paul 
 and Barnabas had a sharp contention at one time, and 
 at another time Paul withstood Peter to the very 
 face. The first Christians differed in opinion as to the 
 practical methods of procedure in the distribution of 
 alms and as to the conditions upon which the Gentiles 
 should be admitted to the new fellowship and main- 
 tained in good standing there. These differences 
 sprang up in the Pentecostal church, and among those 
 who were devoted Christians, and among the very 
 chief of them, the apostles themselves. Having called 
 our attention to that fact John Wesley added: "Nor 
 does it appear that the difference which then began 
 was ever entirely removed. We do not find that even 
 those pillars in the temple of God, so long as they re- 
 mained upon earth, were ever brought to think alike, 
 to be of one mind, particularly with regard to the 
 ceremonial law. It is therefore no way surprising 
 
 » Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 348. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 67 
 
 that infinite varieties of opinion should now be found 
 in the Christian Church."^ 
 
 Just as there are infinite varieties in rehgious expe- 
 rience, so there will be infinite varieties in religious 
 opinion as long as the world stands. Until all eyes 
 are of the same color they will see things in different 
 light. Until all ears are of the same size and shape 
 they will hear the same thing differently. Until all 
 brains are of exactly the same convolutions and pro- 
 portions men will come to different conclusions upon 
 the basis of the same data. The conclusion of the 
 wise man will differ from the conclusion of the fool, 
 and the most of men will approximate one or other of 
 these conclusions in infinitely various degrees. 
 
 It was an old maxim, "Whatever is received, is re- 
 ceived after the manner or nature of the recipient." 
 Just as surely as the recipients are tall and short and 
 fat and lean and white and black and red and yellow 
 and brown, just so surely they differ in their manner 
 and nature and just so surely they will differ in some 
 and in many if not all of their opinions. We are told 
 that no two blades of grass are alike and that no two 
 leaves on an oak tree are exactly alike, and we know 
 that this infinite variety of nature has its parallel in 
 the world of men and in the realm of mind. In that 
 case how can anyone expect all men to think alike or 
 all Christians to think alike? It is utterly impossible, 
 and it always will be impossible. Unity of spirit must 
 be maintained in despite of varieties of judgment; 
 that is the only possibility of continuous fellowship in 
 a universal church. Therefore we must bear and forbear 
 in all nonessentials of thought and speech and action. 
 
 2 Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 341. 
 
68 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Wesley said, "I have no more right to object to a 
 man for holding a different opinion from me, than I 
 have to differ with a man because he wears a wig and 
 I wear my own hair."^ Many people are not as wise as 
 John Wesley at this point. They object to any man who 
 does not wear his hair just as they themselves do. They 
 object to hair that is too long or hair that is too short or 
 hair which is parted in the middle. Wesley knew that just 
 as surely as the outsides of men's heads are not all alike 
 and there are black-headed and white-headed and red- 
 headed and bald-headed men, men with a surplus of hair 
 and men with a minimum supply and men with wigs, 
 so surely the insides of men's heads are not all alike. 
 God made them of almost infinite variety. Nothing 
 could be clearer than the absolute impossibility of 
 bringing all men to think alike on all points and noth- 
 ing could be clearer than that God never intended 
 that they should, in this stage of their existence at 
 least. Let us recognize this fact and rejoice in it, for 
 it means a fuller and richer revelation of God and of 
 God's truth through the church. 
 
 God has revealed himself to men through the Bible; 
 but the Bible is a collection of books representing a 
 great variety of literature. There is fundamental 
 truth in the Bible, expressed in almost infinite diver- 
 sity of forms. God has revealed himself to men 
 through nature; but there is no sameness nor staleness 
 in this revelation. The infinite variety of nature is 
 suggestive of the infinite resources of the Creator of 
 all. There is a fundamental type of American life. 
 Yet the Western type is easily distinguishable from 
 the Eastern type, and there always has been a wide 
 
 * Leiievre, John Wesley, p. 430. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 69 
 
 difference between the North and the South. All life 
 is varied in its manifestation, and that is as true of 
 the religious life as of any other. Unity in variety is 
 evidently the purpose of God in the formation of the 
 church, and while he will reveal himself through the 
 church that revelation will be as varied as are his 
 revelations through nature and in the Bible. We 
 ought to be glad that this is so. We ought to see that 
 the church will be all the better for this reason. 
 
 Catholicity is impossible without variety, and, as 
 Bishop Gore has said, "Christianity is really a catholic 
 religion, and only in proportion as its catholicity 
 becomes a reality is its true power and richness ex- 
 hibited. Each new race which is introduced into the 
 church not only itself receives the blessings of our 
 religion, but reacts upon it to bring out new and 
 unsuspected aspects and beauties of its truth and 
 influences. . . . How impoverished was the exhibition 
 of Christianity which the Jewish Christians were 
 capable of giving by themselves! How much of the 
 treasures of wisdom and power which lie hid in Christ 
 awaited the Greek intellect, and the Roman spirit of 
 government, and the Teutonic individuality, and the 
 temper and character of the Kelt and the Slav, before 
 they could leap into light! And can we doubt that 
 now again not only would Indians, and Japanese, and 
 Africans, and Chinamen be the better for Christian- 
 ity, but that Christianity also would be unspeakably 
 the richer for their adhesion — for the gifts which the 
 subtlety of India, and the grace of Japan, and the 
 silent patience of China are capable of bringing into 
 the city o f God.?"^ 
 
 * Gore, The Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 138, 139. 
 
70 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 We need to realize two things: that Christians are 
 to be the evangehsts of the nations and that when 
 the nations are evangelized the universal Church of 
 Christ will be neither the church of any one of our 
 present nationalities nor the church of any one of our 
 present multiplicity of divisions. It will be a church 
 of international brotherhood with racial and creedal 
 differences tolerated in Christian love. No one will 
 say to his brother, *'Know the Lord," for all will 
 know him, from the least to the greatest; and no one 
 will say to his brother, "You must think as I think," 
 for each will be willing to grant unto others the same 
 liberty of thought which he claims for himself. It is 
 the only basis upon which Christendom can be united. 
 
 All must come to the position of John Wesley when 
 he said: "Does the love of God constrain thee to serve 
 him without fear — to rejoice unto him with reverence.'^ 
 ... Is thy heart right toward thy neighbor? Dost 
 thou love, as thyself, all mankind without exception? 
 ... Give me thy hand. I do not mean. Be of my 
 opinion. You need not: I do not expect or desire it. 
 Neither do I mean, I will be of your opinion. I can 
 not. It does not depend on my choice. I can no 
 more think than I can see or hear as I will. Keep you 
 your opinion: I mine: and that as steadily as ever. 
 You need not ever endeavor to come over to me, or 
 bring me over to you. I do not desire you to dispute 
 these points, or to hear or speak one word concerning 
 them. Let all opinions alone on one side and the 
 other: only, give me thine hand."^ The "opinions" 
 which John Wesley had in mind when he wrote those 
 words were theological opinions, doctrines, dogmas of 
 
 6 Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 351. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 71 
 
 great importance and great dispute in his day, "such 
 as the nature and use of the moral law, the eternal 
 decrees of God, the sufficiency and efficacy of his 
 grace, and the perseverance of his children."^ 
 
 The controversies over evolution and higher criti- 
 cism and the literal or symbolical interpretations of 
 the creed in our own day have been no more vital to 
 us than these issues were in John Wesley's day, and in 
 connection with the controversy over the higher 
 criticism Professor Bowne was in complete accord 
 with the spirit of Wesley when he said: "If any one 
 cannot believe in God the Father and in his Son with- 
 out believing in the whale of Jonah or the ass that 
 spoke, or the talking serpent and other saving truths 
 of that kind, I should say. By all means believe in 
 them. If these are the only things that hold you to 
 the deeper truths of religion, hold on to them with all 
 your might; only you must not insist that others also 
 must believe in them. So far the church may go in 
 condescension to ignorance, but no farther. The 
 church should always be a church for the ignorant, 
 but it should never be an ignorant church."^ That 
 is to say, the wise and the simple must dwell together 
 in the Christian Church in brotherly love, although 
 they never will be able to dwell together with like 
 opinions in matters of knowledge and faith. It is 
 this principle of individual hberty of opinion in cor- 
 porate harmony of spirit which alone can insure a 
 lasting or a universal church. 
 
 It was upon this basis that the Methodist Church, 
 the church of John Wesley, was founded; and we 
 
 ' Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 341. 
 
 ^ Bowne, Studies in Christianity, p. 397. 
 
72 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 submit that this is the only basis upon which a uni- 
 versal church ever can be established. In the first 
 Methodist Conference ever held, in London in 1744, 
 the question was raised, "How far does each preacher 
 agree to submit to the unanimous judgment of the 
 rest?" and the answer was made and recorded, "In 
 speculative things each can only submit as far as his 
 judgment shall be convinced; in every practical point, 
 as far as we can, without wounding our several con- 
 sciences."^ In the fourth Conference, held in 1747, 
 the same question was raised and the same answer 
 was made, and then it was asked, "Can a Christian 
 submit any further than this to any man or number 
 of men upon earth .f^" and the answer was recorded, 
 "It is undeniably plain he cannot, either to Pope, 
 council, bishop, or convocation. This is that grand 
 principle of every man's right to private judgment. 
 . . . Every man must think for himself, since every 
 man must give an account for himseK to God."^ 
 
 Notice how that question was worded. It was not. 
 How far does each preacher agree to submit to the 
 majority opinion of his brethren.'^ That is the way 
 in which we settle most of the practical questions 
 with which we deal to-day, by a majority vote to 
 which all submit. That was not the question raised 
 in that first Methodist Conference. The question was, 
 "How far does each preacher agree to submit to the 
 unanimous judgment of the rest.^^" One lone preacher 
 on one side and the whole Conference unanimous on 
 the other side! What did that mean.? It meant that 
 every Methodist preacher was expected to have an 
 
 8 Stevens, History of Methodism, vol. i, p. 212. 
 3 Ibid., op. cit., vol. i, p. 319. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 73 
 
 individually convinced judgment and to maintain an 
 individually unwounded conscience, even if he had to 
 stand alone against the unanimous judgment and 
 conscience of the brethren. That was the only posi- 
 tion the early Methodists agreed to respect. In the 
 fourth Conference they extended the principle to all 
 Christians. They ranked the right of private judg- 
 ment and of the individual conscience far above the 
 necessity or the desirability of absolute unanimity of 
 either opinion or action. It is the only position cap- 
 able of maintenance in a church with a universal 
 destination. 
 
 Luther made the right of private judgment in all 
 holy things a fundamental principle of the Protestant 
 Reformation. He never could believe that any Pope 
 or any man was infallible. He never could be per- 
 suaded that any church council was infallible. The 
 twenty-ninth of his theses declared, "It is open to us 
 to set aside the Councils, freely to question their 
 actions and judge their decrees and to profess with 
 all confidence whatever appears to be the truth 
 whether it has been approved or reproved of any 
 Council."^" John Wesley had no higher opinion of 
 church councils than Martin Luther had. He said of 
 them, "How has one Council been perpetually cursing 
 another, and delivering all over to Satan, whether 
 predecessors or contemporaries, who did not implicitly 
 receive their determinations, though generally trifling, 
 sometimes false, and frequently unintelligible or self- 
 contradictory !"" 
 
 Infallibility is not to be reached by any summing 
 
 1" Grisar, Luther, vol. vi, p. 300. 
 
 11 Wesley, Journal, Standard Edition, iv, p. 97. 
 
74 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 up of fallible judgments. Final authority in matters 
 of truth is not to be attained by any rounding up of a 
 majority vote in any ecclesiastical body made up of 
 men some of whom are grossly ignorant, and many of 
 whom are greatly prejudiced, and all of whom are 
 confessedly fallible. That is the trouble with all the 
 General Councils and Assemblies of Divines who have 
 essayed to formulate and finally fix the Christian 
 faith. They have not been adequate to the task. 
 If we could have an adequately representative body, 
 made up of perfectly holy men, free from all jealousies 
 and antipathies and individual idiosyncrasies and 
 prejudices, absolutely devoted to the truth, and the 
 truth alone, and master of all the knowledge available 
 to that age, such a body might formulate a creed 
 which would be adequate for their own time; but 
 that creed would be antiquated as soon as any new 
 truth had been discovered which would necessitate a 
 readjustment of thought along the whole line. 
 
 Such a body of men never was assembled in all the 
 history of the world, and it never will be to the end 
 of time. All the creed-making councils and assemblies 
 of the church have fallen far below this ideal. Some 
 of them have been so bad that they have fitted the 
 description given by Gregory of Nazianzen to the 
 assemblies of bishops in his day. He said: "I never 
 have known one to terminate well. They strive only 
 for power. They behave like angry lions to the small 
 and like fawning spaniels to the great. It would seem 
 as though a herald had convoked to the Council all 
 the gluttons, villains, liars and false swearers of the 
 empire. I will never more sit in these assemblies of 
 cranes and geese." 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 75 
 
 One trembles to think that the formulation of the 
 faith has been intrusted to such hands, and one re- 
 joices to believe that the truth has come out of them 
 in as good condition as it has. Other councils have 
 been better than these, but in some of them we read 
 of decisions reached by fraud and bribery and in the 
 best of them we read of different parties and fierce 
 and prolonged debates and final compromises to 
 obtain majority votes, and we sympathize fully with 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes when he says, 
 
 "Not from the conclave where the holy men 
 Glare on each other, as with angry eyes 
 They battle for God's glory and their own. 
 Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands 
 Fixes the faith of ages yet miborn — 
 Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear 
 The Father's voice that speaks itself divinel''^^ 
 
 The Thirty-nine Articles are right, therefore, in de- 
 claring of the General Councils that "forasmuch as 
 they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not gov- 
 erned with the Spirit and Word of God, they may err, 
 and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining 
 unto God," and Luther was right in asserting over 
 against all their authority the liberty of his individual 
 conscience: "Very well, let them decree and say what 
 they will, still say I, Thou canst not rest thy confi- 
 dence thereon, nor satisfy thy conscience; thou must 
 thyself decide; thy neck is at stake, thy life is at stake, 
 therefore must God say to thee in thy heart. This is 
 God's Word, else it is still undecided. "^^ 
 
 '^ O. W. Holmes, Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition, p. 
 183. 
 
 " Quoted in Dods, The Bible: Its Origin and Nature, pp. 38, 39. 
 
76 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Truth is not determined by a majority vote. The 
 majority was against Jesus, but he had the truth nev- 
 ertheless. The majority decided that Arius was right 
 and Athanasius was wrong; but Athanasius stood 
 alone against the world until the truth had proved 
 itself mighty enough to prevail. The majority de- 
 cided that the Copernican astronomy was wrong and 
 that Galileo must recant his heresy that the sun was 
 the center of our system and that the earth moved 
 around it, and Galileo recanted, but tradition affirms 
 that he said at the end of his recantation, "It still 
 moves"; and so it does, in spite of the majority vote. 
 Questions of fact are not to be settled by those who 
 are ignorant of the facts, even though they may have 
 a majority vote. Majorities may be in the right, and 
 if they are the individual can go with them in all 
 good conscience; but if the majority seem to him to 
 be in the wrong then it is his right and it is his duty 
 to protest in the name of his own reason and of his own 
 conscience and to allow no authority to coerce him in 
 these things. 
 
 The judicious Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity has 
 stated the truth in this matter: "Now, it is not re- 
 quired, nor can be exacted at our hands, that we 
 should yield unto anything our assent, than such as 
 doth answer the evidence which is to be had of that 
 we assent unto. . . . For men to be tied and led by 
 authority as it were, with a kind of captivity of judg- 
 ment, and though there be reason to the contrary not 
 to listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first in 
 the herd, they know not nor care not whither — this 
 were brutish. Again, that authority of men should 
 prevail with men either against or above reason is no 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 77 
 
 part of our belief. 'Companies of learned men,' be 
 they never so great and reverend, are to yield unto 
 reason; the weight whereof is no whit prejudiced by 
 the simplicity of his person which doth allege it, but 
 being found to be sound and good, the bare opinion of 
 men to the contrary must of necessity stoop and give 
 place."!^ 
 
 It is the perpetual vindication of the privilege and 
 principle of the humble and sincere conscientious ob- 
 jector in all affairs of church and state. That man 
 who in the assumption of his personal infallibility and 
 in the consciousness of the possession of the majority 
 power attempts to excommunicate or persecute or 
 crush the conscientious objector is as un-Protestant as 
 he is un-Christian, and his position will make a truly 
 catholic church forever impossible. John Wesley set 
 forth the only pronunciamento for such a church when 
 he said: "Every one must follow the dictates of his 
 own conscience, in simplicity and godly sincerity. He 
 must be fully persuaded in his own mind, and then 
 act according to the best light he has. Nor has any 
 creature power to constrain another to walk by his 
 own rule. God has given no right to any of the chil- 
 dren of men, thus to lord it over the conscience of his 
 brethren; but every man must judge for himself, as 
 every man must give an account of himself unto 
 God."^^ 
 
 Wesley phrased the fundamental principle of a 
 genuinely catholic spirit when he said: "Think your- 
 self and let think. Use no constraint in matters of 
 
 " Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, book II, chap, vii, paragraphs 5, 6. 
 Works, vol. i, pp. 323-325. 
 
 1^ Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 349. 
 
78 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 religion. "^^ John Wesley said: "Every wise man will 
 allow others the same liberty of thinking, which he 
 desires they should allow him; and will no more insist 
 on their embracing his opinions than he would have 
 them to insist on his embracing theirs. He bears with 
 those who differ from him, and only asks him with 
 whom he desires to unite in love that single question, 
 Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?"^'^ 
 
 It was in this spirit that Wesley praised the saintly 
 Roman Catholic Fenelon, and held him as a model 
 minister and Christian man. It was in this spirit 
 that he published and scattered abroad among his 
 people the biographies of Roman Catholic saints, like 
 the Spaniard Gregory and Madam Guy on. It was in 
 this spirit that he wrote the life of a saintly Unitarian 
 lady and circulated the tract among his people for 
 their spiritual good. It was in this spirit that he pub- 
 lished The Life of Thomas Firmin, a Unitarian, and 
 said in the Preface to it: "I had long settled it in my 
 mind that the entertaining wrong notions concerning 
 the Trinity was inconsistent with real piety. But I 
 cannot argue against matter of fact. I dare not deny 
 that Mr. Firmin was a pious man, although his notions 
 of the Trinity were quite erroneous."^^ 
 
 It was in this spirit that Wesley wrote in his Jour- 
 nal, "I read to-day a part of the Meditations of Mar- 
 cus Antonius. What a strange emperor! And what a 
 strange heathen! Giving thanks to God for all the 
 good things he enjoyed. ... I make no doubt but 
 this is one of those many who shall come from the 
 
 16 Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 336, 
 
 " Ibid., p. 348. 
 
 " Ibid., Mason edition, 1831, vol. xiv, p. 307. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 79 
 
 east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom, nominal 
 Christians, are shut out."^^ Wesley read Homer and 
 found a vein of piety running through his whole work.^" 
 He believed that the Montanists, "in the second and 
 third centuries, were real scriptural Christians. "^^ In 
 his Christian Library he published a manual of Devo- 
 tions for Every Day of the Week and the Great Festivals, 
 and took it from a work by John Austin, a Roman 
 Catholic writer of the preceding century. 
 
 He wandered through the ruins of a Carthusian 
 monastery and then reflected, 'Who knows but some 
 of the poor, superstitious monks who once served 
 God here according to the light they had, may meet 
 us, by-and-by, in that house of God not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens.f^"^^ He read the 
 Journal of William Edmundson, a Quaker preacher, 
 and then wrote in his own Journal, "If the original 
 equaled the picture (which I see no reason to doubt), 
 what an amiable man was this! His opinions I leave; 
 but what a spirit was here! What faith, love, gentle- 
 ness, long-suffering! Could mistake send such a man 
 as this to hell? Not so. I am so far from believing 
 this that I scruple not to say, 'Let my soul be with 
 the soul of Wilham Edmundson !"'2^ He had no 
 doubt that godly men were saved, even if they be- 
 longed to the Unitarian Church or the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church, or even if they were Quakers, or even if 
 they were heathen. 
 
 1' Wesley, Journal, Standard Edition, iii, p. 215. 
 20 Wesley, Ibid., p. 366. 
 " Wesley, Ibid., p. 490. 
 22 Wesley, Ibid., p. 209. 
 ^ Wesley, Ibid., v, p. 137. 
 
80 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 He would have sympathized with Alexander Bal- 
 main Bruce, of whom they tell the characteristic story 
 that he was present at a student discussion of the 
 question of the fate of the heathen and the issue was 
 raised as to whether a noble soul like Socrates could 
 be denied salvation. One said, "Omnipotence can do 
 anything." Another objected, "Omnipotence surely 
 can do nothing unjust." Yet another suggested, 
 "Omnipotence could not condemn a man of lofty 
 character." To this it was answered, "He might do 
 so, if he did not approve of his goodness." Then 
 Bruce came forward with his fist clenched and closed 
 the debate with this characteristic utterance, "I say, 
 Daniel, God couldn't damn Socrates."-* Of course 
 not. Neither could nor would John Wesley. He said, 
 "The thing which I was greatly afraid of, all this 
 time, and which I resolved to use every possible means 
 of preventing, was a narrowness of spirit, . . . that 
 miserable bigotry which makes many so unready to 
 believe that there is any work of God but among 
 themselves."^^ He believed that 
 
 God sends his teachers unto every age, 
 
 To every clime, and every race of men, 
 
 With revelations fitted to their growth 
 
 And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of Truth 
 
 Into the selfish rule of one sole race: 
 
 Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed 
 
 The life of man, and given it to grasp 
 
 The master-key of knowledge — reverence — 
 
 Infolds some germs of goodness and of right. ^^ 
 
 2^ Henderson, The Religious Controversies of Scotland, p. 251. 
 ^ Methodist Review, vol. Ixxxi, p. 514. 
 
 '"' Lowell, Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge edition. Rhoecus, p. 
 46. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 81 
 
 We can understand how it could be said of John 
 Wesley, "No reformer the world has ever seen so 
 united faithfulness to the essential doctrines of revela- 
 tion with charity toward men of every church and 
 creed,"^^ and we can agree with the conclusion of 
 Professor Winchester, who affirms of Wesley, "The 
 arch-heretics of history, Montanus of the second cen- 
 tury, Pelagius of the fifth century, Servetus of the 
 sixteenth century — he declared that, in his opinion, 
 they were all holy men, who, at the last, with all the 
 good men of the heathen world, Socrates, and Plato, 
 and Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius, would come from 
 the east and the west to sit down in the kingdom of 
 heaven. Religious history from the dawn of Chris- 
 tianity to the present day may be searched in vain to 
 find another leader of equal prominence and equal 
 positiveness of personal opinion who showed such 
 genuine liberality as the great founder of Method- 
 ism."^^ 
 
 Dean Stanley used to claim that John Wesley was 
 the founder of the Broad Church. The church which 
 he actually founded was put upon a basis broad 
 enough for the universal Church of Christ. Just 
 three years before his death he said of it: "One cir- 
 cumstance is quite peculiar to the people called Meth- 
 odists; that is, the terms upon which any person may 
 be admitted into their society. They do not impose, 
 in order to their admission, any opinions whatever. 
 Let them hold particular or general redemption, abso- 
 lute or conditional decree; let them be Churchmen or 
 Dissenters, Presbyterians or Independents, it is no 
 
 " Meredith, The Real John Wesley, p. 160. 
 28 Winchester, The Life of John Wesley, p. 212. 
 
 I^l00(o 
 
82 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 obstacle. Let them choose one mode of baptism or 
 another, it is no bar to their admission. The Presby- 
 terian may be a Presbyterian still; the Independent or 
 Anabaptist use his own mode of worship. So may 
 the Quaker; and none will contend with him about it. 
 They think and let think. One condition and one 
 only is required — a real desire to save their soul. . . . 
 Is there any other society in Great Britain or Ireland 
 that is so remote from bigotry .f' that is so truly of a 
 catholic spirit? so ready to admit all serious persons 
 without distinction? Where is there such another 
 society in Europe? in the habitable world? I know 
 none. Let any man show it to me that can."^^ 
 
 Those words were written in an intolerant age and 
 the greatness of John Wesley at this point is the more 
 apparent in the light of that fact; for he declared that 
 a Christian church ought to be a church of absolute 
 tolerance in all nonessentials in religious worship and 
 theological opinion. Wesley wrote in his Journal^ 
 December 3, 1776, "O that all men would sit as loose 
 to opinions as I do; that they would think and let 
 think" ;^'^ and that motto might be made the Magna 
 Charta of individual liberty in the universal church. 
 Christians think — that ought to be true of them first 
 of all. They ought not to adopt their opinions with- 
 out thinking and simply because their fathers have 
 held them. They ought not to come to any final 
 conclusions in their faith without serious and studious 
 and adequate research. Then it ought to be equally 
 true of them that they allow others to think for them- 
 selves and come to their own conclusions; and, if 
 
 29 Wesley, Works, vol. vii, p. 321. 
 
 30 Wesley, Journal, vi, p. 134. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 83 
 
 their conclusions differ with those they themselves 
 have reached, abate no whit of their fellowship with 
 them on that ground. That is the high plane upon 
 which any universal church must be founded. 
 
 When John Wesley wrote his treatise on The Char- 
 acter of a Methodist he began with these words, "The 
 distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his opin- 
 ions of any sort. . . . Whosoever, therefore, imagines 
 a Methodist is a man of such or such an opinion is 
 grossly ignorant of the whole affair. ... As to all 
 opinions which do not strike at the root of Christian- 
 ity, we think and let think. So that, whatsoever they 
 are, whether right or wrong, they are no distinguishing 
 marks of a Methodist."^^ Up in Glasgow John Wesley 
 wrote in his Journal in 1788: "There is no other reli- 
 gious society under heavefn which requires nothing of 
 men, in order to their admission into it, but a desire 
 to save their souls. Look all around you. You can- 
 not be admitted into the church or society of the 
 Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Quakers, or any others, 
 unless you hold the same opinions with them, and 
 adhere to the same mode of worship. The Methodists 
 alone do not insist on your holding this or that opinion; 
 but they think and let think! Neither do they impose 
 any particular mode of worship; but you may con- 
 tinue to worship in your former manner, be it what it 
 may. Now, I do not know any other religious society, 
 either ancient or modern, wherein such liberty of 
 conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed, since the 
 age of the apostles. Here is our glorying; and a glory- 
 ing peculiar to us. What society shares it with us?"^^ 
 
 31 Wesley, Works, vol. v, pp. 240-241. 
 ^ Wesley, Journal, vii, p. 389. 
 
84 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A year later and less than two years before his 
 death, down at Redruth in Cornwall, Wesley wrote 
 in his Journal, "I still aver I never read or heard of, 
 either in ancient or modern history, any other church 
 which builds on so broad a foundation as the Meth- 
 odists do; which requires of its members no conform- 
 ity either in opinions or modes of worship, but barely 
 this one thing: to fear God and work righteousness."^^ 
 
 His advice to his people always was, "Use every 
 ordinance which you believe is of God; but beware 
 of narrowness of spirit toward those who use them 
 not. Conform yourself to those modes of worship 
 which you approve; yet love as brethren those who 
 cannot conform. Lay so much stress upon opinions, 
 that all your own, if it be possible, may agree with 
 truth and reason; but have a care of anger, dislike, or 
 contempt toward those whose opinions differ from 
 yours. . . . Condemn no man for not thinking as 
 you think: let every one enjoy the full and free liberty 
 of thinking for himself: let every man use his own 
 judgment, since every man must give an account of 
 himself to God. Abhor every approach, in any kind 
 or degree, to the spirit of persecution. If you cannot 
 reason or persuade a man into the truth, never at- 
 tempt to force him into it."^'' 
 
 That is not the spirit of the Vatican decree of 1870, 
 which asserted the papal infallibility and closed with 
 these words, "If anyone shall oppose this our decision, 
 which God forbid, let him be accursed," that is, let 
 him be damned, let him be anathema (anathema sit). 
 It is not the spirit of the Athanasian creed, which 
 
 ^' Wesley, Journal, viii, p. 5. 
 ** Wesley, Works, vol. v, p. 253. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 85 
 
 begins by saying, "Whoever will be saved, before all 
 things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith; 
 which faith except every one do keep whole and unde- 
 filed, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly," 
 and which ends by saying, "This is the Catholic faith; 
 which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be 
 saved." 
 
 What did John Wesley say about the Athanasian 
 creed? He said, "I am far from saying he who does 
 not assent to the creed commonly ascribed to Athana- 
 sius shall without doubt perish everlastingly."^^ 
 So is every sensible and tolerant Christian man; 
 for assent to any creed never will save a man and 
 failure to assent to any creed never will damn a man, 
 if he be a lover of the truth and has honest scruples 
 concerning any statement in it. Augustine did not 
 believe that, and he invoked the civil power to crush 
 out all schism and heresy. Roman Catholicism did 
 not believe that, and it made the Spanish Inquisition 
 a chief defense of the church. John Calvin did not 
 believe that, and he hoped that Servetus might never 
 be allowed to leave Geneva alive. Servetus had writ- 
 ten him, "Though I believe the Father is God, the 
 Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet I scruple 
 using the words 'Trinity' and 'Persons,' because I do 
 not find those terms in the Bible." 
 
 What did John Wesley say about that.^^ He said: 
 "I dare not insist upon any one's using the words 
 'Trinity' or 'Person.' I use them myself without any 
 scruple concerning them, because I know of none 
 better; but if any man has any scruple concerning 
 them, who shall constrain him to use them? I can- 
 
 ** Wesley, Works, vol. ii, p. 21. 
 
86 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 not: much less would I bum a man alive, and that 
 with moist green wood, for saying he had such 
 scruple. "^^ The Puritan Fathers drove Roger Wil- 
 liams into the wilderness, where for fourteen weeks 
 he knew not "what bread or bed did mean." The 
 Presbyterians tried Albert Barnes for heresy because 
 he held to the governmental theory of the atonement. 
 The Methodists expelled Dr. Thomas from their con- 
 nection because he could not believe in the eternal 
 torments of literal hell-fire, and a Methodist minister 
 cited Professor Bowne to a heresy trial upon points 
 nonessential to salvation. But a Methodist Confer- 
 ence, in the true spirit of Wesley, promptly acquitted 
 him. 
 
 What did John Wesley say about all of this? He 
 said: "Beware you are not a fiery, persecuting enthu- 
 siast. Do not imagine that God has called you (just 
 contrary to the spirit of him you call your Master) to 
 destroy men's lives, and not to save them. Never 
 dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think 
 yourself and let think. Use no constraint in matters 
 of religion. Even those who are farthest out of the 
 way never compel to come in by any other means 
 than reason, truth, and love."^^ It is this tolerance 
 in religious belief which is of the very essence of Chris- 
 tianity and a necessary prerequisite for a universal 
 church. Intolerance is un-Christian as well as unwise 
 and unjust and unkind; but it is not uncommon, even 
 among those who profess to be very pious people. 
 
 Religion was intended to bind man to God and to 
 bind men together; but some men make their very 
 
 ^ Wesley, Works, vol. ii, p. 21. 
 " Wesley, Works, vol. i, p. 336. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 87 
 
 religiousness a reason for their persecution of their 
 equally religious brothers. The Master gave his dis- 
 ciples two sacraments as the symbols of their union 
 with each other and with him; and these sacraments 
 of love and life have been made causes of separation 
 and subjects of most bitter controversy and mutual 
 anathema. The church has been divided on the ques- 
 tion of transubstantiation and the method of bap- 
 tism. The very things intended to bring the Christians 
 into closest communion with each other have served 
 to make the most lasting divisions among them. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor said, rightly enough: "It is not the 
 differing opinions that is the cause of the present rup- 
 tures, but want of charity. . . . There is no cure for 
 us but piety and charity. . . . All these mischiefs 
 proceed not from this, that all men are not of one 
 mind, for that is neither necessary nor possible, but 
 that every opinion is made an article of faith, every 
 article is a ground for a quarrel, every quarrel makes a 
 faction, every faction is zealous, and all zeal pretends 
 for God, and whatever is for God cannot be too much. 
 We by this time are come to that pass, we think we 
 love not God except we hate our brother; and we have 
 not the virtue of religion unless we persecute all reli- 
 gions but our own: for lukewarmness is so odious to 
 God and man, that we, proceeding furiously upon 
 these mistakes, by supposing we preserve the body, 
 we destroy the soul of religion; or by being zealous for 
 faith, or which is all one, for that which we mistake 
 for faith, we are cold in charity, and so lose the reward 
 for both."38 
 
 '^ Jeremy Taylor, "The Liberty of Prophesying," Works, vol. v, p. 
 368. 
 
88 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 There is the natural history of the genesis of many 
 an ardent persecutor of heretics in the Christian 
 Church. A beginning zeal for religion and then reli- 
 gion identified with orthodoxy, and then orthodoxy 
 made to cover not only the essentials of the faith but 
 also everything else which the self-styled orthodox 
 may believe, including all questions of higher criti- 
 cism and historical fact; and, finally, with the assump- 
 tion of personal infallibility in the whole field, the 
 arrogation of ecclesiastical authority to maintain it in 
 its integrity and purity, heresy trials, church divisions, 
 charity cold, religion dead. The professional heresy- 
 hunter seldom or never maintains any spiritual leader- 
 ship in the church. 
 
 It was against him and his whole tribe that Pro- 
 fessor Bowne used to inveigh with his characteristic 
 irony in these words: "Having themselves little knowl- 
 edge and no intellectual interest, they desire to stand 
 in the old paths, that is, the old formulas, or, still 
 more accurately, the old phrases. All that is needed 
 for this is a competent and active ignorance and a 
 belligerent conceit. With this furnishing, they read 
 out to their own satisfaction all modern science, mod- 
 ern history, modern sociology, modern political econ- 
 omy, and modern thought in general; and know not 
 meanwhile that they are poor and miserable and blind 
 and naked, and know nothing as they ought to know 
 it. This has been so largely the character of self- 
 styled orthodoxy that one might almost have ground 
 for a suit for slander or libel at being called ortho- 
 dox."39 
 
 All irony aside. Professor Bowne would have been 
 
 ^ Bowne, Studies in Christianity, p. 376. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 89 
 
 among the first to acknowledge that there were ortho- 
 dox people who were intelligent and tolerant and 
 religious. He believed, however, that their ortho- 
 doxy was to be measured not by their tenacity of 
 adherence to old formulas or old phrases but by their 
 absolute loyalty to the truth as God had given them 
 to see it. That loyalty would keep them in touch 
 with the best in the past and at the same time it 
 would keep them in line with all progress toward a 
 better future. It would be perfectly consistent with 
 an absolute tolerance toward those who had not yet 
 arrived at its own stage of enlightenment, and with a 
 cherished hope of added revelation in the days to 
 come. 
 
 Our creeds never will be perfect or complete, since 
 they must be formulated by finite minds. No man 
 and no body of men ever will be superior to all mis- 
 understanding and mistake. It is not necessary that 
 we have all of the truth in order to be saved. It is 
 necessary that we love the truth and seek after it 
 with all the heart and mind and soul and strength. 
 The amount of truth a man possesses may have been 
 determined for him by his opportunities or his en- 
 vironment. The love of the truth will save him, even 
 if he attains to but an infinitesimal portion of the 
 truth itself; for the love of the truth determines his 
 character, and his creed does not. Therefore Profes- 
 sor Bowne was altogether right when he declared: 
 "Let us say, then, with all conviction, that simple 
 intellectual assent to a dogma can never be a ground 
 for acceptance with God, and that simple rejection of 
 a dogma can never be a ground of rejection by God. 
 The guilt or innocence of a soul can never be a matter 
 
90 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of heterodoxy or orthodoxy, but only of the person's 
 attitude toward his ideals of righteousness."^" 
 
 This utterance is in exact accord with the state- 
 ments made by John Wesley: "Whatsoever the gen- 
 erality of people may think, it is certain that opinion 
 is not religion: no, not right opinion; assent to one, or 
 to ten thousand truths. There is a wide difference 
 between them: even right opinion is as distant from 
 religion as the east is from the west. Persons may be 
 quite right in their opinions, and yet have no religion 
 at all; and on the other hand, persons may be truly 
 religious, who hold many wrong opinions. "^^ He illus- 
 trates with Romanists and Calvinists who seemed to 
 him to be in error in their doctrine but at the same 
 time were "real inward Christians," and then he con- 
 cludes, "We cannot but infer, that there are ten thou- 
 sand mistakes, which may consist with real religion; 
 with regard to which every candid, considerate man 
 will think and let think."^^ 
 
 That is the foundation upon which a universal 
 church can be built, the charitable belief that vast 
 multitudes will be saved who differ with us in their 
 faith because they are just as religious as we are, or 
 even more religious than we are, even though they 
 are not half as orthodox. Religion depends upon noth- 
 ing but the attitude of the heart toward God and 
 man. It is as the Master said, "Not every one that 
 saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father who is in heaven."^^ All who honestly and 
 
 *« Bowne, The Essence of Religion, p. 167. 
 " Wesley, Works, vol. ii, p. 20. 
 « Ihid., p. 20. 
 « Matt. 7. 21. 
 
A TRULY CATHOLIC SPIRIT 91 
 
 consistently desire to do the will of the Father ought 
 to be recognized as members of the kingdom, no mat- 
 ter what their name or creed. They must be per- 
 mitted to think for themselves and they must not be 
 condemned for their conclusions, however erroneous 
 we may believe those conclusions to be. It is as Paul 
 said, "Who art thou that judgest the servant of 
 another .5^ to his own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, 
 he shall be made to stand; for the Lord hath power 
 to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day 
 above another: another esteemeth every day alike. 
 Let each man be fully assured in his own mind."^^ 
 Let every man think for himself and let think, and 
 maintain the unity of the spirit in the face of any 
 minor or major differences of dogma. 
 
 It was upon this principle that John Wesley in- 
 sisted through all his life. It is upon this basis that 
 practical cooperation among all Christians becomes 
 possible. It is upon this basis alone that unbroken 
 fraternal union may be maintained among all the 
 Christian churches as long as their separate existence 
 may last. It is along this line alone that anyone can 
 hope for organic union in the end. A truly catholic 
 spirit like that so well illustrated in John Wesley must 
 be cherished in the world-wide church before we can 
 realize that ideal set forth by James Martineau, an 
 ideal to which all sincere disciples of the Christ will 
 look forward with great longing until it is attained, 
 the ideal of the final union of Christendom in a "unity 
 more deep-seated and affectionate than that of mere 
 opinion; a unity of allegiance to one Father, and toil 
 for one Brotherhood, and reverence for one law of 
 
 « Rom. 14. 4, 5. 
 
92 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Duty, and aspiration for one home in Heaven; the 
 universal church of good and faithful souls, adorning 
 God's providence with varieties of thought, and 
 strengthening it by consentaneousness of love."^^ 
 
 *5 Life and Letters of James Martineau, vol. i, p. 107. 
 
V 
 
 RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 
 
 Albert C. Knudson 
 
 The term "a priori" has had a long history and has 
 been used in a variety of senses.^ Down to the time 
 of Kant it was used mainly to denote that type of 
 reasoning which proceeds from cause to effect, stand- 
 ing thus opposed to the a-posteriori method, which 
 argues from effect to cause. Of these two methods 
 the former manifestly yields the higher degree of cer- 
 tainty so long as the field of formal logic is strictly 
 adhered to. If a thing or idea is so simple in its struc- 
 ture that its contents can be completely analyzed and 
 its logical consequences clearly and unmistakably de- 
 duced, as is the case in mathematics, it is evident 
 that we have in the conclusions thus reached a greater 
 degree of certainty than any that could be logically 
 attained by the a-posteriori method, where the con- 
 nection between effect and cause cannot be clearly or 
 fully perceived. In the latter case there is always 
 necessarily more or less of a margin of uncertainty. 
 But "a priori" and "a posteriori" were not in the 
 pre-Kantian period always used in a strictly logical 
 sense. There was a tendency to identify "a priori" 
 with knowledge founded on general or abstract con- 
 ceptions and "a posteriori" with knowledge based 
 directly on experience, and at the same time there 
 
 1 See article on "A Priori," by Paul Kalweit in Encyclopedia of Re- 
 ligion and Ethics. 
 
 93 
 
94 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 was a tendency to approach the problem of certainty 
 from the psychological rather than the logical point 
 of view. Now, psychologically it is evident that the 
 concrete data of experience come first, and carry with 
 them a greater degree of certainty than do general 
 conceptions. The result was that with some thinkers, 
 such as Gassendi, the a priori ceased to be an index of 
 certainty and became subordinate to a-posteriori 
 knowledge. 
 
 The ambiguity that thus arose in the use of the 
 term "a priori" prepared the way for the ascription 
 of a new meaning to it. The new meaning grew out 
 of the increasingly sharp antithesis which the thinkers 
 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries estab- 
 lished between reason and experience. The funda- 
 mental problem which engaged these thinkers was the 
 question as to which of the two, experience or reason, 
 was the source and norm of knowledge. Both no 
 doubt were involved in the knowing process, but one 
 or the other, it was thought, must be primary and 
 normative. In this way there arose a sharp distinc- 
 tion between 'pure reason and pure experience, and the 
 term "a priori" naturally became identified with 
 knowledge derived from the former. This usage ap- 
 pears in Leibnitz, and forms the starting-point of 
 Kant's work. "A priori" in this sense denotes knowl- 
 edge that is independent of experience. It does not 
 mean simply reasoning from cause to effect, nor does 
 it mean a knowledge based on general conceptions. It 
 means such knowledge as grows out of the very struc- 
 ture of reason itself; it denotes those principles that 
 are immanent in the mind, in the rational nature as 
 such, principles that are consequently necessary and 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 95 
 
 universal and in this sense the condition and norm of 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is Kant especially to whom we owe this meaning 
 of the term "a priori." Indeed, the term itself figures 
 far more prominently in his thought than in that of 
 any philosopher before his time. The problem indi- 
 cated by it formed the very center of his system. His 
 entire philosophy might be said to revolve around the 
 various questions relative to synthetic judgments a 
 'priori, that is, judgments that do not consist simply 
 in the analysis of concepts and that at the same time 
 pass beyond the range of experience. Are there such 
 judgments, how are they possible, and what are they? 
 It was these questions above all others that Kant set 
 himself to answer; and the answers he gave to them 
 constitute the substance of his philosophy. 
 
 It was Kant's aim to mediate between empiricism 
 and apriorism or rationalism. And this he did in the 
 sense that he acknowledged elements of truth in both. 
 But at heart his system was a new form of apriorism. 
 Its very genius consisted in the thoroughness and 
 originality with which he made good the claim that 
 there are synthetic judgments a priori. These judg- 
 ments he found both in the theoretical and the prac- 
 tical reason. In the theoretical reason the a-priori 
 elements are the pure forms of perception, space and 
 time, and the various categories. What distinguishes 
 these elements in our thought life is the fact that they 
 have the marks of universality and strict necessity. 
 It is this that gives to them their a-priori character. 
 They are not innate ideas, nor are they psychological 
 capacities like that of color-sensation. They are 
 purely formal principles, immanent in the mind, prin- 
 
96 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ciples that are involved in experience as a whole and 
 that are essential to experience. In the practical 
 reason, on the other hand, the a-priori element, ac- 
 cording to Kant, manifests itself in the categorical 
 imperative. This imperative involves the uncondi- 
 tional obligation to do the right; and the right Kant 
 interprets in terms of the unselfish will and of the 
 sacredness of personality. That the latter ideas have 
 no foundation in mere experience is evident. They 
 are ideal creations of the practical reason, and hence 
 are to be regarded as a priori. 
 
 To Kant's use of the term "a priori" in the latter 
 connection objection has in recent times been raised. 
 It has been urged that there is hardly any resemblance 
 between his theoretical and his practical a priori. 
 The same tests, those of universality and necessity, it 
 is said, are not applied in the two cases; and in the 
 practical realm there is no such fusion or cooperation 
 of the a priori and the empirical as in the theoretical. 
 The will, for instance, must be determined by the 
 a priori alone. But while there are manifest differ- 
 ences between the two kinds of a priori, there are also 
 significant points of similarity. Both are principles 
 immanent in the mind, not derived from experience, 
 and both are purely formal in character; that is, the 
 practical a priori is constitutive of moral action in the 
 same way that the theoretical a-priori conditions 
 experience in general. There is thus an apparently 
 adequate justification for applying the same term to 
 both. The question here at issue, it may be added, 
 might also be raised with reference to Kant's use of 
 the word "reason." Was he justified in speaking of a 
 "practical" as well as a "speculative" reason? Is it 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 97 
 
 true, as he says, that "practical and speculative rea- 
 son are based on the same faculty, so far as both are 
 pure reason"?- If so, it is evident that there must 
 also be a practical as well as a theoretical or specula- 
 tive a priori. For reason implies a-priori principles. 
 Without them there would be no reason. "A priori" 
 and "rational" are with Kant synonymous terms. 
 "Rational knowledge," he says, "and knowledge a 
 priori are one and the same."^ 
 
 From this it follows that religion also, in so far as it 
 is based on reason, must have its a priori. The a- 
 priori element in religion, however, did not, according 
 to Kant, have the same specific character as the moral 
 a priori. It was rather derived from it. The beliefs 
 in God and immortality are, to be sure, distinctively 
 religious beliefs, and they are synthetic judgments 
 a priori; necessarily so, since they are not given in 
 experience. But their validity does not rest in them- 
 selves, as is the case with the categorical imperative. 
 They are, rather, inferences drawn from the moral 
 nature, postulates of the practical reason. Without 
 God and without immortality the moral will would 
 face an impossible task. This is evident from the fact 
 that the summum bonum, which by its very nature 
 the moral will is called upon to realize, contains two 
 essential elements, personal holiness and the harmony 
 of happiness with morality, and that neither of these 
 can be attained by mortal man. Holiness implies "a 
 perfection of which no rational being of the sensible 
 world is capable at any moment of his existence."^ 
 
 2 Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 261. Translation by Abbott. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 138. 
 * Ibid., p. 317. 
 
98 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Its realization is an endless task, and so requires as 
 its condition an endless life. On the other hand, an 
 endless life would not affect the harmony of happiness 
 with morality. For that an omnipotent Being is 
 needed, and so the moral nature postulates the exist- 
 ence of God. In this indirect way Kant sought to 
 show that religion has its roots in pure reason, and 
 consequently has an a-priori basis. 
 
 Such in its main outlines was Kant's conception of 
 the a priori, a conception that with some variations 
 has since been adhered to by the various Kantian 
 schools. It is out of these schools that the current 
 doctrine of a "religious a priori" has arisen, and it is 
 only in the light of the Kantian tradition that it can 
 be understood. Kant himself did not use the term 
 "religious a priori," but the idea, as we have just 
 seen, is manifestly involved in his system. With the 
 way, however, in which he developed the idea there 
 has been much dissatisfaction. Fault in particular 
 has been found with his subordination of the religious 
 to the moral a priori. He did not allow religion to 
 come fully to itself, to express itself in its own unique 
 and distinctive character. He left it secondary and 
 derivative. Hence the effort has of late been made 
 to give to the religious a priori a more independent 
 character and to define it more precisely. 
 
 This effort has in Germany attained almost the pro- 
 portions of a theological movement. It is closely asso- 
 ciated with the socalled history-of-religion school, and 
 has a twofold motive, a motive analogous to that 
 which underlay the Kantian philosophy. What Kant 
 primarily aimed to do was to save reason and the 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 99 
 
 cultural interests of mankind from the disintegrating 
 influence of the sensationaHstic and empiricistic phil- 
 osophy. At the same time he wanted to enable reason 
 itself to come to its own as over against the cramping 
 influence of the dogmatisms of the past. To attain 
 this double object he created the critical philosophy 
 with its theoretical and practical a priori. He showed 
 that there are principles immanent in the mind, which 
 no psychology can dissolve away, and which are 
 essential in order to make not only psychology but 
 even experience itself possible. On the other hand, 
 these principles do not enable us to go beyond expe- 
 rience, and hence there is no theoretical basis for the 
 traditional metaphysical dogmas. The latter are at 
 the most permissible only in so far as they serve the 
 purposes of the practical reason. Reason with its 
 aprioristic principles thus stands in its own right as 
 over against empiricism on the one hand and dogma- 
 tism on the other. 
 
 What Kant in this way did for reason as a whole, 
 especially for the sciences and morality, the modern 
 advocate of religious apriorism seeks to do for reli- 
 gion. Religion is to-day confronted with a double 
 danger. On the one hand, there are the various psy- 
 chological and sociological attempts to explain religion 
 as an illusion. Religion, we are told, is simply a re- 
 vival or survival of an earlier "prelogical" type of 
 thought characteristic of primitive men, and hence is 
 destined to disappear before the light of science. Or 
 it is, as Karl Marx declares, simply the outcome of 
 unjust social conditions. "Religion," he says, "is the 
 striving of the people for an imaginary happiness; it 
 springs from a state of society that requires an illusion. 
 
100 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 but disappears when the recognition of true happi- 
 ness and the possibihty of its reahzation penetrates 
 the masses."^ Or one may with Emile Durkheim 
 regard reHgion as a necessary and permanent phase 
 of human society, while at the same time denying 
 objective reahty to the ideal objects of its faith. Or 
 one may with various theorists of the past treat reli- 
 gion as the baseless product of fear, of dreams and 
 trances, or of the personifying tendency of the human 
 mind. In any case religion in its creedal form is an 
 illusion, and has no basis in reason. 
 
 On the other hand, as over against this powerful 
 positivistic tendency in modern thought we have the 
 various traditional theologies, which fix upon some 
 point or period of the past and erect it into an abso- 
 lute standard of faith. In so doing they often tie 
 religion up to the obsolete ideas and customs of the 
 past, and so stand in the way of the development of 
 true religion. Furthermore, in virtually all cases they 
 make the truth of religion dependent upon the his- 
 toricity of some ancient tradition. This exposes reli- 
 gious faith to the destructive fire of historical criticism, 
 and leaves the intelligent believer in more or less of 
 perplexity and uncertainty. 
 
 To meet this double peril, one coming from theologi- 
 cal dogmatism and the other from naturalistic posi- 
 tivism, it is urged by the religious apriorist that what 
 is needed is a theology, which will make it clear that 
 religion is something wrought into the very texture of 
 human reason, that it is not a merely primitive or 
 transitory or illusory phase of the social life of man, 
 but that it is woven into the very warp and woof of 
 
 ^ Quoted in Woman and Socialism by August Bebel, pp. 437-438. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 101 
 
 the human mind as a unique and constituent factor 
 thereof, so that it stands in its own right and is rela- 
 tively independent of the support either of science or 
 history. And such a theology, it is claimed, is con- 
 tained or involved in the doctrine of a religious a 
 priori. This doctrine thus carries with it a twofold 
 polemic. One is directed against the relativism of 
 psychologism and historicism, and the other against 
 the authoritarianism of biblicism in all its forms, even 
 the attenuated form represented by the Ritschlian 
 school. That the latter line of attack has not been 
 without its effect is conceded by the Ritschlians them- 
 selves. Professor E. W. Mayer, for instance, writing 
 in 1912,® represents the theological youth of Germany 
 as carried away with the new program. He sees them 
 going forth in long processions with poles and torches 
 in search of the religious a priori, and as he watches 
 them he feels like a father who beholds his sons for- 
 saking the fruitful daily task and starting out on a 
 vain quest after some magical stone of wisdom. 
 
 The acknowledged leader of the new movement is 
 Professor Ernst Troeltsch, perhaps the most influen- 
 tial theologian of the day. It is he who has given 
 currency to the term "religious a priori," and made it 
 the watchword of the movement. The term, however, 
 in spite of what has been said above, is by no means 
 clear in its meaning and implications. H. SUskind, 
 writing as a representative of the movement, declares 
 that "the most interesting thing in connection with 
 the whole discussion relative to the religious a priori 
 is that up to the present [1914] it has been virtually 
 
 * Zeitschrift filr Theologie und Kirchc, pp. 59f. Article entitled "Ueber 
 den gegenwartigen Stand der Religionsphilosophie und deren Bedeut- 
 ung fiir die Theologie." 
 
102 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 totally devoid of results. The reason for it is that no 
 one knows what the religious a priori really is or is 
 meant to be."^ This uncertainty and indefiniteness 
 as to the meaning of the term has naturally given 
 rise to different interpretations of it. Within the 
 history-of-religion school we may distinguish two, that 
 by Troeltsch and that represented by Rudolph Otto 
 and Wilhelm Bousset. After considering these we will 
 take up a third view advocated by Paul Kalweit, 
 which stands in closer relation to the traditional 
 theology. 
 
 With Troeltsch the idea of a religious a priori is of 
 central importance. Frequent references to it are to 
 be found in his essays, and in three of them it is ex- 
 pounded at some length. Of these the first was deliv- 
 ered as a lecture at the International Congress of Arts 
 and Sciences held in Saint Louis in 1904, and bears 
 the title of "Psychologic und Erkenntnistheorie in der 
 Religionswissenschaft." The second appeared in 1909 
 in "Religion und Geisteskultur," and is entitled "Zur 
 Frage des religiosen Apriori." And the third was 
 published in "Logos" in 1913 under the title of "Logos 
 und Mythos in Theologie und Religionsphilosophie."^ 
 What Troeltsch says in these essays and elsewhere 
 concerning the religious a priori is not as definite nor 
 does it get us as far as one might like, but the main 
 lines of his thought are fairly clear. 
 
 He begins with the conviction that the first task of 
 the philosophy of religion at present is to establish the 
 fact that religion is no accidental or contingent ele- 
 
 ' Theologische Rundschau (1914), p. 54. Article with title "Zur 
 Theologie Troeltschs." 
 
 * The last two essays are reprinted in the second volume of Troeltsch's 
 Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 754-768 and pp. 805-836. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 103 
 
 ment in human life, no mere product of psychological 
 and sociological forces, but that it is rooted in human 
 nature, and not only in human nature, but in reason 
 itself. Holding this conviction he naturally turns for 
 support to the Kantian doctrine of a rational a priori. 
 Within human reason there are principles, both theo- 
 retical and practical, that are independent of expe- 
 rience, that carry their validity within themselves, 
 that are unique and ultimate. Among these religion 
 along with science, morality and art has its place. 
 It is a necessary and constituent element of reason. 
 That this is so, says Troeltsch, "may be proved from 
 the immanent feeling of necessity and obligation that 
 belongs to religion, and from its organic position in 
 the economy of consciousness, which first receives its 
 unification and its relation to an objective world- 
 reason through religion."^ That is, the a-priori char- 
 acter of religion is guaranteed by its inevitableness, 
 by the feeling of obligation immanent in it, and by its 
 structural relation to a rational world-view. In other 
 words, both religious experience and philosophy attest 
 the existence of a religious a priori, a distinctively 
 religious principle inherent in reason itself. 
 
 But while there is a certain apologetic advantage in 
 thus emphasizing the rational character of religion, 
 there are also perils in it. The rationalism of the 
 eighteenth century made that clear once for all. To 
 these perils Troeltsch is quite alive, and seeks to 
 guard himself against them. First, he insists that his 
 is a purely "formal" rationalism. The "speculative" 
 and "regressive" rationalisms of the past he rejects. 
 They ojBFered themselves, their logically deduced ideas 
 
 ^ Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 43f . 
 
104 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of God and immortality, as substitutes for the histori- 
 cal religions; but as such they were wholly inadequate. 
 They lacked vital power and before long died of 
 anemia. A purely rationalistic religion is in truth no 
 religion. At the best it is a parasitic growth, wholly 
 dependent on the historic faiths which it seeks to dis- 
 place. The only "rationalism" that is consistent with 
 really vital religion is a "formal" rationalism, a ration- 
 alism that does not detach the religious a priori from 
 experience and history but finds it realized only in 
 and through them. 
 
 How, from this point of view, to distinguish the 
 aprioristic element in religion from the purely empiri- 
 cal is no easy matter. Even in the theoretical field it 
 is difficult enough to separate the autonomous and the 
 valid from the given and the factual. But the diffi- 
 culty is still greater in the cultural values of life. And 
 yet the distinction must be made. The logical must 
 be distinguished from the psychological, the norma- 
 tive from the factual. Otherwise truth itself would 
 vanish. The difficulty of the task — and it is, says 
 Troeltsch, "the fundamental difficulty of all thought 
 in general" — must not, therefore, bar us from under- 
 taking it. No simple and final solution of the prob- 
 lem, however, is possible. All that we can do in the 
 practical field is to acquaint ourselves with the various 
 cultural developments of human history, compare 
 them, reflect on them, live ourselves into them, and 
 then wait for the response of our own spirit as to what 
 is normative and valid, not in the absolute sense of 
 the term but in the sense of approximating and point- 
 ing forward to an ideal goal. In all this there will 
 necessarily be more or less of the volitional; but voli- 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 105 
 
 tion is not arbitrary, it is guided by truth, a truth 
 which it does not make but finds, a truth rooted in 
 reason — a truth, however, which is actuaHzed only in 
 practice, in hfe itself. To determine the a priori in 
 religion is thus a complex and a more or less elusive 
 undertaking. But it is on this account, according to 
 Troeltsch, none the less important that the existence 
 of such an a priori should be recognized. And the 
 very fact that the religious a priori, as he conceives it, 
 is purely formal, immanent in experience and with no 
 content apart from it, saves, he thinks, his conception of 
 religion from the charge of being a barren rationalism. 
 
 In meeting, however, the latter charge Troeltsch 
 does not content himself with aflBrming the purely 
 formal character of the religious a priori. He is 
 equally insistent on the view that the religious a priori 
 is unique, distinct from the intellectual, the moral, and 
 the aesthetic. It is not an intellectual principle nor an 
 appendix to morality, but something peculiar, realized 
 only in experience itself. It is not, therefore, a "ra- 
 tional" a priori in the same sense as is the theoretical 
 a priori, or, if so, the word "rational" is in both cases 
 used in a sense different from the ordinary. There is, 
 consequently, a question whether the word "rational" 
 should be applied to the religious a priori. On this 
 point Troeltsch himself seems to have undergone a 
 change of view. In the first essay in which he advo- 
 cated the idea of a religious a priori he laid stress on 
 its "rational" character. He speaks of the "rational 
 a priori of religion" and of the "rational kernel of 
 religion," and declares that "being religious belongs to 
 the a priori of reason."^" In the second essay, that 
 
 1" Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 36, 48, 44. 
 
106 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 entitled "Zur Frage des religiosen Apriori," he retains 
 this usage, and confesses that he has no such aversion 
 to the word "rational" as many theologians have; but 
 at the same time he brings out the fact that he uses 
 the word in a special sense. It means for him simply 
 "autonomous validity"; that is, religion, science, mo- 
 rality, and art each has within itself the law of its 
 own being and needs no validation from without. It 
 is this that constitutes the rationality of each. But 
 in the essay called "Logos und Mythos in Theologie 
 und Religionsphilosophie" Troeltsch seems to fear that 
 his previous use of the word "rational" may have been 
 misunderstood, and so emphasizes the "anti-intellec- 
 tualistic" and even irrational character of religion. 
 There is, he says, no "rational standard" by which 
 religion may be judged. The only standard applicable 
 is a purely religious one, one that rests upon a personal 
 act and grows out of life itself, one that is, therefore, 
 nontheoretical, nonscientific, yea anti-intellectualistic. 
 So emphatic, indeed, does Troeltsch make this idea 
 that one might almost as well speak of his "irrational- 
 ism" as of his "rationalism." 
 
 The difference, however, between the later and the 
 earlier exposition of his views is, after all, one of 
 phraseology more than of substance. In the last 
 named essay he still speaks of a "unity of reason" 
 that embraces both the theoretical and the atheoreti- 
 cal validity recognized in morality, art, and religion. 
 He thus continues to hold to a species of "rationalism"; 
 he looks upon religion as rooted in reason. But the 
 reason he here has in mind is a broader and deeper 
 reason than the theoretical or scientific. It is a rea- 
 son that in the religious realm has its own law, a law 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 107 
 
 that may be said to be "irrational" in the sense that 
 it is nontheoretical. To speak of an "irrational rea- 
 son" seems, to be sure, to be a manifest contradiction, 
 but the contradiction disappears when one takes into 
 account the ambiguity of both terms. Reason has its 
 practical as well as its speculative side, and in the former 
 regard it may, though somewhat ineptly, be spoken of 
 as "irrational." It is, however, reason in both cases. 
 
 In thus stressing the broader and deeper conception 
 of reason Troeltsch seeks to weaken, if not to over- 
 come, the epistemological dualism of the Ritschlians. 
 They sharply oppose religion to science, and so to a 
 certain extent isolate religion. What Troeltsch as 
 over against this seeks to do is to bring religion back 
 into the circle of reason and to link it up more closely 
 with the other rational interests of men, science in- 
 cluded. He consequently traces these various inter- 
 ests back to a common "kernel of reason." This 
 kernel of reason is structural in human personality, 
 and hence is more than a merely formal reason. In 
 this respect Troeltsch goes beyond Kant, introducing 
 a metaphysical element into his conception of reason. 
 But more significant than this is the fact that reason 
 as thus understood is represented as having both its 
 a priori and its a prioris. When Troeltsch is interested 
 in emphasizing the unity of man's rational nature, he 
 speaks of "the a priori of reason," but when he wishes 
 to bring out the distinctive character of the great 
 practical interests of life he declares that each of these 
 has its own a priori. The religious a priori, for in- 
 stance, has its own "completely anti-intellectualistic 
 peculiarity."^^ We are thus left in uncertainty as to 
 
 ^1 Gesammelte Schriften, ii, p. 820. 
 
108 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 whether reason is one or many, or if it is both, how 
 the two are related to each other. 
 
 The tendency in Troeltsch's thought is toward the 
 recognition of several different a prioris, but he still 
 insists that there is a common element in them all, 
 and this common element he finds in the autonomous 
 validity that characterizes each. They are all "validi- 
 ties of reason." But if these validities are independent 
 of each other, in what does their unity consist? Does 
 the general term "reason" furnish anything more than 
 a verbal unity? That Troeltsch means to affirm an 
 actual bond of union between the different a prioris 
 is, of course, evident. But would it not be better to 
 find this bond of union in personality itself rather than 
 in reason? The word "reason" suggests too easily the 
 "intellectual," and the ambiguity of the term leads 
 almost inevitably to more or less of misunderstanding. 
 Furthermore, in Troeltsch's case the desire to satisfy 
 both the intellectual and nonintellectual elements in 
 reason leaves his thought in a state of unstable equilib- 
 rium. The apologetic interest leads him to affirm the 
 rationality of religion, but, on the other hand, the 
 fear of "rationalizing" religion leads him to insist on 
 its anti-intellectualistic nature, the result being that 
 neither aim is fully attained. 
 
 The frequency and emphasis with which Troeltsch 
 asserts the nontheoretical character of the religious 
 a priori has been accepted by his followers as suffi- 
 cient evidence that there is in his aprioristic concep- 
 tion of religion no danger of a new Hegelianism. But 
 it is by no means certain that this confidence is fully 
 warranted, H. Siiskind, for instance, accepts all that 
 Troeltsch says about the anti-intellectualistic and 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 109 
 
 anti-rationalistic character of religion, but in his 
 effort to define more precisely the religious a priori 
 falls liimseK unwittingly into a species of intellectual- 
 ism. The religious a priori means, he says, that it 
 can be demonstrated "that it is necessary to think 
 the thought of God, and that therefore a necessary 
 idea of reason lies at the basis of religion; and this 
 proof," he adds, "it must, of course, be possible to 
 carry through with cogent reasons, if the thought of 
 the religious a priori is to have a meaning." ^^ Thus 
 defined the religious a priori has manifestly a theoreti- 
 cal character. The "cogent reasons" referred to are 
 reasons addressed to the intellect. The "proof" is a 
 logical proof. Yet Siiskind thinks he saves the prac- 
 tical nature of religion by saying that cogent reason- 
 ing does not compel the obedience of the will. "The 
 concept of the religious a priori means not that every- 
 one must become religious, also not merely that 
 everyone can become such, but that he ought to be- 
 come such."^^ The final decision rests with the will. 
 The will "lays hold of the truth apprehended by 
 thought."^^ But this very statement implies that the 
 rational factor in religion is the primary one. The de- 
 cision of the will, the "ultimate axiomatic act," as 
 Troeltsch terms it, has no part in the knowing process. 
 The truth itself is already there, apprehended by thought 
 and established by cogent reasons. All that the will does 
 is to ratify what logic has made indubitably clear. 
 
 The will, to be sure, may act without convincing 
 proof, but convincing proof will necessarily to some 
 
 12 Theologische Rundschau for 191!t, p. 57. 
 
 13 Ibid., p. 57. 
 « Ibid., p. 13. 
 
110 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 extent influence the will. In any case it is the rational 
 that logically comes first. It is there, according to 
 Siiskind, in the logical necessity of the idea of God, 
 that the religious a priori is to be found. And if so, no 
 matter what may be said about the uniqueness of reli- 
 gious experience, the conception given us of religion is 
 essentially rationalistic. That theory does not carry 
 with it practice by no means saves a theory from the 
 charge of being rationalistic. "A rational a priori of 
 religion," as Traub says, "would necessarily rationalize 
 religion itself." ^^ Troeltsch himself escapes this con- 
 clusion by leaving the religious a priori vague and un- 
 defined. But the tendency is implicit in his system, and 
 no amount of stress upon the "anti-intellectualistic 
 peculiarity" of religion and upon the purely formal char- 
 acter of its a priori can altogether eliminate it. The 
 very word "apriori" has a rationalistic suggestion. 
 
 The tendency toward rationalism or intellectualism 
 is, however, considerably more pronounced in the con- 
 ception of the religious a priori which we find with 
 Otto and Bousset. Otto speaks of the "religious 
 a priori" as a "not very felicitous expression" and as 
 one "encompassed with misunderstandings,"^^ but 
 both he and Bousset still use it, and the idea figures 
 prominently in their theology or philosophy of reli- 
 gion. ^^ These men also profess to be Kantians, but 
 
 ^^ Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche, 1914, p. 196. In article, "Zur 
 Frage des religibsen Apriori." 
 
 18 K antisch- Fries' sche Religionsphilosophie, p. 3. 
 
 " Bousset says: "Das aber wird, wie es von Troltsch bereits richtig 
 erkannt, das grundproblem unser heutigen Systematik bleiben: die 
 Frage nach dem religiosen Apriori und seiner Aufweisung im Gesamt- 
 wesen der Vernunft" {Tlieologiscbe Rundschau, 1909, p. 471). Says 
 Otto: "Wir suchen ja heute wieder von alien Seiten nach dem reli- 
 giosen Apriori" (p. 3). 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 111 
 
 the Kantianism which they adopt is that system as 
 modified by Jacob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843). In 
 harmony with this modified form of the system they 
 surrender the two conceptions on which, as we have 
 seen, Troeltsch mainly rehes in order to meet the 
 charge of intellectuahstic rationahsm. For them, as 
 for Fries, the rehgious a priori is neither wholly unique 
 nor purely formal. 
 
 According to Bousset, the characteristic of the 
 Friesian philosophy of religion, and its chief service 
 to theology, is to be found in "the assignment of the 
 religious ideas to the pure reason and the abolition of 
 the Kantian dualism between the theoretical and the 
 practical reason." ^^ There is, therefore, from this 
 point of view, but one reason and that the theoretical. 
 The religious ideas are a "necessary constituent of the 
 one homogeneous reason." There is no distinctive 
 religious a priori. It is the same theoretical reason 
 that lies at the basis both of religion and of science. ^^ 
 The only way, consequently, to establish the truth of 
 religion is to show that its central ideas — its ideas of 
 God, freedom, and immortality — are implications of 
 pure reason. 
 
 In seeking to furnish this proof the neo-Friesians 
 begin by rejecting the Kantian doctrine of the subjec- 
 
 1* Theologische Rundschau, 1909, pp. 422, 472. Review of Otto's 
 "Kantisch-Fries'sche Religionsphilosophie und ihre Anwendung auf 
 die Theologie." 
 
 " In his recent book, entitled Das Heilige, Otto distinguishes be- 
 tween the rational and irrational elements in religion. The idea of 
 holiness involves both, and in each sense "the holy," he says, is "a 
 pure a priori category." The "irrational" is a fundamental, constit- 
 uent and permanent element in religion. There is thus an "irrational" 
 as well as a "rational" religious a priori. This is an approach to 
 Troeltsch's position. What is said of Otto in the following pages 
 applies to his earlier rather than his later views. 
 
112 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tivity or ideality of the categories. Thought, they 
 say, starts with full confidence in itself, faith in the 
 objective reality of that which it apprehends. This is 
 a fundamental fact of consciousness, one that needs 
 no demonstration and is capable of none. The basal 
 assumption of the Kantian epistemology is, therefore, 
 mistaken. We have an immediate metaphysical 
 knowledge, and that in the idealistic rather than the 
 realistic sense. 
 
 So far as our knowledge of nature is concerned, the 
 Kantian theory is accepted as essentially correct. 
 The only important criticism is directed against the 
 assumed external source or cause of sensations. Sen- 
 sations, it is argued, are as subjective as the categories 
 and also as the speculative ideas, the ideas of God, 
 freedom, and immortality. These ideas Kant had 
 found no basis for in the pure reason. They were not 
 constitutive elements in experience and hence could 
 not be deduced. Whatever basis they had must, 
 therefore, be derived from the practical reason. But 
 this Fries and his followers deny. They hold that the 
 speculative or transcendent ideas have the same basis 
 as perceptions and the categories of thought. All 
 three forms of representation are equally immanent 
 in consciousness. No proof that they grasp an objec- 
 tive reality is possible in the case of any of them. 
 They all derive whatever validity they possess from 
 reason's undemonstrable faith in itself. 
 
 There is, then, nothing in the fact that the specula- 
 tive or religious ideas have no direct relation to expe- 
 rience that need cast any doubt on their truth. Rather 
 do they represent a higher type of being and a greater 
 degree of certainty than do the things of sense. The 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 113 
 
 space-and-time world is a world of incompleteness, of 
 multiplicity and manifoldness, and for that very rea- 
 son fails to meet the deepest test of reality. What 
 reason in its inmost nature requires of reality is unity 
 and necessity. But unity and necessity can be realized 
 only in the realm of spirit, of consciousness, of the 
 Absolute. It is, consequently, only there, in the 
 supersensible world of the soul, of freedom and of 
 God, that ultimate reality is to be found. The world 
 of sense experience represents a lower form of exist- 
 ence, and is to be viewed simply as the manifestation 
 of a higher order of being. This is a conclusion forced 
 upon us by reason's fundamental demand for a "neces- 
 sary synthetic unity in the nature of things," and it is 
 also a conclusion that involves the essential ideas of 
 religion. These ideas, therefore, belong to the a priori 
 of reason, and as such they constitute the true reli- 
 gious a priori. They form the rational essence and 
 norm of religion, and their validity is guaranteed by 
 "the immediate metaphysical knowledge" possessed by 
 the human mind. 
 
 Such in brief is the Friesian or neo-Friesian concep- 
 tion and deduction of the religious a priori. This 
 conception manifestly implies that the a priori of reli- 
 gion is not purely formal, as with Troeltsch. It con- 
 sists of a body of abstract doctrines; and this, 
 according to Bousset, gives to it a distinct advantage. 
 Troeltsch with his formal a priori is forced to find its 
 definite content in history; and from this point of 
 view the universally valid aprioristic element in reli- 
 gion can only gradually be disentangled out of the 
 multiplicity of individual phenomena. And even then 
 we have nothing final, for man's religious history is in 
 
114 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 constant process of development. Change is con- 
 tinually taking place. In history, consequently, we 
 can find no absolute norms. Norms so discovered can 
 at the best be only relatively valid, and as such they 
 leave our fundamental problem unsolved. "For," 
 says Bousset, "what we here need is an absolute 
 a priori and in harmony therewith fixed norms of 
 judgment for the individual religious phenomenon. "^° 
 Hence, it is claimed, the religious a priori of the neo- 
 Friesians with its positive content and its necessary 
 and absolute "ideas" meets the needs of the situation 
 better than a merely formal a priori. 
 
 Whether this claim is justified need not here be 
 discussed. Nor is it necessary to point out how un- 
 substantial is the Friesian epistemology and how 
 inconclusive is the Friesian deduction of the specula- 
 tive or religious ideas. What concerns us here is the 
 bearing of the neo-Friesian conception of the religious 
 a priori upon the nature of religion. Does this con- 
 ception "rationalize" religion and so destroy its dis- 
 tinctive character? Both Bousset and Otto are con- 
 fident that it does not. For one thing, they lay stress 
 on the prominence given by Fries to the emotional 
 element in religion. The speculative ideas in his sys- 
 tem are not offered as the basis of a new religion of 
 reason. They are "wholly abstract ideas which by 
 themselves alone can never become vital, which, how- 
 ever, unconsciously or consciously — and usually uncon- 
 sciously — lie at the basis of all vital religion as aprior- 
 istic elements."-^ In this sense they may be said to 
 be "formal"; that is, they are cold and lifeless. Feel- 
 
 20 Theologische Rundschau, 1909, p. 432. 
 
 ^^ Bousset in Theologische Rundschau, 1909, p. 439. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 115 
 
 ing and action are essential to genuine and vital reli- 
 gion. But however much this point may be 
 emphasized, it still remains true that from the Friesian 
 standpoint the validity or truth of religion is not to be 
 found in the vital religious experience itself but in the 
 speculative ideas that underhe it and that have their 
 root in the theoretical reason. Religion as such, then, 
 does not stand in its own right as something unique 
 and distinct. It derives its support from speculative 
 ideas that lie outside of or underneath it. What 
 Fries offers us as the rational basis and norm of reli- 
 gion is an abstract metaphysical system — a system 
 that is not itself religion. Real religion he makes 
 subordinate and derivative. 
 
 This is the case no matter whether his "religious 
 ideas" be regarded as logically deduced or simply as 
 constituent elements within human reason. Bousset 
 thinks it important that a distinction should be made 
 between "a logical proof," a Beweis, "of religion" and 
 a "setting forth or exhibition," an Avfweis, "of the 
 necessary and fundamental religious ideas and the 
 determination of their place in the total structure of 
 reason. "^^ The latter, he asserts, is the aim of the 
 Friesian system and not the former; and this he seems 
 to think is an effective response to the charge of ration- 
 alism. But however interesting the distinction be- 
 tween Beweis and Aufweis may be, the fact is that in 
 philosophy an Aufweis is of value only in so far as it 
 is a Beweis. To exhibit certain religious ideas as con- 
 stituent elements of reason has significance only in so 
 far as such exhibition carries with it a proof of their 
 validity. And this is manifestly the aim of the Fries- 
 
 22 Ibid., pp. 478ff. 
 
116 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ian philosophy. Its conception of religion is, therefore, 
 fundamentally and in principle rationalistic. In spite 
 of all that it says about the emotional and practical 
 nature of religion, what it actually does is to bring 
 out not the truth of religion but the truth in religion, 
 which is a very different thing. The truth in religion 
 belongs not to religion as such but to the theoretical 
 reason. 
 
 Thus far in our consideration of the doctrine of a 
 religious a priori as held by Troeltsch, on the one 
 hand, and by Otto and Bousset on the other, we have 
 dealt chiefly with its bearing on the general nature of 
 religion; and we have seen that there is a tendency in 
 the doctrine toward rationalism or intellectualism. In 
 the case of Troeltsch this tendency is held in check by 
 the author's insistence on the purely formal and 
 wholly unique character of the religious a priori, but 
 in the case of Otto and Bousset these restraints are 
 lacking and the result is that we have, in spite of all 
 protestations to the contrary, a fundamentally ration- 
 alistic conception of religion. A further point to be 
 noted in connection with the religious apriorism of 
 these scholars is its bearing on the relation of religion 
 to history. Naturally, the rationalistic tendency just 
 spoken of will manifest itself here. There will be a 
 depreciation of the importance of the historical. The 
 a priori of reason rather than any fact or facts of his- 
 tory will be made the basis of religion. But there 
 will also be a diflFerence in the degree of this de- 
 preciation of the historical as between Troeltsch on 
 the one hand and the neo-Friesians on the other. The 
 latter will be more negative in their attitude toward 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 117 
 
 history than the former. And such, as a matter of 
 fact, we find to be the case. 
 
 Both Troeltsch^^ and Bousset^^ accept Kant's dic- 
 tum that "the historical serves only for illustration, 
 not for demonstration"; to which also may be added 
 Lessing's famous saying that "the accidental truths of 
 history can never become the proof of necessary 
 truths of reason." In history we can never find the 
 absolute. Miracle is excluded by modern science. 
 There is, therefore, no point or person or period of the 
 past to which absolute authority can be ascribed. 
 The authoritarianism of biblicism in even its mildest 
 form is to be rejected. The ultimate basis of religion v(^ 
 must be found in the rational, not the factual. But in 
 spite of agreement on this point Troeltsch in his 
 philosophy of religion accords a considerably larger 
 place to history than does Bousset. The latter sees in 
 history nothing more than symbols of religious truth. 
 That is all Jesus is.^^ Whether he actually existed or 
 not is a matter of comparative indifference. In either 
 case he is a symbol, and in neither case is he more than 
 a symbol. Furthermore, in the case of a symbol the 
 important thing is not the symbol but the thing sym- 
 bolized. Psychologically, it is true, the symbol may 
 be of considerable value, may even be essential to a 
 vital religion; but logically or epistemologically it has 
 no real significance. The one source of religious truth 
 is reason, and reason stands in its own right. History 
 has nothing whatever to do with the validity of reli- 
 gion. It matters not, therefore, what conclusions 
 
 2^ Das Historische in KanVs Religionsphilosophie, pp. 131, 134. 
 2* Theologische Rundschau, 1909, p. 432. 
 
 2^ See Die Bedeutung der Person Jesu fiir den Glauben (1910), by 
 Bousset. 
 
118 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 critics may arrive at with reference to biblical history. 
 The most negative conclusion would not affect reli- 
 gious faith. For in reason faith has a storm-free port, 
 undisturbed by the winds of criticism. 
 
 With not a little of this Troeltsch would probably 
 agree in the abstract. But actually, he would insist, 
 the case is different. History may perhaps furnish us 
 with only symbols of religious truth. But a symbol, 
 in order to be an effective symbol, must be more than 
 a symbol. There must be an historical reality corre- 
 sponding to it. It is not then, Troeltsch says, a mat- 
 ter of indifference whether Jesus ever lived or not. A 
 negative conclusion on this point would put an end to 
 the Christian Church. Organized Christianity could 
 not exist without the belief in the historicity of Jesus. 
 It is the historical Jesus, the Jesus alike of faith and of 
 history, that is the center of Christian worship and the 
 uniting bond in every Christian communion. Without 
 him the religious forces of our Western civilization would 
 disintegrate. His is the only name given among men 
 whereby a vital religious life can be maintained in our 
 American-European world. What might happen if 
 our Western civilization were overthrown no one can 
 tell. The religious forces of mankind would no doubt 
 again reassert themselves, and might then rally under 
 some new name. But for us this is impossible. Jesus 
 is the very life blood of our Western religion. His 
 "heartbeat goes throughout the whole of Christendom 
 just as the vibrating of a ship's engine is felt in every 
 corner of the great vessel. "^^ In our European civili- 
 zation there is no substitute for him. For us it is 
 "either Christ or no one." 
 
 ^^ Troeltsch, Gesammelle Schriften, ii, p. 847. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 119 
 
 Vital religion, therefore, according to Troeltsch, is 
 necessarily bound up with history. The necessity, 
 however, does not lie in any absolute predicates of 
 Jesus. It is not an a priori of reason. It is due to a 
 socio-psychological law. Religion as a social force 
 requires a unifying bond, a center around which wor- 
 ship and fellowship may develop, and this center can 
 with us be found only in Jesus. History makes this 
 indubitably clear. The Christology, consequently, 
 which Troeltsch had discarded in the realm of the 
 a priori he thus in large measure restores in the realm 
 of the a posteriori. But the question arises at this 
 point as to whether on Troeltsch's own principles it is 
 necessary to make such a sharp distinction as he at 
 times does between the rational and the socio- 
 psychological. If the religious a priori is purely 
 formal, it can manifest itself only in the empirical; 
 and if it is unique and non-theoretical, there would 
 seem to be no reason why it should not reveal itself in 
 a socio-psychological law. Indeed, Troeltsch himself 
 says that "it is one of the clearest results of all reli- 
 gious history and religious psychology that the essen- 
 tial thing in every religion is not dogma or idea, but 
 worship and fellowship, living communion with God, 
 and that too a communion of the entire social group. "^^ 
 In accordance with this it would seem evident that 
 we must look for the religious a priori in the life of 
 spiritual communion and the law that governs its de- 
 velopment. For an a priori that did not express the 
 essence of religion would not itself be "religious." 
 The socio-psychological law, therefore, which con- 
 ditions the life of worship and fellowship, and which, 
 
 " Die Bedeutung der geschichtlichkeit Jesu fiir den Glauben, p. 25. 
 
120 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 according to Troeltsch, makes necessary the venera- 
 tion of Jesus and his leadership in our Western world, 
 need not be regarded as a mere empirical fact. It may 
 be looked upon as an expression of the religious reason. 
 What alone seems to prevent this in Troeltsch' s case is 
 the possibility that our American-European civilization 
 may be overthrown. But on this point he seems un- 
 necessarily dubious. With the world unified as it now is 
 it is hardly probable that our present civilization will ever 
 be engulfed as those of the past have been.^^ In any 
 case what we have here to reckon with is simply an 
 abstract possibility. So far as we know, our civiliza- 
 tion is so deeply rooted in reason as to give promise of 
 permanence; and its permanence, as Troeltsch admits, 
 guarantees the permanence of historic Christianity. 
 
 In spite, however, of all that Troeltsch says about 
 the practical necessity of the historical in religion, one 
 cannot escape the feeling that he has not altogether 
 extricated himself from the influence of eighteenth- 
 century rationalism. Take, for instance, his indorse- 
 ment of the Kantian dictum that history "serves only 
 for illustration, not for demonstration." It is here 
 assumed that demonstration is essential to rational 
 belief, and that demonstration and illustration form a 
 complete disjunction. But both these assumptions are 
 false. Demonstration, at least in the strict sense of 
 the term, is not only not necessary to rational belief; 
 it is not even possible in the practical realm. Belief 
 roots in life, and life justifies itself. It is this that 
 Troeltsch himself has in mind when he speaks of 
 
 28 See article by Johannes Wendland on "Philosophie und Christen- 
 tum bei Ernst Troeltsch im Zusammenhange mit der Philosophie und 
 Theologie des letzten Jahrhunderts," in Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und 
 Kirche (1914), p. 164. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 121 
 
 "autonomous validity." The only difference in his 
 case is that he identifies autonomous validity with 
 reason or regards it as an expression of reason. But 
 reason thus understood is manifestly not independent 
 of history. As over against history it is an effect as 
 well as a cause. For history, at least from the reli- 
 gious point of view, i§ not passive. It does not simply 
 illustrate truth discovered elsewhere; it reveals it; 
 and this revelation is a necessary factor in evoking 
 the religious "life" or "reason," whichever we may 
 call it. To represent demonstration and illustration 
 as forming a complete disjunction is thus a mistake, 
 the result of a rationalistic bias. There is a third 
 alternative. History, we agree, does not serve for 
 demonstration, but it does not serve only for illustra- 
 tion; it serves also for revelation, as a medium through 
 which religious truth is discovered and apprehended.^^ 
 
 But if this view of history be adopted and the 
 tendency toward rationalism thus avoided, the ques- 
 tion arises as to whether we are still justified in speak- 
 ing of a religious a priori. Many think not; but we 
 have at least one noteworthy exposition of religious 
 apriorism representing this standpoint. The author is 
 Paul Kalweit, to whom reference has already been 
 made.^° Kalweit turns back to Schleiermacher for his 
 definition of the religious a priori, and finds it in the 
 feeling of absolute dependence. This feeling is not 
 simply a psychological or empirical state, analogous 
 
 2» For an elaboration of this idea, see Georg Wobbermin, Geschichte 
 und Ilistorie in der Religionswissenschaft, especially pp. 16-20 and 
 47-72. 
 
 ^^ "Das Religiose Apriori," in Theologische Siudien und Kritiken, 1908, 
 pp. 139-156. 
 
122 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 to other feelings. If it were, there would be nothing 
 of the "absolute" about it. That it is a feeling of 
 absolute dependence characterizes it as something alto- 
 gether unique. Indeed, it would be better, as Kalweit 
 says, to give up the word "feeling" and put in its place 
 the more general term "consciousness." The con- 
 sciousness of dependence is something that grows 
 inevitably out of the conditions of our life. It is, to 
 begin with, fragmentary, lawless. We are aware of 
 being dependent at this point and at that. But the 
 sense of dependence itself we cannot escape. The more 
 we attempt to do so, the more we find ourselves in- 
 volved in its coils. The only release from the diffi- 
 culty lies in rising above the empirical and recognizing 
 an absolute dependence. As we do this we enter into 
 the realm of religion. Indeed, it is this consciousness 
 of absolute dependence that constitutes the essence of 
 religion. To have this consciousness is to be religious. 
 And the characteristic of this consciousness is that it 
 both embraces and transcends all the concrete feelings 
 of dependence, giving meaning and unity to life as a 
 whole. It is, therefore, a superempirical conscious- 
 ness, a consciousness which empirical reality could not 
 generate; and as such it may properly be regarded as 
 the true religious a priori. 
 
 As against this view of the religious a priori it may 
 be objected that the term "a priori" implies the idea 
 of human activity and of immanence in human con- 
 sciousness. And these ideas, it is urged, contradict 
 the nature of religion. For religion means recognition 
 of the transcendent and submission to it. The expres- 
 sion "religious a priori" is, therefore, a case where the 
 noun devours the adjective and the adjective the 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 123 
 
 noun. But, as a matter of fact, the antithesis between 
 the two terms is not necessarily so sharp as all this. 
 In the notion of an a priori there is involved the idea 
 of something super-individual and so transcendent. 
 On the other hand, the feeling of absolute dependence 
 does not necessarily mean passive submission. It 
 may mean and does mean active self-surrender — in 
 other words, faith. Faith is thus an essential con- 
 stituent of the religious ^ priori. It is faith that 
 makes possible religious experience. It is not religious 
 experience that gives rise to faith but the reverse. 
 Faith is the a priori, the formal principle, that alone 
 makes religious experience possible. If we wish to 
 distinguish between the consciousness of absolute de- 
 pendence and faith, we may say, as does Kalweit, 
 that the former constitutes the religious a priori in 
 its most general content, while the latter expresses its 
 purely formal side. 
 
 Such a conception of the religious a priori mani- 
 festly contains nothing that conflicts with the idea of 
 revelation as a source of religious truth, and hence 
 nothing that implies the rationalistic attitude toward 
 history. Still it does, as over against a one-sided his- 
 toricism, emphasize the fact that religion is primarily 
 a present relation to God and not some sort of relation 
 to the past. A knowledge of the events of Christ's life 
 does not necessarily have any religious value. These 
 events become religiously significant only in so far as 
 they are interpreted by faith and express the feeling 
 of absolute dependence. All the facts of Scripture, 
 however, do not serve this purpose. A distinction 
 must, therefore, be made between the transient and 
 the permanent in biblical history, and it is the reli- 
 
124 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 gious a priori that enables us to make this dis- 
 tinction. Apriorism thus affirms that there is in 
 man a native religious endowment that is measurably 
 independent of science, of morality, and of art. Each 
 of these great human interests has an independence 
 of its own and validates itself. Religious certainty, 
 consequently, has as good a basis as scientific 
 certainty. But however true all this may be, it still 
 remains a question whether "apriorism" is the proper 
 term to apply to such a conception of religion. 
 And this is a point which only taste and usage can 
 finally decide. 
 
 In concluding this essay it will be well to sum up 
 the main considerations that have been urged for and 
 against the idea of a religious a priori. Against the 
 idea there are three main arguments. First, the term 
 "a priori" belongs primarily to logic, and can never 
 wholly divest itself of its logical or intellectual impli- 
 cations. The result is that the use of the term tends 
 almost inevitably to "rationalize" religion and so to 
 destroy its unique and distinctive character. Sec- 
 ondly, "a priori" points to a human capacity rather 
 than a human need, and this too runs counter to the 
 essential genius of religion. For in religion it is not 
 capacity but need that is the important thing. That 
 human nature or human reason necessarily generates 
 the idea of God is an interesting and significant philo- 
 sophical truth, but what religion requires is not simply 
 a self-generated idea of God but God himself. That 
 is, revelation is essential to religion, and this idea is 
 not conveyed by the term "a priori." The latter 
 rather suggests human self-sufficiency. 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 125 
 
 In the third place, the idea of a reHgious a priori 
 does not sujQBciently differentiate rehgion from the 
 other cultural interests. One may, as does Troeltsch, 
 emphasize the unique and non-theoretical character of 
 the religious a priori, but in doing so he coordinates 
 religion with the other a prioris, those of science, 
 morality, and art, and this very coordination implies 
 a conception of religion that fails to do justice to its 
 distinctive nature. For, as Windelband has pointed 
 out, religion does not have its own independent field 
 of cultural or rational values alongside of science, 
 morality, and art. It is, rather, something superior 
 to them and manifesting itseK in them. The ideals of 
 the true, the good, and the beautiful are also the 
 ideals of religion. What religion does is simply to 
 unite these ideals in a supreme ideal, an infinite Being, 
 to whom we stand in personal relationship. And it is 
 this personal relationship to the divine that consti- 
 tutes the unique element in religion. It is this fact 
 that leads Dunkmann^° to distinguish between Geistes- 
 geschichte and Kulturgeschichte, and to argue that the 
 religious a priori is to be found in the former, in that 
 society of spirits human and divine, which is the 
 creative source of human spirits, who in turn are the 
 creators of that cultural history, to which science, 
 morality, and art belong. But if the religious a priori 
 is to be assigned to so distinct a field, it would seem 
 best to discard the term altogether, and to think of 
 religion as the source and ground of the other a prioris 
 rather than as itself an a priori coordinate with the 
 others. 
 
 As over against these considerations, however, it is 
 
 .30 Das religiose Apriori und die GeschicfUe (1910). 
 
126 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 argued that we need a term to express the fact that 
 religion, in spite of all its uniqueness, is not an isolated 
 phenomenon, but stands in a structural relation to life 
 or reason as a .whole. We need also a term to bring 
 out the idea that religion is not something secondary 
 and derivative, but something fundamental and irre- 
 ducible, as much so as the intellectual, moral, and 
 aesthetic interests of men. We further need a term 
 that will carry with it the implication that religion 
 rests upon as sure a basis as does either science or 
 ethics. And these needs, it is claimed, are all met by 
 the term "religious a priori." It is the relativism of 
 empiricism that is to-day, as it was in Kant's time, 
 the chief philosophical enemy of religion. The only 
 logical position, therefore, for the religious believer at 
 present to take is that of apriorism. 
 
 But with this limited meaning of the term the 
 religio-historical school would hardly be content. 
 Troeltsch and the neo-Friesians, as we have already 
 pointed out, see in it not only an antithesis to rela- 
 tivistic empiricism but also an antithesis to authori- 
 tarian supernaturalism. And in the latter as well as 
 the former sense there is a certain fitness in the term. 
 It designates that which is autonomous. But when 
 we seek to define it more precisely and to make it the 
 organizing principle of a theological system, as some 
 do, we find ourselves confronted either with a dis- 
 concerting vagueness or with differences of opinion as 
 to its precise meaning that seem to preclude its 
 fruitful use. Still in spite of this the term has a 
 stimulating suggestiveness, and in view of its mani- 
 fest adaptability to express certain fundamental and 
 significant religious ideas may very well serve a use- 
 
RELIGIOUS APRIORISM 127 
 
 ful purpose as the watchword of a new theological 
 endeavor.^^ 
 
 21 In addition to the articles and books already referred to, see George 
 Wobbermin, Die Religionspsyckologische Methode in Religionswissen- 
 schaft und Theologie, pp. 353-358; Ernst Troeltsch, "Wesen der Reli- 
 gion and der Religionswissenschaft" in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, 
 Tail I, Abt. IV, pp. 461-489; Karl Bornhausen, "Das religiose Apriori 
 bei Ernst Troeltsch und Rudolf Otto" in Zeitschrift fur Philosophie 
 und philosophiscke Kritik, 1910, pp. 193-206; and "Wider der Neo- 
 friesianisraus in der Theologie" in Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, 
 1910, pp. 341-405; Paul Spiess, "Zur Frage des religiosen Apriori," in 
 Religion und Geisteskultur, 1909, pp. 207-215; D. C. Macintosh, 
 "Troeltsch's Theory of Religious Knowledge" in the American Journal 
 of Theology, 1919, pp. 274-289. 
 
VI 
 BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 
 
 Francis J. McConnell 
 
 Students of the Bowne philosophy often ask what 
 the attitude of Dr. Bowne would probably be toward 
 the great social and international questions of to-day 
 if he were now among us. It is, of course, impossible 
 to hazard more than a guess in an attempted answer 
 to this question, but there are certain principles of the 
 Bowne philosophy which have a direct bearing on the 
 problems which confront us to-day; and some recol- 
 lections of chance interviews which I may be par- 
 doned for mentioning are at least suggestive. 
 
 At the very start it may be well to remind ourselves 
 that in his ordinary conversation on social themes Dr. 
 Bowne was a man of varying moods. I remember 
 calling upon him once on a Sunday evening at his 
 home just after he had finished reading Miss Tarbell's 
 History of the Standard Oil Company. He was blazing 
 with rage against the practices which had been laid 
 bare through the investigations of the skilKul journal- 
 ist. A few weeks later I saw him again when he was 
 in an equally strenuous temper over the Standard Oil 
 Corporation. This time, however, his attitude was 
 one of defense of the organization against the attacks 
 of a group of ministers who were protesting against 
 the use of tainted money for religious purposes. We 
 may see in a moment that there was not as much 
 contradiction between the two moods as one might 
 
 128 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 129 
 
 imagine; but on the surface the attitude at the one 
 time was directly opposite to the attitude at the other. 
 So, in relation to the social crises through which men 
 were passing in his day, the attitudes of Dr. Bowne 
 were many times in contradiction to one another until 
 the underlying reason in each case was discovered. 
 
 Let us remind ourselves also that Dr. Bowne did 
 not give himself to a close study of social questions 
 until rather late in his professional career. He came 
 upon the scene when the Huxley and Tyndall and 
 Spencer type of agnosticism was on the ascendent in 
 the United States. From the period when he first 
 began to write on philosophical themes in about 1871 
 until 1882, when his Metaphysics was published, the 
 evolutionary philosophy of the materialistic variety 
 was making long strides in the United States. The 
 polemic articles which Dr. Bowne wrote in those days 
 were directed against Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, 
 Romanes, and even against John Fiske, for John 
 Fiske was then writing in Spencerian fashion on what 
 he called cosmic theism. Dr. Bowne also found leisure 
 for an occasional thrust at skepticism of the Strauss 
 type. It was not until the late eighties or early nine- 
 ties that Dr. Bowne made opportunity to devote 
 himself largely to ethical questions, including, of 
 course, social questions. He himself felt that his chief 
 duty was in the realm of strict metaphysics and that 
 the application of his principles to social philosophy 
 would have to be the task of those who were to follow 
 him. So that we must remember, in thinking of 
 Bowne's relation to the social sciences, that he him- 
 self did not consider that his own obligations lay 
 primarily in this field. Moreover, a goodly share of 
 
130 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the strength he had left after completing his meta- 
 physical system he felt inclined to devote toward 
 clearing up some of the difficulties of everyday reli- 
 gious experience. 
 
 Keeping all this in mind, however, we may not be 
 far astray when we say that Dr. Bowne wrote no 
 greater book than his Principles of Ethics. The out- 
 standing feature in his ethics was his proposal for 
 reconciliation of the intuitional and utilitarian schools. 
 While Bowne was still a student in college he wrote 
 a classroom thesis to show that the two schools, cor- 
 rectly understood, were not really opposed. Even as 
 a youth he insisted that the intuitionalist was right in 
 maintaining that certain moral data were part of the 
 native furnishing of the mind; but he maintained, on 
 the other hand, that while the intuitionalist was right 
 in emphasizing an innate categorical moral imperative, 
 the utilitarianist was right also in teaching that the 
 only way this imperative could take actual concrete 
 content was in experience itself. At the center of the 
 moral life Dr. Bowne maintained that there must al- 
 ways be the absolute will to do right, but conscience 
 alone cannot tell what is right in a particular set of 
 circumstances. This must be determined by observa- 
 tion and reflection, and sometimes by guess. Even if 
 the inner will and disposition may be looked upon as 
 absolute, the concrete duty must always be conceived 
 as relative. At the center of the Bowne system, then, 
 must be placed the will to do right. Next in order, 
 but practically equal in importance, must be the need 
 of intense intellectual eflFort to determine the conse- 
 quences which ought to be sought for in carrying out 
 the will to do right; and, finally. Dr. Bowne contended 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 131 
 
 that there must be a growing human ideal which will 
 condition all thought of moral duty. Through these 
 three points his ethical system was drawn, and, of 
 course, he built upon all these points in his reflection 
 upon the problems of society. 
 
 It is the merest commonplace that one who made so 
 much of personality as did Dr. Bowne could not do 
 otherwise than put personality at the center of his 
 ethical philosophy. Just as Dr. Bowne conceived of 
 the thinking person as furnishing the clue to the uni- 
 verse, so he conceived of the moral will as the only 
 element which would make personal life worth while. 
 He would at times, indeed, defend the utilitarian posi- 
 tion in such terms as to lead one to believe that he 
 was losing sight of the inner will to do right altogether; 
 but he never left a discussion without coming back to 
 his fundamental proposition that moral persons are 
 the only ends in themselves, and that in all their rela- 
 tionships to one another moral persons owe one an- 
 other good will. 
 
 Inasmuch as Dr. Bowne was a teacher rather than a 
 preacher, it was but natural that in his classroom work 
 he should lay stress upon the importance of the second 
 point in his system, namely, the need of using every 
 faculty at our command — especially every intellectual 
 faculty — for determining what is right under given 
 circumstances. He would insist at the outset that 
 every man of us owes every other man good will; but 
 suppose the man whom we owe good will is in an 
 imperfect moral condition, or suppose he is in any 
 condition which raises perplexity. In such case Dr. 
 Bowne would protest vehemently against any attempt 
 to solve the problem by any other method than the 
 
132 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 most careful and earnest thought. It is from this 
 angle that such contradictions as those in his moods 
 about the Standard Oil Company must be understood. 
 His first feeling was one of rage against the system 
 which had left out of the account the harmful social 
 consequences involved in building up such a monopoly. 
 His second mood was explained by his resentment at 
 the attempt to deal with a tangled and difficult eco- 
 nomic situation by coining a phrase like "tainted 
 money." In this field of the study of social causes 
 and effects Dr. Bowne had a thorough horror of those 
 whom he called "sentimentalists" — a horror so intense 
 as to lead him to question the sincerity of most senti- 
 mentalists. 
 
 In the days when the United States was wrestling 
 with the problem of how best to deal with the Philip- 
 pines — in the years 1899 and 1900, to be exact — 
 Bowne found himself much out of patience with the 
 "aberrant moralizers," as he called them, who kept 
 shouting that America must do right toward the 
 Filipinos without giving any sort of hint as to what 
 the right would call for. He used to declare that the 
 performances of these moralizers were about as com- 
 mendable as if they should shout at a doctor minister- 
 ing to a sick patient, "Cure the patient," without 
 themselves possessing any information as to the cause 
 of the patient's illness, or without any suggestion as 
 to what a cure would be. Remarks of this sort threw 
 a certain type of impatient radical into a frenzy. 
 After some such deliverance by Bowne a heated mem- 
 ber of a Philosophical Club to which Dr. Bowne be- 
 longed remarked that the Doctor might well have 
 been employed as prosecuting attorney before the 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 133 
 
 Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus. This criticism, by 
 the way, seemed to amuse Dr. Bowne himself very 
 much. He was never tired of quoting it. The Bowne 
 students, however, never misunderstood; they knew 
 that Dr. Bowne had a passion for social righteousness 
 which never waned, and that he felt that the passion 
 for righteousness in all men should manifest itself in 
 the hardest kind of hard thinking. He felt that con- 
 science should be a driving force urging men on to the 
 most thoroughgoing intellectual mastery of the enig- 
 mas of social life. For earnest thinking — not noisy 
 oratory — of the most revolutionary kind Bowne had 
 sympathy. I remember looking through a New York 
 book store with him upon one occasion to find the 
 best books on socialism by socialists to recommend 
 to students. Of course it would have been impossible 
 for Bowne, with his nature and training, ever to have 
 been a socialist. He was an individualist through 
 and through, but he was always willing to give heed 
 to such social radicalism as might show itself intel- 
 lectually respectable. He once stood in Copley Square 
 gazing at the Boston Public Library and finally turned 
 away with the remark, "That library comes out of the 
 kind of socialism I believe in." Moreover, he never 
 wearied of poking fun at the professed intellectual 
 superiority of many social conservatives. In the 
 famous free silver campaign in 1896, a prominent 
 Boston political economist was supposed by Beacon 
 Hill Republicans to have completely demolished the 
 free silver cause with what he called his "hammer 
 argument." "Here are two coins," said this economist, 
 "one silver, and the other gold. Hammer the govern- 
 mental inscription off the silver and it loses half its 
 
134 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 value. Hammer the governmental inscription off the 
 gold and it still has nearly its full value." This par- 
 ticular argument gave Bowne no end of mirth because 
 of the obvious failure of the economist to see that if 
 the demand for gold as currency should cease in large 
 part, as the demand for silver had ceased, it too would 
 lose much of its value. Another class of arguments 
 that Bowne delighted to ridicule were those advanced 
 in behalf of withholding political suffrage from women. 
 Most of these Bowne characterized as among "the 
 drollest whimseys" that had ever entered the human 
 mind. The objection that women should not be al- 
 lowed to vote because they were evidently intended 
 to be the "mothers of the race" he declared could only 
 be matched by the objection that men should not be 
 allowed to vote because they were evidently intended 
 to be the fathers of the race. 
 
 Against the pretensions too of any governmental 
 autocracies of whatever sort Bowne was very fierce. 
 Political and ecclesiastical machines he detested. The 
 ecclesiastical mechanism of his own church in his day 
 must have been in very woeful plight if it deserved 
 the criticism that Bowne poured forth. It must be 
 admitted that his own encounters with official eccle- 
 siastics had been very unfortunate, especially during 
 the days when Professor Mitchell, of Boston Univer- 
 sity, was under fire for his biblical views. I have heard 
 him say more than once that the best thing that could 
 be done for the Methodist Church would be to abolish 
 the episcopacy and the district superintendency out- 
 Tight. 
 
 If any fault is to be found with Dr. Bowne's method 
 of social theorizing, it would probably have to take 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 135 
 
 the form of showing that some of his own logical de- 
 vices occasionally played tricks on him. Every stu- 
 dent who has ever worked under Dr. Bowne is aware 
 of the Bowne emphasis on the fallacy of the universal 
 — the fallacy, that is to say, of considering class terms 
 as if they represent actual realities, whereas, of course, 
 the only realities are the concrete individual existences 
 themselves. In many a field Bowne wrought splendid 
 service by showing the bogs in which we land our- 
 selves by taking class terms as if they were anything 
 more than mere tools to help our thinking; but in dis- 
 cussing social institutions Bowne would occasionally 
 lay himself open to a charge of failure to admit the 
 degree of reality which attaches to institutions as 
 such. In dealing with the major social groups, like 
 the state and church, or the minor institutions, like 
 the school and the theater, for example, he would 
 lay such stress on the fact that individual human 
 beings are the only realities concerned that he would 
 now and again understress the other fact that when 
 individuals meet together in group contacts, their 
 conduct is different from that which marks them as 
 unrelated individuals. To be sure, it would arouse to 
 contempt the Bowne who founded an argument on 
 the fact that even chemical elements act differently 
 when together than when separate to hear anyone 
 speak as if he were not aware of so obvious a con- 
 sideration; but it is true that he did not always make 
 clear his own understanding of the part played in 
 human life by social groups functioning as groups 
 rather than as mere assemblies of individuals. 
 
 Again, it can probably be urged with justice that 
 Bowne had not read widely or closely in the field of 
 
136 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 social theory. He was apt to flip social theories out 
 of his fingers because of their logical weakness without 
 stopping to consider their historical importance. For 
 example, he dismissed the theory of the divine right 
 of kings with the curt remark that the only truth in it 
 was the general supremacy of society over individuals 
 — a supremacy which grasping kings identified with 
 their own sway. The historic fact that the divine 
 right of kings was, in its day, a potent weapon against 
 ecclesiastical ofiScial pretension he would have lightly 
 dismissed. Bowne once remarked that books had 
 done him very little good. He was hugely pleased 
 when a book reviewer in the New York Tribune re- 
 ferred to him as a man who had thought more than 
 he had read. 
 
 The third element in the Bowne social philosophy, 
 namely, the shaping of a conditioning human ideal, 
 also called forth much of his best utterance. "What 
 the law of good will asks for," he used to say, "will 
 depend altogether on what we take ourselves to be. 
 The law of good will in a group of convivial roisterers 
 would call for nothing higher than a fresh round of 
 drinks." It was at this point that the Bowne doc- 
 trine of an inherent dignity in man and of a morally 
 responsible God came in to reenforce the conclusions 
 of his ethical thinking. He placed Christianity at the 
 head of the forces working for an enlarging human 
 ideal, and therefore among the most powerful dynamic 
 agencies for the development of the true ethical spirit. 
 All the larger theistic conceptions Bowne employed to 
 make more forceful his notion of what he called the 
 essential dignity of humanity. Readers of the Ethics 
 will recall the sentence which declares that social con- 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 137 
 
 tacts take on new force when we reflect upon the pas- 
 sage, "Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of 
 these, ye did it unto me." 
 
 A moment ago I spoke of his emphasis on the neces- 
 sity of the careful calculation of consequences in a 
 sound moral life. In estimating consequences Bowne 
 made quite as much of inner consequences as of outer, 
 and by inner consequences he meant the effect of 
 courses of conduct on what he called "essential hu- 
 manity" in ourselves and others. For every form of 
 patent panacea for the redemption of society, Dr. 
 Bowne had unsparing scorn, but he welcomed every 
 movement in every quarter which laid increasing 
 stress on what he always called the essential human 
 values. 
 
 About the year 1906 Dr. Bowne remarked to his 
 closer friends that his interest in abstract philosophi- 
 cal questions as such was beginning to fade out as 
 compared to his interest in the larger social and inter- 
 national themes. His journey around the world, made 
 at about this time, did much to deepen his interest in 
 the greater human needs. Dr. Bowne was nearly, if 
 not quite, sixty years of age when he made his journey 
 through the Orient — a journey which did not indeed 
 change fundamentally the character of his thinking, 
 but which made an impress upon it truly indelible. It 
 will be remembered that in discussing the larger 
 international questions in his Principles of Ethics Dr. 
 Bowne occasionally spoke with a harsh accent. He 
 said once of the non-Christian nations that they must 
 either be transformed or perish — and there was a 
 suggestion of unpleasant grittiness in his tone. After 
 Dr. Bowne, however, had served for a considerable 
 
138 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 period as trustee for the American College for Girls in 
 Constantinople, and after he had himself visited the 
 Orient, his thinking on international questions took 
 on a new charity and sympathy. It will be remem- 
 bered that one of Dr. Bowne's favorite utterances was 
 that in dealing with men we are dealing neither with 
 animals nor with angels, but with beings passing 
 upward from a predominantly animal stage to a stage 
 which may be predominantly spiritual. He used to 
 declare also that this was the true ground for charity 
 in our dealings with men and that only a cheap cyni- 
 cism could unqualifiedly condemn men in this half-way 
 stage. The journey out into the non-Christian world 
 chastened the Bowne spirit and deepened his feeling 
 of charity for the so-called heathen peoples. This was 
 very remarkable when we consider the peculiar sensi- 
 tiveness of his own nervous organization to anything 
 crude or even unsesthetic. He once stood on the banks 
 of the Ganges watching the Hindus in the midst of 
 one of their chief religious festivals. The disgusting 
 sights and odors sickened him so dreadfully that he 
 asked to be taken home; and he left the scene with an 
 ashen face, exclaiming that he could understand very 
 well how it might repent God that he had ever made 
 man and how God might justly exterminate the race 
 which he had made. The mental nausea passed, how- 
 ever, and following it came abiding pity which was 
 probably the largest factor in the Bowne conscious- 
 ness in the last months of his life. He felt that the 
 huge outlying races of the world had vast contributions 
 to make to the moral and spiritual content of the 
 human ideal. Almost the last thing I heard him say 
 was that if he were to live his life over, and were to 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 139 
 
 teach philosophy and ethics again, he would sooner 
 work in China than anywhere else on earth. 
 
 Dr. Bowne saw the so-called backward races of the 
 earth in all their unpleasant and even revolting char- 
 acteristics. He described the impression of sheer in- 
 anity and futility made upon him by hearing hun- 
 dreds of Mohammedan youths at school droning away 
 together in a monotonous sing-song in their study of 
 the Koran. He was distressed by the apparent 
 superficiality of many of the Indian students. Lec- 
 turing once to a group of Hindus, he became nettled 
 as one after another would arise and leave in the 
 midst of his most profound discussions; and finally 
 called out to some of those going out of the room that 
 "pint pots are soon filled." He saw much everywhere 
 to set his soul on edge, and yet he came back to Amer- 
 ica in the main hopeful of the final outcome of the 
 non-Christian peoples. 
 
 Especially did he rebel against any treatment of 
 the so-called heathen peoples as other than human 
 beings. He used to say that it was immoral and 
 abominable for a so-called civilized nation to deal 
 with the backward nations with a purpose of exploita- 
 tion, or to act on any policy which left the betterment 
 of the backward nations out of the account. The 
 world interested him as a vast human problem. He 
 would not think of men just in masses, but he saw 
 them as hosts of individuals, each with the possibili- 
 ties of distinction as a responsible human soul. He 
 hoped for great things even from peoples whose ca- 
 reers since Dr. Bowne's death have dashed to earth 
 the dreams of their best friends. For example, Bowne 
 in the nineties was extremely bitter toward the Turks. 
 
140 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 He used to say that if he had an earthquake harnessed 
 into good working condition, he could think of no 
 better use for it than to rock around in Turkey and 
 shake it into ruins. At the time of the Young Turk 
 Revohition, however, his feehngs underwent a change. 
 He was in constant correspondence with friends in 
 Turkey who filled his mind with fine hopes for the 
 days just ahead. The story goes that Dr. Bowne 
 became so convinced of the bright prospects of the 
 new movement in Turkey that he prevailed upon an 
 American philanthropic board to give outright $125,- 
 000 for education in Turkey. He used to quote with 
 delight the reports that would come to him of the 
 way in which the Mohammedan priests had adjusted 
 themselves to the altered situation and were declaim- 
 ing upon the worth of education. "Certainly our 
 people should know geography," said one Moham- 
 medan leader to a friend of Bowne's; "how can they 
 tell rightly how to place their prayer mats unless they 
 do?" And Bowne remarked slyly after the utterance 
 of the priest had been reported to him, "It is a perfect 
 illustration of the smugness with which religion can 
 adjust itself to a revolutionary change." Dr. Bowne 
 was spared the distress of seeing his hopes for the 
 Young Turk movement brought to naught. 
 
 There are two incidents which recur to me as illus- 
 trating Dr. Bowne's feeling about men everywhere. 
 Both occurred in India. The Bowne party once went 
 into the Himalaya region accompanied by a servant 
 from the hot plains. The servant was but thinly clad 
 and suffered much from the cold in the high altitudes. 
 Upon inquiry Dr. Bowne learned that the keeper of 
 the inn, or hotel, who was to lodge the party was ex- 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 141 
 
 pecting the Indian servant to crawl under a sort of 
 porch and shiver the night through as best he might. 
 The dismay of the innkeeper can be imagined when 
 he found that the entire party would move from their 
 lodgings unless the servant had quarters inside as 
 comfortable as the quarters of any one of the party. 
 
 The other incident was even more significant. Stay- 
 ing one night with a missionary, Dr. Bowne heard a 
 peculiar sound about nightfall — a sort of mixture of 
 scuffle and moan. He went to the rear of the house 
 to learn the cause and found the missionary beating a 
 servant — an old man. That missionary then and there 
 heard a disquisition on the brotherhood of man and 
 the rights of human beings as such probably much 
 more pointed than the students ever heard in the 
 classroom. Then Bowne gathered up his bags and 
 marched off to a hotel. Now, with Dr. Bowne these 
 two incidents meant just this: that he would not 
 compromise under any circumstances as to the ideal 
 of the worth of a human life as such. That really was 
 the heart of his ethical system. 
 
 The net result in largest and finest human terms — 
 this was the Bowne test for all social institutions what- 
 soever. He would judge social systems and nations 
 and empires by their effect on the human beings who 
 had to live under them. 
 
 It may be well to add that Dr. Bowne saw in the 
 social, and especially in the international realm, the 
 sphere for moral expansion and development of most 
 significance for mankind in the decades just before 
 the world at the time of his death. He always urged 
 that moral advance must take the line of bringing 
 more and more persons within the range of our good 
 
142 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 will, and more and more of our activities under the 
 sway of enlightened conscience. He used to say that 
 there is a deal of wild land as yet untouched in the 
 social and international ethical sphere and that human 
 moralization cannot be complete until these large 
 outer relationships are completely conquered under 
 the guidance of ethical principle. It may seem like a 
 trifle, but he would inveigh in his classrooms against 
 the sharp-tongued talkers who, under the cloak of 
 patriotism, would carry their sarcasm and scorn into 
 treatment of international themes. Glancing at a car- 
 toon once which represented a foreign nation under a 
 grotesque and stupid personification, Bowne remarked* 
 "All that sort of thing is profoundly immoral and will 
 one day raise a spirit which we cannot easily lay." 
 
 If we put Bowne's social ethics into his own terms, 
 we may say that social progress can only come by the 
 efforts of those who have warm hearts and cool heads. 
 Very likely those who know Bowne only through his 
 books think of him as altogether of the cool-headed 
 type. Those of us, however, who were privileged to 
 stand closer to him knew the warmth of a heart which 
 beat passionately for mankind. Borden P. Bowne 
 would not be beguiled into believing in any sort of fool's 
 fire or any sort of wild fire. He did believe, however, 
 that the problem of the moralization of the world is so 
 desperate that it can never be solved except as an ear- 
 nest purpose shows itself in the most careful and intense 
 scrutiny of facts in the search for the principles which 
 will make the life of men worth living. The aim of all 
 ethical striving, both individual and social, said Bowne, 
 should be to lift men up to the highest reaches of 
 normal human life. All ethical theories must be tested 
 
BOWNE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS 143 
 
 out in life. It is all very well, said he, to avow that we 
 are to let justice be done though the heavens fall; but 
 we must remember that if an act brings down the 
 heavens it is not likely to be an act of justice. He 
 protested against our being told that virtue is its own 
 reward unless the concrete contents of the virtue 
 and of the reward were specified. He believed that 
 the testing place of human character is in the play 
 and interplay of relationships in ordinary human con- 
 tacts. If out of this interplay there comes increasing and 
 enlarging richness of life, Bowne maintained that the 
 ethics governing such contacts is justified. He would 
 not hear of any appeal whatsoever to any other stan- 
 dard for social morality than the actual effects upon 
 actual human beings. When a fastidious New York 
 editor sniffed contemptuously through two columns and 
 a half against a sincere moral deliverance of a host of 
 good ordinary citizens, Bowne declared of the editor 
 that "Pharisaism had so dementalized him that he 
 had become an ass of the first magnitude." For 
 Bowne believed in the people, and demanded that all 
 social causes must stand or fall by the degree to which 
 they meet the needs of the people. He once said that 
 the vast amount of drudgery performed to keep the 
 world going was an immense item to be set down to 
 humanity's credit — and he declared that all moral and 
 social precepts and philosophies must minister to the 
 ordinary mortals who day by day bear the load of the 
 world's drudgery. He believed that social solutions 
 must be wrought out — rather than talked out. After 
 long ethical discussion of social themes he would 
 return to the words of Voltaire's Candide: "Mean- 
 while, let us cultivate the garden." 
 
vn 
 
 A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 
 
 Herbert C. Sanborn 
 
 When one attempts to identify and assemble the 
 data designed to serve as the starting point for devel- 
 oping some general conception of beauty one discovers 
 at once a disconcerting situation that explains, while 
 it does not ultimately justify, the desperate claim of 
 the skeptic. No accounting for tastes, de gustihus non 
 est disputandum — the perennial plaint that has re- 
 ceived a recent formulation in the positive assertion 
 of Robert Eisler: "Whatever pleases or at any time 
 has pleased anybody is beautiful" — would seem to be 
 the appropriate reaction to the apparent confusion of 
 palates and palettes. In spite of such downright rela- 
 tivism, however, it seems significant, otherwise than 
 to sophist and skeptic, that hardly anything is more 
 general than disputes on matters aesthetic and no field 
 perhaps where in practice skepticism is actually less 
 prevalent. 
 
 The notion that everybody is an equally good or, 
 rather, equally bad authority in matters of taste, that 
 the conflicting verdicts of naive appreciation and those 
 of the connoisseur stand on the same plane, is surely 
 not borne out by any survey of practice; moreover, 
 the state of aesthetic purity and innocence assumed as 
 the possibility of strictly naive appreciation is prac- 
 tically nowhere existent. The bald fact that things 
 have pleased or displeased given individuals is cer- 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 145 
 
 tainly no guarantee of aesthetic worth, since it is ob- 
 vious that things please and the contrary for various 
 reasons. Furthermore, just as every layman is to 
 some extent a psychologist, so everybody concerned 
 is somewhat sophisticated aesthetically. Everybody 
 worth considering as a source of the alleged not-to-be- 
 disputed facts knows for one thing of the existence of 
 standards of criticism and is under the influence of 
 this knowledge; one important cause preventing the 
 novice from rendering a tolerably chaste judgment 
 resides in the fact that he knows or believes, without 
 having the power to discriminate between them, that 
 both good and bad works of art exist. As compared 
 with the connoisseur who is able to attain a state of 
 comparative aesthetic abstraction, such a person is 
 embarrassed by this as well as by the humiliating con- 
 sciousness that defects of taste in some way argue 
 even greater inferiority than lack of knowledge. 
 Neither in the determination nor in the evaluation of 
 the facts is reliance placed in practice on off-hand 
 judgment; nor is it usually felt that the emphasized 
 disagreements of experts and epochs are actually irre- 
 concilable when due account has been taken of indi- 
 vidual and racial evolution and of uneliminated 
 personal and epochal equations, which probably receive 
 too much consideration from pragmatist and skeptic. 
 
 In the attempt to exclude irrelevant factors, that is, 
 to indicate somewhat precisely just what facts ought 
 indisputably to be included under the general head, 
 we become more than ever keenly aware that "aesthet- 
 ics" is a kind of blanket term, sometimes for different 
 classes of phenomena, sometimes for different meth- 
 ods of treatment. If we use the word thus broadly, 
 
146 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 as may be done, to include facts throughout the whole 
 field of sense experience, we are soon forced to indicate 
 by means of qualifications like "aesthetically effective" 
 (to which the experience of animals is perhaps limited) 
 and "aesthetically beautiful" differences of importance 
 or value inside this larger field. Finally, we must 
 make in the narrower field of the beautiful distinctions 
 of excellence which but corroborate the belief that the 
 most important element in the manifest "complexity 
 of aesthetic experience" is the implicit or explicit refer- 
 ence to a norm. 
 
 In aesthetics so-called facts are, after all, significant 
 or known facts, appearing always relative to prin- 
 ciples, and being patently, perhaps even more than 
 elsewhere, the results of selection and interpretation 
 behind which stand not merely deep-rooted prejudices 
 and idola of various kinds but also more or less con- 
 sciously defined systems of metaphysics. The issues 
 are ultimately philosophical ones; the trail of the 
 serpent is over it all. Except in the denial of this 
 inevitable circle there is, indeed, no truly naive ap- 
 proach to any special field of investigation; and this 
 and other general considerations suggest caution — 
 here and elsewhere- — in putting unlimited confidence in 
 the efficacy of the experimental method in the narrower 
 sense of the term, notwithstanding striking averages 
 obtained by it and data of heuristic value that have 
 been unearthed. 
 
 In typical instances of experimentation in aesthetics, 
 lines of various forms and directions, rectangular and 
 other figures of different sizes and proportions, colors 
 of different hues, shades, tints, and saturation are ex- 
 hibited to subjects, among them children and savages, 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 147 
 
 in the eflFort to determine aesthetic preference, emo- 
 tional and motor reactions, etc.; and in this way the 
 majority vote is secured. In order, however, for such 
 results to possess more than doubtful value it hardly 
 needs to be said that the jury impaneled must not be 
 naive but, on the contrary, sophisticated aesthetically 
 and sufficiently schooled in introspection to be capable 
 of determining whether normally free judgment has 
 actually taken place, and in such event to be able to 
 indicate to some extent what subjective factors — indi- 
 vidual, racial, and epochal influences — may have en- 
 tered into the reaction. These may, indeed, be quite 
 other than aesthetic. 
 
 Similar considerations would apply a fortiori to at- 
 tempts that have been made to gather naively from an 
 examination of literature the conceptions of beauty 
 prevalent in past epochs of history. In such cases we 
 may, to be sure, discover what has been called beau- 
 tiful, ugly, or indifferent; that is, we may gain ob- 
 viously an identity of terminology; but knowledge is 
 not thereby advanced, unless by some reference to what 
 is otherwise known concerning the spirit of the race 
 and the periods in question, and through analogy on 
 the basis of our own reactions, we are enabled to guess 
 whether the appeal was chiefly physiological, intellec- 
 tual, ethical, reUgious, or, indeed, aesthetic. 
 
 Subjects suffering from tone-deafness or from achro- 
 masia would be plainly as handicapped in their judg- 
 ment of music and painting as a cretin in reasoning. 
 A gourmand, or even a gourmet, might find estimates 
 of still life prejudiced by the arousal of nonaesthetic 
 elements. Differences of age, artificial and abnormal 
 habits of life, accidental associations, racial tenden- 
 
148 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cies, fashions, social and religious experience, and, in 
 general, strong emotions and moods of various kinds 
 may modify or destroy intended aesthetic effects. Sor- 
 row in particular seems either to prevent or to exag- 
 gerate enjoyment of given works of art, while the 
 blindness of love to positive ugliness is proverbial. 
 Bad or indifferent paintings of John Knox preaching 
 to the Covenanters were once sure of general approval 
 in England; the Niederwalddenkmal, erected in com- 
 memoration of 1871, fails to receive proper objective 
 consideration on either side of the Rhine; the presen- 
 tation of his birthplace in a mere daub may delight the 
 exile, while the mediocre portrait of a wife by a son 
 now dead may call forth eccentric appreciation in the 
 case of husband and father. Through association with 
 persons of distinction and beauty the most bizarre and 
 ugly fads in clothing, etc., may come to be considered 
 beautiful, so as even to warp the collective judgment 
 of subsequent epochs. Thus, for example, a mere 
 fashion of wearing wigs in the sixteenth century seems 
 to have been largely responsible for the eccentricities 
 of the rococo, the baroko, and for Hogarth's em- 
 phatic and one-sided preference for the famous ser- 
 pentine line.^ Similarly the bold color effects of 
 cathedral glass in the fifteenth century brought about 
 a rather crude use of color in contemporary painting. 
 As a most typical illustration of the way in which 
 nonsesthetical factors may intervene to disturb seri- 
 ously aesthetic appreciation we may note, furthermore, 
 how frequently the spirit of a narrow moralism pre- 
 vents works of genuine value from producing their 
 
 * Compare Victor Rydberg, Det Skona och dess Lagar (Goteborg, 
 1901), pp. 28flF. 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 149 
 
 legitimate effects. The conflicting estimates of Byron, 
 Coleridge, Poe, and many others, Ruskin's homilies on 
 painting and painters, and the effect of the Puritanical 
 atmosphere on art in general are too well known to 
 need much emphasis. Whole epochs, too, like that of 
 the Middle Ages, may hold the aesthetic consciousness 
 as a mere ancilla ecclesicp in bondage from which only 
 a long period of time may partly liberate it; while, 
 under the influence of positivism and naturalism, 
 aesthetic truth may come to be regarded as nature 
 seen through a personality instead of personality seen 
 through the medium of the natural. Moreover, the 
 complex works of art are truly "caviare for the 
 masses"; the full appreciation of such works, if it 
 comes at all, far from being naive, is largely, except 
 perhaps for the especially talented, the outcome of 
 careful education in discrimination. 
 
 Just as in the field of theory there are easy concep- 
 tions and those whose elements are united with diflS- 
 culty, as well as many of both kinds whose wider 
 implications are by no means self-evident, so also in 
 the field of art. Rhythm in music, for example, is 
 regularly apprehended and appreciated, so that dance 
 music and marches (good or bad) are popular with 
 the masses for whom the harmony of such pieces or 
 of Beethoven symphonies and Bach fugues is as non- 
 existent as the philosophy of Kant. In poetry and 
 painting, too, the uninitiated will seek mere mechani- 
 cal rhythm or a didactic content, taken in abstraction 
 from the form. These are, however, all of them ab- 
 normal and complex phenomena that find their paral- 
 lels in other fields than that of art, and, while they 
 arouse distrust for merely impressionistic criticism. 
 
150 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 they should cause one to despair of aesthetics no more 
 than mistakes in addition and subtraction, fallacious 
 reasoning, or aberrations in conduct lead one to skep- 
 ticism of mathematical, logical, or ethical science. 
 
 Because of the unitary nature of culture in the con- 
 crete, action and reaction necessarily take place be- 
 tween the other fields of human experience and art of 
 which the latter must take due account while main- 
 taining abstractly its own freedom. Works of art as 
 such belong to a world of their own in a sense inde- 
 pendent of practical everyday life, as is, in fact, indi- 
 cated symbolically by isolating devices like the 
 pedestal of the statue, the frame of a picture, the 
 inclosure of the stage, the "es war einmal" of the 
 narrating grandmother, etc. Inasmuch, nevertheless, 
 as works of art enter indirectly as potent factors into 
 the practical world itself, they are doubtless subject 
 to political sanctions, as Plato means in banishing the 
 poets from the Republic. The artist cannot expect, 
 even conceding that there may be pure works of art 
 and that some of them may not be for children, that 
 layman or critic shall be forced to put off the moral 
 consciousness in order, as an abstract aesthete, to 
 enter the realm of art without embarrassment. In 
 order, however, to render a tolerably unbiased ver- 
 dict it is important for the critic in many instances to 
 be able to approximate the state of aesthetic abstrac- 
 tion of the creative artist as a limit or ideal, while it 
 may be necessary for him at times to leave this van- 
 tage point for that of vivid moral consciousness in 
 order to establish whether fundamental ethical prin- 
 ciples or merely some long-established but false con- 
 ventionalism has been violated by the artist. 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 151 
 
 In view of the complexity and the development of 
 aesthetic experience the study of the facts may be pur- 
 sued in several ways. We may direct our attention to 
 the physiological concomitants of the psychic processes 
 involved; we may attempt an introspective study of 
 the aesthetic consciousness itself; we may trace the 
 genesis and evolution of this consciousness in the 
 individual and in the race by an examination of its 
 products in the field of art history; and we may, on the 
 basis of such studies, attempt the development of a 
 theory of beauty. As is the case with other fields of 
 investigation, these methods, though logically distin- 
 guishable, are in actual practice more or less inter- 
 mingled. The sciences mentioned are, in fact, 
 merely points of view for observing one and the same 
 reality. 
 
 In pure physiological aesthetics efforts have been made 
 to explain beauty and ugliness as adjustment or mal- 
 adjustment of the object to given bodily conditions, 
 more specifically to the peculiar modes of nervous, 
 organic, and glandular activity. Sometimes it has 
 been alleged that the physiological description ex- 
 hausts the aesthetic fact, which has forthwith been 
 identified outright with what would otherwise be 
 called its physiological concomitant. On such ex- 
 treme theories the consciousness of beauty would be 
 reduced to minute or incipient organic movements and 
 secretions of certain glands. The work of art might 
 then be thought of as the permanent possibility of 
 certain organic conditions not yet definitely specified 
 but probably closely connected with manifestations of 
 sex and functioning biologically in sexual selection. 
 Such one-sided interpretation rests, of course, on meta- 
 
152 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 physical views that are far from being estabhshed and 
 also seem to be hardly in good repute. 
 
 The psychology of beauty starts with the reality of 
 the aesthetic experience as a psychic fact, attempting 
 to isolate it in introspection from other factors of expe- 
 rience in order to determine by analysis its nature and 
 the conditions and laws of its occurrence. Its general 
 field of investigation is the receptive and productive 
 artistic activity among civilized adults, but it also 
 takes account, in comparative and genetic studies, of 
 the origin and development of aesthetic consciousness 
 in the individual and in the race. In such studies it 
 employs experimental methods of the old and of the 
 new psychology, depending, of course, upon psy- 
 chological theorizing to supplement the facts of direct 
 observation. 
 
 Beauty is for this point of view primarily a feeling, 
 the quality or predicate of a valuing subject. It is not 
 a quality of the object like red or green, sweet or sour; 
 but means that acts of aesthetic appreciation, which 
 take place only in consciousness, are grounded in the 
 nature of an object to which they are referred sec- 
 ondarily as predicates of aesthetic judgments. As 
 reactions they are likewise founded in the nature of 
 the subject, so that the complete study of their con- 
 ditions involves directly or indirectly the study of the 
 aesthetic nature of the subject. Variations in either 
 set of conditions result, of course, in variations or 
 modifications of appreciation. 
 
 As a result of a preliminary analysis of conscious- 
 ness the distinction is established between those feel- 
 ings that arise in the presence of objects which satisfy 
 us because of their manifest utility and the thrills of 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 153 
 
 emotion that animate us in reaction to objects that 
 evoke no such conscious reference but which dehght 
 us solely because of their existence. This attitude of 
 disinterestedness or aesthetic detachment, the absence 
 or negation of theoretical and practical desires, has 
 been uniformly stressed as a chief characteristic of the 
 aesthetic consciousness, since Aristotle first called at- 
 tention to it. A knife or other tool, but only after its 
 purpose is known, may please because of utilitarian 
 considerations; whereas the immediate delight in the 
 ornamentation of the handle not only implies no such 
 extrinsic reference of value, but might conceivably 
 exist when the decoration should serve to diminish 
 considerably the utility of the implement, or even in 
 the case of some archaic instrument whose utility 
 should not be apparent. We distinguish also between 
 shelter as the utilitarian aspect of a building and its 
 architectonic value, noting that in the dwelling house 
 beauty is regularly sacrificed to utility and comfort. 
 Some — not all — useful things are also beautiful; and 
 not all beautiful things — for example, a ruin or a 
 destructive conflagration — are useful. Indeed, beauty 
 and utility often vary in the inverse ratio. Similarly 
 it is not difficult to discern that the agreeable odor of a 
 rose and the agreeable warmth of a room are experiences 
 different in kind from those due to the rich color, the 
 arrangement and shape of the petals in the one, and 
 to the harmonization and general disposition of ob- 
 jects in the other; although, indeed, in the case of 
 many complex objects such distinctions are practically 
 more difficult than in these simple examples. The 
 utilitarian in the field of aesthetics attempts to explain 
 all such disinterested feelings as developments from 
 
154 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 narrow individualistic interests by means of assimila- 
 tion and complication, much as in the field of ethics he 
 strives to exhibit altruistic feelings as an evolution 
 from self-seeking, thus far, however, in both fields 
 without marked success. 
 
 A further distinction may be drawn between ele- 
 mentary feelings and form-feelings, or between those 
 feelings aroused in the presence of simple tones, colors, 
 movements, and lines, and those which occur in the 
 presence of complex rhythmic and harmonious com- 
 binations of such elements. So far as these elementary 
 feelings are concerned it seems impossible to find in 
 consciousness directly the ground for their peculiarity, 
 while explanation of them as due merely to past indi- 
 vidual or racial associations, complications and the 
 like, would seem to abandon the aesthetic point of 
 view. These feelings may, however, be interpreted 
 fairly in the light of our knowledge of the feelings due 
 to aesthetic form. 
 
 Form-feelings arise in connection with regular, sym- 
 metrical, and proportionable arrangements of the ele- 
 ments which call forth the elementary aesthetic feelings. 
 The artist's problem, like that of the logician, consists 
 in the harmonization of discord and contradiction, in 
 the unification of a manifold. It is this universal and 
 fundamental aspect of art to which Madame de Stael 
 in her declaration that architecture is "frozen music" 
 and Walter Pater in the statement that "all art aspires 
 toward the condition of music" both refer. In other 
 words, when the object manifests, so spontaneously and 
 obviously that attention is facilitated, the typical form 
 of consciousness, then we experience the peculiar kind 
 of affective consciousness that is called aesthetic and 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 155 
 
 ascribe beauty to the object in the form of an aes- 
 thetic judgment. This law of harmony or unity in 
 variety, which is one of ancient discovery, has been 
 regularly emphasized by those who have described the 
 conditions of aesthetic experience. 
 
 Harmony implies, however, not that the elements 
 appear simply associated or conjoined as the result of 
 the merely temporal continuities of past experience 
 but that they are connected conatively and evaluated, 
 that is, belong together organically. Only an organ- 
 ism, or that which must be apprehended organically, 
 is able to arouse a thrill of beauty. The special condi- 
 tions for harmony are realized when differentiation of 
 a common principle is revealed in the elements of an 
 object; for example, the rhythm or rime common to 
 the parts of a poem; the poetical idea unfolded in the 
 successive stanzas (sometimes emphasized in the re- 
 frain, as in Poe's *'Raven") ; the architectural principle 
 illustrated and typified in the parts of a structure; 
 gradations of light and color and characteristic mood 
 revealed in the manifold color- tones of a landscape; 
 or consistency, that is, harmony of volition, mani- 
 fested in the successive acts of a character in the 
 drama or in real life. Richard III and, in real life. 
 Napoleon (for both of whom our approval is not 
 moral but aesthetic) are illustrations for this last 
 group. 
 
 It is possible to distinguish clearly two phases of 
 this law. In the one case we have the simpler differ- 
 entiation of a common principle, which might be 
 called monotonous or democratic differentiation, where 
 the common bearers of the principle stand about on a 
 par with one another. The regular alternation of the 
 
156 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 pillars, metopes, and triglyphs in the Greek temple, 
 the spondaic and pyrrhie foot, and the regular succes- 
 sion of similar feet in a line of verse are examples. We 
 may have, however, in the sesthetic object a point of 
 orientation or emphasis which appears as the special 
 representative of the common principle to which the 
 other elements are plainly subordinated. According 
 as the subordination is more or less absolute, we may 
 speak of a monarchical subordination that is tyran- 
 nical and of one that is free. Illustrations of the 
 former are towers, pyramids, and structures like the 
 Egyptian temple that dominate us with a conscious- 
 ness of sublimity and mystery, together with all cari- 
 cature; whereas instances of the latter are the Gothic 
 cathedral, in which the spire (often counterbalanced 
 by one or more turrets) typifies the architectural prin- 
 ciple involved; cases of *'majoring," such as the legiti- 
 mate exaggeration of the head, jaws, and paws of a 
 lion, or the neck and shoulders of a bull; groups in 
 painting with dominant and sub dominant figures; poems 
 and dramas with carefully graduated climax; and char- 
 acters like Balzac's Catherine de' Medici, whose every 
 act is brought into unity through the control of a ruling 
 purpose. 
 
 Attempts to discover empirically and abstractly the 
 exact relationship that should prevail between the 
 unifying and the unified or subordinated principle in 
 a work of art, or the search for the most pleasing pro- 
 portion, have given some very interesting results with- 
 out leading to anything absolutely conclusive. More- 
 over, like the memory experiments with nonsense 
 syllables, the conditions of such abstract experimenta- 
 tion vitiate to a degree the actual concrete problems 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 157 
 
 involved. The relation in question is doubtless a 
 variable dependent on factors of each concrete case 
 to a greater degree than in other fields of experiment, 
 and is, in general, some mean between a differentia- 
 tion that means aesthetic anarchy, as in the perfect 
 square, and a domination seen in extremely elongated 
 rectangles and in ultra-impressionism, that means 
 tyranny. 
 
 From the knowledge that such well-established prin- 
 ciples as these underlie the aesthetic feelings due to 
 the form of the elements found in combinations, it is 
 not unreasonable to infer that the elementary aesthetic 
 feelings aroused by the purity and richness of colors 
 and tones result similarly from peculiarities of form 
 (different rhythms of vibration, simplicity and com- 
 plexity of sound and ether waves, and the like) in the 
 objects to which they are provisionally referred. The 
 aesthetic satisfaction would then be explained by their 
 concinnity with fundamental psychic conditions, sub- 
 ject to modification by manifold environmental factors 
 that would to some extent account for epochal, racial, 
 and individual idiosyncrasies. 
 
 The object that inspires aesthetic feeling is content 
 as well as form, and this content too is an expression 
 of the nature of the contemplating subject. ^Esthetic 
 delight, in general, is the enjoyment of our own free 
 activity in the aesthetic object, which itself exists, in 
 the sense that everybody creates or recreates his own 
 work of art, only in the consciousness of subjects: it 
 is an objectification of self. In the case of the ugly 
 in art or nature the elements are likewise drawn from 
 our own psychic life, but the independent exaltation 
 or exaggeration of subordinate aspects in this kind of 
 
158 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 experience — insubordination — serves merely to depress 
 or disgust by diminishing our sense of free activity. 
 
 In the life of the child and of primitive man we find 
 a thoroughgoing tendency to personify or animate the 
 total environment, traces of which persist in the 
 sober daily life of the civilized adult to a greater extent 
 than is commonly noticed. We speak of the ocean 
 dashing against the shore, of the drawn bow tending to 
 unbend; while the scientist, who is supposed to talk 
 prose and not poetry, tells us of unities, energies, 
 forces, activities, and also of functional relations in ob- 
 jective things, though reflection shows that these words 
 have significance, so far as experience goes, only as 
 the names for reactions in consciousness in the pres- 
 ence of certain sounds, colors, etc. We find, more- 
 over, in consciousness experiences that possess a unique 
 intimacy, although they are referred to the past. In 
 the contemplation of these we relive them in the 
 active experience of personal identity as inalienable 
 "moments" of self. In a similar manner, for the con- 
 sciousness of artist and critic, moods and other psychic 
 states are embodied in works of art. The work of art 
 does not merely suggest life; it is itself alive, spirantia 
 mollius aera, when attention is held, not merely by 
 the details of one of its Protean manifestations but 
 by the fundamental meaning. 
 
 In the contemplation of even simple geometrical 
 lines we introject this feeling of our own self -activity 
 into the object of consciousness. The regular curving 
 line or the line with periodical changes of direction or 
 thickness satisfies aesthetically, inasmuch as it permits 
 and induces psychic activity that is unified, contin- 
 uous, and regular. In contrast with the checked and 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 159 
 
 interrupted activity called forth by the annoying at- 
 tempt to attend to broken lines or to those that change 
 their direction lawlessly, such regular, facilitated, 
 "natural" activity satisfies, since in it, without explicit 
 effort, we live through a bit of the consistent, unified 
 life we strive constantly, but with comparative lack of 
 success, to reahze in other fields; it corresponds too 
 with the nonvolitional rhythm of the emotional life. 
 Too great regularity, however, here and in the field of 
 art in general (even in design) is monotonous, artificial, 
 enslaving, "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly 
 null," and thus out of accord with the free self. 
 "There is no excellent beauty," as Bacon said, "that 
 hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Art 
 does not exist for law, but, rather, law for the sake 
 of art. 
 
 Abstract figures seem beautiful in themselves, when 
 not composed of lawless, broken lines, and when the 
 activity in them is not too mathematically regular, as 
 it is, for example, in the perfect square and the perfect 
 circle (both of them rejected throughout art history). 
 Lines in combination must submit freely, not abso- 
 lutely, to the limitation of the general plan or artistic 
 purpose. The plans or ideas of Athena or Aphrodite, 
 for examples, are, respectively, a female goddess-figure 
 presented by means of severe dignified lines and one 
 presented by means of sinuous lines for the purpose 
 of communicating quite different emotional attitudes. 
 Mathematically straight lines are, however, excluded 
 in either case, and no Aphrodite-line may enter the 
 Athena-plan without violation by the artist of his 
 freelj^ accepted limitation. Other specific limitations 
 or laws would be present, according to difference in 
 
160 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 posture, etc.; but Athena stooping down or Athena 
 in motion would still reveal the general law of her 
 nature; and the beauty of the sculpturesque idea 
 would in any case be independent of the mythological 
 or literary theme accidentally involved. 
 
 Our apprehension of colors, but particularly of musi- 
 cal tones, is pervaded with a peculiar intimacy that 
 invests them with psychic qualities hardly less cer- 
 tainly than is the case with the intonations of the 
 human voice. In my own personal experience a pure 
 color in isolation is not so satisfying as a rich color, 
 just as for practically everybody the tones of the 
 tuning-fork are not so beautiful as the rich tones of 
 the violin; whereas contrast combinations of pure 
 colors, such that one of the contrasting members some- 
 what dominates, seem beautiful. The reason seems to 
 be that the simplicity or lack of variety in absolute 
 color does not task the self sufficiently to evoke the 
 consciousness of free activity; it is in short too easy. 
 The pure color appears somewhat insipid or lacking 
 in character and does not evince its freedom until in 
 combination with other colors it is limited or has 
 opposition to overcome, as in the case of the funda- 
 mental or dominant tone of the rich color. Purple is 
 one of the most beautiful colors, if, indeed, not the 
 most beautiful one because of this fact. 
 
 The beauty of light seems similar. Not the clear, 
 bright sunlight of high noon, but the uncertain, mys- 
 terious twilights of dawn and evening appeal to us 
 most aesthetically. Pure white in pigment is not so 
 pleasing as a warm or a cool white; the latter have 
 character, that is, freedom. A piece of clear glass has 
 no freedom and individuality as compared with a 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 161 
 
 diamond, which is ahve and active; it sparkles forth 
 its freedom to us and is beautiful when the color in it 
 is subordinated to its light. Yellow and gold are pre- 
 ferred colors, I believe, for the same reason. Pure 
 black (not the rich, luminous, golden black, which 
 Tintoretto called the most beautiful color) exhibits, 
 on the other hand, no freedom; it is dead and appro- 
 priately the symbol of mourning, terror, and evil. 
 Gray in most of its shades is inactive, a balance of im- 
 pulses, and hence properly described by artists as a 
 neutral. The general effect of gray is delicacy, refine- 
 ment, and modesty. We can trace this general quality 
 of beauty, I believe, throughout the fine arts. 
 
 Music was called by Hegel the most subjective of 
 the arts, and Schopenhauer regarded it as the most 
 intimate and profound revelation of absolute reality. 
 In point of genesis perhaps the most primitive of them 
 all and in its later development surely the most per- 
 fect, the spirit of music may from one point of view be 
 regarded as the universal matrix from which the other 
 arts emerge as objectifications. Unity in variety is 
 realized in music in the harmonious system of any 
 chord; in the domination of the notes of a melody by 
 the tonic; in the mysterious identity of a triad in its 
 various positions and inversions; in modulations; to- 
 gether with the monarchical subordination of the 
 dominant and subdominant to the tonic in the moving 
 equilibrium of the piece (continually attained, contin- 
 ually lost), which regularly ends with the psychic organi- 
 zation of all the elements in the unity of the tonic. The 
 counterpart of this organization of the real work of art 
 in the consciousness of the artist, previous to external- 
 ization, is given us in an oft-quoted description of such 
 
162 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 an experience by Mozart^ — one of the few fragments 
 of the psychology of genius that we possess. Music 
 manifests to us depths of experience not yet rational- 
 ized and in this form art is perhaps closest akin to 
 religion. In its organic growth and struggling lawful 
 development from point to point a musical work 
 seems the very image of personality. 
 
 In the contemplation of architecture, as Lipps (de- 
 veloping the thought of Lotze and Friedrich Theodor 
 Vischer) well says, we find ourselves active in the 
 sturdy columns as they thrust upward to meet the 
 load of the superstructure, which must be heavy 
 enough to call forth the reaction of the pillar; other- 
 wise the effect is that of extravagant use of energy, as 
 in the massive buttresses of degenerate Gothic. If, 
 on the other hand, the columns of a structure are so 
 slender as to seem inadequate to the task imposed on 
 them by the plan of the whole to which they are 
 subordinated, we have an acute sense of aesthetic dis- 
 satisfaction, a consciousness of failure to realize func- 
 tion or purpose, maladjustment, a lack of adequate 
 freedom. This instinctive personification or "inner 
 imitation" of the pillar becomes at times so vivid in 
 the consciousness of the artist that the supporting 
 columns are externalized, somewhat extravagantly, as 
 animate forms, for example, in the animal piers of the 
 rock temples of India, the statue columns of the 
 Egyptian and the caryatids of the Greek temples, or 
 in supporting figures in such monuments as the Fon- 
 taine Bartholdi at Reuns. Similarly we strive upward 
 in the "soaring Gothic" with an exalted sense of com- 
 paratively unchecked effort in the vertical; while the 
 
 1 Compare Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 456f. 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 163 
 
 Greek temple, with its balance of opposing forces, 
 reveals the freedom of poise and repose. The massive, 
 unpierced walls of the Egyptian temple awaken in us 
 the sense of some dominating mysterious presence, 
 the sense of divinity omnipresent in Egyptian culture, 
 while the Byzantine dome or a column like that of 
 Trajan seems the very image of imposing grandeur. 
 In contrast with dwelling houses (which "being built 
 to live in and not to look upon" fail to arouse genuine 
 aesthetic feeling because lacking in freedom and uni- 
 versality and because of their emphasis on utility and 
 comfort) such public structures reveal or adumbrate 
 to us profound and significant aspects of personality, 
 quite foreign to the plane of ordinary everyday ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The natural material of artistic building is stone and 
 the architectural problem consists in the construction of 
 a shelter, while the artist realizes his freedom in 
 conformity with the laws of gravity and of the given 
 material and the selected site. It is this last condition 
 or limitation of the architect which accounts for cer- 
 tain characteristic differences in Greek and Gothic 
 structures. The shelter itself, the utilitarian phase of 
 his task, might be provided for by means of a flat 
 roof and by solid walls with almost no openings; but 
 such a building would be in aesthetic effect a prison, 
 lacking freedom and beauty, though it might possess 
 mystery and awe. Beauty is manifested inter alia 
 through the construction of numerous apertures by 
 cutting from the solid walls all the material that may 
 be removed with safety, that is, without weakening 
 the structure unduly. Freedom is, furthermore, re- 
 vealed in architecture by nicety in the determination 
 
164 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of the distance that may be spanned in safety by a 
 jBat roof, as in the Greek temple and in the Roman 
 basilica. While, however, in these cases the width of 
 the building is limited chiefly by the direct working 
 of the law of gravity, the development of the round 
 arch in the Romanesque style presents the possibility 
 of transcending this limitation. 
 
 The more powerful thrust of the heavier Roman- 
 esque vault, however, demands greater thickness in 
 the supporting walls, and this in turn precludes the 
 possibility of a sufficient number of openings for com- 
 plete aesthetic satisfaction. Attempts to circumvent 
 this difficulty by means of the pointed arch and the 
 device of the flying buttress were never more than 
 partially successful, while the disappearance of the 
 problem of the Gothic with the advent of architecture 
 in metal and artificial materials, brings special diffi- 
 culties from the opposite direction. With natural 
 stone there was never a possibility of getting too many 
 openings without weakening to a dangerous degree 
 the whole structure; the stone brought with it the law 
 in its own limitations. With the greater concentra- 
 tion of strength in small compass in the metal build- 
 ings together with the use of girders, architecture 
 becomes unrestrained and lawless. When sufficient 
 material has been used to secure the proper stability 
 and strength needed for the structure, there is the 
 ever-present danger of leaving too many openings or 
 of filling up the empty spaces arbitrarily and Ucen- 
 tiously; since guidance and limitation by the law of 
 the material itself is lacking. Furthermore, such 
 structures, though in fact actually stable and strong, 
 do not give the appearance of being so, and this is 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 165 
 
 from the point of view of aesthetics a fatal defect. 
 These are the chief causes of ugliness in buildings con- 
 structed from artificial materials. 
 
 Sculpture and painting are allied in the beginning 
 with architecture as ornamental adjuncts to the lat- 
 ter. Even in Greece, where sculpture and painting 
 come to their development probably earlier than archi- 
 tecture proper, we find them united, with the marble 
 statuary adorning the temples and also the temples 
 themselves stained or painted. Only by a gradual 
 differentiation and mutual limitation do sculpture and 
 painting become later free and independent arts. Pure 
 sculpture renounces color and the portrayal of actual 
 space, limiting itself rather strictly to representation 
 of form. Simultaneously there is an advance beyond 
 architecture in that the artist has now freed himself 
 and his art from certain embarrassing utilitarian 
 problems. Instead of the presentation symbolically 
 and merely suggestively of aspects and fragments of 
 personal experience there is in sculpture a develop- 
 ment toward completer organization and a certain 
 unification of such elements in the objective represen- 
 tative of the person. All material not necessary for 
 the expression of the sculpturesque idea is chiseled 
 carefully away, so that form and content stand in a 
 characteristic relationship of balance and poise. Free- 
 dom is shown by the artist in the selection of typical 
 or representative poses that shall manifest not merely 
 some particular action but the general capacity and 
 possibility of the body for a wide range of action, as 
 in the Discobolus. In sculpture, moreover, as Hilde- 
 brand has made clear, depth or the third dimension is 
 given to us in idea, without the necessity of actual 
 
166 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 visual accommodation as in the perception of real 
 depth in natural objects; that is, through a closer uni- 
 fication of the dimensions in the work of art attention 
 is facilitated and we experience a corresponding in- 
 crease in freedom. 
 
 In classic sculpture, where the sculpturesque prob- 
 lem consisted chiefly in the presentation of the body, 
 statues are nude or more lightly draped than in real 
 life, even with the naturally artistic Greek clothing, 
 which manifests easily the freedom of bodily move- 
 ments. Inartistic modern clothing, however, with its 
 mathematically exact lines succeeds in masking or in 
 boxing up the body to such an extent that the sculptor 
 is able to reveal freedom (with the greatest difficulty) 
 only by such disposition of the folds of coat and 
 trousers as shall show graceful free lines; by the 
 draping of national heroes with flags, etc.; and by the 
 portrayal of character in poses and particularly in 
 the lines of the face. To a certain extent the inner 
 personal life may be revealed in sculpture through the 
 structure of the eye and its socket, the brow, and in 
 the modeling and conformation of the muscles, as, for 
 example, in the meditative sculpture of Praxiteles and 
 in the emotional works of Scopas and the later Hel- 
 lenistic school. The monotonous stone and bronze 
 can, however, in general suggest merely the broader 
 aspects of personality; whereas the medium of color, 
 with its highly differentiated variations of light and 
 shade, is able to express, particularly in the eye (which 
 in sculpture is comparatively lifeless), much finer 
 differentiation of psychic life, feeling, moods, and 
 action. Painting thus marks from one point of view an 
 advance over sculpture as a direct result of its material. 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 167 
 
 Midway between sculpture and painting might be 
 placed the so-called graphic arts of etching, drawing 
 in black and white, and recently, in the hands of 
 Maskell, Demachy, Coate, Craig-Annan, Puyo, and 
 others, artistic photography. Renouncing color proper, 
 or chrome, these take for their material various inten- 
 sities of colorless light, by means of which they are 
 able to present space with considerable differentiation 
 of feeling. Their problem, like that of sculpture, is 
 chiefly one of form; and it seems rather significant in 
 this connection that certain great colorists, notably 
 Rembrandt and Whistler, have sought and found 
 under the limitations of etching expression of form, 
 voluntarily renounced by them in the field of paint- 
 ing. 
 
 Modern photography, as Sizeranne points out, has 
 become an art rivaling at its best good work in the 
 other graphic arts. In such work personality is every- 
 where in evidence in the selection of scenes, groups, 
 poses, costumes, and, above all, in the developing and 
 toning, which in ordinary photography is purely 
 mechanical. To-day the artist-photographer is able 
 to intervene in the developing, printing, enlarging, 
 and combining processes to such an extent that he 
 may secure modulations and gradations of light and 
 shade, creating at will high lights and low lights, soft- 
 ening lines, blurring and effacing unimportant details 
 and accentuating others in accordance with a given 
 plan or artistic idea, until, from one and the same 
 objective scene, several artistic pictures may be ob- 
 tained, differing widely from one another and repre- 
 senting, in spite of the fact that the process of pro- 
 duction is still rather more mechanical than in the 
 
168 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 other allied arts, not mechanism chiefly and not ec- 
 centric individuality, but personality. 
 
 Motion pictures up to date have been limited chiefly 
 to a slavish, mechanical imitation of the stage-play 
 and, in general, to a quite trivial content suited to 
 the taste of the industrial masses. Muensterberg has 
 shown, however, that a new form of art is probably 
 developing here with special possibilities of its own. 
 The material proper is the same as that of the graphic 
 arts, and when fully conscious of its peculiar possibili- 
 ties and limitations the motion picture should be able 
 to bring its special interpretation of reality in its own 
 silent material, aided perhaps by music or lyric verse, 
 and dispensing, like true painting, with the prosaic and 
 oftentimes tactless labels to the scenes. At present 
 most of the plays presented consist merely of stories 
 in telegraphic form thrown on the screen and illus- 
 trated by pictures. Lyric productions, like that by 
 Annette Kellerman in "A Daughter of the Gods," 
 represent perhaps, in spite of many quite obvious 
 defects, the most successful efforts in this general 
 field. In such works as these a greater unity might be 
 secured by appropriate lyrical transitions between the 
 scenes shown, together with emphasis on the musical 
 aspects of the verse and accompanied perhaps by 
 suitable interpretative music. In this latest sphere of 
 art there are doubtless unrealized possibilities of an 
 epic and dramatic nature; but in any case its develop- 
 ment into true art depends on its being rescued and 
 freed (by dignified screen artists like Pauline Fred- 
 erick and by some playwright of real capacity) from 
 the vulgarity and maudlin sentimentality that now in- 
 fest the films. 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 169 
 
 Painting rises into freedom in differentiation from 
 painted sculpture, carving, and tattooing, revealing 
 even in its developed form, like sculpture and the other 
 arts, the common origin and interdependence of all 
 art. Painting is sculpturesque in the case of Man- 
 tegna and Verrochio; epic in the works of Giotto; 
 lyric in Duccio, Dolci, Reni, Corot, or van der Wey- 
 den; and dramatic in Titian. In any case painting is 
 not at all concerned with the imitation of nature, 
 which is seen clearly here to be an impossibility. 
 Even in portraiture, where at first thought an ac- 
 curate imitation would seem requisite, freedom de- 
 mands an interpretative presentation of character. 
 *'Vart n'est pas une etude de la realite positive; c'est une 
 recherche de la verite ideate, ^^ the saying of George 
 Sand, is well illustrated here. 
 
 All painting, even that of landscape, serves as a 
 revelation of personality. Sometimes it is the sub- 
 jects which are the bearers of the idea, when the artist 
 in a typical Shakesperian manner effaces or loses him- 
 self in his theme, as did Velasquez and Holbein; 
 sometimes it is the artist himself, as in the case of 
 Van Dyck, who reveals to us in himself a typical char- 
 acter or a characteristic point of view. Even in a 
 landscape there is regularly some detail, now a person, 
 now an object of human creation, or some isolated 
 and emphasized natural object that arouses specific 
 human interest or intensifies the consciousness of per- 
 sonal values; while, by virtue of its coloring, toning, 
 direction of line, and composition, the whole land- 
 scape may be imbued with a specific mood or an 
 emphatic presentation of what Lanier calls "the vast 
 sweet visage of space" that brings a sense of some- 
 
170 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 thing transcendent and ineffable peculiar to this field 
 of art. It has been maintained that the chief, if not, 
 indeed, the only purpose of landscape painting, is to 
 give this intense experience of space, the objects of 
 the composition being accessory or merely subsidiary 
 to the production of this exalted consciousness, which 
 Berenson describes as "the feeling of being identified 
 with the universe — which is the very essence of the 
 religious emotion." It is interesting to note in this 
 connection that the love of landscape painting de- 
 velops pari passu with the establishment of large 
 industrial centers, whose inhabitants, cut off as they 
 are from any considerable experience of space and 
 vista, seek and find compensation for this want in 
 the works of the landscape artist. 
 
 The completest definition of aesthetic experience is 
 poetry, where we find in a sense the epitome of the 
 other arts. The material of poetry is no longer tones 
 simply, the bearers of vague, general meaning as in 
 music, but words as the vehicle of ideas. The artistic 
 value of language, contrary to the opinion that finds 
 "all words equally poetical," consists in certain felici- 
 tous combinations of vowels and consonants, fusions 
 or complications of various kinds of imagery, chro- 
 matic accent, cadence, assonance, alliteration, rime, 
 collocations of words, etc., which vary, of course, 
 from language to language and serve to render poetry 
 untranslatable even into prose of the same language. 
 The function of rime, contrary to the opinion of those 
 who regard rime as an impediment, is to free the 
 verse from the tyranny of mechanical rhythm, and 
 marks, as Lipps pointed out years ago, a difference 
 comparable with the transition from a state of society 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 171 
 
 where the individual counts for little and the law is 
 everything to a condition where law in the abstract 
 becomes subordinated to the needs and purposes of 
 the individual. Rime, when used with strictly mechan- 
 ical rhythm, stands in antithesis to the latter, pro- 
 ducing then a humorous effect, as for example in the 
 lines of Walt Mason. Rime when properly used uni- 
 fies the verses and strophes in various significant ways, 
 and by concentrating the attention on the end of the 
 verse, as a goal for the movement in it, permits more 
 freedom of substitution in the individual feet of the 
 verse than is possible in the verse of antiquity. 
 Trochees may thus take the place of iambics or even 
 of anapests, and vice versa, for the sake of logical 
 accent or movement, so that the verse gains in flexi- 
 bility and freedom of expression. Rime has also an 
 analytic and synthetic function. As it synthesizes the 
 verses into strophes by concentrating the attention 
 upon similar sounds, it analyzes the thought units 
 into elements which gain a relative independence. In 
 this way the stanza as a whole becomes at one and the 
 same time more complex and more unified. Such 
 verse, freed as it is from the comparative monotony 
 and rigidity of stricter rhythm, is more expressive of 
 personality; while for special themes like that of 
 "Thanatopsis," where the inflexibility and uniformity 
 of law needs to be emphasized, we have rhythm alone, 
 that is, blank verse. Free verse, so called, seems to be 
 an attempt to get rid of all law; in other words, it is 
 licentious in the aesthetic sense of the word. 
 
 In epic poetry the persons stand out for us in an 
 objective plastic manner, like the figures of sculpture 
 and painting; in the lyric we find again the spirit of 
 
172 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 music; while in the drama these two forms of poetry 
 are united. In the epic the artistic idea is a series of 
 heroic deeds presented not immediately as in the 
 drama, but in poetic narration as a train of historical 
 events; it is history in germ or history with particular 
 emphasis on artistic expression. The deeds portrayed 
 and interpreted are gathered, of course, from widely 
 different sources and are then exaggerated, harmon- 
 ized with one another, and fused imaginatively by 
 various authors into heroic or superhuman unities and 
 demigods. It is interesting to note in this connection 
 that the two Greek epics give us in Odysseus, the man 
 of wisdom, and in Achilles, the man of action, ideal 
 objectifications of intellect and will. The lyric is like 
 music subjective; and in this form of poetry we are 
 introduced through imaginative description to the 
 emotional sources in which overt acts in some way 
 take their origin. The lyric in its purity reveals, not 
 specific deeds, but their general possibility in the 
 private aspects of personal life. A given lyrical back- 
 ground of love and hate, joy and sorrow, etc., offers the 
 material for specification and definition in numberless 
 dramas. In the drama, finally, we find the clearest mani- 
 festation of personality in the immediate presentation 
 of a struggle of wills, rooted in the clash of conflicting 
 interests. 
 
 In comedy the struggle is either merely apparent 
 or transparently specious — a mere play; the issues are 
 never important enough to preclude their reconcilia- 
 tion; and the characters lack grandeur or are humanly 
 all too human. The typical comic figure is, in fact, a 
 kind of sham, claiming freedom and perfection until 
 unmasked by the irony of events. By the reaction of 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 173 
 
 the environment upon which he acts he is revealed as 
 more or less ridiculously weak, limited, and mechani- 
 cal; by pillorying him the artist announces his own 
 superiority to the fools these mortals be, and we laugh 
 with him in aesthetic consciousness of a freedom su- 
 perior to that of the comic figure, without raising the 
 question as to whether in the affairs of life we behave 
 much differently. 
 
 In genuine tragedy, however, vitally important 
 ideals which cannot be compromised, and uncompro- 
 mising characters as the incarnations of such ideals, 
 are involved; there is in tragedy not a mere play or 
 simple opposition of conflicting forces, but a genuine 
 antagonism to the death. The tragic character is one 
 for whom the internal law of his nature is supreme; 
 he comes (neither rightly nor wrongly, for the question 
 of poetic justice is a doubly false issue imported from 
 the field of morals) like Romeo, Othello, or Richard 
 III into inevitable and irreconcilable conflict with the 
 will of his environment. His action upon this in the 
 initial stages of the tragedy is followed in the later 
 parts by its reaction which destroys him. The tragic 
 character must die (like Turgeneff's sparrow), not in- 
 deed to satisfy poetic justice, but to satisfy causality 
 and in order that we, through the sense of his loss, 
 may come to have a proper appreciation of his real 
 value aesthetically. His willingness to die for his life- 
 purpose attests, as nothing else can, his genuineness; 
 we know then certainly that he has not been sham- 
 ming. 
 
 This is without doubt what Edgar Allan Poe had in 
 mind, when he maintained that the most artistic 
 object is a beautiful woman lying cold in death; for at 
 
174 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 such a time, because we value our possessions most 
 when we have lost them, her aesthetic value would 
 indeed become enhanced. The excellence of the hero's 
 personaHty in the tragedy is impressed upon us 
 through the fact that, though pitted against some- 
 thing stronger than the force of any isolated individual 
 will, he is yet able to struggle with it to the very end. 
 The characteristic tragic feeling is a mixed emotion, 
 consisting of joy in the contemplation of an ideally 
 free personality, limited and tempered by sorrow at 
 his loss and by awe for the superindividual power that 
 compasses his destruction. To say, as has been done, 
 that the struggle of the tragic hero must end in failure 
 is surely to measure success and failure by external, 
 apparent consequences rather than by inner purposes. 
 
 Poetry, music, and dancing were closely associated 
 in the primitive song and dance and the intimate re- 
 lationship still persists. Poetry and music in some 
 form seem to be as original and fundamental as 
 any of the arts; and their appeal to-day is perhaps 
 more general than that of other forms. For the 
 majority architecture, sculpture, and painting are far 
 from being, even in a quite legitimate sense, "frozen 
 music"; and, except in the case of highly speciaHzed 
 talent, the full appreciation of these arts probably pre- 
 supposes a certain development of taste through expe- 
 rience with poetry and music. The fundamental 
 significance of musical sense seems also to be suggested 
 by the results of recent research, according to which 
 persons specifically designated as "musical" are regu- 
 larly found to be highly gifted in other respects. 
 
 Moreover, it appears that art experience in general, 
 in spite of those who believe that "nature is more 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 175 
 
 beautiful than art," first teaches us to see the beauty 
 of nature; it is very doubtful whether beauty in the 
 world of natural objects is really discernible except 
 from the platform of liberalizing art experience. It 
 was not the savage or the rustic, neither the man in 
 the street nor the man in the laboratory, who dis- 
 covered (amid much ugliness of color, form, etc.) the 
 beauty of forest and field and stream, but poets and 
 the great landscape painters. Only the artist-genius 
 and the lover of art may detect, through the chaotic 
 presentations of the natural world, the harmoniously 
 ordered reality, the freedom at the heart of the world, 
 as did Plato and Wordsworth; and thus it is indeed 
 true that "poetry is the elder sister of philosophy," 
 without which the latter and even science itself cannot 
 exist. Art, philosophy, science, and morality are 
 never mere adjustments or simple adaptations in 
 reaction to a given environment, but transformations 
 and interpretations that regularly transcend the 
 environment. 
 
 It is perhaps the keen awareness of spontaneity in 
 his own consciousness that has called forth so often 
 from the artist -genius the emphatic but mistaken pro- 
 test that art has nothing whatever to do with rules or 
 laws. On the one hand it seems to be clear enough 
 that while all art is expression, not all expression is 
 art; but on the other it is probably above debate that 
 the perfectly correct is often far enough removed from 
 the artistic. True art, great art, is, however, never 
 capricious and licentious (in the aesthetic sense), 
 though regularly violating worn-out conventions that 
 claim absolute validity. Its aesthetic truth is, indeed, 
 its freedom, but freedom implies above all things 
 
176 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 poise and balance (not rest), being here and always 
 autonomous — voluntary self-control under law, living- 
 law, the fact of noblesse oblige. 
 
 Art works are beautiful only in so far as the artist 
 succeeds in expressing himself under the limitation of 
 general art laws, the specific conditions of a given art 
 medium and a selected artistic idea. The artist must, 
 for example, affirm the universal law of symmetry, 
 but his subjection to this must not be absolute 
 and mathematically exact. A too great regard for 
 symmetry and abstract proportion and "repose" is 
 artificial and fails to satisfy a mature taste. There is 
 even an art of the "poker-face" variety that arouses 
 disgust through its studied lack of expression. 
 
 In a thing of the natural world, such as a crystal, a 
 tree, a rose, or a lily, the most absolute realization of 
 symmetry and proportion seems satisfying aestheti- 
 cally, because it seems to manifest the exceptionally 
 free and lawful development of the given object, 
 struggling toward organization against an apparently 
 opposing environment. When it succumbs, as in the 
 gnarled and twisted tree that has been thwarted in its 
 development, we get a painful experience of the ugly 
 in nature. When it triumphs, we triumph with it. 
 We seem then to pierce the veil of phenomena and to 
 find ourselves in contact with reality to a degree 
 seldom realized in the contemplation of natural ob- 
 jects; because of lack of perspective and insight, im- 
 perfection regularly overwhelms and oppresses us in 
 the world of things. 
 
 Our delight in such organic things, however, hardly 
 seems to equal the thrill aroused by the unification 
 and organization of impulses and instincts in the 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 177 
 
 animal form; and the reality of this form, which is 
 in very truth the animal, is probably revealed less 
 clearly in the perfect "repose" of sleep or death than 
 in poised attitudes and graceful movements. Trained 
 animals, and persons like Dumas' Sapho, attract us 
 aesthetically, until we know the secret of their mechan- 
 ical activities, because we find here the illusion of 
 character and personality. A natural songster may 
 express its exuberant and joyous freedom "in profuse 
 strains of unpremeditated art" and we are delighted 
 as in the artless life of the child; but the adult human 
 singer must show seemly poise and control of his instru- 
 ment, if he is to arouse an experience of beauty. It 
 seems that aesthetic satisfaction depends upon our 
 finding reality, whether at rest or in motion, in stable 
 equilibrium with itself, such that it emphasizes itself 
 as law amid the apparently chaotic and formless, and 
 as autonomy is in the presence of automatism or 
 manifest anarchy. 
 
 The realm of beauty (of tones, of color and line, 
 of word and phrase, marble and porcelain and bronze) 
 subjects the one who enters that domain to laws that 
 are felt not as external determination but as internal 
 aesthetic obligation. Harmonies and contrasts in art 
 are beautiful when they are not absolute but free. 
 The octave is the most perfect, but not the most 
 beautiful chord; and, even in the elementary expe- 
 riences that underlie the higher combinations, the pure 
 tone of the tuning-fork and the pure colors are of 
 less value aesthetically than the rich tones of the 
 violin and the deep, rich colors. Merely technical 
 scientific terms fetter the imagination, which is stimu- 
 lated to freedom through the old, natural words rich 
 
178 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in overtones. Free-hand lines, soft or brilliant strokes 
 of the burin, and ornamentation executed with the ax 
 of the Norman mason are all of them beautiful; while 
 ruled lines, photo-engraving, and machine-made orna- 
 ments, no matter how perfect their execution, are 
 unfree and ugly. This fundamental and essential 
 quality of beauty is touched on without being ex- 
 plicitly stated in an approving criticism of Whistler's 
 etching by Hans Singer when he says: Dass es in der 
 Kunst so etwas wie eine gerade Linie ueberhaupt 
 nicht gibt, haben auch zahllose andere gefunden, und 
 haben darnach gesucht, dieser "Luege der Natur" zu 
 steuern, die Starrheit der Form zu mildern. Keiner 
 fand eine so glueckliche Loesung wie Whistler. Bei 
 scharfer Beobachtung mit der Lupe sieht man oft, wie 
 er die Form geschmeidiger macht, nicht etwa, indem 
 er die Linie zittriger fuehrt, sondem indem er sie in 
 ein System von zwei ganz nebeneinander parallel 
 laufenden Einzellinien aufloest, die sich synkopieren. 
 
 Freedom is, moreover, manifested in the selection of 
 the artistic idea capable of being incorporated in the 
 given art medium — the underlying theme, in fact, of 
 the "Laokoon." "The sensuous medium of each art,'* 
 says Walter Pater, "brings with it a special quality of 
 beauty, untranslatable into the forms of any other, an 
 order of impressions distinct in kind. Good painting 
 and sculpture attempt to present nothing that cannot 
 be manifested in color and stone without the use of a 
 label or title. Music as such is always "song without 
 words." The opera presents and develops its action 
 differently from the drama in verse; and this in turn 
 quite differently from the prose drama. Freedom is 
 also shown in a subtle manner in the treatment of the 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 179 
 
 details of the chosen artistic theme. The lines of 
 Raphael, for example, in the Sistine Madonna, though 
 more restrained than those of Murillo and Coreggio in 
 similar works, are nevertheless freer and more beau- 
 tiful, while the pictorial idea as a whole possesses a 
 dignity and divinity not found in the human, some- 
 what theatrical madonnas of the last two. If the 
 purpose of Raphael had been, furthermore, to express 
 primarily beauty of the body, as in the case of a dancer 
 or athlete, the clothing might have been omitted alto- 
 gether or so disposed, as in Sargent's charming "Car- 
 mencita," as to reveal and emphasize posture and the 
 general possibilities of free movements. Ribera's club- 
 footed boy is a sublime masterpiece, a ringing chal- 
 lenge to the ugly in nature, but it would have been 
 ugly and pathetic, as in real life, if the artist had 
 attempted to show the boy dancing or performing 
 some movement requiring dexterity of limb. "The 
 Nike of Samothrace" lives and has its very being in 
 the free movement of its drapery, but the "Discobolus'* 
 draped in any way would be intolerable. The "Lao- 
 koon" with wide open-mouth, as Lessing says, would 
 indeed have had a distorted face, but since the style 
 is the man, it would also have revealed to us a 
 certain lack of freedom in the artist and the race he 
 might represent, of which they would indeed be quite 
 unaware. In the severe lines of Pallas, as in the more 
 graceful lines of Aphrodite, we find. freedom in differ- 
 ent guises, and though both statues in their special 
 organization of parts are lawful, free, beautiful, the 
 head of one transferred to the body of the other would 
 reveal lawlessness, license, ugliness. We should have 
 the lawlessness that is seen, though in a minor degree. 
 
180 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in the tolerable incongruity of head and body in the 
 Discobolus. 
 
 The inorganic intermingling of architectural styles, 
 the unrestrained skyscraper, the squat or square build- 
 ing of our crowded streets, Gothic structures on 
 hilltops and Parthenon-hke buildings in the level plain 
 are ugly and the other fields of art teem with similar 
 aberrations. Arbitrary Klingerism, geometrical and 
 exaggerated sprawling poses in sculpture or painting; 
 glaring and flashy or timid color effects (as distin- 
 guished from skillful touches of color in subdued color 
 schemes and the free use of color by the great color- 
 ists) ; too great or too little contrast in light and shade 
 (as compared with their masterly reconciliation in 
 Rembrandt and Correggio); uncertain modeling, hard 
 lines, and extremes of impressionism; flesh like marble 
 or chalk and brutal imitations of flesh tints; emaciated 
 bodies (Cranach) and voluptuous portrayal of bodily 
 forms (Rubens and Correggio); mechanically precise 
 music, unrestrained rag-time and the abandon of jazz; 
 sing-song cloying variations that cling too closely or 
 those that depart too widely from the musical theme; 
 mechanically faithful as well as eccentric interpreta- 
 tion in playing or singing; jingle instead of real func- 
 tioning rime; vers d'esclave and more recently vers 
 licencieux (as distinguished from the vers libre that 
 great poets have regularly written); ornament for 
 ornament's sake; anachronisms and other inconsisten- 
 cies in the development of a novel's plot; ranting ac- 
 tors and ranting playwrights; snakelike movements 
 and contortions or awkwardness in gesture and gait; 
 too few or too many details: the extremes of the gro- 
 tesque and of naturalism in any field of art — these 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 181 
 
 are all of them in their effects unlovely because unfree 
 and serve merely to reemphasize the old truth, "/» 
 der Beschraenkung zeigt sich der Meister.'^ 
 
 In the study of Raphael from his earliest imitations 
 of Perugino and the Umbrian School up to the mas- 
 terpiece just mentioned we may trace a continuous 
 development in the expression of freedom (also ob- 
 servable in other great artists and schools); and a 
 comparison of the successive periods of art history 
 discloses a similar evolution. The life-quality of a 
 people or an epoch is clearly seen in its art. Whether 
 we view it in the architecture of Egypt or Assyria, 
 Oriental art is comparatively mechanical, mathemati- 
 cally perfect, conventional, and unprogressive; its chief 
 characteristic is the irresponsible, awe-inspiring force 
 of a culture that suggests, as Hegel said, "a Memnon 
 waiting for the dawn of the Greek spirit." Greek and 
 Roman art in general marks decided advances in the 
 expression of organic perfection, Roman art being, 
 however, for the most part imitative, ostentatious, 
 and unfree. In sculpture the progress is seen histori- 
 cally from Egyptian works dominated mechanically by 
 what Lange called the "law of frontality" to freedom 
 of body, head, and face in Greek art and to the sub- 
 lime expressiveness of Michelangelo; from the slavish 
 particularity of Oriental portrait statues to the free- 
 dom of types like the "Nike of Samothrace"; from 
 groups in which the composition is slavishly symmetri- 
 cal to the free grouping in the pediments and friezes of 
 the Greek temples. In music the historical develop- 
 ment is seen from simple melody through polyphony 
 to explicit harmony; from the simple harmony of the 
 octave through the fifth to the musical mastery of the 
 
182 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 third; from the musical suite and the merely mechani- 
 cal sonata to its free treatment in Beethoven, etc. 
 With respect to form there is a general progress in 
 art from rather slavish symmetry to free proportion. 
 From the psychological or psycho-physical point of 
 view we might come to see that beauty is always due 
 to an harmonious adjustment of inner relations to 
 outer relations. We might analyze and describe both 
 sets of conditions, explaining the present experience 
 by a continual reference to past experience and finding 
 the ultimate causes for the phenomena of art in cer- 
 tain prehistoric Ungs and other geniuses, who have 
 molded the aesthetic consciousness of "their tribes that 
 were blind"; we might account for their choice of art 
 medium, their subjects, and even certain details in 
 their methods of treatment through a reference to 
 physiological, social, and environmental factors of 
 various kinds; we might discover art originating ap- 
 parently in more or less awkward and realistic imita- 
 tions of nature, conceivably useful in the beginning 
 but subsequently modified and idealized into useless- 
 ness; and we might accomplish this important deter- 
 mination of facts in infinite regress without under- 
 standing the general characteristic of beauty already 
 indicated, without discovering the ground or possi- 
 bility of the beautiful object as such, and without 
 inquiring whether the aesthetic experience ends in 
 itself or has perhaps some further significance. For 
 the mere hedonist the aesthetic experience is suffi- 
 ciently accounted for by empirical description and a 
 reference to the universal desire for pleasure alleged 
 to be the chief or the sole aim of human beings. For 
 Kant, however, aesthetic experience has a fundamental 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF LIFE 183 
 
 significance first emphasized by him in the Critique of 
 the Judgment. In this work, which serves as the 
 maturest thought of the author to reinterpret the 
 earlier critiques, he points out that aesthetic sense 
 forms a kind of bridge or hyphen between theoretical 
 and practical reason. 
 
 The possibility of knowledge for Kant lies in the 
 categories when applied (not temporally but logically) 
 to the material furnished by the senses. Theoretical 
 reason is limited to objects of possible experience and 
 never reaches the ground of empirical objects, the 
 transcendental thing by itself; because this is not 
 given under the general conditions of space and time 
 and cannot be reached causally; that is, the thing by 
 itself has neither spatial nor causal predicates. For 
 theoretical reason, freedom, like God and immortality, 
 is a mere idea, incapable either of demonstration or of 
 refutation. In the Critique of Practical Eeason, how- 
 ever, Kant makes it clear that freedom is real and 
 that it constitutes the possibility of all conduct that is 
 distinctively human. The fact of moral obligation 
 reveals freedom as its necessary implication. Natural 
 laws, far from invalidating freedom, are indeed sub- 
 ordinate to it, but this subordination is not for Kant 
 a function of theoretical reason. 
 
 Now, while scientific knowledge is a computation 
 (as Hobbes put it, an addition and subtraction), there 
 are nevertheless among the objects of the phenomenal 
 world some which are not susceptible of such treat- 
 ment, namely, the living organisms. Wholes which 
 are merely aggregates may be handled by a method 
 of analysis and synthesis; but wholes, like organisms, 
 in which the parts are functions that get their meaning 
 
184 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 from the idea of the whole in which they are impKed, 
 transcend the hmits of theoretical reason or scientific 
 thinking. These objects are not mere aggregates that 
 change; they grow and develop. Whatever develops 
 must develop into something. Viewed as progressive 
 stages in evolution, instead of as objects of knowledge, 
 the phenomena in question are bearers of purpose, 
 manifesting the general character of self-determina- 
 tion. Since, now, the existence of such objects is 
 undeniable, while they are for science miracles that 
 cannot be understood theoretically and mechanically, 
 they can be thought of only as ideas and purposes. 
 They belong not to the world of science, but to the 
 intelligible world, and must be interpreted from the 
 point of view of philosophy. In this necessity the 
 subordination of nature to freedom is revealed. 
 
 Kant suggests, furthermore, as Schopenhauer em- 
 phasizes later, that the thing by itself, the transcen- 
 dental object, is in some sense identical with the 
 transcendental subject of knowledge; so that the 
 objects of the natural world that demand a teleological 
 interpretation must be considered, from the point of 
 view of the reflecting judgment, as concrete manifes- 
 tations of the will to live which develops them and 
 their parts as functions necessary to its purposes. 
 Life, then, so far as revealed in the so-called objective 
 world would abut on freedom and will; life is for 
 science and mechanical causality a limit-notion. Such 
 interpretation has, moreover, an a priori foundation in 
 aesthetic experience. 
 
 For Kant the beautiful is that which arouses a dis- 
 interested, universal, and necessary feeling of com- 
 placency or delight by virtue of its accord with the 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 185 
 
 conditions of selfhood. ^Esthetic satisfaction is a 
 purely subjective condition of free contemplation, 
 concerned only with the subjective aspect of the 
 object; but the fact that in this state we are con- 
 scious secondarily that the object is beautiful is 
 grounded in some peculiarity of the object that can 
 be understood from the point of view of science as 
 little as the life manifested in the organisms. Only in 
 aesthetic experience do we obtain the key for interpre- 
 tation of any kind, because here, and here only, do we 
 find an adequate realization of freedom and the in- 
 trinsic adaptation of elements to a common end, an 
 awareness of unity of purpose and organic perfection 
 that enables us to transcend and synthesize the dis- 
 jecta membra of the objective world. Because of 
 aesthetic sense we are able to interpret the natural 
 organisms and, indeed, the whole external world 
 teleologically. The ground of aesthetic experience 
 itself and the whole world of art (as well as that of 
 thought and conduct) is, then, for Kant as for his 
 disciple Schiller, free purposive personality. 
 
 Only in the art world do we find "things molded to 
 the heart's desire." In the contemplation of the work 
 of art we live in it, identifying ourselves with it in- 
 stinctively and sympathetically, and experiencing then 
 a completer realization of self, a more exalted sense of 
 personality than is possible on the plane of everyday 
 life with its continual compromises. The masterpiece, 
 so far as we possess it, is a subjective construction 
 whose elements are drawn from our innermost life, but 
 purified then and raised to an unwonted degree of 
 intensity that gives at times a mysterious sense of 
 potentiality and reserve force not easily accounted for 
 
186 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 by the object contemplated. "En art il ne faut pas 
 tout dire.^^ In this sense indeed "suggestiveness is the 
 height of art," involving at the least a kind of hero- 
 worship. 
 
 The characteristic delight (as distinguished from 
 mere pleasure attached to ordinary activities) of the 
 aesthetic experience is due to the instinctively realized 
 accord, the thrill of agreement, between our free 
 selves and the spirit manifested in the beautiful ob- 
 ject. We are in such experience truly at one with 
 the other and are so satisfied with the consciousness of 
 its existence and discovery that we concern ourselves 
 for the time being with it alone. The aesthetic absorp- 
 tion proceeds from the fact that for persons noth- 
 ing is so supremely fascinating and valuable as that 
 which reveals free personality, no exaltation so great 
 as that which flows from the sense of spontaneous, 
 triumphantly successful activity, perfect economy of 
 psychic force, as contrasted with the cabined, crib- 
 bed, confined striving of ordinary practical life. While 
 other experiences in their incompleteness involve a 
 reference to the past and to the future, the aesthetic 
 experience transcends such reference to time and is 
 complete in itself. Feeling is not here an end in itself 
 — it never is — but a sign or symptom of the completest 
 functioning we know. The beautiful object proceeds 
 from freedom and functions to develop freedom, a 
 freedom that is no longer a goal or a problem, but a 
 realized condition. The experience is disinterested, 
 not merely in the sense that it can be shared by others, 
 as Bain says, but in so far as in it we are freed from the 
 burden of strenuous practical and theoretical interests. 
 We do not desire to own the work of art for individual 
 
A PERSON ALISTIC VIEW OF ART 187 
 
 use and enjoyment, but are content to possess it in 
 contemplation. We are, in fact, interested and eager 
 to put it in some public place to be shared by others, 
 as one hastens to repeat a good joke without a thought 
 of its utility to us or to others. We do not in the 
 moment of aesthetic appreciation attend to its physical 
 constitution or to its technique, nor do we desire to 
 analyze it in scientific abstraction. The experience is 
 immediate and necessary in the sense that the object 
 (for example the triad c, e, g as contrasted with c, d, e) 
 delights us immediately and necessarily ; but the neces- 
 sity, like that which leads to a true conclusion in rea- 
 soning, is felt, not as hindrance and restraint, but 
 merely as limitation. While at one with the spirit of 
 the object we find ourselves in this activity more truly 
 at one with ourselves than elsewhere. We yield to the 
 influence of the beautiful object, but willingly and 
 gracefully in activity that is neither toward it nor 
 away from it but in it. 
 
 Variety is the spice of art, since it provides occasion 
 for free activity in the contemplating subject. Objec- 
 tively it reveals to us personality that is freely crea- 
 tive instead of passively mechanical, habitual, and 
 slavish. Chaotic variety, however, taxes the freedom 
 of attention beyond its capacity, revealing objectively 
 caprice and lawlessness. Ugliness means subjectively 
 the failure to cosmetize such a chaos, objectively it 
 means the awareness of such a spirit. Both beauty 
 and ugliness are expressions of life, so that, depending 
 on the grade of culture in the artist and the race of 
 which he is the representative, we have on the one 
 hand expressions of freedom; while on the other we 
 have the consciousness of a comparatively unfree 
 
188 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 spirit, expressing and even revelling in disorder, dis- 
 cord, and mere passion (which is always ugly, as Poe 
 points out in the Poetic Principle, and the cause of our 
 bondage, as Spinoza insists). Even in the represen- 
 tation of objects naturally ugly the great artist will 
 show us beauty, freeing by his creative act that which 
 in itself is chaotic, unfree, and cramped in expression. 
 
 In so-called naturalistic art we find a slavish attempt 
 to reproduce faithfully the world of phenomena. The 
 function of the artist is conceived here (in the spirit of 
 positivistic natural science of the latter half of the 
 nineteenth century) not as a *'recherche de la vSriti 
 idSale," but as an "itude de la rialite positive." From 
 this point of view art is not properly selective and 
 interpretative but merely imitative; and appreciation 
 sinks to the level of an estimate of technical skill. 
 The standard of excellence would then be that given 
 us in the alleged contest of Zeuxis and Apelles in 
 which the former deceives the birds with his picture 
 of fruit and the latter tricks the former to such an 
 extent that he takes the painted curtain for a real one 
 concealing a competing picture. This is not only a 
 modern view of art but that of Plato and probably 
 even of Aristotle, and it is, in fact, on account of his 
 theory, which, indeed, contradicts the practice of the 
 Greek artists, that Plato excludes the artist from the 
 plan of his Republic. From the point of view of 
 personalism the productions of naturalism must neces- 
 sarily receive scant consideration. 
 
 In realism art rises into freedom in the presentation 
 of significant, typical, and universal aspects of expe- 
 rience. The attitude of the artist is selective and re- 
 veals to a considerable extent free personality. Orien- 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 189 
 
 tal art, for example, gives us particularistic portraits 
 of kings victorious in battle, while Greek art shows us 
 the "Nike of Samothrace," which typifies Victory in 
 general and is freed in its treatment from the imitative 
 impulse of mere portraiture. The realist starts, like 
 Browning in the "Ring and the Book," with a theme 
 selected from the factual world and interprets and 
 modifies it creatively with the purpose of securing 
 greater unity and coherence in the resulting work of 
 art. 
 
 An idealistic treatment involves a greater subordina- 
 tion of a given subject matter to an artistic ideal and 
 though the limits (between this form of art and real- 
 ism on the one hand, and between ideahsm and the 
 grotesque on the other) are often diflScult to determine, 
 they are in general fairly well defined. The Greeks 
 and Shakespeare are, for example, reahstic in their 
 method. "There is," as has been well said, "no 
 Shakesperian point of view. We are left in the pres- 
 ence of a world of types, no one of which is preferred or 
 indorsed by the artist, that is, he does not use them as 
 vehicles to indicate his appreciation of life. The atti- 
 tude of Goethe is similar, while Schiller, Tennyson, 
 Byron, Wordsworth, Dante, and others interpret life 
 from the vantage ground of a clearly marked world- 
 view. In the extremes of the grotesque and fantastic 
 we find reality considerably distorted in absolute sub- 
 jection to some controlling ideal, as in the excesses 
 of romanticism. 
 
 Beauty is ia the first instance an actual, affective 
 state of consciousness, an act of synthesis, a feeling of 
 worth or delight in the completest realization of free- 
 dom we can know; it is not a predicate of the beautiful 
 
190 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 object except through a sort of transference in the 
 process of aesthetic judgment. In so far as it exists 
 for me both form and content of the beautiful object 
 are my own product. Its beauty is not, however, 
 subjective in the sense that it is accidental, a mere 
 "special to me." Just as nobody when uttering a 
 judgment in mathematics or physics is persuaded that 
 the judgment is true for him alone, though well aware 
 that many men are and probably always will remain 
 ignorant of these sciences, so one finds an inexpugnable 
 element in aesthetic judgment to consist in an objective 
 reference. If persons really believed in the particular- 
 ity and incommunicability of this sort of experience, 
 how, pray, could we account for the infinite pains 
 taken by artist and critic to impart to us their treas- 
 ures? Even failures, like that of Michelangelo with 
 the Brutus head, emphasize, at least in the intention, 
 this objective reference of the judgment which consti- 
 tutes its universality. 
 
 It is equally clear that, while beauty is objectively 
 grounded, it is in nowise an analytic predicate of any 
 physical thing; and none of the predicates of the 
 phenomenal world may be applied to it without pro- 
 ducing nonsense. It is in the physical world as little 
 as "happiness" in the happy brook, "utility" in the 
 useful tool, or "interest" in the object possessing in- 
 terest. It can be seen with the physical eye no more 
 than force in the perceived effects of force, or a good 
 intention in the overt act. Beauty is not red or green, 
 heavy or light, long or short; it is not to the right, in 
 the center or in the periphery of the beautiful painting, 
 nor is it the function of any or all the notes of a musi- 
 cal composition. The arrangement of elements in the 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 191 
 
 so-called beautiful object may well be the immediate 
 causal correlate of bodily movements, glandular 
 changes, etc., concomitant with kinsesthetic sensa- 
 tions in the contemplating subject; but even though 
 we should be able to reduce the aesthetic experience to 
 such sensations we should not thereby (unless sensa- 
 tions are movements) have located beauty in the 
 physical realm. We look truly here not upon the 
 things that are seen but upon the things that are 
 unseeable, "the light that never was on sea or land." 
 Beauty is not there at all, but here and beyond, this 
 and thaty not now and then, but eternal. Unity in va- 
 riety, symmetry and proportion may suffice for a 
 merely formal solution of aesthetic problems, but if we 
 seek for beauty in the concrete we can find it only in 
 the manifestations of free, purposive personality. 
 
 In a search for the possibility of the great creations 
 of art we are thrown back ultimately to a study of 
 those inspired personalities who sit closer to reality than 
 the masses of men in their day. Impelled and reinforced, 
 like the mystic, the reformer, and the martyr, by a 
 strong sense of freedom (the quod nequeo monstrare 
 et sentio tantum of which Coleridge spoke), they 
 regularly burst the bonds of political, moral, aesthetic, 
 and intellectual conventions, false to the spirit of the 
 past, and channel new paths for themselves and for 
 humanity. While in one sense the product of their 
 epoch — the highest crest of an evolutionary wave — they 
 seem in another profounder sense more than this, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously "participating," as Shelley 
 thought, "in the eternal, the infinite, and the One." 
 They, for the world movement as a whole, are like the 
 few isolated acts of free choice in the midst of mechani- 
 
192 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cal habits in the individual, and they mold both their 
 own and subsequent periods by virtue of their sublime 
 spontaneity. This is the significance of the mysterious 
 creative impulse, or Spieltrieb, by means of which the 
 genius, as Plautus said, "seeks and finds what pre- 
 viously existed nowhere." It is what both Raphael and 
 Beethoven suggest when they say that they found in 
 their own souls something they could discover in no work 
 of nature. Lanier means the same thing in his poem 
 entitled "Individuality." Back of their categorical crea- 
 tions the experience of average mortals does not go. 
 
 The psychology of genius, like the psychology of 
 instinct and feeling, reminds one of the saying of 
 Emerson that in skating over thin ice our safety lies 
 in our speed. Genius itself in its fragmentary and 
 cryptic utterances has been perhaps too prone to 
 overemphasize the "poeta nascitur non fit," as, for 
 example, when Whistler in the famous Ruskin trial 
 went so far as to assert that there are neither artistic 
 peoples nor artistic periods, though admitting that 
 some periods and peoples offer less resistance to the 
 efforts of the artist than do others. On the other 
 hand, paralleling Hegel's retort to Talleyrand that no 
 man is a hero to his valet because the valet is not a 
 hero, it is clear that we are lacking in proper first-hand 
 information, because few geniuses have attempted to 
 communicate their artistic experience to the world 
 except through their works of art. What we know is 
 obscure and fragmentary, consisting for the most part 
 in the recognition of a mysterious fact, together with 
 the enumeration of certain general characteristics. 
 Genius appears under most unexpected conditions, 
 and there is no rule for its production. Corresponding 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 193 
 
 to the special fields to which the genius devotes him- 
 self there are important and significant differences of 
 endowment, but along with these go by general agree- 
 ment certain qualities common to the class, such as 
 the possession of a prodigious memory, great emo- 
 tional capacity, extraordinary power of selective at- 
 tention and will, combined often with eccentricity of 
 various kinds and a sense of personal dignity and 
 worth amounting at times almost to conceit. Accord- 
 ing to all accounts, the genius is not merely a represen- 
 tative man, but in some sense one who speaks or 
 assumes to speak in the name of all reality. 
 
 Primarily the work of art is a free construction in 
 consciousness, an objectification or imaginative inter- 
 pretation of an exuberant, enthusiastic state of the 
 self in the case of such supermen, in some sense an 
 "inner imitation" in the presence of some natural 
 object at the start, but nevertheless free, constructive, 
 refining contemplation. Secondarily, art is a technical 
 convention for fixing and recording such states, or 
 for communicating them to others, through an appeal 
 to their imagination. The individual for whom such 
 a work of art is to exist must recreate the same for him- 
 self, guided and controlled in his experience by the 
 interpreting spirit of the art-leader, who produces the 
 externalization under the guidance of what he com- 
 monly calls his inspiration. Just as a reasoner must 
 reconstruct for himself from merely conventional signs 
 the thought of the person he would understand, so the 
 art lover must reproduce in free imaginative construc- 
 tion the real work of art in the spirit of the artist, of 
 which the externalization is never more than an im- 
 perfect and unsatisfactory representative. 
 
194 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The inartistic layman for the most part sees even 
 living things as mere aggregates, so that if asked to 
 draw or to picture to himself a familiar animal like a 
 horse, he finds (when at best he can imagine some of 
 the parts) that he cannot join them properly. He 
 has not observed how the parts connect or organize 
 themselves. The artist, on the other hand, masters 
 and synthesizes the manifold of his experience, recon- 
 ciling contradictions and seeing things organically; he 
 finds, as Coleridge saw, "the freedom and movement 
 of life in the confining form." Great artists never 
 take machines but only organisms or that which must 
 be interpreted organically for their subjects; and great 
 art creations, just because they are never mechanical 
 in their origin, can never be understood mechanically 
 (as Taine and others have thought) nor reproduced 
 mechanically by rule of thumb. Every attempt to do 
 so, whether by meistersinger and noisy huckster-poets, 
 or by imitating pupils and virtuosi who have not 
 caught the secret spirit of the master, or by the copy- 
 ist with his slavish, hesitating line and faltering color, 
 merely emphasizes by violent contrast the essential 
 nature of all true art; true art is never thus artificial. 
 
 Great art, the grand style, whether in lines, pos- 
 tures, colors, tones, words, actions, or composition, 
 manifests always one and the same spirit. Whether 
 the genius show us "what swimmeth below when the 
 tide comes in," "the light, level, and aerial illusions of 
 Italian sunsets," "the glint of light on a haystack," 
 or that which rests on the face of a madonna, he will 
 in any case present us not merely "objectified emo- 
 tion" unqualified, but typical manifestations of free- 
 dom. If he shows us joy or passion, it will never be 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 195 
 
 unrestrained and licentious, but (as in the maternal 
 love of the Sistine Madonna) idealized, rationalized, 
 shot through with law; and when he leads us to the 
 very depths of human sorrow, there, too, we shall 
 find, as in the Greek stele, Michelangelo's "Pieta," or 
 in much misunderstood "Hamlet," noble self-control, 
 autonomy, "a temperance that may give it smooth- 
 ness." Beauty is objectively, freedom of a line, of a 
 posture, a color, light and shade, a tone, a movement, 
 etc.; or freedom manifested in their combinations 
 under general and specific freely accepted law-giving 
 limitations; freedom and purification of the sensibil- 
 ity, just as truth is free-thinking under the limitations 
 of logical laws, and good conduct is action under the 
 limitation of freely accepted moral laws. 
 
 At times defective technique or faulty materials may 
 prevent an individual or an epoch from adequate mani- 
 festation of experience, leaving us the impression of 
 profundity mingled with gaucherie. On the other hand, 
 accomplished technique for technique's sake, paint for 
 paint's sake (particularly in periods of decadence lack- 
 ing in freedom and confusing the uniformity of law 
 with necessity) may revel in the obtrusive presenta- 
 tion of itself or serve to reveal an all too human or 
 even subhuman content. Blase nerves in such un- 
 healthy periods revel in emotion for emotion's sake 
 and demand the spicy, sensational, and burlesque in 
 art, as the depraved appetite of the pampered sybarite 
 the taste of putrid meats. Moreover, the corrupted 
 taste may come to seem the norm, just as through con- 
 stant association the piano out of tune may come to 
 be preferred by an originally normal ear. The great 
 masters, however, free and refine themselves (and 
 
196 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 through them their race and the epochs) in fashioning 
 the work of art (in either sense), making known 
 through an ever-difiFerentiating, ever-developing series 
 of particular externalizations the creative spirit re- 
 vealed in their innermost life, and thus bearing wit- 
 ness, consciously or unconsciously, to the universal 
 spirit of absolute reality. The world of art, taken as 
 a whole, is one gigantic example of infinite variety 
 manifesting progressively, throughout the ages, the 
 unifying, organizing spirit of freedom. In this sense 
 beauty, like the other two aspects of reality, would be 
 for us a goal until the end of time, an unfinished sen- 
 tence, although as in the "Flower in the Crannied 
 Wall," and in the realization of the good in each good 
 deed, the universal would be really immanent and living 
 in each particular. 
 
 The arrangement of the elements in the externaliza- 
 tion of the artist results in phenomenal forms express- 
 ing a real content; it reveals not merely the artist 
 himself and his epoch with various tendencies and 
 idiosyncrasies, but ultimately, at least in the case of 
 real genius, something more fundamental and univer- 
 sal. Nobody has been more persuaded of this than 
 certain great artists who have felt themselves inspired; 
 and they tell us, at times with great assurance, that 
 their works interpret merely suggestively and inade- 
 quately a vast background of inner experience but 
 vaguely adumbrated by the artist himself; and these, 
 in any case, must be our authorities of last resort. 
 ^Esthetic experience has been for them a sort of 
 ecstasy, like that described by Plato in the Phsedrus, 
 coming only at rare moments and irregularly. For 
 them, if their report be trustworthy, it has been some- 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 197 
 
 thing akin to religion and their works have been a 
 kind of language for communicating something as 
 much deeper than thought as thought itself is deeper 
 than speech. 
 
 The transcendent masterpieces of art may be, as 
 Grant Allen says, "the last link of a chain whose first 
 link began with the insect's selection of bright-hued 
 blossoms"; but they are also in all epochs, whatever 
 their subjects may happen to be, like transparencies 
 in the general veil of mystery that surrounds the race, 
 through which we gain in especially thrilling moments 
 glimpses that seem to reassure us, immediately and 
 prior to all reasoning, of our essential kinship with 
 absolute reality. We experience then, in the accord 
 between our free selves and the free spirit of the 
 universe in this or that concrete manifestation, the 
 consciousness that, even as here, in spite of the con- 
 tradictions and paradoxes of life, all's right with the 
 world as a whole. Abutting on real freedom, not on 
 caprice or blind mechanism, it may be trusted practi- 
 cally. We realize this instinctively, but when we 
 reflect upon it we may well think with Dante of an 
 influence that "inwills" us, che'ri suo voter ne invoglia. 
 We may understand too in the same spirit Goethe's 
 declaration: Wer die Kunst hat, der hat Religion^ wer 
 die Kunst nicht hat, der hahe Religion; as well as the 
 assertion of still another inspired artist that "art is 
 God's grandchild;" for art that is worthy of the name 
 is rooted in sublime personality, and personality has 
 its solid basis in freedom. 
 
 When a person speaks to us the words are nothing 
 substantial, nothing abiding; they pass swiftly while 
 the meaning remains. As the externalization of con- 
 
198 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cepts they serve to mark out and to fix for our atten- 
 tion and retention important aspects described in the 
 changing world of nature. They themselves, whether 
 spoken or written, are indeed only special arrange- 
 ments and modifications of that realm, the • latest 
 conventionalized skeletons of what were once poems 
 and (in writing derived from hieroglyphics) paintings; 
 they represent, in varying degrees of abstraction, stages 
 on the way from aesthetics to logic, summations or 
 condensations of experience, living concentrations of 
 psychic force by which we act upon the immediate 
 present. By means of these as tools we grasp in the 
 eternal becoming, truth that is, truth that it required 
 ages of human effort to discern and which without 
 these instruments would pass unnoticed by us. In 
 the practical field, too, we find in a relatively stable 
 form other instruments, "the lengthened shadows" of 
 innumerable known and unknown reformers who have 
 molded the conscience of the race. In a similar man- 
 ner the artist manipulates and organizes into typical 
 forms the elements of the world of experience, fixing 
 for himself and for us in the becoming, aspects of 
 beauty, shorthand records to remind himself and the 
 rest of us of something caught by his glance in the 
 apparently chaotic, incoherent flux. 
 
 The externalization, that is, the communication of this 
 real work of art in stone and bronze, or even in monu- 
 menta acre perennius, persists only somewhat longer 
 than the spoken word: it, too, like the artist's body, 
 his brain, his detachable tools, and the rest of the 
 constant flux, is transitory. We feel, however, that 
 Leonardo, for example, abides not merely and chiefly 
 in the works of his contemporaries, but that he must 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 199 
 
 persist as an immortal "moment" in universal history, 
 even though the bare fragment of him we now iden- 
 tify with certainty should pass beyond the recognition 
 of mankind, as has indeed happened with Apollodorus, 
 Apelles, Zeuxis, and their unknown civilized and sav- 
 age predecessors. The aesthetic truth discovered by 
 them, the true principles, by means of which new 
 syntheses of past and present beauty are here and 
 now possible, would still remain functioning in spite 
 of temporary aberrations and lapses of art-memory, 
 as the inalienable possession of men. 
 
 Art, as the organization and modification of ele- 
 ments in space and time, would be like the rest of 
 nature, "not existence but speech," while art as a 
 spiritual possession would not be in that realm any 
 more than thought exists in libraries. It would not 
 be merely the "holding of a mirror up to nature," as 
 one great realist said, but would consist, rather, in 
 finding nature itself always a mirror of the super- 
 natural. The substratum of communication would be, 
 then, for us ultimately the free World-Ground; and to 
 that extent we should agree with Malebranche that in 
 some sense all things, art works along with the rest, 
 are seen by us in the World-Ground. Art, as the most 
 immediate and human revelation of beauty, leads 
 eventually to the height from which in perspective the 
 natural world appears, notwithstanding all apparent 
 discord, imperfection, and failure, as a cosmos and in 
 some sense a work of supreme art, a theurgy and a 
 theophany. We can well agree with Walter Pater 
 that "the ideal end of Greek sculpture, as of all other 
 art, is to deal, indeed, with the deepest elements of 
 man's nature and destiny." 
 
200 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Of course the meaning is not that all this is con- 
 sciously present or is explicitly involved in the produc- 
 tion or in the contemplation of a given work of art. 
 The reactions there are surely unpremeditated. We 
 and the artist abandon reflection largely in apprecia- 
 tion. Nevertheless the judgment, it is beautiful, con- 
 tains implicitly the subjective and objective reference 
 indicated, just as the familiar impersonal judgment: 
 it snows: implies with subjective and objective refer- 
 ence the true but unfamiliar: I snow: of Emerson; he 
 himself in the "Conduct of Life" calls beauty "in its 
 largest and profoundest sense one expression for the 
 universe." 
 
 Positivistic and agnostic writers have intimated that 
 the period is perhaps not far off when art, like religion, 
 may be cast aside like a worn-out garment, and even 
 Ruskin says somewhere that he can imagine a period 
 of the future when art shall have been outgrown be- 
 cause its content will have been realized in other ways 
 by men. However that may be for the enlightened, 
 the hedonist, and the industrial, it seems in general 
 rather plain that art in some form should continue to 
 function in human life at least until the time comes 
 when "the great world-struggle of developing thought," 
 as George Eliot puts it, shall no longer be "continually 
 foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections seeking 
 a justification for love and hope"; that is, until expe- 
 rience shall have been completely rationalized. "Some- 
 times," says Bowne, "the subject matter eludes all 
 articulate thought and expression. This is particularly 
 the case with the emotional life. In setting forth this 
 deeper life of feeling and aspiration we fall back on 
 music, art, worship, and various symbolic activities 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 201 
 
 which alone serve to give voice to the dumb souls of 
 men." 
 
 The ubiquity of aesthetic judgment in popular dis- 
 tinctions like the good and the beautiful theory or 
 proof, the good life and the beautiful life, a beautiful 
 tool, a beautiful case of cancer, a beautiful stroke in 
 tennis, a beautiful play in other athletic games, etc., 
 is explained by the fundamentality of aesthetic sense 
 as the possibility of ideals in thought and conduct. 
 Back of the "will to know" and the "will to realize 
 ideals," back of all "rhythmic anticipation" of stimuli, 
 all attempts at cleanliness, comprehension, "work- 
 manship," and the like, the first manifestations of 
 living-law, in which it appears that beauty possesses 
 us rather than that we possess beauty, is the enthusi- 
 astic instinct to organize, the ordering normative 
 principle, which is Heaven's and our first law and 
 upon which all values depend. A person unfurnished 
 a priori with aesthetic sense, even supposing he could 
 think and act at all, would hardly stumble on the 
 notion of an ideal world to be realized in thought or 
 an ideal self to be realized in conduct; for theoretical 
 and practical experience, taken in abstractness, would 
 leave us impotently fumbling with the isolated details 
 of life, with no real unities and totalities, no syntheses 
 and harmonies of coexistence and sequence, no free- 
 dom of thought and action, no mastery of experience. 
 There would be no impulse toward truth for truth's 
 sake, no art of thinking; the very conception of educa- 
 tion and progress would seem to be impossible. 
 
 It is through this fundamental tendency that we 
 are stimulated to the will to "see things steadily and 
 whole," and normally, that is, except in the case of 
 
202 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the mere aesthete, the experience of art results iii a 
 return to the difficult field of theoretical and practical 
 life in a renewed effort to live artistically. Thus we 
 are enabled to transcend the empirical helium omnium 
 contra omnes and come to the consciousness of a prin- 
 ciple of solidarity in the social order to which we are 
 related organically. This would seem in a sense to 
 indicate the importance of aesthetic development, par- 
 ticularly under the aegis of democracy, to which the 
 modem world seems irrevocably committed. Art does 
 not need democracy or sectarianism, but democracy 
 and sectarianism, whatever their own opinions in the 
 matter may be, certainly need art. 
 
 It has long been a familiar commonplace that de- 
 mocracy rests in some vague way on education and 
 culture; but the danger to civilization from trained, 
 irresponsible democracy "doing as it likes," was re- 
 garded rather lightly until the imminent menace of 
 universal radicalism without ideals, with wants but 
 without desires and real purposes, startled men into 
 the insight that democracy militant and triumphant 
 must in some way be made safe for the world, unless, 
 indeed, the sequel shall "bring the old Dark Ages 
 back without the faith, without the hope." The 
 danger is all the greater because of the blunders and 
 flagrant injustice with which democracy in our own 
 country under the influence of materialistic, sensa- 
 tionalistic philosophy, utilitarian ethics, and natural- 
 istic notions of art may perhaps be justly charged. 
 
 Pragmatic "bluffing and getting by," "frenzied 
 finance," "illegal combinations in restraint of trade," 
 political corruption, "graft," inhuman conditions of 
 child labor, lynchings, "shootings," etc., have un- 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 203 
 
 doubtedly been viewed with considerably more toler- 
 ance in modem democracies than in modern mon- 
 archies, whatever may be the reasons and whatever 
 may be said theoretically of the two forms of govern- 
 ment. The citizen, in such democracies as we have 
 had, has not failed to look out for number one in a 
 sense not intended perhaps by the proverb. He has 
 too often thought of himself and his fellow men in 
 terms of mechanism, as individuals instead of as 
 persons, because his own life has lacked organic unity 
 and consistent purpose. The individual with us has 
 usually not been very keenly aware of any organic, 
 purposive relationship uniting himself and others; he 
 has not regarded society sympathetically as "himself 
 writ large"; that is, as the means for realizing the 
 highest personal good as distinguished from mere 
 personal advantage or "enlightened self-interest." He 
 fails, I believe, rather generally to attempt some 
 personal embodiment of the Platonic ideal of Dikaio- 
 sune, because he is for the most part far too busy 
 staking out superficial claims to liberty and equality 
 to bother himself overmuch about real freedom and 
 fraternity. The spirit of cooperation and good fellow- 
 ship often seen in and between European classes is 
 almost unknown with us; so that it almost seems as 
 though the leveling process and the auri sacra fames 
 had resulted not merely in "insulating the individual," 
 as Emerson said, but in isolating him. 
 
 All this is perhaps due to a fundamental lack of 
 taste and tact that might be corrected by a certain 
 emphasis on aesthetic and cultural education gen- 
 erally, conspicuous in our American life by its absence. 
 Under a form of government dependent for its control 
 
204 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and direction largely on the culture and initiative of 
 the individual it would seem that the development of 
 taste should be of supreme significance; since it should 
 bring to the members of the social body a profounder 
 consciousness of personal worth, the solid foundation 
 on which any adequate realization of true freedom 
 must surely rest. It would lead men, in general, per- 
 haps really to believe the statement of David Friedrich 
 Strauss: ''Das Menschen groesstes Kunstwerk ist der 
 Mensch."" It might lead to living harmony and a 
 genuine chivalry in the social group. 
 
 The present outlook for Western civilization hardly 
 seems so rosy as to warrant the unreserved optimism 
 displayed by many. Civilization is not yet safe; no 
 safer than it ever has been. 'Wwr der verdient sick 
 Freiheit wie das Leben, der taeglich sie erobern muss.'* 
 *'Was Du ererht von Deinen Vaetern hast, erwirh es um 
 es zu besitzen." The story of Faust and the story of 
 the talents is one which every period of civilization 
 as every individual must take to heart in order to ful- 
 fill its "contract with those who are dead and those 
 who are to be born." It is not inconceivable that 
 after a brief respite Western life should decline rapidly 
 from the temporary exaltation of the present moment 
 to a plane of crassest materialism and naturalism. It 
 may, on the contrary, rise, sooner than can now be 
 guessed, to another Renaissance — to a reincarnation 
 of the incomparable spirit of Hellas that always finds 
 men young and always keeps them so. 
 
 Whichever of these visions shall become the reality 
 may depend perhaps in a most vital way, not on the 
 mechanical efficiency of "vocational training," not 
 even on "mental discipline," but, rather, on the proper 
 
A PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF ART 205 
 
 functioning of art and culture for everybody possible 
 in the democratic programs of the immediate future. 
 Once in the days of the humanities it was universally 
 believed that only the liberal arts were occupations 
 worthy of freemen; but it is at any rate true and needs 
 to be emphasized that only liberal education of some 
 kind, "giving," as Plato intended, "to the body and 
 to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of 
 which they are capable," will develop free men. In 
 spite of unproved and one-sided assertions concerning 
 the transference or nontransference of education there 
 is one phase of the problem for which the discussions 
 are somewhat irrelevant, since it concerns something 
 not intended to be transferred but, on the contrary, to 
 remain an inalienable, living possession. Inasmuch as 
 the "completer living" for which education is alleged 
 to be a preparation is more than eating and drinking 
 and being merry with set purpose, Ovid's ancient 
 statement, ^'Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes emollit 
 mores, nee sinit esse feros," still holds its full measure 
 of truth. 
 
 When Eris at the marriage of Peleus threw in at the 
 window the famous golden apple we are told that it 
 bore the inscription, 'H /caA?) Aa/Jero). Accordingly, the 
 prize was awarded not to jealous, squabbling Hera, 
 mother of Ares, not even to versatile, intellectual 
 Glaucopis Ergane, but to Aphrodite, goddess of love, 
 beauty, and the "smiling, peaceful sea." Both the 
 inscription and the judgment seem appropriate. The 
 source of all values is indeed evil, contradiction, dis- 
 cord; but only beauty may truly possess and assimi- 
 late their fruits. 
 
VIII 
 SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 
 
 Benjamin W. Van Riper 
 
 It may be doubted that, in its original formulation, 
 the law of Identity and Contradiction was supposed 
 to carry with it any great insight either logical or 
 metaphysical. Certainly the statement that A is A 
 and is under no imaginable circumstances to be re- 
 garded as non-A, has little dramatic quality. Yet, in 
 the whole course of history, few generalizations have 
 given rise to anything like such prolonged and acri- 
 monious controversy. In the eyes of the chance ob- 
 server it seems like a labored deliverance of an obvious 
 triviality; to the Platonist or Hegelian it is not un- 
 likely to appear as very much the evidence of things 
 not seen. And whatever one's final opinion of it now, 
 it must be conceded that for many centuries the law 
 itself — even Aristotle's formulation of it — has re- 
 mained as a cardinal point of reference for the whole 
 field of abstract reflection. 
 
 There are doubtless many reasons for this long and 
 extraordinary career. Two are not far to seek. In 
 the first place, it seems to be the innermost citadel of 
 conceptual thought. The integral unity of the con- 
 cept, the inherent necessity for stability in the foci of 
 thinking, the fundamental exclusion by an idea of all 
 contradictory relationships — these read like the con- 
 stitution and by-laws of all mental life. Granted that 
 in daily life the principle is abstract and unheard-of; 
 
 206 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 207 
 
 it would certainly seem to be at least an elementary 
 consideration for any understanding of thought itself. 
 For this it would be valuable even if it never proved 
 of any direct use in the actual concrete calculations of 
 every day. 
 
 But the dialectician does not leave the law in any 
 such obscure philosophical retreat. Not a law of syl- 
 logizing merely, it generally becomes for him a dom- 
 inating fact in the processes of objective knowledge. 
 With this simple change of context it may assume a 
 most startling importance. If it be written, not 
 merely that an idea shall remain consistent with itself 
 within the narrow confines of the mind, but that 
 consistency is the most inescapable requirement in the 
 acquisition of knowledge — that two rationally contra- 
 dictory statements cannot both be true — one appears 
 to stand in the very presence of Absolute legislation 
 itself. By what transcendent right, one is inclined to 
 ask, does a dry and abstract rule of thinking assume 
 to say what may or may not he in the infinite world 
 outside of and beyond the thinking mind.^^ How may 
 it presume to set limits to the antecedent alternatives 
 of creation, eliminating even from the realm of the 
 possible everything that fails to pass the censorship 
 of its criterion of logical coherence? Philosophers 
 were not slow to see the sweep and pretension of such 
 acclaim, and so, long before Kant announced the syn- 
 thetic activity of the mind in the process of knowl- 
 edge and constructed his celebrated table of categories, 
 the authority of the understanding to lay down at 
 least one "condition of all possible experience" had 
 already been more than once acknowledged — the con- 
 dition of noncontradiction. 
 
208 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 To tlie taunt that so vague a generalization is either 
 tautologous or fanciful, the traditional dialectician has 
 a quick reply. This law, in spite of its seeming aridity, 
 may easily be seen to be the constant though tacit 
 reference of our most concrete thinking and the one 
 thing of which the average man is absolutely certain. 
 He may not know which of two witnesses is telling the 
 truth, but he does know that, if their statements are 
 logically contradictory, one at least must be false. The 
 scientist likewise accepts it. He, indeed, may be 
 open-minded where the average man is not. Black 
 swans, birds with vertebrated tails, gill-slits in human 
 throats, mountaintops made of sea shells, canals on 
 Mars, degradation of chemical elements, space bent 
 through a fourth dimension, even telepathy — there is 
 apparently no limit to his mental hospitality. He 
 knows the danger of declaring anything impossible 
 ante rem. But he too becomes instantly dogmatic in 
 face of logical contradiction. Tell him of a breakdown 
 of the law of gravitation and the scientist is glad to 
 receive and inspect the evidence; tell him that a circle 
 and a square have been discovered that are of exactly 
 the same area and he laughs you out of court. That 
 can be shown to involve a logical contradiction, and 
 not the most cogent evidence of the senses may pre- 
 vail against it. Once dispense with this criterion and 
 admit that two logically contradictory judgments can 
 both be true, and experience becomes an indiscrim- 
 inate chaos; assert it, and knowledge begins to shape 
 itself into manageable order. So it would appear that 
 this highly rarefied and desiccated abumbration of 
 formal logic is, after all, a very practical and indis- 
 pensable rule of procedure. It thus turns out that 
 
 I 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 209 
 
 the statement "A is A," when rendered with all its 
 variations, is an interesting and even portentous 
 assertion. 
 
 While, from the assumption that two contradictory 
 statements cannot both be true, it is possible, as we 
 saw above, to launch at once upon the dialectic of 
 idealism, the more common route is through the con- 
 cept of the knowability of things. All conceptual 
 dealing with the world assumes, so the argument runs, 
 that knowledge is possible, and from the fact that 
 knowledge is possible one may finally reach the con- 
 clusion that the outer world is in some sense a thought 
 product, or is "cast in the molds of thought." What- 
 ever be the force of this deduction, better known as 
 the epistemological argument, it is mentioned in this 
 connection only to remark that it is essentially the 
 same as the objective reading of the principle of non- 
 contradiction. If it be assumed that the detection of 
 inherent contradiction is what is meant by incon- 
 ceivability, then from the statement that the incon- 
 ceivable is not true one may infer the obverted 
 converse that the true is conceivable — which is to say 
 that the world is amenable to thought, or that knowl- 
 edge is possible. This has become the major premise 
 of more than one philosophy. The object of what 
 immediately follows is to inquire more in detail (1) to 
 just what degree the principle of identity and con- 
 tradiction is an a priori principle of thought and what 
 further may be involved in it; and (2) as to what, 
 either in this connection or in isolation, is to be under- 
 stood by, or inferred from, the postulate of the possi- 
 bility of knowledge. 
 
210 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 One thing may be acknowledged in advance. If we 
 had things on one side and thought on the other whose 
 function it was to penetrate and know the things; and 
 if thought apprehended or comprehended those things 
 only in terms of ideas which were essentially the pro- 
 duct and creatures of the thinking subject; and if in 
 relation to each other these ideas were possessed of 
 certain intrinsic qualities known as mutual compati- 
 bility or consistency, and contradiction, in virtue of 
 which the mind could categorically permit or deny 
 certain combinations of predicates from any real sub- 
 ject qua real, then, certainly, thought processes might 
 at once be taken as a prototype for the philosophical 
 understanding of the world. To be specific: The 
 judgment "S is P" professes to describe a certain 
 reality, "A," which may or may not be named by the 
 grammatical subject, "S." The judgment "S is P" is 
 either true or false of "A," and it is evident that the 
 ground of this relationship must be either *'A" itself 
 or something that may, without loss or gain or modi- 
 fication, be substituted for "A." And so, if there are 
 purely mental qualities of ideas — such as consistency 
 and contradiction — that can of themselves to any 
 degree mark the judgment as true or false, then those 
 qualities must be epistemological equivalents (in the 
 sense that the one may legitimately and validly be 
 substituted for the other) of some assignable proper- 
 ties of the reality in question, "A." In so far, that is 
 to say, as the ideas "S" and "P" have about them 
 inherently logical marks that determine to any extent 
 the truth or falsity of the judgment "S is P," then to 
 just that extent is "A" built on a framework of logical 
 laws. This would be the epistemological argument in 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 211 
 
 an irrefragible form, since it would require as an 
 alternative either the condemnation of knowledge as 
 a whole (or at least of that part of it which is logical 
 in character), or the acknowledgment of a Reality in 
 which mental principles are structural. 
 
 This conclusion, however, hangs from the combina- 
 tion of "if's" mentioned above. It is impossible here 
 to discuss all of those conditions. It is the third that 
 must for the present monopolize our attention. Does 
 the law of identity and noncontradiction refer to an 
 inherently logical disposition of ideas, or does it only 
 report an objective and empirical necessity in dealing 
 conceptually with things themselves? This paper is 
 dominated by the opinion that the latter is the case. 
 
 Doubtless it is a vicious and, in the long run, impos- 
 sible theoretical project to draw a clear and distinct 
 line between subject and object, between the mind 
 and the things it knows. Yet certainly for practical 
 purposes it can be done, and all traditional discussion 
 of logical laws apart from things presupposes it. 
 Doubtless reasoning is never rigidly formal. Yet, in 
 so far as its processes can be described in abstraction 
 from their cognitive content itself, the question may 
 fairly be raised whether any given principles find their 
 locus primarily in the noetic processes as such or in 
 the objective field of intellection. 
 
 It probably would be admitted that traditionally 
 the laws of identity and noncontradiction (and their 
 correlate of excluded middle) have been regarded and 
 relied upon as primarily mental principles. The theory 
 of the concept as Socrates sketched it and as Plato 
 elaborated it was the basis of Aristotle's theory of 
 judgment and inference. To see how direct and nat- 
 
212 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ural this sequence was one has only to try to imagine 
 what the first formulations of logic might have been 
 had the original doctrine of the concept been along 
 the lines, say, of James' account! It hardly seems 
 probable that in that case there would have devel- 
 oped a logic in which the syllogism was basal and in 
 which the laws of identity and noncontradiction could 
 express the fundamental presuppositions of ratiocina- 
 tion. But the original theory of reasoning did grow 
 out of a view of concepts as fixed metaphysical and 
 intellectual entities the operation of which would re- 
 quire, as logical axioms, just those laws of thought as 
 Aristotle stated them. 
 
 It has always been difficult, however, to confine 
 these laws to the field of thought, or to make them 
 axiomatic. As an illustration of this ambiguity, inter- 
 est naturally attaches to Mr. Bradley's account, 
 especially in view of his well-known theory of Reality 
 and Appearance. 
 
 The law of identity he has stated in two more or 
 less distinct ways; we shall consider first the more 
 striking view of the matter. As applied to proposi- 
 tions he makes it to mean *'Once true always true."^ 
 This, indeed, will, as he says, "seem a false statement." 
 If it is not a false statement, it is because the field of 
 truth has been enormously restricted in comparison 
 with ordinary usage. He himself points out that a 
 merely singular judgment, such as "I have a tooth- 
 ache," could not possibly be true on this theory. One 
 may grant that we are occasionally confronted with a 
 vivid and overwhelming conviction of the validity of 
 such a proposition; but as a logical proposition it fails 
 
 ^ Principles of Logic, p. 133. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 213 
 
 by default. It is a fragment of a "this," torn from a 
 context in separation from which it can be neither 
 true nor real, and, while inadequate to the present, 
 it does not even make any pretensions of transcending 
 the present to give expression to a general truth. 
 Such a statement is therefore, in Mr. Bradley's view, 
 caught between the upper and the nether millstones 
 and has practically no value at all as truth. 
 
 Ordinary universals, though always hypothetical, do 
 aim to assert of reality a quality by virtue of which, 
 when A is given, B always follows. While this is 
 highly abstract, it still meets much more successfully 
 the demands of the law of identity as Mr. Bradley 
 understands it, and so is more nearly true. "The real 
 axiom of identity is this: What is true in one context 
 is true in another. Or, if any truth is stated so that a 
 change in events will make it false, then it is not a 
 genuine truth at all."^ Obviously, nothing but a 
 highly abstract universal could begin to approach this 
 ideal of identity. Incidentally, Mr. Bradley mentions 
 no examples of this genuine sort of truth. The vicissi- 
 tude of daily life, taken along with the all-inclusive 
 drift of cosmic evolution, renders such an illustration 
 extremely diflScult of discovery and hazardous of 
 formulation. 
 
 When this view of identity is taken in conjunction 
 with the above-mentioned view of singular judgments 
 on the one hand, and that of the identity of indiscern- 
 ibles (which he accepts) on the other, the result is 
 startling. Singular judgments, as we saw, are all 
 stamped as ultimately false because of their mutila- 
 tion in being isolated from their context or conditions 
 
 2 Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 133. 
 
214 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 which, however much they are abstracted from, are 
 always organically relevant to the judgment in ques- 
 tion. But the law of identity, in the form of "What 
 is true in one context is true in another," deliberately 
 ignores, and even denies, the inevitable influence and 
 relevancy of the context, which to do was acknowl- 
 edged to be the unpardonable and blasting sin of all 
 singular judgments. In other words, the ideal of 
 truth is absolute identity through difference; but since 
 no element of meaning or reality ever is absolutely 
 independent of its context, the ideal of absolute truth 
 is a logically unrealizable one. This is not pointed 
 out as a startling refutation of Mr. Bradley's tlieory; 
 rather it is a consequence of his theory which he him- 
 self draws in the "Appearance and Reality," where 
 all thought, because of this very discrepancy, is set 
 down as appearance. The present purpose has been 
 to make it clear that, if the above a priori formulation 
 of the law of identity be adopted, the result is a theory 
 of truth that condemns, not merely all existing judg- 
 ments, but all possible ones, to the graduated limbo 
 of varying degrees of falsehood. 
 
 And tliis is the outcome even if the law as stated 
 be accepted at its face value. But it is by no means 
 apparent that it should be so accepted as a law of 
 thought. A law of thought might be expected to 
 reveal some distinguishing mode of the mind's ac- 
 tivity; the formula in question sets up an ideal of 
 validity to be sought for in the finished product of 
 the thought process. So, even apart from the intrinsic 
 unattainability of this ideal, it is doubtful that, if it 
 did exhaust the law of identity, it could be regarded 
 as an elemental law of thought at all. If anything like 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 215 
 
 a law, it is a law of truth — of a type of relation be- 
 tween the thinking subject and the object thought 
 about. And if, in the above form, it were offered as a 
 law of thought, it would possess the doubtful virtue 
 of defining the thought activity in tenns of one of its 
 own derivatives, namely, truth. But perhaps these 
 are minor matters. The essential point in all this is 
 that in this formulation of the principle of identity we 
 have, not a fundamental necessity nor an elemental 
 modus operandi of the thought process as such; and 
 whatever it be, other than that, need not concern us 
 here. 
 
 In his chapter on "The Two Conditions of Infer- 
 ence" Mr. Bradley gives us a slightly different view 
 of the law that does at the start locate it quite specifi- 
 cally in the thought process. If, from "M is P" and 
 **S is M," we are validly to conclude that *'S is P," 
 "M" must be identical, not merely similar, in the two 
 premises. "The axiom may be monstrous or again it 
 may be true, but at least one thing is beyond all 
 doubt, that it is the indispensable basis of reasoning. 
 It may be false metaphysically, but there is no single 
 inference you possibly can make but assumes its 
 validity at every step."^ But with this too there must 
 be coupled the familiar proviso that "an identity that 
 is not a synthesis of differences is plainly inert and 
 utterly useless."^ Which is to say that, in the world 
 of thought, as in the proper realm of any other ap- 
 pearance, we are aware of converging lines that point 
 into a realm of perfection where the appearance itself 
 would cease entirely to exist. 
 
 ' Principles of Logic, p. 264. 
 * Ibid., p. 263. 
 
216 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 But that is not the chief difficulty here. The main 
 question still is the degree to which this presupposi- 
 tion of all inference is a law of thought. Is it neces- 
 sary, in other words, that "M" be identical as "M" — 
 as the middle term in the syllogism — or is the primary 
 necessity merely that it shall refer to an identical en- 
 tity in the world? It is certainly true that if we knew 
 on good authority that, while the concept "M" had 
 remained identical, the entity designated by it had 
 undergone material change, the most regular and 
 formally faultless inference would be immediately re- 
 pudiated. If, on the other hand, the concept "M'* 
 changed in the mind of the reasoner, in any other 
 respect than that which had led to the judgments 
 "M is P" and "S is M," and if at the same time it 
 were discovered that the objects referred to were un- 
 altered — at least in the essential relation of "M" to 
 "S" and "P" — the validity of the inference would be 
 unharmed. That, in order to reason certain ways 
 about objects, certain assumptions must be made 
 about them, is surely no more concerned with the 
 reasoning than with the objects reasoned about. If 
 you are going to conclude, from *'M is P" and "S is 
 M," that "S is P," you must assume that the terms 
 involved remain essentially identical. If you are going 
 to reason from a nest of eggs to a flock of birds, you 
 must assume that the entities involved are living 
 things. Nobody would regard the latter as a law of 
 thought; it is an empirical generalization from objec- 
 tive facts; but just on that account it imposes ines- 
 capable restrictions and responsibilities on the thought 
 that deals with them. Down to this point no reason 
 has been shown why the other law should not be 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 217 
 
 understood in a similar way and regarded as having a 
 similar — though broader — empirical origin and signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Thought we understand to be a way of dealing with 
 reality, and for its operation a certain dependableness 
 seems to be necessary in the reality dealt with. If the 
 world were merely an enormously exaggerated kaleido- 
 scope, thought would doubtless fail of fruitful results. 
 It requires a moderate degree of identity, just as a 
 pair of ice tongs requires a relative persistence of 
 rigidity and weight in the ice. If ice were in the habit 
 of turning without warning into electric charges or 
 volcanic explosions, ice tongs would certainly lose 
 their prehensile utility. But too much identity would 
 be just as fatal. If the cake of ice did not change at 
 all, not only would there never have been the present 
 use for ice tongs, but their mechanical utility would 
 have been in principle impossible. The bite of the 
 tongs depends upon two things: the relative persist- 
 ence of the ice as ice, and a sufficient capacity for 
 change to let the tongs sink in. In the same way, 
 while thinking requires a field of reference of a fair 
 degree of stability, it also might have too much iden- 
 tity! If it became apparent, for instance, that the 
 objective world had been stricken into total rigidity 
 by a kind of cosmic paralysis, or if all existing con- 
 cepts were suddenly congealed into standardized 
 thoughts that would never change again, certainly all 
 the occasion and character of thought would be gone. 
 Just as the process of carving marble consists partly 
 in a continuous repair of tools, so the action of intel- 
 ligence on its world consists always in a relative remak- 
 ing of itself in addition to its objective achievements. 
 
218 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 All such effective interaction would be destroyed if the 
 law of identity were regarded as an a priori necessity 
 and applied with legalistic severity to concepts and to 
 the objects of their reference. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the law be interpreted in the 
 relative and empirical way just outlined, its service- 
 ability as a major premise for the epistemological argu- 
 ment would, of course, disappear, since the force of 
 that argument depends upon that law's being of itself 
 and in its first intention a fact of the mind. Only as a 
 mental law in the latter sense could it be held to put 
 upon the very content of knowledge the indelible 
 stamp and superscription of the mind, and to require 
 in consequence a mental structure of reality on pain 
 of sacrificing the validity of knowledge were reality 
 otherwise. 
 
 The law of noncontradiction is ordinarily stated in 
 one of two ways: (a) Logically contradictory predi- 
 cates may not validly be asserted of the same subject; 
 or (b) two contradictory judgments cannot both be 
 true. These, however, amount to the same thing, 
 since two judgments could not contradict unless they 
 both referred ultimately to the same entity or subject. 
 We may not, then, ascribe logically inconsistent predi- 
 cates to the same subject without subverting the 
 whole knowing process. This, in other words, is a 
 law of thought to which the objective world, in so 
 far as it is to be accepted as knowable, must conform. 
 And with this there begins a familiar dialectic. 
 
 Obviously, the crux of the whole matter is the dis- 
 covery and ordering of the incompatible predicates. 
 Simple cues from the structure of words will not help 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 219 
 
 us. Dr. E. E. Southard once noticed with surprise that 
 to "ravel" a knitted object, and to "unravel" it, meant 
 precisely the same thing. The housemaid "dusts" the 
 furniture; to "undust" it would be an identical per- 
 formance. "Valuable" and "invaluable" are not con- 
 tradictories nor even opposites. If there be logical 
 marks of consistency and inconsistency, they, at any 
 rate, are not reflected in any dependable way in the 
 form of words. 
 
 Unquestionably, there are many pairs of words that 
 are divergent and opposite, not in mere form but in 
 meaning. This fact is so conspicuous that Heraclitus 
 could think of these dichotomies as fundamental to 
 the very nature of being itself. Aristotle did much 
 the same thing, at least in the field of ethics. But the 
 trouble is these opposites do not stay put. Whether 
 any two shall be regarded as really incompatible and 
 as contradictory to each other is always an empirical 
 matter and depends upon the thing of which they are 
 asserted and the sense in which they are regarded as 
 modifying or qualifying it. Can the same thing be 
 both round and square .^^ A plain area cannot be, but 
 a cylinder can if it be looked at from two certain 
 points of view. "Dead" and "alive" are mutually 
 exclusive enough in human society, but as applied to 
 a dry seed the case is not so clear. The argument gen- 
 erally ends with, "Of course, in a certain sense, one 
 may say — " etc., and that is just the point. Professor 
 James once remarked that there was a sense in which 
 not even the arithmetical laws of addition and multi- 
 plication would hold — for drops of quicksilver, for in- 
 stance, or for rabbits! Can a thing be both large and 
 small .f* It is an ancient paradox that a tall Esquimo 
 
220 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 may be a short man. Are not straight and curved 
 lines absolute opposites? It is perfectly allowable in 
 mathematics to regard a straight line as a curve — as 
 a circle, for instance, of infinite radius.^ Can the same 
 person be both happy and unhappy? In the same sense 
 and for the same identical causes, perhaps not. But ask 
 a mother who wears a golden star whether she was happy 
 or unhappy on Victory Day. She will probably answer 
 that she was both ! Are "like"and "unlike" logically con- 
 tradictory terms. f^ It is a familiar paradox that no two 
 entities could possibly be compared which were not in 
 some degree both like and unlike. It would probably 
 be impossible to mention any two so-called opposite 
 terms about which some such qualifications would not 
 have to be recognized. 
 
 The more such points are raised, the more evident it 
 becomes that without specific objectification in some- 
 thing actual and without definition of the predicates 
 with reference to both the substantive and the con- 
 text in which the terms are applied, these questions 
 cannot be answered. When taken in complete abstrac- 
 tion from empirical particulars attributes lose the pur- 
 chase that is necessary to offset or displace each other. 
 The two predicates do not, in these circumstances, 
 come to quarrel, because they have nothing to quarrel 
 about or fight over. The only opposites that are inher- 
 ently — in and of themselves — contradictory are the 
 completely formal pairs "A" and "non-A," in which 
 
 5 It is interesting that between straight and curved there may also 
 be qualitatively intermediate terms. Consider (a) a line straight with 
 reference to the three axes of our space but curved with reference to a 
 coordinate axis in the fourth dimension; or (6) a line straight with 
 regard to all given axes of space, but drawn in a space which is itself 
 curved, etc. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 221 
 
 *'non-A" designates no assignable content of reality 
 in this world or the next, but stands only for a denial 
 which, as a psychological act, is the opposite of affir- 
 mation. In other words, the only case in which two 
 predicates may be seen in an a-priori and purely 
 logical sense to be contradictory is where there are 
 really no two predicates at all, but only one which 
 submits to the mental alternative of assertion or 
 denial. All other cases are either obviously empirical 
 — or beg the question. 
 
 Perhaps it goes without saying too that logic, even 
 the logic of contradiction, must adjust itself somehow 
 to the facts of individual or differential psychology. 
 So long as there was "The Human Mind" which an 
 organism either did or did not possess, so long as 
 reason was a homogeneous principle like the Logos, 
 the law of contradiction could be a simple, ultimate, 
 and equally homogeneous principle of the structure of 
 the mind. But the case is different when it is con- 
 ceded that probably no two minds are alike either in 
 content or in structure, when no two authorities can 
 agree as to what an absolutely normal mind would be, 
 and when it is presumptuous for anyone to claim that 
 such a sample exists in real life at all. When, for 
 example, one says that an "A-XY" is a contradiction 
 in terms, that must be taken to mean: "Granting that 
 consciousness as such has no immediate insight into 
 the compatibility of real predicates, I am still con- 
 vinced that, since facts must strike your mind approxi- 
 mately as they do mine, you, if you had before you 
 the evidence that I can present, would be unable to 
 believe in the existence of an *A' that was both *X' 
 and 'Y.'" And not only does this raise Mill's ques- 
 
222 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tion as to whether contradiction is a fact of content 
 or attitude, but one is also bound to acknowledge that 
 however much evidence may seem to warrant the re- 
 garding of these ideas as incompatible, it is always 
 abstractly possible for a mass of new evidence to come 
 to light that would quite harmonize them. Even 
 then, one would be absolutely certain that another 
 mind would draw the same conclusion only if it were 
 antecedently known that the subjective dispositions 
 and objective content of the other mind were identical 
 with one's own. While, in other words, it might be 
 possible to state a law of contradiction in abstraction 
 from personal variations, it would be entirely impos- 
 sible to apply it, to depend upon it with confidence, 
 without taking them into account. 
 
 Mr. Bradley's treatment of the law of noncontra- 
 diction comes as a surprise after his highly abstract 
 interpretation of the law of identity. Having stated 
 the latter as an ideal of logical immutability which few 
 judgments aspire to and none achieve (and which is 
 therefore never, as such, exemplified in experience), 
 the principle of noncontradiction is declared to be 
 purely an empirical matter. "There is no logical 
 principle which will tell us what qualities are really 
 disparate."^ "In the nature of things (this is what it 
 all comes to) there are certain elements which either 
 cannot be conjoined at all, or cannot be conjoined in 
 some special way; and the nature of things must be 
 respected by logic. "^ This statement of the thoroughly 
 empirical and objective character of the relation of 
 logical contradictoriness is especially valuable as com- 
 
 * Principles of Logic, p. 136. 
 7 Ibid., p. 137. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 223 
 
 ing from the present monarch of philosophical abso- 
 lutism. 
 
 Once more, at the risk of irrelevance, we may notice 
 the peculiar relation of this account to Mr. Bradley's 
 other views. "If we wish to show that this axiom is 
 merely the other side of the Law of Identity, we may 
 state it thus, 'Truth is unchangeable, and, as dis- 
 parate assertions alter one another, they cannot be 
 true.'"^ But, as he has developed them, the two 
 halves of this statement are not coordinate either in 
 quality or in origin. The first is an ideal set up quite 
 antecedent to and independent of the deliverances of 
 experience; the noncontradiction half of it rests en- 
 tirely upon the relationships found in experience. In 
 other words, the law of identity involves no need of 
 reading experience content-wise ; the second is mean- 
 ingless without such reading. Certainly, to say that 
 two contradictory assertions cannot both be true does 
 seem, if taken by itself, to be as a priori as the Brad- 
 ley an concept of identity. The disillusionment comes 
 when it is discovered that, apart from the profound 
 impossibility of the simultaneous assertion and denial 
 of an identical predicate, the only conceivable way of 
 determining whether two assertions are contradictory 
 is to find out beforehand whether they can both be 
 true! No such induction as that could be said to be 
 logically antecedent to the law of identity as he stated 
 it. Accepting, then, his statement of the principle of 
 noncontradiction, it is sufficient to have pointed out 
 that it is anything but the simple reverse of his lofty 
 formulation of the principle of identity. 
 
 In view of Mr. Bradley's well-known Criterion of 
 
 ^ Principles of Logic, p. 137. 
 
224 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Reality, it is not surprising that he distinguishes two 
 kinds of logical disparity^ — the concrete disparity which 
 does, and the dialectical disparity which does not, 
 cancel the possibility of the thing to which the oppos- 
 ing predicates are attributed. If this distinction de- 
 pended upon the mere assertion that one is taken 
 from the realm of daily life and the other from the 
 charmed field of metaphysics where ordinary laws 
 break down (and no remark is better calculated to 
 lead to disorderly conduct in a philosophical discus- 
 sion) — if that alone were the distinction, the dialectical 
 method would, indeed, be saved at the expense of its 
 self-respect. But our attention is called to the fact 
 that, while concretely there are opposites that never 
 are conjoined and apparently cannot be (and to re- 
 spect which is the principle of noncontradiction itself), 
 the dialectical method in metaphysics builds upon 
 disparates that not only may be, but always are, con- 
 joined in the same reality.^ In the one case you may 
 choose between A and B, but never may have both. 
 In the other case you not only must acknowledge 
 both A and B while recognizing their disparity, but 
 you find upon reflection that the A taken alone re- 
 solves into Ai and B„ the Ai into A^ and B,, and so on 
 infinitely. For instance, when one tries to under- 
 stand the objective reality of terms and relations, the 
 terms themselves turn out to be made up of terms in 
 relation, and the relations also to be nests of related 
 terms. Such a case differs from ordinary logical oppo- 
 sition in that the disparate terms not only oppose but 
 also imply each other. 
 Our concern here is not, of course, with the reality 
 
 ^ Principles of Logic, pp. 137-142. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 225 
 
 of the dialectical contradictions nor with the question 
 as to whether they finally are reconciled with the law 
 of noncontradiction. We are dealing with the con- 
 crete opposites which, under that second law, do 
 exclude each other. And since the distinction just 
 referred to does involve a fundamental difference in 
 the two types of disparity, the empirical concreteness 
 of the ordinary rule of noncontradiction may be taken 
 as adequately protected in theory. And that is the 
 sole apology for mentioning the subject. It would at 
 least be plausible to claim that Mr. Bradley's con- 
 struction of dialectical contradictories in the Princi- 
 'ples of Logic, and his solution of their mystery by a 
 kind of transcendental empiricism, unquestionably 
 does take at least one of the props from the support of 
 the Absolute. But that point would be clearly irrele- 
 vant. 
 
 One of the most interesting historical discussions of 
 the question of contradiction was the controversy on 
 this subject between Herbert Spencer and John Stuart 
 Mill. The former had set it down that the most ulti- 
 mate proof of the truth of a proposition was the incon- 
 ceivability of its opposite. To which Mill replied that, 
 since most of the fundamental scientific doctrines of 
 modern times had at some time or other in the past 
 seemed preposterous and inconceivable, it was fair to 
 suppose that our present inconceivables might some 
 day similarly be regarded as true. Among such in- 
 conceivables Spencer had explicitly mentioned the 
 inconceivableness of the mvalidity of the syllogism or 
 (what comes to the same thing) of the simultaneous 
 validity of contradictory statements. In insisting that 
 inconceivableness does not prove a statement false, 
 
226 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Mill was taking the same position that he had taken 
 as against Whewell and Sir William Hamilton; and 
 this position roughly was as follows: 
 
 1. Axioms are generalizations from experience. It 
 is because we have had every reason for believing the 
 axiom that the denial of it seems inconceivable (that 
 is, incredible) to us. But "I maintain,'* he says, "that 
 uniformity of past experience is very far from being 
 universally a criterion of truth. But, secondly, incon- 
 ceivableness is still farther from being a test, even of 
 that test."io 
 
 2. When he speaks of contradictories, he refers to 
 the propositions regularly so regarded in formal logic. 
 "An affirmative assertion and its negative are not two 
 independent assertions, connected with each other only 
 as mutually incompatible. The negative proposition as- 
 serts nothing but the falsity of the affirmative." That 
 these cannot both be true he considers to be, "like 
 other axioms, one of our first and most familiar gen- 
 eralizations from experience. The original foundation 
 of it I take to be, that belief and disbelief are two 
 different mental states, excluding one another."" 
 
 These last two paragraphs, with the exception of 
 the last sentence in each, are entirely in harmony with 
 all the foregoing. Even logical laws turn out to be 
 simply our "most familiar generalizations from expe- 
 rience." It then becomes of interest to find out what 
 he regards as, in the last analysis, the present status — 
 perhaps one should say locus — of these laws, and what 
 their sanction. 
 
 We have seen throughout that contradiction may 
 
 '« Mill's Logic, Eight Edition, book ii, chapter vii, p. 2. 
 " Book ii, chapter vii, p. 5. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 227 
 
 be regarded in two ways — as the objective existence 
 of incompatible predicates, or the formal sort of con- 
 tradiction as found in the assertion and denial of the 
 same predicate. These two meanings Mill very care- 
 fully distinguishes. But it is easier to make a distinc- 
 tion than to accord it scrupulous observance. When, 
 for instance, it is said that the principle of noncontra- 
 diction is simply a very familiar generalization from 
 experience, one gets the impression that it is the rela- 
 tion of objective incompatibles that is in question. 
 This is even more evidently the case in a remark in 
 the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. 
 The latter had insisted upon applying the three laws 
 rigorously to his field of inscrutable noumena. To 
 which Mill replies: "Now, in respect to phenomenal 
 attributes, no one denies the three 'Fundamental 
 Laws' to be universally true. Since, then, they are 
 laws of all phenomena, and since existence has to us 
 no meaning but one which has relation to phenomena, 
 we are quite safe in looking upon them as laws of 
 existence. This is sufficient for those who hold the 
 doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge" (p. 
 418). It is hard to see how contradiction here could 
 possibly be other than the objective relationship 
 known as incompatibility. For, surely, the mental 
 impossibility of believing both an assertion and its 
 denial is not a fact to be discovered among objective 
 phenomena as such. Define contradiction as Mr. 
 Bradley did, and it becomes at once a law standing 
 for a type of relationship among phenomena. But 
 define it as Mill does, in the Aristotelian way, and 
 it could at best be a "generalization from experi- 
 ence" only in the psychological sense that assertion 
 
228 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and denial of the same thing defy simultaneous 
 belief. 
 
 If, in other words, contradietoriness be taken as 
 merely affirmation and denial of the same thing 
 ("mathematician" and "moralist," he says, are dif- 
 ferent but not contradictory; "man" and "horse" as 
 applied to the same object are contradictory, "the one 
 affirming and the other denying the extra number of 
 legs"), what does it mean to say that they are "uni- 
 versally true of all phenomena"? Are the assertions 
 and denials phenomena? — or factors in phenomena? 
 If they are merely of phenomena, then phenomena are 
 objective to them, and the law can be true of phe- 
 nomena only if we translate belief and disbelief into 
 existence and nonexistence. But that existence and 
 nonexistence are not simple alternatives is evident 
 from a whole cloud of witnesses. Think of the doc- 
 trine of degrees of reality as one finds it in Bradley, 
 Taylor, Bosanquet, etc.; or of phenomenal and nou- 
 menal reality, in Kant or the views of Mill himself; 
 or of the Neo-Realist distinction of existence, sub- 
 sistence, etc. Mill would certainly not risk that 
 translation. Yet without it one must assume either 
 that credibility and incredibility are themselves phe- 
 nomena, or that the laws in question belong to the 
 mind and so are antecedent to, and not generalizations 
 from, experience. 
 
 If the law of noncontradiction is to be taken in its 
 Aristotelian sense, as simply forbidding the simul- 
 taneous prediction of "A" and "non-A," that law can 
 be made a generalization from experience only by 
 adopting the position of what Mill calls "the extreme 
 nominalists," that we have simply found it linguisti- 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 229 
 
 cally possible to express the same thought in two 
 ways — by direct assertion, or by denial of its contra- 
 dictory. But he does not care for that view of the 
 matter. Having recognized the laws as simply gen- 
 eralizations from experience, he is still haunted by the 
 feeling that in some way they lie deeper in the mind 
 than mere inductions would. "Whether the three so- 
 called Fundamental Laws are laws of our thought by 
 the native structure of the mind, or merely because 
 we perceive them to be universally true of observed 
 phenomena, I will not positively decide; but they are 
 laws of our thoughts now and invincibly so."^^ And 
 the word "invincibly" was put there in deadly earnest. 
 In response to Sir Wm. Hamilton's observation that 
 they are not necessities of the thinking act but instruc- 
 tions for right thinking. Mill replies: "It would not 
 have been claiming too much for these three laws to 
 have regarded them as laws in the more peremptory 
 sense. Our author could hardly have meant that we 
 are able to disbelieve that a thing is itself, or to be- 
 lieve that a thing is, and at the same time that it is 
 not." When one sees a contradiction "it is totally 
 impossible for him to believe it."^^ 
 
 It is evident in all this that the contradiction he 
 discusses is by no means simply the content of an 
 empirical generalization regarding incompatibles. It 
 is the Aristotelian sort of thing instead. And since 
 the latter confessedly deals only with the formal char- 
 acter of propositions as assertions and denials, it is 
 obvious that the law of noncontradiction must either 
 be assumed as ultimate or grounded upon other more 
 
 1* Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 418. 
 " Ibid., p. 407. 
 
230 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 fundamental laws of the mind itself. It was to provide 
 such a sanction that Spencer offered his criterion of 
 conceivability. It is inconceivable that two contra- 
 dictories should both be true; therefore the acceptance 
 of the law of noncontradiction is a categorical neces- 
 sity of the mind. 
 
 That, of course, depends upon the meaning of con- 
 ceivable and inconceivable. The Abelian functions, 
 for instance, are wholly "inconceivable" to me, not 
 because I can detect any logical hiati in their devel- 
 opment, but simply as snow is inconceivable to a 
 Congo savage. Such inconceivability is certainly not 
 in question. Neither could it be the simple psycho- 
 logical impossibility of holding the opposed ideas be- 
 fore the mind. In other words, it is not, so far as the 
 mind is concerned, a mere passive noncoexistability. 
 However inconceivable it may be that one plus one 
 equals three (neglecting Professor James' rabbits), it 
 is not at all impossible to hold the whole offending 
 assertion before the mind and understand perfectly 
 what it means. We not only do conceive — conceptually 
 formulate — what in practice we decline as "incon- 
 ceivable," but we must conceive and understand it in 
 order to make our repudiation of it intellectually 
 respectable. A man who declared inconceivable a 
 proposition he did not clearly understand would be 
 pretty generally discredited. Spencer, certainly, would 
 despise an opponent who declared his views incon- 
 ceivable without first showing that he understood, that 
 is, had correctly conceived them. 
 
 All of which confirms the suspicion that "inconceiv- 
 able" in its literal psychological sense is not exactly 
 what is meant. It is not sheer obstruction of cognitive 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 231 
 
 process — a stalling of the machine. One has to do, not 
 with a totally baffling and incomprehensible mental 
 deadlock, but with the impossibility of believing con- 
 tradictory statements together. Mill makes it per- 
 fectly plain that it was this meaning he had in mind 
 in his well-known statement that inconceivability is 
 no proof of impossibility. And this psychological fact, 
 of the incompatibility of belief and disbelief in the 
 same thing, is the ultimate ground he assigns to the 
 formal law of noncontradiction in the traditional sense. 
 "The original foundation of it I take to be that belief 
 and disbelief are two different mental states, excluding 
 one another. "^^ 
 
 That belief and disbelief are opposite and quite in- 
 compatible in reference to the same thing is indis- 
 putable. But it is not so plain in what sense this is 
 any reply to the "extreme nominalists." Surely, the 
 order of events is not that we contemplate "S is P" 
 and "S is not P," find that the mind balks at believing 
 both, and because of this difficulty regard them as 
 contradictory. Rather it is because we know them 
 to be contradictory that we are unable to believe them 
 both. And the formal contradictoriness is recognized 
 because we know enough about language to know that 
 the second proposition is simply the cancellation of 
 the first, and that in meaning it is an extension to 
 infinity of the relationship of real mutual incompati- 
 bility that we find in objective experience. In that 
 certainly is the fundamental truth in Mill's original 
 insight that the law of noncontradiction, like any 
 other axiom, is in the last analysis a generalization 
 from experience and not an a priori determinant of it. 
 
 " Logic — Eighth Edition, book ii, chapter vii, p. 5. 
 
232 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 It remains in this connection to deal with one or 
 two questions that might naturally present themselves. 
 In the first place, if even the fundamental laws of 
 formal logic are empirical formulae, one might be led 
 to ask: "Has the mind, then, no laws of its own? No 
 matter what your definition of it, it is certainly some- 
 thing and so must have a character of its own." To 
 this there is the patent answer that, indeed, the whole 
 science of psychology is devoted to a statement of 
 that character. All that has been denied in the fore- 
 going is that the mind furnishes any of the ground of 
 validity of judgments — except, of course, when the 
 mind is itself the subject matter of those judgments. 
 The validity of thought must finally be grounded in 
 the character of the things thought about; and when 
 the intended object of a judgment is some fact or 
 relationship of the objective order it would be very 
 droll indeed were some inherent bias of the mind 
 itseK to lay down conditions of what should be 
 acknowledged true. What is denied is not that the 
 mind has a nature of its own but that it has a logical 
 authority of a-priori censorship. In a similar way the 
 structure and "laws" of the physiological apparatus 
 determine what a man's handwriting shall be like, but 
 not the truth of what he writes. 
 
 Yet another point demands attention. The claim 
 that the laws of identity and noncontradiction refer 
 primarily to types of relationship in the content of 
 knowledge must not be identified with the interpreta- 
 tion put upon those laws by some of the neo-realists, 
 in particular by Mr. Holt. Logical facts, from his 
 point of view, are all objective entities of some kind 
 or other, and that leads him to regard logical opposi- 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 233 
 
 tion as identical with the strain and tug and resistance 
 of objective things in interaction. "The objective 
 world does contain contradictions." ^^ "All collisions 
 between bodies, all interference between energies, all 
 processes of warming and cooling, of electrically 
 charging and discharging, of starting and stopping, of 
 combining and separatmg, are processes of which one 
 undoes the other. "^^ 
 
 There is certainly physical opposition enough in the 
 world, counteraction as well as contradiction, and the 
 physical opposition must be allowed for in our think- 
 ing. The only question is whether there does not 
 exist also, and as a distinct type, the kind of opposi- 
 tion that Mr. Bradley calls disparity. To be specific: 
 When a shell leaves a high-angled gun, it is perfectly 
 allowable for Mr. Holt to say, if he chooses, that the 
 force of gravity "contradicts" the upward inertia of 
 the moving shell. The trouble is, however, that what 
 he gives us is not an illustration or more extended 
 application of the old term, but a completely altered 
 meaning of it. The two statements (a) that the mo- 
 mentum of the explosion urges the shell upward, and 
 (6) that the force of gravity urges it downward, de- 
 scribe and specify an actual opposition; but the two 
 statements as such are not opposed to each other as 
 are the really contradictory assertions (a) that the 
 shell is moving upward, and (6) that it is moving 
 downward. The first two are opposed, but not in 
 disparity; they can both be true simultaneously. The 
 second two cannot both be true of the same object, in 
 the same sense, at the same time. If the word "con- 
 
 1* Concept of Consciousness, p. 273. 
 " Ibid., p. 275. 
 
234 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tradiction" is used to name the first type of opposi- 
 tion, then some other word would have to be found 
 to tag the second; in some way or other language 
 would have to provide for so evident a difference. 
 Certainly, the simpler course would be to accept the 
 present usage, which does take care of the distinction. 
 If it be replied that all that Mr. Holt means is that 
 in the case of logical contradiction the two propositions 
 oppose each other exactly as two forces oppose each 
 other in the material cosmos — as Fouillee might have 
 pictured the competing energy of mental entities in his 
 theory of "idee-force" — it would still be impossible to 
 agree with him. In the first place, the opposition of 
 contradictory propositions simply is not in principle 
 similar to the opposition of forces. The resultant of 
 two forces is never a destruction of either; on the 
 contrary, each force realizes its total effect even 
 though it act in conjunction with others which will 
 undo what it individually does. The competing force, 
 far from canceling, does not even diminish its com- 
 petitor in the slightest degree. That, when forces act 
 in conjunction, each realizes in the resultant precisely 
 the effect that it would produce if acting alone is, in- 
 deed, the fundamental theorem of the science of 
 kinetics. Such is certainly not the case with two 
 competing, mutually exclusive propositions between 
 which the thinking subject is obliged to choose. The 
 final judgment in such a case is anything but a cogni- 
 tive resultant in which each of the opposed judgments 
 retains its full validity and, though overshadowed, 
 reahzes its complete effect. And, in the second place, 
 even if this analogy did hold, it would hardly be of 
 service to Mr. Holt because of the epistemological 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 235 
 
 dualism it suggests. For him there is no mental realm 
 and mental facts separate from and in any sense 
 duplicating the objective realm of fact. And when, 
 with him, you have identified the knowledge content 
 and the thing known, the fact comes back that in the 
 field of objective knowledge there are the two clearly 
 distinct types of relationship, which relationships must 
 be separately defined and should be separately named. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that one may hold fairly enough 
 to the essentially empirical origin and reference of the 
 law of noncontradiction without grave risk of being 
 committed to any so mechanically realistic a position 
 as that presented in The Concept of Consciousness. 
 
 To sum up, then: The law of noncontradiction 
 means one of two things; either that predicates that 
 are found to be incompatible in reality shall on no 
 account be attributed in thought to an identical sub- 
 ject, or that one shall not in thought both assert and 
 deny the same predicate of the same subject at the 
 same time. In the first case it is explicitly empirical 
 and can censor present judgment only as, in all proc- 
 esses of apperception, the weighted generalizations of 
 the past condition present knowing. In the second 
 case we are doubtless dealing with a kind of necessity, 
 but not the one from which could possibly be inferred 
 anything regarding the structure of objective reality. 
 
 The traditional law of the excluded middle is omit- 
 ted from this account, not because it is supposed to be 
 any less important or less interesting than the other 
 two, but because it does not seem to have any direct 
 part in the major premise of the idealistic argument 
 from epistemology. It is the force of that argument 
 
236 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 (not the truth of its conclusion) that it is the purpose 
 of this discussion to review. If it has been possible to 
 show that these laws are not a fundamental bias in 
 the mental structure which, if knowledge is to be vin- 
 dicated, the outer world must be assumed to dupli- 
 cate, but primarily inductive and inferential genera 
 that, because of their pervasive presence, have come 
 to seem transcendent in character, then it is obviously 
 impossible to argue from their necessity to a parallel- 
 ism in structure between the mind and the world it 
 knows. This is not to say that there might be valid 
 thinking without respect of them. No doubt they 
 dominate in the processes of knowledge acquisition. 
 But they command and compel us by the only force 
 that thinking knows — the coercion of fact. 
 
 It remains to notice a little further the question 
 regarding the postulate of knowledge. A postulate 
 may be taken to differ from an ordinary assumption 
 in the pressure, practical or theoretical, that is back 
 of it. It differs from axioms in the ordinary sense in 
 that such sanction is not a corollary of any a-priori or 
 immediate insight into its truth. Mr. Russell has 
 pointed out that some of the axioms of mathematics 
 are so very abstract as to lose the sense of mimediate 
 certitude ordinarily attaching to axioms. They are 
 known to be true only because they are presupposi- 
 tions of other simple propositions that are imme- 
 diately seen to be true. But even these more ulterior 
 axioms would be distinguishable from a postulate like 
 the postulate of knowledge in that still the necessity 
 of the axiom is, mediately or immediately, the unan- 
 swerableness of direct intellectual insight, while a 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 237 
 
 postulate may arise from a practical or ethical neces- 
 sity. The postulate, in other words, is an assumption 
 in the sense that it represents in some way an aggres- 
 sive act of the mind. But that act is not at heart a 
 free and arbitrary one; it is the outcome of some kind 
 of pressure, either practical or theoretical. Whether 
 such usage is universal or not, the word "postulate" 
 will be used in that sense in what follows. 
 
 The "knowledge" that is both the starting point 
 and the final problem of epistemology is quite unan- 
 imously distinguished from subjective imagination or 
 the mere having of states. It is not simply a series of 
 interesting events in the knower's head, but a real 
 connecting link between the mind and the world with 
 which it deals. This difference between cognitive 
 states as mental events and the same states in their 
 capacity as cognitive is said to make the difference in 
 subject matter between the psychology of knowledge 
 and the science of epistemology. 
 
 But suppose the outcome of the study of cognitive 
 states should be the conclusion that knowledge is im- 
 possible.'* Suppose that, having set out as Kant did 
 to inquire how knowledge is possible, one should find 
 oneself obliged to "destroy knowledge" and be con- 
 tent with the unobstructed belief for which that catas- 
 trophe had made room.^* 
 
 Kant saw his way out of the difficulty he had set 
 forth in the irresistibleness of the moral postulate. 
 Having found the starry heavens above him so much 
 a creation of the mind itself, he could save himself 
 from solipsism by an appeal to the moral law within. 
 That was absolute, while the other was relative, and 
 thus he was enabled to reach again to an outer world 
 
238 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 from which he had seemed to be barred by the sub- 
 jectivity of tlie categories. Duty and responsibility 
 could bridge the chasm between the self and ultimate 
 Reality and serve as a warrant and sanction of the 
 faith for which his intellectual agnosticism had cleared 
 the way. In other words, the categorical imperative 
 made unnecessary any fundamental assumption of the 
 possibility of knowledge as a starting point for meta- 
 physics. 
 
 But the course of thought during the last century 
 has set this alternative in many a strange light. In 
 contrast with the familiar Hegelian epistemological 
 absolutism only a few, like Professor Andrew Seth, 
 have preferred to build their absolutism on the moral 
 postulate (thus following Kant). "We must conclude 
 that the end which we recognize as alone worthy of 
 attainment is also the end of existence as such."^^ As 
 Hegel had identified thought and being, this identifies 
 being with morality. But a very important departure 
 was made by Professor Huxley in his humanistic 
 representation of morality. Objective nature, he re- 
 minds us, knows no moral ends; it treats alike the 
 just and the unjust, and seems content with the ruth- 
 less decision of tooth and claw. In man only does 
 justice, fairness, mercy, altruism, or personal obliga- 
 tion count. Man's morality, in other words, is his 
 own proud construction; it is at once an achievement 
 of his history and a diflerentium of his species. Mo- 
 rality is not what binds us to nature, but, rather, it is 
 what distinguishes us from it. Where Kant had in- 
 sisted that the understanding makes nature, Huxley 
 replies that the active self creates its moral world; as 
 
 " Mans Place in the Cosmos, p. 32. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 239 
 
 Kant, to escape solipsism, had relied upon the objec- 
 tive validity of moral obligation, Huxley depended 
 upon the objective validity of knowledge in order to 
 set forth his doctrine of the mind's activity in the 
 constitution of the moral law. This theory, which is 
 such a complete reversal of that of Kant, has not only 
 found easy acceptance in the rapidly widening an- 
 thropological view of life, but has found genuine 
 spiritual interpretation. One has only to think, in 
 this connection, of the hardy idealism of Professor 
 Eucken or the austere beauty of Mr. Russell's The 
 Free Man's Worship. 
 
 At any rate, the moral issue has turned out to be a 
 precarious device for the ontological objectification of 
 conscious life. It may be a pathway to Reality, but 
 few now care to risk it as the only pathway. And that 
 brings us back to the original epistemological prob- 
 lem: Is it necessary to make, as the basal philosophi- 
 cal premise, the assumption that knowledge is possible? 
 
 That question cannot be answered until one knows 
 precisely what such an assumption calls for. Ob- 
 viously, it is not to be a guarantee of all cognitive 
 processes, else it would be contradicted by the first 
 case of error. And, on the other hand, it can hardly 
 be taken to authenticate any specific classes or groups 
 of judgments or perceptions without becoming either 
 a complete petitio (if it be taken to refer only to those 
 judgments that are known on other grounds to be 
 valid) or else a merely empirical conclusion in par- 
 ticular cases (in which, if it be a general epistemologi- 
 cal postulate, it would again also have assumed itself). 
 Since it carries within itself, as a postulate, no de- 
 termining limitations of context or occasion, one seems 
 
240 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 driven by it either to claim an utterly untenable 
 infallibility of judgment, or else to be lost in an un- 
 certain and indefinite application to specific cases. 
 
 To this it may be replied: 
 
 (1) That all that the postulate asserts is the possi- 
 bility — not the actuality — of knowledge. Naturally 
 enough, it may be said, an assumption of the actual 
 validity of knowledge would label every real judgment 
 as true; but to orient the mind comfortably in its 
 world it is only necessary to assume that reality is 
 such that knowledge is possible. That is a conceiv- 
 able point of view. But the question of validity is 
 not to be so easily sidetracked. Unless the knowledge 
 that is possible is valid knowledge, it would be no 
 better than the noncognitive states of imagination 
 from which, as a matter of primary definition, it had 
 been distinguished. It remains, then, the assumption 
 that valid knowledge is possible. This, again, either 
 applies to knowledge in general, or it is a statistical or 
 specific deduction from particular cases known, with- 
 out the prior aid of the postulate, to be valid instances. 
 
 Or (2) may it be understood to mean a kind of com- 
 mensurability of the mind and reality, a relation of 
 "rapport," that is implied alike by truth or by error? 
 Are we to say, in other words, that Thought (A) and 
 Thing (B) are already in epistemological relation with 
 each other when A is mistaken about B? Some such 
 position as this seems to be implied in the treatment 
 of the assumption by Professor Royce and, in another 
 way, by Professor Ladd. Certain it is that the relation 
 even of error between Thought and Thing is different 
 in some sense from no relation at all. But this does 
 not prove error to be a real relation between the mind 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 241 
 
 and reality. Indeed, Professor Royce comes to the 
 conclusion that error contributes to the epistemologi- 
 cal enterprise only in so far as the fact of error can be 
 shown to involve a basis of truth. A judgment is not 
 true or false in general or in and of itself. It can be 
 true or false only concerning some ideally designated 
 object or other, and for it to be false in that neces- 
 sarily teleological sense it must assume in particular 
 the validity (not the epistemological possibility) of 
 the reference by which its object is identified. And 
 this, so far as any general prior assumption of the 
 possibility of valid knowledge is concerned, is no bet- 
 ter off than any other specific act of cognition; it 
 implies the possibility of validity in general only in 
 so far as it is known, on other grounds, to be valid itself. 
 Suppose, again, that the postulate be read in exten- 
 sion. Does the possibility of knowledge mean that 
 everything is ultimately knowable? This has prob- 
 ably never been explicitly claimed, at least not with- 
 out heavy emphasis upon the distinction of finite and 
 infinite intelligence. And it is with the finite that we 
 have to deal. It is quite logically possible to claim 
 that everything is knowable even to a finite mind 
 though, as finite, it could not know all things. All 
 sugar is edible, though no one subject can eat it all. 
 Might not everything, therefore, be knowable? Of 
 course it might be. If such a premise were found im- 
 plicit in our cognitive nature, there would be no 
 a-priori objection to making the assumption. But, 
 except perhaps in the case of a few like Parmenides 
 or Hegel who dare to equate thought and being, the 
 postulate, considered as an epistemological necessity, 
 is not generally extended so far. 
 
242 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 On the other hand, it is hard to see, if it be regarded 
 as an epistemological necessity, how any limiting Hne 
 is to be drawn. If the hmitation were in the facts 
 themselves, we could never know it any more than we 
 could know a limit of space. Just as, in the latter case, 
 we would be thinking back to a region (a space) in 
 which there was no space, so in this case we would 
 assume to know of strata in reality that could not be 
 known. This would mean (1) that there were things 
 so at parallax with our minds that our judgments 
 could be neither correct nor mistaken concerning them, 
 or else (2) merely that they were so constructed that 
 our thought about them could not be valid concerning 
 them. And either is obviously set aside by the familiar 
 consideration that to know such a limit is already to 
 transcend it. 
 
 But it is doubtful if, in any case, a limitation merely 
 in the facts themselves would suffice. There is no 
 possibility, m the last analysis, of relieving the postu- 
 late of the responsibility. If the dividing line between 
 the knowable and the unknowable were primarily an 
 objective one, the postulate would surely have to 
 make some provision for the recognition of it; and if 
 the limitation were inherent in the nature of the mind 
 which establishes the postulate itself, surely the latter 
 would be inadequate to its task if it did not embody 
 such an organic circumscription of its own function. 
 But in either case one is faced by the difficulty men- 
 tioned in the preceding paragraph — the difficulty of 
 stating valid limits of the range of validity. 
 
 Apart, however, from the question of the content 
 of the postulate, there remains the further question 
 of the circumstance or occasion of its being made. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 243 
 
 For a postulate means some kind of act that must 
 have, in some sense, a locus and a context. Here also 
 more than one alternative suggests itself. 
 
 (1) It obviously is not made consciously at the be- 
 ginning either of our knowing life or of specific proc- 
 esses of knowledge in isolation. 
 
 (2) But is it subconsciously assumed? It would be 
 possible to hold that some such event occurs subcon- 
 sciously before cognition proceeds. The chief reason 
 for not adopting this alternative is the apparent entire 
 absence of any reason for adopting it. 
 
 Or (3) it might be assumed when knowledge be- 
 came reflective or self-conscious. But history would 
 seem to be against such a view. The problem of 
 knowledge itself was reflectively raised long before 
 anybody found such a postulate necessary. In fact, 
 it can hardly be said to have been stated as a clear-cut 
 alternative before Descartes. While it may turn out 
 that the ultimate philosophy will regard such an ex- 
 plicit assumption as necessary for a valid theory of 
 knowledge, it is at least true that thought was fruit- 
 fully reflective in its concept of knowledge long before 
 the necessity of this prior assumption was declared. 
 
 From another angle one may remind us (4) that 
 the postulate, while perhaps debatable in academic 
 discussions, is nevertheless assumed by everybody as 
 the rational justification of practical life. But here 
 once more is the old ambiguity. If this is to say that 
 the assumption is made in practice, it would seem to 
 be palpably false in the vast majority of cases. The 
 individual is rare who prefaces his participation in 
 practical affairs with an acknowledgment of the pos- 
 sibility of knowledge! If it be claimed only that any 
 
244 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 cognitive being would see the necessity of it if the 
 question were raised, one has only to point to the 
 differences of opinion on the part of those who have 
 reflectively raised the issue. 
 
 Or (5) it may be said that, while such an assump- 
 tion is not always made as a premise even of epistemo- 
 logical speculation, it should be, since it is logically 
 implicit in the data of that science. As, in mathe- 
 matics, everything can be proved except the ultimate 
 axioms which have to be assumed as a starting point 
 and just on that account cannot themselves be proved, 
 so epistemology has to start with or from something 
 assumed on trust. To which it may be replied that 
 even in mathematics there is so much question as 
 to the content of this axiomatic terminus a quo that 
 any mathematician is under considerable obligation to 
 justify his choice of axioms, even though it be granted 
 that none of them can be demonstrated from prior 
 mathematical premises. He must show that they are 
 necessary for the coherence of his science as well as 
 being antecedently unprovable. And, even granting 
 for the sake of argument the parallel between these 
 axioms and the epistemological postulate, it has been 
 the purpose of the foregoing to show that the latter 
 would not stand, in its own field, before a demand for 
 justification which even a mathematical proposition, 
 set up as a mathematical axiom, has to face. 
 
 After so unwarrantably long a discussion of the pos- 
 tulate of the possibility of knowledge, the positive 
 opinion that underlay it need occupy little space. // 
 the situation were just as Descartes pictured it — if 
 the mind knew first itself, then its intermedia of 
 knowledge, and finally, indirectly and by inference. 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 245 
 
 the world outside itself, a postulate of the possibility 
 of knowledge would be an a-priori necessity, perhaps, 
 as a step in the process. The logical continuity of the 
 transition would be broken without it. But nothing 
 would be harder to prove than that such is the case. 
 That the knowledge of self is a relatively late attain- 
 ment of thought and is, even now, a subject on which 
 there is the greatest imaginable divergence of opinion, 
 should be suflBcient certainly to cast some doubt upon 
 the Cartesian premises. Besides, the argument cuts 
 both ways. If it is necessary to assume the possibility 
 of knowing the world outside the mind, it is equally 
 necessary to postulate the validity of the distinction 
 between the mind and its world, the possibility of 
 knowing the mind itself, and even perhaps to assume 
 the possibility of making valid postulates! In a sense 
 any function doubtless assumes its own possibility; 
 walking assumes the possibility of walking, or a man's 
 effort to write poetry assumes (however precariously) 
 his ability to do so. But it is hard to think of such 
 an assumption as either profound or valuable. 
 
 There is one other point to notice in this connection. 
 The assumption of knowledge is not the same thing as 
 assuming a bridge, a cognitive rapport, between the 
 knowing mind and the balance of reality, the world 
 outside the mind. Because, the knowing mind itself 
 is an object of its own cognitive states. If the very 
 continuity of Being between the mind and the rest of 
 the universe consisted in a cognitive interaction only, 
 not only would some familiar conclusions follow very 
 easily but many other unfamiliar ones would also 
 follow if the matter were pressed. Two considerations 
 would seem, however, to discourage such a view. In 
 
246 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the first place, if the being of consciousness consisted 
 fundamentally in its cognitive function, one would 
 have to go to the length of accounting for other kinds 
 of subjective states as the products of cognition 
 (which would be difficult) or leave a complete existen- 
 tial disparity between cognitive and noncognitive ele- 
 ments of the same consciousness. In the second place, 
 sensation as the elemental fact of cognition not only 
 is not primarily an act on the part of the subject but 
 has a being and even a character quite distinguishable 
 from and in addition to its cognitive value. In the 
 third place, some ideas may purport to be true about 
 certain other ideas that belong or have belonged to the 
 same consciousness ; and when they become reflective in 
 this sense the relationship between ideas and ideas is 
 exactly the same, in so far as it is noetic (in virtue, 
 that is, of its sheer abstract capacity of being true or 
 false) as the relationship between ideas and objective 
 things. A theory of the way in which the idea reaches 
 or relates to its object is therefore anything but a theory 
 of the basal concatenation of subject and object. It 
 may assume it, or be a factor in it, or may even in the 
 last analysis throw much collateral light upon it; but 
 it is not identical with the fact of such concatenation. 
 
 Finally, let one consider what is essentially the 
 same thing from another point of view. Suppose one 
 grant the whole sequence: "I know myself directly. 
 The outer world I know only in the form of thought. 
 Assuming, then, that my knowledge is real and valid, 
 the outer world must itself be cast in thought forms," 
 etc. It is obvious that the conclusion follows just in 
 so far as my effective commerce with the outer world 
 is a matter of thought. But that may be no more 
 
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES 247 
 
 than a small fraction of the actual nexus. The whole 
 body of affective processes and emotions, the overt 
 functions of volition with all its deep-lying instinctive 
 foundations, the dim and unknown recesses of the sub- 
 conscious life, all this is left untouched by the meta- 
 physical inference based upon the postulate of knowl- 
 edge. The parallelism, if it holds even in the most 
 elaborate way within the province of cognitive subject 
 and object, still concerns but a fraction of consciousness. 
 If, then, all the above-mentioned remainder be without 
 parallel in objective existence, and if there be a similar 
 proportion of reality to which cognition accordingly 
 does not apply, it might well act as a millstone about 
 the neck of the most validly inferred idealistic veneer of 
 logical intelligibility. In no case, therefore, could the 
 argument in question authenticate a complete idealistic 
 conclusion. Even if all the traditional or Cartesian 
 premises be granted, one could at best only say that the 
 neotic function in the conscious self seems, on the 
 basis of the enigmatical postulate of the possibility of 
 valid knowledge, to imply a corresponding factor or 
 element of logicality in objective reality. And this 
 would still be compatible with a preponderating bal- 
 ance in a nonidealistic direction. 
 
 It is not the interest of the above discussion to sup- 
 port any such positive nonidealistic conclusion, but 
 only to point out that while (1) the argument from 
 the possibility of knowledge is itself ambiguous and of 
 uncertain value, it still (2) does not, even if accepted 
 as valid in its own field, assimilate to personality or 
 consciousness any more of outer reality than logical 
 cognition proportionately occupies in the living mass 
 of consciousness itself. 
 
IX 
 
 DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 
 
 Herbert Alden Youtz 
 
 It is the fashion to-day to decry every ministry to 
 life that is not "practical." Our very philosophies 
 follow the fashions and deal often in superficialities 
 and utilities. Yet every earnest man has a deep 
 spiritual experience which refutes these superficial esti- 
 mates of life. Ideas, convictions, spiritual insights are 
 the ultimate sources of life — men do not live by bread 
 alone. The mistaken Gospel of Wages must be re- 
 placed by a Gospel of Manhood which shall sympa- 
 thetically diagnose anew the heart-breaking symptoms 
 of human need that find expression in the current 
 social upheaval. Religion is the greatest and oldest 
 social power in the world. Religious hunger cannot 
 be satisfied by cheap substitutes for a Living God. 
 Neither can it be quieted by scientific assurance that 
 "religion is an emotion." All hunger is an emotion — 
 but starvation is none the less a fact. Is there a Liv- 
 ing God? Who is He? Where is He? How shall I 
 find Him? These questions are insistent. These ques- 
 tions can be answered and religious hunger can be 
 satisfied. Human life and human society can be fed, 
 energized, from above — from within ! The great social 
 ill is spiritual anemia. The remedy is radical, and 
 calls for an expert physician. The quack remedies 
 applied to the symptoms must be replaced by attack- 
 ing the spiritual sources of human ills. The practical 
 
 248 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 249 
 
 ministries which we are all so eager to offer must pro- 
 foundly understand the spiritual nature of personality 
 and its need. The genius of Jesus lay in this discovery. 
 The power of Jesus' Gospel lies in speaking "with au- 
 thority" to men's deepest consciousness. We shall 
 escape the threatening materialism of to-day only by 
 a deeper diagnosis and by heroic remedies. The dis- 
 cussion which follows undertakes such a diagnosis, and 
 is addressed to thoughtful leaders of the Church 
 everywhere. Especially does it long to bring a vision 
 of the need of the world to young men and women, 
 and a vision of the opportunity for ministry to need, 
 that faces educated religious leadership. It aims to 
 sound a note sometimes lacking in our discussions of 
 "religious education." 
 
 Religion, like all of the spiritual possessions of the 
 race, grows by vital processes. Theology, the rational 
 interpretation of religion, is likewise subject to the 
 laws of growth. A vital theology is never a manufac- 
 tured thing. It germinates and grows and bears fruit 
 in the soil and climate and under the thought-culture 
 of a particular age or people. What will an age of 
 dawning democracy contribute to the shaping of Chris- 
 tian theology .J* That is the problem of this discussion. 
 
 The leadership of men passes by slow processes from 
 the primitive stage of the tyranny of the strong, 
 through feudalism and constitutional monarchy, to the 
 ideals of democracy and freedom. Democracy is that 
 native, irresistible force planted in the heart of a race, 
 by which with growing insight it throws off, one by 
 one, the petty tyrannies of life, and achieves ideals of 
 freedom and autonomy. 
 
250 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Democracy is not first of all an organized form of 
 government; it is a spirit, an attitude toward life. 
 Modern science has thrown off the tyranny of eccle- 
 siastical control and achieved freedom, democracy. 
 Modern industry is seething with revolt against tyran- 
 nical control, trying to achieve democratic freedom. 
 The nations are in revolt against artificial tyrannies, 
 trying to find the form of government where the peo- 
 ple can exercise self-control, in the interests of their 
 higher destiny. The democratic meaning of the mo- 
 mentous world happenings since 1914 is that the 
 yeast of democracy has not waited for the slow proc- 
 esses of evolution, but has burst forth in earthquake 
 and volcano. The task of spiritual leadership is to 
 control this mighty force and educate this passion for 
 freedom which so strongly marks all social movements 
 of our day. And the history of religious interpretation 
 reflects tardily, but surely, the awakening spirit of 
 democracy, feeling its way cautiously, but passion- 
 ately, out of the old despotisms and feudalisms of 
 thought, into the larger freedom of the spirit. And 
 what can contribute more to the processes of civiliza- 
 tion than the spiritualizing, the democratizing, the 
 freeing of our religious thinking, and thus putting it 
 at the service of the New Age that is dawning? Chris- 
 tian theology was once rated as "queen of all the 
 sciences." It has fallen from its pedestal into the 
 dust. But theology will come back to its place of 
 power when it shows itself trustworthy. 
 
 The democratizing of religion is one of the signifi- 
 cant processes that is taking place just now at an 
 unprecedented rate. This democratizing comes not 
 with observation; but it is coming silently and inevit- 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 251 
 
 ably. The very conception of religion, our interpre- 
 tation of spiritual processes, and even our way of 
 conceiving the living God and his relationship to our 
 world, is undergoing a radical transformation. 
 
 Sometimes a minister will yield to the temptation 
 to re-preach sermons from his barrel, and has the 
 curious, indignant experience of discovering that these 
 sermons have become innocuous. He preaches the 
 thing that he wrote about Christ ten years ago, and 
 he has a sense of unreality and untruth. He preaches 
 the thing that holy men taught him about God, and 
 he knows that he is not dealing with the living God, 
 but with a theological God. Our Christologies and 
 our doctrines of God are being democratized. The 
 church has inherited some magnificent systems of 
 theology, cherished through the generations as "The 
 Faith of our Fathers." And a good many of us are 
 making the disconcerting discovery that these splendid 
 ideas which once stirred the people have become 
 denatured and powerless to affect the people. They do 
 not ring true to our modern democratic ideals ! 
 
 There is a superficial way in which a man may 
 democratize his theology by going over it and sub- 
 stituting for the monarch God a democratized divine 
 ruler; substituting a republic of God for a kingdom 
 of God. This is necessarily an artificial thing to do, 
 however suggestive. Theologies grow by vital proc- 
 esses, and it is only by understanding the principles 
 of growth that a man can intelligently and effectively 
 set himself to the task of reconstruction for a demo- 
 cratic age. The living theology of to-day must root 
 in our age and grow in our thought climate and receive 
 the most intelligent cultivation. This paper deals 
 
252 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 with some of tlie tyrannies that beset theological 
 thinkers, and some of the consequences of emancipat- 
 ing theology from these tyrannies. We cannot get at 
 the root of the matter by discussing devices or 
 patched-up doctrines, but only by discussing thought- 
 movements, certain shaping principles of our thinking 
 which find expression in our theologies. 
 
 That was a fine insight of Sabatier when he said, 
 "To the thinking man a discord between methods is a 
 graver matter than an opposition between doctrines.'* 
 The matter of democratizing theology is not a matter 
 of superficial or popular modernizing of old doctrines; 
 it is a matter of re-thinking the truth about God and 
 spiritual reality — a matter of right or wrong intellectual 
 method. It is not a matter of popular juggling with 
 evolution and socialistic doctrines, bringing forth a 
 finite god while the crowd gapes — after the manner of 
 H. G. Wells; but it goes back to the thought-currents 
 themselves, and tries profoundly to understand and 
 test conceptions and thought-movements, that it may 
 determine their truth and their value for religion. 
 
 I will speak of three tyrannies that the democratic 
 spirit in theology must overthrow: The Tyranny of 
 Orthodoxy, The Tyranny of Mechanism, and the 
 Tyranny of ExternaUsm. 
 
 I 
 
 By the Tyranny of Orthodoxy, I mean not any par- 
 ticular orthodoxy, but the mental habit of thinking 
 religion in terms of fixed standards, and not of living 
 truth! The principle of operating with an orthodoxy 
 in our religious thinking, as though that were a mark 
 of spirituality, is the evil I want to arraign. It has 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 253 
 
 come to be one of the most despiritualizing things that 
 haunt our theological world. The spirit of democracy 
 in the heart of many preachers is trying to throw off 
 the tyranny of orthodoxy, and be free to think things 
 through with all the help that comes from the present 
 as well as the past. For if the consciousness of a 
 Living God is to come to the New Age, we must have 
 a living theology. 
 
 Let me illustrate the present tyranny of orthodoxy 
 by reference to church history. A half century ago 
 the church was in a turmoil over the doctrine of crea- 
 tion. The orthodox doctrine held that the divine 
 creation occupied six days. Geology taught that 
 world-making occupied millenniums. The situation 
 was tense in the warfare between science and theology. 
 Harmonizations of science with orthodoxy multiplied. 
 The most successful "harmonization" was that which 
 held that though geology had won the case, still there 
 were six periods of creation, "creative days"; and thus 
 orthodoxy was saved! It brought relief to multitudes 
 of pious people; and there are churchmen still who 
 curse evolution and worship the six-day theory. 
 Surely the logic of this sort of thing has had its day, 
 though it has not yet ceased to be. The principle of 
 measuring spiritual truth and religious interpretations 
 by canons and infallible rules of faith still persists. 
 
 In every field of Christian doctrine the tyranny of 
 an orthodoxy haunts us, with evil results. Our Chris- 
 tologies, our conceptions of salvation, our conceptions 
 of God, of sin, of prayer, of the power of the Spirit of 
 God in human life, are all hampered and hindered by 
 a thought-method, a sacred thought-standard, an or- 
 thodoxy beyond which a man may not venture and 
 
254 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 be regarded as safe! Now I have little respect for 
 reckless adventure in thinking; but I believe that the 
 spiritual regeneration that must come to the Church 
 of Christ in the New Age will come not through men 
 who play safe and repeat the slogans of the past, but 
 to the men and women who in the spirit of holy adven- 
 ture wrestle with the meanings of the Spirit of God in 
 our modern world and modern social movements, and 
 "go forward" in their thinking. 
 
 Every really great creative age has dealt with 
 the perennial problems of religion anew, and found 
 inspired conceptions of God, inspired conceptions of 
 God's meanings in its own life. Like Jesus, it has 
 fulfilled the old and passed into the new way of think- 
 ing. Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of 
 old time that Luther and Calvin and Grotius and 
 Wesley and Hodge and Park and Finney^ are the 
 orthodox guides of faith; but I say unto you that the 
 Spirit of the hving God, of the great holy Christ, can 
 come in power to our generation only as we realize 
 that our own thinking is God's way to the hearts of the 
 people. That sense of responsibility, that sense of 
 prophecy — that experimental method of finding God 
 and his meanings — how sadly we preachers need it! 
 Theology must follow Jesus' method of growth and 
 living inspiration, not the scribal method of holy stan- 
 dards. Creativeness rather than conformity must be 
 the law of our thinking. 
 
 We have looked backward to a God of the Past, to 
 "sacred history," to sacred thought-guides. All ortho- 
 
 * This address was given from the Oberlin pulpit where the great 
 evangelist, Finney, used to speak as pastor, and where his name is still 
 revered. 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 255 
 
 doxies do that. We have said, "God's revelation is in the 
 past." And as a consequence our own age has seemed 
 secular, and our own thinking we have distrusted, and 
 our own prophets we have stoned, and we have given 
 the people a second-hand account of God out of the 
 world that used to be, instead of a vision of God living 
 in our own thought and life and work! 
 
 Can an "orthodoxy" guide an aroused preacher of 
 righteousness to his place of power as a religious 
 leader? Are we not stewards of the thought of the 
 past? Do faithful stewards keep the shining coin of 
 thought wrapped in a napkin or do they invest it? 
 
 The church has tacitly assumed in the past that 
 true piety and spiritual insight is the possession of 
 the conservatives, and that liberals are under suspicion 
 because they are liberal. We have applauded the 
 "defenders of the faith," and we have unsparingly 
 condemned the enlargers of the faith. We have en- 
 dured the liberal spirit, but we have not welcomed it. 
 Surely the time has come to insist that illiberalism 
 and conservatism are immoral and unspiritual in a 
 world of progress; they are contrary to God's way of 
 working. The vision of God must come to the people 
 of the New Age through the liberal, forward-looking, 
 forward-moving thinkers. In the name of the rising 
 passion for spiritual reality and a spiritual message 
 for the people, I urge upon the church the intellectual 
 duty of a progressive interpretation of ethical religion. 
 For the great days of religion lie ahead of us, not be- 
 hind us! And the achieving of the theology of the 
 future must be our inspiration; not the defense of the 
 theologies of the past. For divine revelation is a living 
 process, never discontinued. God's meanings are grow- 
 
256 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ing meanings; and growing men and women must seize 
 these newer revelations for the blessing of the world. 
 
 II 
 
 By the Tyranny of Mechanism I mean the wide- 
 spread tendency in our thinking to treat the expe- 
 riences of consciousness as though a man were simply 
 a resultant and not an actor. The ideals of natural 
 science, mechanism, force, cause and effect, have over- 
 spread our thought of the personal world until in some 
 cases they have flouted and defeated the convictions 
 of freedom and responsible action and of creative 
 idealism. The outcome of this type of thinking is 
 materialism and naturalism. The trail of mechanical 
 thinking lies over our religious explanations, leaving 
 the conviction of determinism, materialism, atheism, 
 in its wake. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out that the convic- 
 tion of freedom is of the highest service to the welfare 
 of the race. No dynamic inspiration so affects the 
 spirit of a man as the belief that he is free and respon- 
 sible. And the paralysis of that vital belief cripples a 
 man's powers of recovery and attainment. The vir- 
 tual fatalism of much so-called Christian philosophy 
 strikes at the very beating heart of all spiritual con- 
 viction, emasculating and stultifying our creative efforts. 
 A man lives and works best under the spell of the con- 
 viction, *T am not a machine nor a slave, but a free 
 man!" 
 
 It would not be profitable to show in technical de- 
 tail here the history of the rise of modern Naturalism, 
 getting its clew from natural science method, and 
 insisting that the law of things shall be the law of a 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 257 
 
 man. It is a subtle process creeping into our thinking, 
 but it is very real and cannot be met by popular 
 magazine philosophy. Naturalism is the thought- 
 method which sees the spiritual merely as a continua- 
 tion of the scheme of the natural. It is the insistence 
 that the spiritual shall have no significance save the 
 secondary significance shed from the natural. It says, 
 truly, "That is not first which is spiritual, but that 
 which is natural"; and then it passes to the inference, 
 "therefore the natural must be authoritative for the 
 spiritual," the law of things must be valid for per- 
 sonality. We accept the scientific, evolutionary de- 
 scription; the natural comes first. We challenge that 
 false philosophic inference; for the spiritual, the 
 higher, creative, personal facts — now that they have 
 arrived — are authoritative over the natural order and 
 over a man's whole life. A man as a man has a right 
 to his ideals of freedom, and has the capacity to 
 achieve freedom, whatever his pedigree has been. The 
 Indian philosopher gazes at a point in space until he 
 loses his very sense of existence. And the modern 
 naturalistic philosopher fixes his eyes on his animal 
 pedigree, the animal instincts that preceded reason, 
 until he is persuaded that instinct and animal impulse 
 are the great reality; while creative reason and the 
 ideals of freedom are illusions and mockery. Which is 
 the dream and which is the reality? Is this funda- 
 mentally a world of mechanism, or is it fundamentally 
 a world of personality and purpose? The answer to 
 that question is fateful for religion. 
 
 The religious philosophy which conquers the world 
 must resolve that uncertainty and re-evaluate Moral 
 Personality as a creative power, re-evaluate the ideals 
 
258 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of conscience, re-estimate the greatness of conscious- 
 ness as freedom and will. No interpretation of the 
 meaning of the tragic world-war seems so adequate 
 as that which sees it as the modern epic-contest 
 between the ideals of moral personality and the ideals 
 of force and materialism and mechanical power 
 and world-mastery. The cause of the War was the 
 arrogant challenge of Force. The victory was the 
 victory of personality and its spiritual ideals, over 
 Force. Thank God for the victory! The thing that 
 was really demonstrated was that the spirit of man 
 is mightier than mechanism! Even Field Marshal 
 Foch, the organizer of military victory, says, "Battles 
 are lost or won, not materially, but morally." Morale, 
 the power of spiritual personality, was the big fact in 
 the Great War. It is the big fact in the universe. 
 
 Now in almost all fields of our thinking, that very 
 battle is being fought out. The ideals of mechanism 
 and naturalism are militant in current thinking, striv- 
 ing to assert their supremacy. And nowhere more 
 than in the fields of psychology and of education is 
 the significant contest going on. To quote the lan- 
 guage of a prominent educator and psychologist, ^ *'We 
 have been in some doubt in the past as to whether 
 society is based on instincts or ideas. We have talked 
 about our institutions as intelligent, but studied them 
 as if they were mechanical. Our whole treatment of 
 human life has been biological rather than psychologi- 
 cal. I believe that the period of biologizing human 
 life is over." The same writer protests that those 
 "who bear the name of psychologists are arrayed on 
 
 2 Professor Judd's Presidential Address before the American Psycho- 
 logical Association, December 30, 1909. Published in the Psychological 
 Review, March, 1910, vol. xvii, p. 97. 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 259 
 
 the side of physiologists and biologists"; and he de- 
 clares that "we are on the eve of a newer psychology" 
 which shall deal fairly with living personality. 
 
 I have cited Professor Judd's article in the Psycho- 
 logical Review that you may not feel that my earnest- 
 ness is that of theological interest, and that I have no 
 rational justification. Mechanism and its ideals are 
 seeking to get a strangle-hold upon our thinking in all 
 fields. It is tyrannizing over the ideals of much popu- 
 lar literature and leavening the thought of the masses 
 with materialism.^ 
 
 The democratizing of theology calls for emancipa- 
 tion from this tyranny. For the ideals of religion, her 
 conceptions, her message, her goal, her challenge, 
 depend upon a conception of personality as living, 
 creative power; a conception of conscious agency, and 
 not of blind "cause and effect." One cannot breathe 
 in the atmosphere of Jesus' teaching, with its utter 
 confidence in a heavenly Father, and its confident as- 
 sertion of human values, without feeling a greatness of 
 spiritual import which refutes the travesty of a 
 mechanical explanation. And we who labor, at the 
 task of theology in the democratic spirit want the 
 intellectual right to think of a living God in living 
 relations with men and women who are great enough 
 to respond freely to his call — free to accept, free to 
 reject his love. That is the only thing that makes 
 love and work great! We want the right to teach 
 workers that they are "workers together with God," 
 not cogs in a machine. That gospel is needed more 
 than all else. I do not think that any other gospel is 
 
 3 A remarkable and valuable analysis of the present thought situa- 
 tion is Professor Stuart P. Sherman's "On Contemporary Literature." 
 
260 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 true enough and stirring enough to solve the great 
 crying "labor question." 
 
 And with this re-evaluation of personality as free 
 and creative, our Christologies will drop the unreali- 
 ties of the older formulations, and present Christ as 
 the Way and the Truth and the Life for our age, 
 which more than any previous age pants for life and 
 reality in its religion. Christ as supreme moral Per- 
 sonality is the world's supreme Saviour. Christianity 
 can come to its own only as it transcends the realm of 
 mechanical explanation and scientific method, and 
 trusts the interpretations of the world as purpose and 
 meaning and infinite worth. The living ideals of reli- 
 gion and ethics, as well as the ideals of science, must 
 find satisfaction in our view of the cosmic life. Cause 
 and effect are no more cosmic facts than conscience 
 and creative will. 
 
 Surely some of the crucial experiences of the War, 
 the agony of our intellectual questionings, must bring 
 a renewed conviction of the emptiness of a mechanical 
 universe, and of the truth of a universe which is life 
 and warmth and sympathy and purpose and love! 
 No little God can heal a broken-hearted world. It is 
 a rational faith that demands, though it but dimly 
 understands, a living God in control of life who is 
 himself Sympathy and Self-Sacrifice and Present Help, 
 sharing our suffering and our work of reconstruction. 
 This world is a living world of a good God, not the 
 dead, meaningless thing that mechanism aflSrms. The 
 pitiless ideals of machinery and force are not our 
 guides to the great redemptive truths; but the pitying, 
 unconquered Christ and his Cross. The cosmic mean- 
 ing of these things is that we have a Christlike, cross- 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 261 
 
 bearing God; and this is therefore a world where 
 Christlikeness and cross-bearing always pay, in spite 
 of appearances. The profound meaning of preaching 
 a living Christ as a Saviour is just this: that the living. 
 Christlike God is a Saviour! When the church utterly 
 believes that, we shall witness a regeneration of reli- 
 gion as power. For no truth is mightier to bless life 
 than belief in a living God. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I have spoken of Orthodoxy and of Mechanism as 
 enemies of the spiritual interpretation of life. My 
 third point is that Externalism must be overthrown 
 in the democratizing process. The essentially spirit- 
 ual is an inward movement, an inward act, an inward 
 achievement. Great religion moves fundamentally 
 from within, outward; not from without, inward. 
 
 It will be apparent that my three points are but 
 three angles of approach to the same plea, namely, 
 that personality is a form of power that works best 
 when it can manage its problems in the insight of 
 creative freedom; when the creative will is seen as an 
 energy that lays hold of the cosmic sources of life, 
 personal and social. The cosmic contacts are within 
 the hearts of men, in the heights and depths of their 
 moral experiences, not in the external mechanism of 
 the outer, visible world. Prayer is a living moral act 
 by which a man lays hold of the environing energy 
 and knows God as Moral Help. The well of living 
 water has its source within us! 
 
 To an age that is learning so well the lessons of the 
 scientific control of life, this gospel of the spiritual 
 control of life seems like an outgrown superstition, a 
 
262 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 fairy-story of our childhood. For we must acknowl- 
 edge and give unstinted praise to the mastery of life 
 that has come through scientific invention. It has 
 helped us to throw off the superstitions and the slav- 
 eries of the past. And the New Age that is opening 
 promises to bring undreamt-of modes of scientific 
 ministry and power for the blessing of our human 
 world. 
 
 But there is a deadly peril to the soul in this un- 
 paralleled progress in scientific achievement, if it con- 
 fuses and stampedes the Christian Church from its 
 ancient, original conviction that the kingdom of God 
 must come to the world through the souls of men, and 
 not from without. The only salvation against the 
 peril of the scientific control of life is that the church 
 shall keep alive its original message, that is, the spirit- 
 ual control of life. The finest achievements of human 
 invention serve the ends of diabolism quite as effec- 
 tively as the ends of ethical spiritualism. Science as 
 such is neutral on that point. Scholarship can Ger- 
 manize the world or it can Christianize it. Germany 
 outranked the world in many lines of scientific con- 
 trol, and she deserves credit for it. But she lost the 
 mastery that has to be achieved from within, and a 
 world-catastrophe has resulted. What doth it profit 
 a man or a nation if it gain scientific control of the 
 whole world, and lose the spiritual control of its own 
 souLf^ If the soul has not learned moral mastery, self- 
 mastery, it will run amuck, a world-wrecking force! 
 
 Externalism is the form of thinking in many fields 
 which does not acknowledge the inner source of con- 
 trol and value in personal life. When a labor leader 
 recently wrote, "Altruism is unscientific," he was 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 263 
 
 speaking the language of externalism, denying the 
 worth of self-sacrifice and love. When we put our 
 trust in economic and political programs as the su- 
 preme way to manage men and women, that is ex- 
 ternalism. When we frankly talk of wages and short 
 hours as the chief labor problems, that is externalism. 
 When we say anything which forgets that men and 
 women are not things, but offspring of the Almighty, 
 that is externalism. When we treat society as though 
 redemption could come from without, without trans- 
 forming the very souls of people, that is externalism. 
 The inwardness of the spiritual control that redeems 
 and saves society is the characteristic insight of Jesus, 
 the characteristic note of great Christianity. When a 
 preacher forgets this and tries simply to get Jesus 
 behind his own social program, he has lost Jesus' 
 distinctive message. 
 
 It may be put in this way. There is a great contest 
 going on in the church to-day between Christianity 
 conceived as a method of practical service, and Chris- 
 tianity conceived as a message, a spiritual philosophy 
 of life. The ministers are aligning themselves on the 
 issue. There are those who lead with a passion for 
 better methods. Reorganized work and institutional- 
 ized work are the fruit of this leadership. It is a sign 
 of awakening with a promise of a better future for the 
 church. It speaks much of efficiency, the efficiency 
 of improved methods. 
 
 Then there are the ministers who feel that men 
 and women need new motives, new meanings, new 
 incentives, comfort, sympathy, help, and companion- 
 ship. They feel that nothing challenges and arouses 
 and heals like an evangel of divine meaning and love 
 
264 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and inward transformation. Such leadership tries to 
 keep the vision of a Hving God before the eyes of the 
 people, a heavenly Father who wants to awaken a 
 childlike spirit in men. It lays much stress upon 
 preaching a gospel to arouse and sustain the spirits 
 of men. 
 
 On the whole our churches are tending to become 
 institutional or social centers rather than places for 
 prayer and worship. Our ministers feel a strong call 
 to become business managers or popular exponents of 
 industrial unions rather than prophetic guides of the 
 inner life. We put great stress upon the practical, the 
 concrete, the visible, in our religious thinking. We 
 are possessed or obsessed by the idea of administering 
 to life from the outside and controlling it from the 
 outside. The Young Men's Christian Association 
 came home from a great ministry to the needs of 
 our boys in uniform. Their practical service was 
 inestimable. The effect has been to raise a somewhat 
 confused issue as to whether the religion of the future 
 will be a matter of purely practical service. We are 
 told that numbers of pastors returned to resign 
 their pastorates in order to become Y. M. C. A. work- 
 ers. Certainly a good many Christian ministers 
 returned from war service with a feeling of impa- 
 tience for the slow-working processes of moral educa- 
 tion and spiritual ministry; they feel called to large 
 tasks of "organization" and "administration." They 
 have felt the pulse of the big movement in the world's 
 life and they have made a wrong diagnosis. They 
 have lost something of Jesus' vision of the funda- 
 mental greatness of the leaven method of saving souls, 
 and are impatient to save "society," not by the laws 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 265 
 
 of moral health, but by applying some "social" or 
 "civic" or "economic" or "political" remedy. Surely 
 there is peril to the soul of the world in this wide- 
 spread ethical confusion! 
 
 All of the symptoms seem to point to a cleavage 
 between the two ideals of Christian ministry. And 
 I am not sure but the greatest problem before the 
 church in the immediate future is the problem that 
 lies behind these symptoms. What is practical Chris- 
 tianity? 
 
 Shall the church of the future be a regenerating 
 church with a message, or shall it be an organizing 
 church with its emphasis upon efficient methods? Is 
 it a gospel that human life most needs, or is it better 
 methods and organization and laws? Shall the future 
 church work with a spiritual passion or a practical 
 passion — when we see the problem in the right pro- 
 portion, what kind of minister shall we need? It is 
 true that the minister who is not alert to the best 
 methods is lacking in efficiency, but it is equally true 
 that excessive emphasis upon practical methods often 
 conceals spiritual deadness. Here is the fatal weak- 
 ness of much religious education and pedagogical 
 psychology. The best methods we must have; but a 
 message great enough to arouse and inspirit and mo- 
 tivate and sustain men seems to me a prime condition 
 of religious awakening. A Method or a Message — 
 which is the greater need? 
 
 The most practical appeal in the world, after all, 
 is the call to serve a great Cause; to live and die for a 
 great Meaning; to march with unconscious heroism to 
 the music that a conquering host makes advancing 
 together toward the goal of victory. The world has 
 
266 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 never heard a greater recruiting, fighting, conquering 
 call to humanity than the challenge of the kingdom 
 of God as a cause that puts heroism into every task 
 and every cause. Shall the church to-day not learn 
 the lesson of the Call of a Cause which has aroused 
 Canada and America to heroism and sent our boys 
 out to make the supreme sacrifice? Is a method the 
 supreme need of the church — or a great dramatic 
 cause to enlist our supreme loyalties? 
 
 The great menace that hangs over the world to-day, 
 with its Peace Terms, its League of Nations, its Bol- 
 shevism, and its rising Socialism, is that we should 
 come to feel that organization and laws and a recon- 
 structed world contain the power of redemption! 
 These things are all external; they are all elaborate 
 methods and programs, with machinery to enforce 
 their observance; they are in danger of concealing or 
 denying the fact that spiritual salvation must first come 
 through men as a transforming experience, and not 
 to men as a New Social Order. We must socialize the 
 souls of men before we can reconstruct society. We 
 must make men brotherly, as well as organize brother- 
 hoods. It is that inner dynamism, that free thing in 
 men's hearts which must be morally educated to 
 accept the new order in the spirit of willing coopera- 
 tion, of glad self-sacrifice, of "unscientific" altruism, 
 which alone will make economic and international 
 programs and peace methods workable as redemptive 
 agencies. 
 
 This will seem obvious or childish to some readers. 
 It seems to me the fateful point in our social philoso- 
 phies to-day. Programs, better laws, a new social 
 order, we must have. Bless the men and women who 
 
DEMOCRATIZING THEOLOGY 267 
 
 are working away at these problems! But all of this 
 social reconstruction, as such, believes that when the 
 perfect order is outlined, the remedy for human ills is 
 at hand. It believes that human nature will respond 
 automatically to its better environment. It says that 
 "we can't save the souls of men when their stomachs 
 are empty." And it seems to assume that an ema- 
 ciated soul can be nourished by bread and beef. So 
 much social enthusiasm has such a superficial estimate 
 of a man — it forgets that we must save the souls of 
 men if we would save men for society! 
 
 When a great factory is built and fully equipped 
 with the most modern machinery, the problem of 
 production is not solved. The matter of power and 
 the matter of men must be solved before the machin- 
 ery has any significance. Thus the externalism of all 
 socialistic programs from single tax and abolition of 
 property to the latest Bolshevism assumes that men 
 can be manipulated like things; that cause and effect 
 and environment and wages exhaust the ways in 
 which men can be managed. And I am trying to say 
 that the human spirit cannot be managed from the 
 outside; it must be spiritually educated to manage 
 itself from within; it must learn the greatness of fol- 
 lowing idealistic programs, not because it must, but 
 because it will! It is the will and the affections that 
 must be educated, not the intellect alone. Democracy 
 must learn and teach the meaning of self-control to the 
 point of unselfishness, the free subordination of its 
 own to that of another, before externalism and social- 
 ism will work. In short, the task of regeneration must 
 go hand in hand with the task of reorganization and 
 administration. 
 
268 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The supreme peril before the church, and the su- 
 preme opportunity, lies right here. Shall we so 
 democratize our thinking about religion, so throw off 
 the tyrannies that beset us of rigid standards of think- 
 ing, of mechanism and externalism in our treatment 
 of religion, that we can bring Jesus' living message 
 to the people — namely, the challenge to rise up and 
 follow him, and go against the strong currents of life, 
 and wrest a victory over the world in the form of Christly 
 character, Christly service, and a new Christly order of 
 society in which men shall follow Christ, not because 
 he has the loaves and fishes, hut because they love him 
 and want to follow himf 
 

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