REESE LIBRARY
; 1 1 1-:
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
" Nach cwigcn, chrnen,
Grossen Gesetzen
Miisscn wir alle
Unseres Dascins
Kreise vollenden.
Nur allein der Mcnsch
Vermag das Unmogliche;
Er unterschcidct,
Wahlet und richtet;
Er kann dcm Augenbliclc
Dauer verleihen.
Er allein darf
Den Guten loknen,
Den Bosen strafen,
Heilen und retten ;
AUes Irrende, Schweifendc
Nutzlich verbinden."
GOETHE, "Das Gottliche.
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
AND
OTHER ESSAYS
BY
ANDREW SETH, M.A., LL.D.
(i
PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCVII
3 3 M3
76
PREFACE.
THE title of this volume may seem disproportioned
to its contents. A systematic discussion of "man's
place in the cosmos " would obviously involve the
whole range of science and of metaphysics. These
essays make no pretence to be such a discussion.
Nevertheless it is not unadvisedly that the title of
the first paper has been extended to the volume as
a whole, and thus used to indicate the general char-
acter of its contents. The papers of which it is com-
posed were written within the last six years, and are,
in the first instance, a criticism of some of the more
significant contributions to philosophy which have ap-
peared during that period. They cannot, therefore,
be taken as a series, in which there is a systematic
progress from the earlier essays to those which follow.
Vi PREFACE.
But it will be found that they are all, at bottom, treat-
ments of the same theme, man's relation to the forces
of nature and to the absolute ground of things, or, in
the words of the title, man's place in the cosmos. The
books or pamphlets criticised were originally selected
for criticism because of their bearing upon this funda-
mental question, in which all vital interest in philoso-
phy centres. And whatever the starting-point of the
discussion may be, the main concern of every essay is
to enforce the same view of the world and of man.
That view I have described in one of the papers as
humanism, in opposition to naturalism; in another
reference, it might be described as ethicism, in opposi-
tion to a too narrow intellectualism. Man as rational,
and, in virtue of self-conscious reason, the free shaper
of his own destiny, furnishes us, I contend, with our
only indefeasible standard of value, and our clearest
light as to the nature of the divine. He does what
science, occupied only with the laws of events, and
speculative metaphysics, when it surrenders itself to
the exclusive guidance of the intellect, alike find un-
intelligible, and are fain to pronounce impossible he
acts. As Goethe puts it in a seeming paradox, Man
alone achieves the impossible. But inexplicable, in a
PREFACE. Vll
sense, as man's personal agency is nay, the one per-
petual miracle it is nevertheless our surest datum
and our only clue to the mystery of existence.
This position is maintained in several of the essays
against the lower monism of the naturalistic systems.
In the long essay entitled "A New Theory of the
Absolute," it is defended against the Spinozism which
permeates Mr Bradley's statement of metaphysical
monism. This essay emphasises, on the one hand, the
necessary limitations of human insight and, on the
other hand, the validity or practical truth of our human
rendering of the divine. Such a view of the cosmos
must rest ultimately, I think, upon a conviction of the
absolute value of the ethical life. For there is no such
thing as a philosophy without assumptions. Every
idealistic theory of the world has for its ultimate pre-
miss a logically unsupported judgment of value a
judgment which affirms an end of intrinsic worth, and
accepts thereby a standard of unconditional obligation.
On account of this unity of contention, the essays
have been brought together, in the hope that they may
serve a useful purpose. The paper on Professor Hux-
ley's " Evolution and Ethics " appeared in ' Blackwood's
Magazine/ three of the others in the 'Contemporary
Vlll PEEFACE.
Keview,' and the short paper on " The Use of the Term
' Naturalism,' " in the ' Philosophical Eeview.' To the
editors and proprietors of these Keviews I am indebted
for their courtesy in sanctioning this republication.
The essays are republished without substantial alter-
ation, but I have availed myself of the opportunity of
revision, and have also reinserted a few passages which
had been omitted, in order to bring the treatment
within the ordinary compass of re view -articles. The
second part of the essay on " The ' New ' Psychology and
Automatism," though written in 1892 as an integral
part of the discussion, is now printed for the first
time. It gives the question a wider range, and will
be found, I hope, to make the treatment more com-
plete. Mechanism in physiology, " presentationism "
in psychology, materialism and sheer pantheism in
philosophy, may be regarded as different aspects of
the same preconception the denial of the presence of
a real cause at any point in the sequence of events.
I desire in conclusion to express my thanks to my
colleague, M. Charles Sarolea, for his kindness in read-
ing the proofs and making many helpful suggestions.
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, February 1897.
CONTENTS,
MAN S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN ... 1
THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE, OCTOBER 1891 ... 34
THE " NEW " PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM
(a) MUNSTERBERG'S ANALYSIS OF WILL ... 64
(6) KNOWLEDGE AND ACTIVITY . . . .114
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE
MR BRADLEY'S ' APPEARANCE AND REALITY ' . . 129
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS . . . .226
NOTE A. THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM" . . 289
NOTE B. THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM CON-
SEQUENCES . 304
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN.
pEOFESSOE HUXLEY'S Eomanes Lecture .on
-*- " Evolution and Ethics " deservedly attracted a
large amount of attention on its appearance. That
attention was due not only to the importance of the
subject handled and the reputation of the lecturer,
but quite as much to the breadth and scope of the
treatment, to the nobility of tone and the deep human
feeling which characterised a singularly impressive
utterance. Popular interest was also excited by the
nature of the conclusion reached, which, in the mouth
of the pioneer and prophet of evolution, had the air
of being something like a palinode. Criticisms of the
lecture appeared at the time by Mr Leslie Stephen
in the ' Contemporary Eeview/ and by Mr Herbert
2 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
Spencer in a letter to the ' Athenaeum ' ; l and many
discussions appeared in theological quarters. But the
subject as a whole was pediaps dismissed from public
attention before its significance had been exhausted,
or indeed properly grasped. Professor Huxley's argu-
ment and the criticisms it called forth illuminate most
instructively some deep -seated ambiguities of philo-
sophical terminology, and at the same time bring into
sharp relief the fundamental difference of standpoint
which divides philosophical thinkers. The questions
at issue, moreover, are not merely speculative ; already
they cast their shadow upon literature and life. The
opportunity of elucidation is therefore in the best sense
timely, and no apology seems needed for an attempt
to recall attention to the points in dispute and to ac-
centuate their significance.
The outstanding feature of Professor Huxley's argu-
ment is the sharp contrast drawn between nature and
ethical man, and the sweeping indictment of " the
cosmic process " at the bar of morality. The problem
of suffering and the almost complete absence of any
1 The Eomanes Lecture was delivered on the 18th May 1893, and
published shortly thereafter. Mr Spencer's letter appeared in the
* Athenaeum ' of August 5, and Mr Leslie Stephen's article in the ' Con-
temporary Keview ' of August 1893. The present paper was published
in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' December 1893.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 3
relation between suffering and moral desert is the
theme from which he starts, and to which he con-
tinually returns. " The dread problem of evil," " the
moral indifference of nature," " the unfathomable in-
justice of the nature of things " this is the aspect of
the world which has burned itself deeply into the
writer's soul, and which speaks in moving eloquence
from his pages. The Buddhistic and the Stoic at-
tempts to grapple with the problem are considered,
and are found to end alike in absolute renunciation.
" By the Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits
that the cosmos is too strong for him ; and, destroying
every bond which ties him to it by ascetic discipline,
he seeks salvation in absolute renunciation " (p. 29).
Is the antagonism, then, final and hopeless, or can
modern science and philosophy offer any better re-
conciliation of ethical man with the nature to which
as an animal he belongs, and to whose vast uncon-
scious forces he lies open on every side ? As Pro-
fessor Huxley puts the question himself in his open-
ing pages Is there or is there not " a sanction for
morality in the ways of the cosmos " ? Man has
built up " an artificial world within the cosmos " :
has human society its roots and its justification in
the underlying nature of the cosmos, or is it in
4 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
very truth an " artificial " world, which is at odds
with that nature and must be in perpetual conflict
with it ? The Stoic rule -which places virtue in " fol-
lowing nature" is easily shown to be a phrase of
many meanings, and to demand qualification by refer-
ence, first, to the specific nature of man, and then to
a higher nature or guiding faculty within the mind of
man himself. But the modern ethics of evolution
apparently claim to have bridged the gulf and to have
made the ethical process continuous with the cosmic
process of organic nature, they claim, in short, to
exhibit the ethical life as only a continuation, on
another plane, of the struggle for existence. If this
claim is well founded, and the two worlds are really
continuous, then the maxim, " Follow nature," will
have been proved to be, after all, the sum and sub-
stance of virtue.
It is against this naturalisation of ethics that Pro-
fessor Huxley protests in the strongest terms. He
readily allows that the ethical evolutionists may be
right in their natural history of the moral sentiments.
But " as the immoral sentiments have no less been
evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for
the one as the other. . . . Cosmic evolution may teach
us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 5
have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to
furnish any better reason why what we call good is
preferable to what we call evil, than we had before "
(p. 31). That is to say, the origin of a belief and the
validity of a belief, or the origin of a tendency and the
ethical quality of that tendency, are logically two dis-
tinct questions. But the evolutionist is apt to make
the answer to the first do duty as an answer to the
second also, because he has in reality no standard of
appreciation to apply to any phenomenon except that
of mere existence. " Whatever is, is right," or at all
events, " Whatever is predominant, is right," is the
only motto of the consistent evolutionist. This is
embodied in the phrase " survival of the fittest," which
is used illegitimately, as we shall see to effect the
transition from the merely natural to the ethical world.
In opposition to such theories, Professor Huxley con-
tends that the analogies of the struggle for existence
throw no light on the ethical nature of man.
Cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters
of the enemy of ethical nature (p. 27). Self-assertion, the
unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the
tenacious holding of all that can be kept, . . . constitute
the essence of the struggle for existence. . . . For his suc-
cessful progress as far as the savage state, man has been
6 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the
ape and the tiger (p. 6).
So far is this struggle from explaining morality that
the practice of what is ethically best what we call good-
ness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, in all
respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the
cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-
assertion, it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting
aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the
individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his
fellows. ... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of ex-
istence. . . . Laws and moral precepts are directed to
the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the
individual of his duty to the community, to the protection
and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at
least the life of something better than a brutal savage.
In short, "social progress means a checking of the
cosmic process at every step, and the substitution
for it of another which may be called the ethical
process." This leads up to the characteristic call to
arms with which the address concludes : " Let us
understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of
society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process,
still less in running away from it, but in combating
it" (pp. 33, 34).
Such is the logical framework of the lecture. It
is obvious that the important points of the treat-
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 7
merit are : (1) The emphasis laid upon the division
between man and nature, which a reviewer in the
' Athenseum ' 1 called " an approximation to the Paul-
ine dogma of nature and grace " : and (2) the mood
of militant heroism, not untouched, however, by stoi-
cal resignation, which naturally results from contem-
plation of the unequal struggle between the microcosm
and the macrocosm.
Before proceeding to consider the consistency of
Professor Huxley's argument and the ultimate ten-
ability of his position, I wish to say, in regard to
the first point, how timely, it seems to me, is his
insistence on the gulf between man and non -human
nature ; how sound is the stand he takes upon the
ethical nature of man as that which is alone of sig-
nificance and worth in the "transitory adjustment of
contending forces," which otherwise constitutes the
cosmos. Whether the breach is to be taken as abso-
lute or not, it is at least apparent that if man with
his virtues and vices be included simpliciter and with-
out more ado in a merely natural order of facts, we
inevitably tend to lose sight of that nature within na-
ture which makes man what he is. The tendency so
to include man has become a settled habit in much of
1 July 22, 1893.
8 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
our current literature. I need not speak of the docu-
ments of so-called Naturalism, with their never-end-
ing analysis of la bte Jmmaine analysis from which
one would be slow to gather that any such qualities
as justice, purity, or disinterested affection had ever
disturbed the brutish annals of force and lust. But in
other quarters, even where the picture is not so dark,
the fashion still is to treat man as a natural product,
not as the responsible shaper of his destiny, but,
void of spiritual struggles and ideal hopes, as the
unresisting channel of the impulses which sway him
hither and thither, and issue now in one course of
action, now in another. This literature is inartistic,
even on its own terms, for, blinded by its material-
istic fatalism, it does not even give us things as
they are. The higher literature never forgets that
man, as Pascal put it, is nobler than the universe ;
and freedom (in some sense of that ambiguous term)
must be held to be a postulate of true art no less
than of morality. But besides being bad art, litera-
ture of this sort has a subtly corrosive influence upon
the ethical temper. For the power of will, as Lamen-
nais said, is that in us which is most quickly used
up : " Ce qui s'use le plus vite en nous, c'est la
volonte." Hence the insidious force of the sugges-
PROFESSOK HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 9
tion that we do not will at all, but are merely the
instruments of our desires. For this is to justify,
or at least to excuse, every passion on the ground
of its "natural" origin. This temper of mind is
found invading even more serious writers, and it is
traceable ultimately to the same confusion between
the laws of human conduct and the workings of
nature in the irresponsible creatures of the field.
M. Eenan, it will be remembered, delicately excuses
himself in his ' Souvenirs ' rallies himself, as we
may say on his continued practice of chastity :
I continued to live in Paris as I had lived in the semi-
nary. Later, I saw very well the vanity of that virtue as
of all the rest. I recognised in particular that nature cares
not at all whether man is chaste or not. I cannot rid my-
self [he says elsewhere in the same volume] of the idea that
after all it is perhaps the libertine who is right, and who
practises the true philosophy of life.
Many will remember, too, how Matthew Arnold
took up this parable when he discoursed in America
011 the cult of the great goddess Lubricity, to which,
as he said, contemporary France seemed more and
more to be devoting herself. After much delicate
banter and much direct plain-speaking, Mr Arnold
turns upon M. Eenan and cuts to the root of the
fallacy in a single sentence. " Instead of saying that
10 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
nature cares nothing about chastity, let us say that
human nature, our nature, cares about it a great
deal." And when we meet the same fallacy invad-
ing our own literature, the same answer will suffice.
I think it may be worth pointing out a notable in-
stance in a novel widely read and highly praised
within the last few years. Mr Hardy's ' Tess of the
D'Urbervilles ' is unquestionably a powerful work,
but it suffers, in my opinion, both artistically and
ethically, from this tendency to assimilate the moral
and the natural. To smack of the soil is in many
senses a term of praise ; but even rustic men and
women are not altogether products of the soil, and
Mr Hardy is in danger of so regarding them. What
I wish, however, to point out here is the pernicious
fallacy which underlies a statement like the follow-
ing. Tess, after she has fallen from her innocence,
is wont to wander alone in the woods, a prey to
her own reflections, "terrified without reason," says
the author, by "a cloud of moral hobgoblins."
It was they [he continues] that were out of harmony
with the actual world, not she. Walking among the sleep-
ing birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a
moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough,
she looked upon herself as a figure of guilt intruding into
the haunts of innocence. But all the while she was making
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 11
a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling her-
self in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had been
made to break an accepted social law, but no law known
to the environment in which she fancied herself such an
anomaly.
The implication of such a passage is that the "ac-
cepted social law " is a mere convention, and that
the deeper truth, "the actual world," is to be found
in the hedgerows and the warrens. To satisfy an
animal prompting without scruple or hesitation, and
without the qualms of a fantastical remorse, is only
to fulfil the law of nature, and to put one's self
in harmony with one's surroundings. The shallow-
ness of such revolt against "accepted social laws"
is too apparent to need further exposure. A con-
vention truly, in one sense, the moral law in ques-
tion is ; but upon this convention the fabric of
human society and all the sanctities of the family
rest. He must be strangely blinded by a word who
deems this sanction insufficient, or who would pit in
such a case a " natural " impulse against a " social "
law.
In view of pervasive misconceptions and fallacies
like these, it is eminently salutary, I repeat, to have
our attention so impressively recalled by Professor
Huxley to the idea of human life as an imperium
OF THB
UNIVERSITY
12 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
in imperio a realm which, though it rises out of
nature, and remains exposed to the shock of natural
forces, requires for its laws no foreign sanction, but
bases them solely on the perfection of human nature
itself. For, even though Professor Huxley's way of
stating the opposition should prove ultimately unten-
able, the breach between ethical man and pre-human
nature constitutes without exception the most im-
portant fact which the universe has to show ; and for
a true understanding of the world it is far more vital
to grasp the significance of this breach than to be
misled by a cheap desire for unity and system into
minimising, or even denying, the fact.
It is time, however, to examine Professor Huxley's
position and arguments more closely. His critics have
not been slow to remark upon the ambiguity lurking
in the phrase " cosmic process," which occurs so often
throughout the lecture, in antithesis to the ethical
process to the moral and social life of man. And
they point with one accord to Note 19 as containing, in
effect, a retractation of his own doctrine by Professor
Huxley himself. " Of course, strictly speaking," we
read in the note, " social life and the ethical process, in
virtue of which it advances towards perfection, are part
and parcel of the general process of evolution." As Mr
PEOFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 13
Spencer pointedly asks, " If the ethical man is not a
product of the cosmic process, what is he a product
of ? " Or as Shakespeare expressed it in the often-
quoted lines
" Nature is made better by no means
But nature makes that means : so, o'er that art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes."
If the cosmic process be understood in the full latitude
of the phrase, this is, indeed, so obvious, and the critic's
victory so easy, that it is hard to believe Professor
Huxley's position rests altogether on a foundation so
weak. The term " nature," and still more an expres-
sion like " the cosmic process," may be taken in an all-
inclusive sense as equivalent to the universe as a whole
or the nature of things ; and if so, it is obvious that
human nature with its ethical characteristics is em-
braced within the larger whole. The unity of the
cosmos in some sense is not so much a conclusion
to be proved as an inevitable assumption. Professor
Huxley apparently denies this unity in the text of his
lecture, and is naturally obliged to reassert it in his
note. This constitutes the weakness of his position.
The part must be somehow included in the process of
the whole ; there is no extra-cosmic source from which
14 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
a revolt against the principles of the cosmos could draw
inspiration or support.
Now the strength of the evolutionary theory of ethics
lies in its frank recognition of the unity of the cosmos ;
and in this it is, so far, at one with the philosophical
doctrine of Idealism to which it is otherwise so much
opposed the doctrine which finds the ultimate reality
of the universe in mind or spirit, and its End in the
perfecting of spiritual life. But each of these theories
exhibits the unity of the world in its own way. The
way taken by the ethical evolutionists is to naturalise
morality, to assimilate ethical experience to nature,
in the lower or narrower sense in which it is used to
denote all that happens in the known world except the
responsible activities of human beings. And it is
against this removing of landmarks that Professor
Huxley, rightly, as it seems to me, protests. For
though Mr Spencer and Mr Leslie Stephen may be
technically in the right, inasmuch as human nature
is unquestionably part of the nature of things, it is
the inherent tendency of their theories to substitute
for this wider nature the laws and processes of that
narrower, non-human world, to which the term nature
is on the whole restricted by current usage.
This tendency is inherent in every system which
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 15
takes as its sole principle of explanation the carrying
back of facts or events to their antecedent conditions.
And, as it happens, this is explicitly formulated by Mr
Stephen, in his article in the ' Contemporary Eeview,'
as the only permissible meaning of explanation : " To
'explain' a fact is to assign its causes that is, give
the preceding set of facts out of which it arose." But
surely, I may be asked, you do not intend to challenge
a principle which underlies all scientific procedure, and
which may even claim to be self-evident ? I certainly
do not propose to deny the formal correctness of the
principle, but I maintain most strongly that the cur-
rent application of it covers a subtle and very serious
fallacy, for the true nature of the cause only becomes
apparent in the effect. Now, if we explain a fact by
giving " the preceding set of facts out of which it
arose," we practically resolve the fact into these ante-
cedents that is to say, we identify it with them. When
we are dealing with some limited sphere of phenomena,
within which the facts are all of one order say, the
laws of moving bodies as treated in mechanics there
may be no practical disadvantage from this limited in-
terpretation of causation. But when we pass from one
order of facts to another say, from the inorganic to
the organic, or, still more, from animal life to the self-
16 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
conscious life of man the inadequacy of such explana-
tion stares us in the face. For " the preceding set of
facts," which we treat as the cause or sufficient explan-
ation of the phenomenon in question, is ex hypothesi
different from the phenomenon it is said to explain ;
and the difference is, that it consists of simpler ele-
ments. To explain, according to this view, is to reduce
to simpler conditions. But if the elements are really
simpler, there is the fact of their combination into a
more complex product to be explained, and the fact of
their combination in such a way as to produce precisely
the result in question. And if we choose to take the
antecedent conditions, as they appear in themselves,
apart from the all-important circumstance of the pro-
duction of this effect, we have, no doubt, a " preceding
set of facts/' but we certainly have not, in any true
sense, the cause of the phenomenon. We have elimi-
nated the very characteristic we set out to explain
namely, the difference of the new phenomenon from
the antecedents out of which it appears to have been
evolved. Hence it is that, in the sense indicated, all
explanation of the higher by the lower is philosophically
a hysteron proteron. The antecedents assigned are not
the causes of the consequents ; for by antecedents the
naturalistic theories mean the antecedents in abstraction
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 17
from their consequents the antecedents taken as they
appear in themselves, or as we might suppose them to
be if no such consequents had ever issued from them.
So conceived, however, the antecedents (matter and
energy, for example) have no real existence they are
mere entia rationis, abstract aspects of the one concrete
fact which we call the universe. The true nature of
the antecedents is only learned by reference to the
consequents which follow ; or, as I put it before, the
true nature of the cause only becomes apparent in
the effect. All ultimate or philosophical explanation
must look to the end. Hence the futility of all
attempts to explain human life in terms of the
merely animal, to explain life in terms of the inor-
ganic, and ultimately to find a sufficient formula for
the cosmic process in terms of the redistribution of
matter and motion. If we are in earnest with the
doctrine that the universe is one, we have to read
back the nature of the latest consequent into the
remotest antecedent. Only then is the one, in any
true sense, the cause of the other.
Applying this to the present question, we may say
that, just as within the limits of the organic world
there may be exhibited an intelligible evolution of
living forms, so within the moral world we may
B
18 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
certainly have an evolution of the moral sentiments
and of the institutions which subserve ethical conduct.
But as, in the one case, we must start with the fact of
life that is to say, with the characteristic ways of
behaving which are found in living matter and which
are not found in dead matter so, in the other case,
we must carry with us from the outset the charac-
teristics or postulates of moral experience namely,
self-consciousness, with the sense of responsibility, and
the capacity for sympathy which is based on the
ability to represent to one's self the life and feelings
of another. Such an evolution within the moral sphere
does not justify us in presenting morality as an " evolu-
tion " from non-moral conditions that is, in resolving
morality into non-moral elements. And this Mr Leslie
Stephen seems to admit in an important passage of the
article already referred to. " Morality proper," he says,
" begins when sympathy begins ; when we really desire
the happiness of others, or, as Kant says, when we
treat other men as an end, and not simply as a means.
Undoubtedly this involves a new principle no less than
the essential principle of all true morality." I cannot
but regard this as an important admission, but at the
same time I am bound to say that, till I met this
unexpected sentence of Mr Stephen's, I had supposed
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 19
that the admission of " a new principle " was precisely
what the evolutionists were, of all things, most anxious
to avoid.
It seems to me, therefore, that though Professor
Huxley may have put himself technically in the wrong
by speaking of " the cosmical process," his contention
is far from being so inept as a verbal criticism would
make it appear. It is really directed against the sub-
mergence of ethical man in the processes of non-ethical
and non-human nature ; and if any justification is to
be sought for the use of the phrase, we may find it in
the tendency inherent in the evolutionary method of
explanation the tendency already explained to sub-
stantiate antecedents in abstraction from their conse-
quents, and thus practically to identify the cosmos
with its lowest aspects. If the evolutionists do not
make this identification in their own minds, they are
at least singularly successful in producing that impres-
sion upon their readers.
On another important point connected with, and
indeed involved in, the foregoing, Professor Huxley,
by an unguarded statement, laid himself open to a
pretty obvious and apparently conclusive rejoinder.
"The cosmic process," he says in one place, "has no
sort of relation to moral ends." But " the moral indif-
20 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
ference of nature," even in the restricted sense of the
term, cannot be maintained so absolutely. Nature
undoubtedly puts a premium upon certain virtues,
and punishes certain modes of excess and defect by
decrease of vitality and positive pain. As Mr Stephen
says : " That chastity, temperance, truthfulness, and
energy are on the whole advantages both to the
individual and the race does not, I fancy, require
elaborate proof, nor need I argue at length that the
races in which they are common will therefore have
inevitable advantages in the struggle for existence."
But if so, then it would seem that cosmic nature is
not, as it was represented, "the headquarters of the
enemy of ethical nature " ; to a certain extent it may
even be regarded as a " school of virtue." The sphere,
however, in which this holds true is a comparatively
limited one, being substantially restricted to temper-
ance, in the Greek sense of the word that is to say,
moderation in the indulgence of the animal appetites,
to which may, no doubt, be added, with Mr Stephen,
energy. But nature, as distinct from that human
nature which organises itself into societies and adds
its own sanctions to the moral ideal which it is con-
tinually widening and deepening non-human nature
seems to have no sanctions even for such fundamental
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 21
virtues as truthfulness, justice, and beneficence, still
less for the finer shades and higher nobilities of char-
acter in which human nature flowers. And even in
regard to the list of virtues cited, it might be argued
that cosmic nature sanctions and furthers them only
when we deliberately restrict our survey to the present
stage of the evolutionary process the stage during
which man has grown to be what he is on this planet.
Within this limited period nature, through the struggle
for existence, may be said to have favoured the evolu-
tion of the morally best. But it is no intrinsic quality
of the struggle to produce this result. Here, it appears
to me, we strike upon the deeper truth which prompted
Professor Huxley's somewhat unguarded statement, and
we are under an important obligation to him for the
exposure of what he appropriately calls " the fallacy of
the fittest."
Fittest [he writes] has a connotation of " best " ; and
about best there hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic nature,
however, what is "fittest" depends upon the conditions.
Long since, I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere
were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring
about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population of more and
more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until
the "fittest" that survived might be nothing but lichens,
diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which
give red snow its colour; while, if it became hotter, the
22 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be unin-
habitable by any animated beings save those that nourish
in a tropical jungle. They,- as the fittest, the best adapted
to the changed conditions, would survive (p. 32).
Mr Spencer has been forward to emphasise his agree-
ment with this position, and has recalled attention to
an essay of his own, twenty years old. in which he
makes the same distinction:
The law is not the survival of the "better" or the
" stronger," if we give to these words anything like their
ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are
constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in
which they are placed ; and very often that which, humanly
speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority,
whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other
things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility ; and where
the life led by a species does not demand these higher
attributes, the species profits by decrease of them, and
accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why
there occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis. . . .
When it is remembered that these cases outnumber all
others, it will be seen that the expression " survivorship of
the better " is wholly inappropriate. 1
Out of the mouth of two such witnesses this point
may be taken as established. But if so, I entirely fail
to see where, on naturalistic principles, we get our
standard of higher and lower, of better and worse.
1 Essays, vol. i. p. 379, " Mr Martineau on Evolution."
PKOFESSOK HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 23
If changed conditions of life were to lead to the de-
humanising of the race, to the dropping one by one
of the ethical qualities which we are accustomed to
commend, whence the justification for pronouncing
this process a " retrograde metamorphosis " ? There
can be no other sense of better or worse, on the theory,
than more or less successful adaptation to the con-
ditions of the environment, and what survives is best
just because it survives. The latest stage of the process
must necessarily, therefore, be better than all that went
before, from the mere fact that it has maintained itself.
Mere existence is the only test we have to apply, and
at every stage it would seem that we are bound to
say, Whatever is, is right. But this is tantamount to
saying that, when the theory of evolution is taken in
its widest scope, it is not really legitimate to say that
nature abets or sanctions morality; since the result
of further evolution or, to speak more properly, of
further cosmical changes might be to dethrone our
present ethical conduct from its temporary position
as the fittest, and to leave no scope for what we
now regard as virtue. The k type of conduct which
would then succeed, and which would so far have
the sanction of nature on its side, we should be con-
strained, it seems to me, to pronounce superior to
24 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
the conduct which, from our present point of view,
seems to us better ; because the latter, if adopted, would
in the altered circumstances set us at variance with
our surroundings, and so fail. Failure or success
in the struggle for existence must, on the theory, be
the sole moral standard. Good is what survives ; evil
is what once was fittest, but is so no longer. Thus,
our present good may become nay, is inevitably be-
coming evil, and that not, as might be contended,
in the sense of merging in a higher good. We have
no guarantee that the movement of change, miscalled
evolution, must continue in the line of past progress :
it may gradually, and as it were imperceptibly, assume
another direction a direction which our present moral
ideas would condemn as retrograde. Yet, none the
less, the mere fact of change would be sufficient to
convert our present good into evil.
Such, I must insist, is the only logical position of
a naturalistic ethics. But an important outcome of
the recent discussion has been to show that the most
prominent upholders of the theory do not hold it in
its logical form. Mr Spencer, as we have seen, has
strongly insisted that survival of the fittest does not
mean survival of the better, or even of the stronger ;
and Mr Stephen tells us that the struggle for existence,
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 25
instead of being the explanation of morality, " belongs
to an underlying order of facts to which moral epithets
cannot properly be applied. It denotes a condition
of which the moralist has to take account, and to
which morality has to be adapted, but which, just
because it is a ' cosmic process/ cannot be altered,
however much we may alter the conduct which it
dictates." Surely this comes very near to admitting
Professor Huxley's contention, that our moral standard
is not derived from the struggle for existence, but
rather implies its reversal, substituting for selfishness
sympathy for others, and, in Mr Stephen's own words,
"the sense of duty which each man owes to society
at large." Mr Spencer speaks of an " ethical check "
upon the struggle for existence: it is our duty, he
says, " to mitigate the evils " which it entails in the
social state. " The use of morality," says Mr Stephen,
"is to humanise the struggle, to minimise the suffer-
ings of those who lose the game, and to offer the prizes
to the qualities which are advantageous to all, rather
than to those which serve to intensify the bitterness
of the conflict." But this is neither more nor less than
to say that, as soon as man becomes social and moral,
he has to act counter to the leading characteristics of
the struggle for existence. He becomes animated by
26 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
other ideals, or, to speak more strictly, he then first be-
comes capable of an ideal, of a sense of duty, instead of
obeying without question- the routine of animal impulse.
But if this is so, I still ask the evolutionist who
has no other basis than the struggle for existence, how
he accounts for the intrusion of these moral ideas and
standards which presume to interfere with the cosmic
process, and sit in judgment upon its results ? This
question cannot be answered so long as we regard
morality merely as an incidental result, a by-product,
as it were, of the cosmical system. It is impossible
on such a hypothesis to understand the magisterial
assertion by itself of the part against the whole, its
demands upon the universe, its unwavering condem-
nation of the universe, if these demands are not met
by the nature of things. All this would be an in-
congruous, and even a ludicrous, spectacle if we had
here to do with a natural phenomenon like any other.
The moral and spiritual life remains, in short, unin-
telligible, unless on the supposition that it is in reality
the key to the world's meaning, the fact in the light
of which all other phenomena must be read. We must
be in earnest, I have already said, with the unity of the
world, but we must not forget that, if regarded merely
as a system of forces, the world possesses no such
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 27
unity. It acquires it only when regarded in the light
of an End of absolute worth or value which is realised
or attained in it. Such an End-in-itself, as Kant called
it, we find only in the self-conscious life of man, in the
world of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness which he builds
up for himself, and of which he constitutes himself a
citizen. If it were possible to consider the system of
physical nature apart from the intelligent activities and
emotions of rational beings, those worlds on worlds,
" Rolling ever
From creation to decay,"
would possess in themselves no spark of the value,
the intrinsic worth, which we unhesitatingly assert
to belong, at least in possibility, to the meanest human
life. The endless redistribution of matter and motion
in stupendous cycles of evolution and dissolution would
be a world without any justification to offer for its
existence a world which might just as well not have
been. 1 But if we are honest with ourselves, I do not
1 Without encumbering the main argument by inopportune discus-
sion; one may perhaps ask in a note in what sense even existence could
be attributed to a system of unconscious forces a material world per
se. We cannot perform the abstraction required of us in conceiving
such a system. Nature refuses to be divorced from the thoughts and
feelings of her children and her lords, and we need not be subjective
idealists to hold the literal truth of ,the poet's words that " in our life
alone does Nature live."
28 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
think we can embrace the conclusion that the cosmos
is a mere brute fact of this description. The demand
for an End-in-itself that is, for a fact of such a
nature that its existence justifies itself is as much
a necessity of reason as the necessity which impels us
to refund any phenomenon into its antecedent con-
ditions. And further, unless we sophisticate ourselves,
we cannot doubt that we possess within ourselves
in our moral experience most conspicuously an in-
stance and a standard of what we mean by such
intrinsic value. As Carlyle has put it in one of his
finest passages,
What, then, is man ! What, then, is man ! He endures
but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in
the being and in the working of a faithful man is there
already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance)
a something that pertains not to this wild death-element
of Time ; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be,
when Time shall be no more.
This conviction of the infinite significance and value
of the ethical life is the only view-point from which,
in Professor Huxley's words, we can " make existence
intelligible and bring the order of things into harmony
with the moral sense of man." And it is impossible
to do the one of these things without the other. To
understand the world is not merely to unravel the
PEOFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 29
sequence of an intricate set of facts. So long as we
cannot " bring the order of things into harmony with
the moral sense of man," we cannot truly be said to
have made existence intelligible: the world still re-
mains for us, in Hume's words, " a riddle, an enigma,
an inexplicable mystery."
What, then, is Professor Huxley's final attitude?
The lecture breathes throughout the loftiest temper
of ethical idealism. It is the writer's keen sense of
the superiority of ethical man to non-ethical nature
that prompts him to pit Pascal's "thinking reed" in
unequal struggle against the cosmic forces that en-
velop him; and the noble words at the close stir the
spirit by their impressive insistence on the imperish-
able worth of human effort inspired by duty. Yet
this unflinching conviction does not lead Professor
Huxley to what seems the legitimate conclusion from
it namely, that here only, in the life of ethical en-
deavour, is the end and secret of the universe to be
found. It serves but to accentuate the stern pathos
of his view of human fate. His ultimate attitude
is, theoretically, one of Agnosticism; personally and
practically, one of Stoical heroism. Substantially the
same attitude, it appears to me, is exemplified in the
Pieligion of Humanity the same despair, I mean, of
30 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
harmonising human ideals with the course of the
universe. The Religion of Humanity rightly finds in
man alone any qualities which call for adoration or
worship ; but it inconsistently supposes man to de-
velop these qualities in a fundamentally non-ethical
cosmos, and so fails to furnish a solution that can be
accounted either metaphysically satisfying or ethically
supporting. But we must bear in mind, I repeat, the
principle of the unity of the world. The attitude of
the -Agnostic and the Positivist is due to the separa-
tion which they unconsciously insist on keeping up
between nature and man. The temptation to do so is
intelligible, for we have found that nature, taken in
philosophical language as a thing in itself nature
conceived as an independent system of causes cannot
explain the ethical life of man, and we rightly refuse
to blur and distort the characteristic features of moral
experience by submerging it in the merely natural.
We easily, therefore, continue to think of the system
of natural causes as a world going its own way, ex-
isting quite independently of the ethical beings who
draw their breath within it. Man with his ideal
standards and his infinite aspirations appears conse-
quently upon the scene as an alien without rights in
a world that knows him not. His life is an unex-
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 31
plained intrusion in a world organised on other prin-
ciples, and no way adapted as a habitation for so
disturbing and pretentious a guest. And the conse-
quence is that he dashes his spirit against the steep
crags of necessity, finds his ideals thwarted, his aspira-
tions mocked, his tenderest affections turned to instru-
ments of agony, and is driven, if not into passionate
revolt or nerveless despair, then at best into stoical
resolve. Some such mood as this appears also in much
of Matthew Arnold's poetry, and is to my mind the
explanation of its insistent note of sadness.
" No, we are strangers here, the world is from of old, . . .
To tunes we did not call, our being must keep chime."
It is powerfully expressed in the famous monologue
or chant in " Empedocles on Etna," with its deliberate
renunciation of what the poet deems man's " boundless
hopes " and " intemperate prayers." It inspires the
fine lines to Fausta on " Eesignation," and reappears
more incidentally in all his verse. But calm, as he
himself reminds us, is not life's crown, though calm
is well ; and the poet's " calm lucidity of soul " covers
in this case the baffled retreat of the thinker. We
have, in truth, no right to suppose an independent
non-spiritual world on which human experience is in-
32 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS.
congruously superinduced. If we are really in earnest,
at once with the unity -of the world and with the
necessity of an intrinsically worthy end by reference
to which existence may be explained, we must take
our courage in both hands and carry our convictions
to their legitimate conclusion. We must conclude that
the end which we recognise as alone worthy of attain-
ment is also the end of existence as such the open
secret of the universe. No man writes more pessi-
mistically than Kant of man's relation to the course
of nature, so long as man is regarded merely as a
sentient creature, susceptible to pleasure and pain.
But man, as the subject of duty, and the heir of
immortal hopes, is restored by Kant to that central
position in the universe from which, as a merely
physical being, Copernicus had degraded him.
To a certain extent this conclusion must remain a
conviction rather than a demonstration, for we cannot
emerge altogether from the obscurities of our middle
state, and there is much that may rightly disquiet
and perplex our minds. But if it is in the needs of
the moral life that we find our deepest principle of
explanation, then it may be argued with some reason
that this belongs to the nature of the case; for a
scientific demonstration would not serve the purposes
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 33
of that life. The truly good man must choose good-
ness on its own account ; he must be ready to serve
God for naught, without being invaded by M. Eenan's
doubts. As it has been finely put, he must possess
"that rude old Norse nobility of soul, which saw
virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not
shaken in its faith." l This old Norse nobility speaks
to us again, in accents of the nineteenth century, in
Professor Huxley's lecture. But because such is the
temper of true virtue, it by no means follows that
such virtue will not be rewarded with "the wages
of going on, and not to die."
1 K. L. Stevenson, Preface to 'Familiar Studies of Men and Books.'
THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 1
"VTOU will not find it wonderful if my feelings are
deeply stirred in appearing before you to-day for
the first time in my new capacity. There is no honour
1 An Inaugural Lecture on assuming the duties of the Chair of Logic
and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, October 26, 1891.
The Lecture is printed exactly as it was delivered, and the nature of
the occasion will perhaps be held to excuse the personal references
with which it opens. The general survey of the philosophical field
which it undertakes, and the philosophical point of view indicated in
the concluding pages, seem to give it a useful place in the present vol-
ume. But to prevent misconception, it may be well to append here
the Prefatory Note which accompanied it on its original appearance :
" The title of this Lecture may seem to promise too much. The Lec-
ture does not profess to deal with the circle of the philosophical
sciences, but only with the subjects traditionally associated with a
Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Scotland. Moreover, as the occasion
demanded, it is addressed not so much to the expert as to the large
general public interested in philosophy."
PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 35
or privilege which I could possibly esteem higher than
to teach philosophy in my own alma mater, and in the
capital of my native land to teach, moreover, in the
Chair which, through the lustre of its occupants for
half a century, is, in the mind of the country (I think
I may say it without offence) in some respects the most
famous of Scottish philosophical Chairs. All this is
^deeply gratifying. But it also lays a heavy responsi-
bility upon him who succeeds to such great traditions.
He who did not feel diffident at stepping into the place
of these eminent men would be unworthy of the trust
committed to him. I am deeply sensible of my own
deficiencies, but I hope, if it is granted me, to live and
learn.
It is also a very gratifying experience to join as a
colleague those who were the guides of one's youth.
All are not here ; but of the seven Professors of the
Arts curriculum in my time only two have been re-
moved by death. One, the genial and universally
beloved Kelland, passed away in the ripeness of his
years. The other leaves an untimely gap, which
speaks of recent loss and a common sorrow. One
whose welcome to-day would have sounded with
peculiar pleasantness in my ears, the generous and
high-souled Sellar, has gone from us too soon; and
36 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
to those who knew him, his loss seems not less but
greater as the days go by.
All the more is it matter of heartfelt satisfaction to
me that no such painful gap exists in connection with
my own Chair that I succeed my honoured and be-
loved teacher while he is yet among us in full health
and in the unimpaired vigour of his powers. Long
may he live to counsel us wisely and inspire us by his
example, and to embody in literary form the ripe
results of a life's reflection. In these circumstances,
and in his presence, it is not for me to pronounce any
eulogy upon his thirty-five years of strenuous and
fruitful work in this university, or to attempt to sum
up his happily unfinished achievement. But I will
at least record a little of what I personally owe to him.
He taught me to think ; and in the things of the mind
that is the greatest gift for which one man can be in-
debted to another. Seventeen years ago I entered the
Junior Logic class of this university, with a mind
opening perhaps to literature, but still substantially
with a schoolboy's views of existence ; and there, in
the admirably stimulating lectures to which I listened,
a new world seemed to open before me. What the
student most needs at such a period is to be intellectu-
ally awakened. The crust of custom has to be broken,
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 37
and the sense of wonder and mystery stirred within
him. He should not be crammed with ready-made
solutions of difficulties he has never been made to feel.
Eather should he be sent "voyaging through strange
seas of thought alone." He has to be induced to ask
himself the world-old questions, and to ponder the
possible answers. Above all, the listener should be
made to feel that the questions of which the Professor
speaks are not merely information which he communi-
cates that they are to him the most real things in the
world, the recurring subjects of his deepest meditation.
All this his students found realised in Professor Eraser's
teaching. His sympathetic exposition enabled us to
catch the spirit of the most diverse systems, while
his searching criticism prevented us from resting in
any of those facile solutions which owe their simplicity
to the convenient elimination of intractable elements.
The sense of mystery and complexity in things, which
he brought so vividly home to us, inspired a wise dis-
trust of extreme positions and of systems all too perfect
for our mortal vision. This union of dialectical subtlety
with a never-failing reverence for all that makes man
man, and elevates him above himself, lives in the
memory of many a pupil as no unworthy realisation
of the ideal spirit of philosophy. I shall count myself
38 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
happy if, with his mantle, some portion of his spirit
shall be found to have descended upon his successor.
I hope that, in the days to come, the dingy but famous
class-room will be distinguished as of old by searching
intellectual criticism and impartial debate, not divorced
from that spirit of reverence and humility which alone
can lead us into truth.
That reminds me that you will expect to hear from
a new Professor some indication of the view he takes
of his subject, and of the present outlook in connection
with it. Anything that can be said on an occasion like
the present must necessarily be of a very general char-
acter, but even so it may have a certain interest and
usefulness.
The discipline of the Chair, then, seems to me to
be of a threefold character logical, psychological,
and metaphysical or philosophical in the strict sense.
That is to say, we study, in the first place, the nature
of the reasoning process, or, to be more accurate, the
nature of proof or evidence the conditions to which
valid reasoning must conform. In the second place,
we study, introspectively and otherwise, the pheno-
mena of consciousness. We bring observation and
experiment to bear upon those internal facts which are
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 39
for each of us the only facts immediately present to us,
the facts through which we know all other facts. We
try to analyse and lay bare the inmost nature of those
functions of knowing, feeling, and willing which lie
" closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands or
feet," which constitute, in fact, our very life, the ex-
pression of the self in time. In the third place, we
study, under the title of philosophy proper, the two-
fold question of Knowing and Being. On the one
hand, we investigate human knowledge as to its con-
stitutive notions and its scope or validity ; we discuss
the question of the possibility of knowledge, as it is
called, or the relation of knowledge to reality. This is
what is termed Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge.
On the other hand, so far as the discussion has not
been already anticipated, we approach those questions
as to the ultimate nature, the origin and destiny, of all
that is, which have occupied the speculative intellect
of mankind from the dawn of history, and will occupy
it till its close. These may be embraced under the
special title of Metaphysics, both Epistemology and
Metaphysics falling under the wider designation of
Philosophy.
These three lines of training the logical, the psycho-
logical, and the philosophical are cognate, and the
40 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
first two are in a measure introductory or propaedeutic
to the third. Both logic and psychology, at all events,
if we go beneath the surface, lead us into the very
heart of philosophical difficulties ; and most treatments
of either subject involve a tissue of metaphysical as-
sumptions, of which the writer is, in all probability,
either quite unconscious or only half aware. But
though the subjects are thus cognate and continuous,
and so fitly combined under one Chair, the discipline
they afford has in each case a character of its own.
Logic gives a training almost purely abstract or formal,
comparable in some respects with the mental discipline
of mathematics a training in clearness of thinking, in
accuracy of definition, in appreciation of what is meant
by demonstration or proof. Psychology brings us face
to face with a concrete subject-matter the actual facts
of mental life. It views these facts, partly in them-
selves, but largely in their connection with material con-
ditions and accompaniments. So far as it approaches
these facts by the ordinary methods of observation
and experiment, classifying them and endeavour-
ing to resolve complex phenomena into their simplest
constituents or causes, so far it affords a scientific
discipline comparable to that gained, say, in the study
of one of the natural sciences. And if it often lacks
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 41
the exactness of the sciences of external nature, it has
the advantage, as compared with them, of cultivating
fresh powers of mind through the attitude of " reflec-
tion" or introspection which it is forced to take up.
Self-observation or introspection is by no means so easy
as the observation of a foreign object. We can more
easily analyse a substance in a phial before us than we
can analyse the exact nature of what passes at any
moment in our own mind. Hence Psychology, which
incessantly calls for the exercise of this faculty, and
sharpens and perfects it by constant use, was justly
praised by Hamilton as one of the best gymnastics of
the mind. Philosophy carries us into a more difficult
region; for here we deal not with any particular de-
partment of fact, but with the ultimate principles of
knowledge and the ultimate constitution or meaning
of the cosmos as such, including the prior question
whether we are justified in speaking of a cosmos or
orderly unity at all. These are questions of supreme
and intimate concern to us all, seeing that they embrace
the question of man's place and destiny in relation to
the system of things. He to whom they have no voice
must be either less or more than man. And I fail to
see how any one can lay claim to a liberal education
who is ignorant of what has been thought by the great
42 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
minds of the past upon these subjects, or who is un-
acquainted with the elements of the problems as they
face us to-day. The rudiments of such a knowledge
are necessary, were it for nothing else, to enable any
one to take an intelligent part in the incessant discus-
sion and conflict of opinion which is so marked a feature
of the present time.
This threefold discipline may be justified, therefore,
in a liberal curriculum, whether we look at it, from the
formal side, as a discipline of mental powers otherwise
untrained as the cultivation of one whole side of
human nature or, on the concrete side, as a communi-
cation of knowledge of singular importance and inter-
est. And its permanent value seems to me so high
and unimpeachable, in both these respects, that it needs
no defence at my hands. A defence is generally a con-
fession of weakness. In offering such for philosophy,
" we do it wrong, being so majestical."
I turn, therefore, by preference, to say a little about
the present outlook in the three departments to which
reference has been made, and the way in which it
seems to me that a philosophical Professor should
shape his work at the present time. Logic I will pass
over lightly almost with a word because, of the
three, its discussions are most technical in character.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 43
It appeals, therefore, least to a general audience. More-
over, if we penetrate beneath the surface and examine
the foundations on which it rests, we are immediately
involved in difficult questions of general philosophy;
and it becomes impossible to maintain a rigid distinc-
tion between Logic and Epistemology and Metaphysics.
For that reason the very conception or definition of
the science has long been matter of keen debate, and
at present the aspect of things is confessedly chaotic.
The activity, however, in the higher theory of logic has
of late been great both in this country and in Germany.
I need only refer to the important treatises of Lotze,
Sigwart, and Wundt in Germany, and of Bradley
and Bosanquet in this country, not to speak of the
more distinctively English work of Jevons, Venn, and
others. The chaos, moreover, if at first bewildering,
is not of the kind which should be disheartening to
the serious student. It is of the kind which portends
and accompanies growth, and bears in it the promise
of future order. Evidently, however, such discus-
sions do not lend themselves to exoteric exposition;
they belong to the labours of an advanced class of
metaphysics.
The other aspect of Logic is the elementary doctrine
which has so long formed part of the curriculum of
44 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
educated Europe the ordinary formal logic, originally
based upon Aristotle, to- which has come to be added
some discussion of the theory of scientific method and
the conditions of inductive proof. It has been the
fashion of late with many philosophers to sneer at the
logic of the schools ; but this is only justifiable, as it
seems to me, when extravagant claims are made on its
behalf. No doubt the ordinary logic depends on many
uncriticised assumptions; its analysis of the process
of thought is often superficial ; it cannot stand as a
coherent philosophical doctrine. All this is granted.
The whole discipline is essentially of an elementary
and propaedeutic character ; it is a continuation, in a
more abstract form, of the grammatical training re-
ceived at school. But just this circumstance, that it
continues and attaches itself to the studies of the
school, gives it a peculiar claim to stand as the gate-
way of the philosophical sciences ; whilst, on the other
hand, the very defects and ambiguities which dis-
cussion reveals in many of its conceptions form an
excellent stimulus to the opening mind, and introduce
the student insensibly to important psychological and
metaphysical problems. The formal mechanism may
certainly, in great part, be relegated with advantage to
text-book work and tutorial instruction. But even
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 45
this is not to be despised ; I have always found it an
admirable test in picking out the really clear-headed
members of a class. Here there are no cloudy phrases
in which to take refuge ; the issue is as clear and defi-
nite as in a mathematical proposition, and inaccuracy of
mind is tracked remorselessly down. In view of these
merits, which the study undoubtedly possesses, I can-
not share the contempt frequently expressed for the
logic of the schools. Its names and distinctions, more-
over, have entered so largely into the thought, and
even the familiar language, of the civilised races, that
a certain acquaintance with its forms and processes
may well be demanded in the interests of historical
culture.
It is not so long since a somewhat similar contempt
for Psychology was current in the leading idealistic
school of this country. The horror of the true-blue
experientialist for what he calls " metaphysics " was
amply repaid by the tone of condescension and in-
difference which the idealists adopted towards "em-
pirical psychology." Misled by a name, they visited
upon the head of an unoffending science the inade-
quacies of Empiricism as a philosophical theory. Be-
cause the chief cultivators of psychology in England
had been of the Empiricist persuasion, and had fre-
46 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
quently confounded the limits of psychology and meta-
physics, the transcendentalists tabooed the science as
beneath the notice of a philosopher. Hence a state
of unnatural division and mutual distrust a distrust
rooted in both cases largely in ignorance. To-day the
situation is greatly changed. Psychology has become
more scientific, and has thereby become more con-
scious of her own aims, and, at the same time, of
her necessary limitations. Ceasing to put herself
forward as philosophy, she has entered upon a new
period of development as science ; and in doing so
she has disarmed the jealousy, and is even fast con-
quering the indifference, of the transcendental philo-
sopher. For whatever be the bearing of these
psychological investigations upon philosophy be
their importance in that connection great, or be it
small it is at least certain that in the near future
no philosopher will speak with authority, or will
deserve so to speak, who does not show a competent
acquaintance with the best work in psychology.
The marvellous activity displayed just at present
in the department of psychology constitutes, indeed,
to an expert perhaps the most notable feature in the
state of the philosophical sciences. In Germany and
France, in America, and now in England, there may
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 47
almost be said to be a " boom " in that direction.
In Britain the study of psychology is a native
growth, and it had long flourished in the hands of
the Associationists, such as Hartley, James and John
Mill, and Professor Bain. But before such a school
was heard of by name, the works of Hobbes, Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume had brilliantly exemplified the
national genius in that direction. As already indi-
cated, however, the British thinkers of the past were
far from keeping their psychology unadulterated.
Betraying frequently an insular ignorance of the
great metaphysical systems of ancient Greece and
modern Europe, they gave us, in general, psychology
and philosophy inextricably intermingled. The im-
pulse towards a differentiation of provinces came
from Germany, where the clearer formulation of aims
and methods may be regarded as one beneficial
result of the training which the German intellect
has enjoyed at the hands of Kant and succeeding
thinkers. But the influence of Germany upon psy-
chological investigation has not been limited to this
formal or methodic stimulus. There has been much
good work done there in psychology since the time
of Kant. The psychology of Herbart and his fol-
lowers is in many respects the more elaborate counter-
48 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
part of English Associationism ; and artificial as his
constructions often seem,^ it is acute and able work,
which no modern student of the subject can afford
to neglect. The names of Lotze and Wundt repre-
sent work at once brilliant and patient on independent
lines, and bring before us also the close connection
between psychology and physiology, which is the
distinguishing mark of most recent investigation in
this department. Some of Lotze's most characteristic
work was contained in the book he called 'Medical
Psychology ; ' and ' Physiological Psychology ' is the
name Wundt gives to his important treatise. Psy-
chology, physiology, and physics meet in the great
works of Helmholtz on ' Sensations of Tone ' and
' Physiological Optics.' Another mark of recent in-
vestigation is the potent influence exerted on psy-
chology, as on all other departments of knowledge,
by the conception of evolution. Wherever life is
met with, there the psychologist now finds material
for illustrating and enlarging his science. The old
meaning of ^f%?) has been revived, and the begin-
nings of a comparative psychology have come into
being. The observation of abnormal mental develop-
ments, such as insanity, hysteria, the hypnotic state,
and similar phenomena, forms another field assiduously
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 49
cultivated by modern observers, especially in France,
where, no less than in Germany and America, there
is a large amount of psychological activity among
the younger men.
All these influences may be said to meet and come
to fruition in the best English work of the last few
years such work, I mean, as Mr Ward's masterly
treatise in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and the rich
and stimulating volumes published a year ago 1 by
Professor James of Harvard. Such work may not
unreasonably be taken as marking the new departure
that has been achieved in psychology the critical
maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint,
the wider range of material, the more minute and
experimental analysis.
For one of the most striking results of the rap-
prochement between psychology and physiology just
referred to has been the attempt to introduce experi-
ment into psychological science. Starting from the
experiments of Weber and the more extended psycho-
physical researches of Fechner, but taking a wider
scope, there has sprung up a new line of inquiry,
which, under the name of Experimental Psychology,
sometimes aspires to the dignity of a separate dis-
1 In 1890.
D
50 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
cipline, and looks back with no little condescension
upon the observational and descriptive science with
which we are familiar. Wundt has been the leader
of this movement, and Leipzig its great centre; but
it is now widely spread in Germany, and has been
enthusiastically taken up in America, where every
well- equipped college aims at the establishment of a
psychological or psycho-physical laboratory. England
shows some disposition to follow in the wake. At least
the University of Cambridge has voted a small sum for
the same purpose, and the younger generation of Oxon-
ians are found deserting the philosophy of Green to
work in the laboratories of Freiburg, Leipzig, and
Berlin.
Let me say at once, to prevent misconception, that
I think the experimental psychologists magnify their
office overmuch. The field of experiment is necessarily
limited ; it is limited to those cases where we are able
to manipulate the physical and physiological processes
which condition mental facts. The facts of sensation,
the phenomena of movement, and the time occupied
by the simpler mental processes, constitute, therefore,
practically the whole accessible area. Within these
limits, moreover, the results are often so contradictory
as to leave everything in doubt ; where definite results
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 51
are obtainable, their value is often not apparent.
Finally, many of the results are of a purely physio-
logical nature, and are only by courtesy included in
psychological science. These are the serious deductions
which I think require to be made by a dispassionate
observer of all this eager work. But the appetite for
facts is a healthy symptom, and the whole movement
is one which every student of psychology must take
note of. We need not look for light from this quarter
upon the problems of philosophy and the deeper
mysteries of being ; but it is impossible that so much
patient ingenuity should be devoted to analysing the
substructure of our mental life without ultimately im-
portant effects upon our knowledge of the psychological
mechanism.
A collateral effect of this scientific development of
psychology has been an immense increase of detail-
work. Already it is becoming more and more the
practice for psychologists to publish elaborate mono-
graphs on special phenomena, or on comparatively
small departments of the subject. The number of
psychological journals has also largely increased. One
result of this is obvious. As psychology becomes in-
creasingly scientific in character, and as the literature
of the subject becomes more and more voluminous,
52 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
the severance between philosophy and psychology
must necessarily become more pronounced for it will
become impossible for the same man to do original
work in both departments. From the point of view
of philosophy there might seem to be a certain ad-
vantage in this, as effectually preventing any further
confusion between the two spheres and sets of prob-
lems. But this advantage is more apparent than real.
For psychology, as the science of mental life, must
always stand to philosophy in a more intimate rela-
tion than any of the other sciences can. If the divorce,
then, be carried so far that the philosopher and psy-
chologist are no longer on speaking terms, the old
evils will recur ; for a critical severance of provinces can
be effected and maintained only by one who is familiar
with both departments, even though his original work
should lie only in one. It is to be hoped, therefore, that
the psychologists of the future will all be trained in
philosophy, and the philosophers in psychology. With
this view, and in the present situation of affairs, I can-
not help adding that it seems to me extremely desir-
able, in a great university like this, that there should
be a third man connected with the philosophical de-
partment a Lecturer or Assistant-Professor specially
charged with the teaching of psychology in its most
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 53
recent developments. Such work would lie, of course,
largely with Honours students ; for psychological de-
tail could not profitably replace to the Passman that
introduction to the problems of philosophy and the
history of thought which the retention of the Chair in
a liberal curriculum is meant to ensure.
To Philosophy, then, we come in the last place. It
is by philosophy that this Chair and others like it in
the Scottish universities must ultimately justify their
existence ; and it is to the inbred Scottish bent towards
philosophy that the public interest felt in them is due.
The outlook here is not discouraging. Within the
present century, as is well known, Comte promulgated
his law of the three stages, representing metaphysics
as a disease of childhood, like measles, which the race
was in the act of outgrowing. And since then, Comtian
and other influences have undoubtedly produced in
many quarters a positivistic or agnostic attitude of
mind, which gives itself great airs of finality from
time to time in our newspapers and reviews. But
metaphysics shows no inclination to die, by way of
obliging these prophets of her decease. It is sufficient
answer to their vaticinations to point to the marked
revival of interest in philosophical discussion within
recent years. There was a period, perhaps, when
54 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
philosophical interest languished ; but there has seldom
been a time when people were more anxious than they
are at present to listen to any one who has anything
to say. For indifferentism here, as Kant says, can be,
in the nature of the case, no more than a temporary
phase of feeling. " It is in reality vain to profess
indifference in regard to such inquiries, the object of
which cannot be indifferent to humanity."
Apart from indifference, there was a time when the
vast strides made by science more especially by the
natural sciences in the third quarter of the present
century fascinated men's attention, and diverted it
from the problems which lie beneath and behind all
science. But the very progress of science has brought
men face to face once more with ultimate questions,
and has revealed the impotence of science to deal with
its own conditions and presuppositions. The needs of
science itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge
as the basis of an ultimate theory of things. The idea
entertained in some quarters that all difficulties would
be solved by a scientific conception like that of evolu-
tion, has been found illusory, inasmuch as that concep-
tion itself requires a philosophical interpretation before
it can throw any light at all upon the metaphysical
question. History is not philosophy, and nothing is
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 55
explained merely by being thrown back in time.
Evolution notwithstanding, the old questions all re-
appear in a slightly altered form. They are brought to
light again by the very success of science in dealing
with her own problems.
Philosophy is first, then, at the present day, a doctrine
of knowledge ; and as such the critic of scientific cate-
gories, to purge us of bad metaphysics. For the sweep-
ing away of bad metaphysics is not the least important
part of the philosophical task, and there is no meta-
physics so bad as the metaphysics of the physicist or
biologist when, in the strength of his own right arm,
he makes a raid into philosophical territory. This
critical office of Philosophy must also be extended to
the metaphysical systems of the past. And in this
connection we have one of the richest parts of the
training afforded by a philosophical Chair ; for here the
teacher must constitute himself the historian of thought,
and, with a wise admixture of sympathy and criticism,
introduce his hearers to the typical thinkers of the
world
" The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."
But this critical, and to a certain extent negative,
work is not all. Philosophy must finally endeavour to
56 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
be itself critically constructive, or, if that is a contra-
diction in terms, it must endeavour to be constructive
without forgetting its own critical strictures. The
criticism of past philosophies, therefore, should not
be purely negative. Truly light -giving and helpful
criticism should seek to lead the learner, through the
very consciousness of defects and inconsistencies in the
systems examined, to a truer statement of the problem,
and a more adequate solution. In this way, the systems
of the past become so many stepping-stones on which
we rise to fuller and clearer insight. And if, at the
end, a completed system should still prove beyond our
reach, the philosophical teacher will at least seek to
indicate the general lines upon which an ultimately
satisfactory theory must move.
I have only time here to mention one or two points
on which I think that a true philosophy should lay
stress, and on which it should lay special stress at
the present time. The first is the necessity of a
ideological view of the universe. Trendelenburg, the
eminent German Aristotelian, devotes one of the most
interesting of his essays to illustrating what he calls
the fundamental difference or antithesis between philo-
sophical systems, the difference, namely, between the
teleological and the mechanical point of view. Whether
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 57
an exhaustive classification of systems is possible on
this basis or not, I believe with him that the antithesis
he signalises is fundamental for philosophy ; and there
is nothing of which I am more profoundly convinced
than that philosophical truth lies, in this case, alto-
gether with the teleological point of view. Any system
which abandons this point of view lapses thereby from
philosophy to science.
The word teleology acts upon some people like a red
rag upon a bull, from its association with certain old-
fashioned arguments which explained particular pheno-
mena from their supposed adaptation to external ends,
more especially from their adaptation to the require-
ments and conveniences of man. This paltry mechan-
ical teleology was never at any time convincing to
strong and sincere thinkers, and after being riddled by
modern science, it may be held as finally beaten off the
field. Its unsatisfactory character arose in great part
from its taking facts in isolation, and then endeavour-
ing artificially to fit them together in the relation of
means and end. The philosophical teleology of which
I speak concerns itself only with the End of the whole
evolution. It concentrates itself upon the proof that
there is an End, that there is an organic unity or pur-
pose binding the whole process into one and making it
58 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
intelligible in one word, that there is evolution and
not merely aimless change. For it is only when con-
templated in the light of a realised idea that any one
speaks of a series of changes as steps in an evolution.
A speculation which does not see that evolution spells
purpose has not made clear to itself the difference
between progress and aimless variation. Such specu-
lation rests ultimately on a purely mechanical view of
the universe.
Let us try, therefore, in a sentence or two, to illu-
minate by contrast these two opposite points of view.
The mechanical view explains the universe as a col-
location of mere facts so many real existences which
just happen to be there. They are not there to ex-
press any idea, meaning, or purpose : they have no
further significance ; they simply are. Every change in
these facts is completely determined by its immediate
antecedents, acting as a blind vis a tergo. A cause
may thus be assigned for every change, but a reason
can be given for none ; for where there is no question
of realising any idea or purpose, all change must be
entirely motiveless. One collocation of facts is just
as good as another. The mechanical explanation of
things is thus a constant looking backward ; the teleo-
logical or philosophical explanation, a looking forward
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 59
to the end or ultimate purpose which is being realised
to the reason of the whole development, which is
also in the deepest sense its cause.
The mechanical explanation of any phenomenon is
not false in itself. Nor need there be any quarrel
between the causal and the teleological view of things,
for they move upon different planes. The mechani-
cally causal view only becomes false, when it professes
to be a complete explanation of any phenomenon, and
therefore, by implication, a philosophy of the universe.
True, under certain limitations, as science, it is false
when it puts itself forward as philosophy. Mechanical
explanation is a proyressiis in infinitum, which can
ultimately explain nothing. In the last resort, causce
efficientes pendent afinalibus; the complete explanation
of anything is only reached when we are able to view
it in the light of a purpose, of which it forms an in-
tegral part or element. Philosophy, therefore, stands
or falls with the possibility of discovering a reasonable
meaning or end in the universe. Every true phil-
osophy is in this sense an attempted theodicy the
vindication of a divine purpose in things.
The antithesis of teleology and mechanism is, as you
perceive, substantially the old opposition of Idealism
and Materialism more strictly expressed. And it is
60 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
equally obvious that while the mechanical view,
through looking ever backward, finds an explanation
of things in reducing them to their lowest terms, and
presents us, for example, with matter and motion as
philosophical ultimates, the teleological or idealistic
view seeks the true explanation of the lower in the
higher, of which it is the germ. For if the lower
carries in it the promise and potency of the higher,
then it must involve no less than a falsification of
the facts to substantiate the lowest terms as indepen-
dent self-existent facts, out of relation to the ultimate
term in which we read the meaning of the whole de-
velopment. That, however, is precisely what is done
by all materialistic and quasi-materialistic systems.
If philosophy, then, is the indication of an end,
meaning, or purpose in the universe, what has phil-
osophy to say, finally, as to the nature of the End ?
Here again, it seems to me that philosophy has to
wage unsparing battle against certain tendencies of
our time. As it defends the truth of teleology in
spite of former abuses of the principle, so it has to
champion the truth underlying the old view which
made man the centre of the universe. In a material
aspect, man is but an atom or a point in the system
of things, and we smile when we read in Cicero of
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 61
the heavenly redile who nightly lights the candles
of the sky for our mortal comfort and convenience.
But the Copernican view of the universe is pressed
too far when we are invited, on the strength of it,
to efface ourselves before the immensities of external
nature. Much current thought is naturalistic at heart
that is to say, it makes human nature only a part
of nature in general, and seeks, therefore, to explain
away the most fundamental characteristics of intelli-
gence and moral life. As against this naturalistic
tendency, philosophy must be unflinchingly human-
istic, anthropocentric.
Not to man as a creature specially located upon
this earth, but to man and all creatures like him
who are sharers in the life of thought, and called
thereby to be authors of their own perfection to
man as rational all things are relative. To him the
creation looks ; for him all things are made. This is
the imperishable grandeur of Hegel's system that he
has given such sonorous utterance to this view, and
expressed it with such magnificent confidence. I can-
not always emulate his confidence, nor can I adopt
as perfectly satisfactory his universalistic mode of
expression. The achievements of the world -spirit
do not move me to unqualified admiration, and I
62 THE PRESENT POSITION OF
cannot accept the abstraction of the race in place of
the living children of men. Even if the enormous
spiral of human history is destined to wind itself at
last to a point which may be called achievement, what,
I ask, of the multitudes that perished by the way?
" These all died, not having received the promises."
What if there are no promises to them ? To me the
old idea of the world as the training-ground of indi-
vidual character seems to offer a much more human,
and, I will add, a much more divine, solution than this
pitiless procession of the car of progress. Happily,
however, the one view does not necessarily exclude
the other : we may rejoice in the progress of the race,
and also believe in the future of the individual.
Nature's profusion and nature's waste will doubtless
be urged against us, when we plead for the rights
of the individual life. But these are objections which
every theodicy has to meet. I do not wish to minimise
them : on the contrary, they appeal to me with painful
force. But the possibility of any theodicy depends on
our being able to show that nature and nature's ways
of working are not the last word of creation. Nature
is non-moral, indifferent, and pitiless; but man is
pitiful, and human nature flowers in love and self-
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 63
denial, in purity and stainless honour. If these have
no root in the nature of things, then indeed
" The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."
But we do well, as Goethe teaches in one of his finest
poems, to recognise in such attributes of human-kind
our nearest glimpse into the nature of the divine.
The part is not greater than the whole ; and we may
rest assured that whatever of wisdom and goodness
there is in us was not born out of nothing, but has
its fount, somewhere and somehow, in a more perfect
Goodness and Truth.
THE "NEW PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
I 1
T.
ALL who take an intelligent interest in the movement
of contemporary thought whether it be philos-
ophy more strictly so called, or the advance of science
are aware of the great activity which has been shown
of late years in the department of psychology. Till
within the last half century or thereabouts, psychology
had been an appanage of the philosophers ; and it can-
not be said that they neglected this province of their
dominion. In this country in particular in England
and Scotland psychology has formed the bulk of our
philosophic treatises ; and Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Hartley, Dr Thomas Brown, and the Mills,
1 An Address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society,
November 9, 1892.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 65
Beid, Stewart, and Hamilton, must always remain
among the classics of the science. But it may be
admitted that their work often shows a crossing of
interests and of points of view. Questions of logic and
theory of knowledge were mixed up with the more
properly psychological inquiry. And, at other times, the
investigation was subordinate to the establishment of
some metaphysical theory. The distinguishing note of
most recent psychology has therefore been insistence
on the separation of psychology from philosophy, and on
the maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint.
In psychology, it is argued, we have a realm of pheno-
mena, a moving world of causes and effects, which it is
our business to investigate in the ordinary scientific way,
with all the resources of observation and experiment.
Imitating the example of physics, we have to reduce
this world of complex phenomena to its ultimate con-
stituents and the laws of their interaction, and we have
to do this without any arridre pe?iste as to the bearing
of our results on the ultimate problems of philosophy.
No advice could be more excellent ; disinterestedness
is the very watchword of science. But it seems to me
that a good many of those who talk most loudly of " the
new psychology " are exposed to the usual danger of re-
action. The rise of this "scientific" psychology, as it
E
66 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
also calls itself, is connected with the great develop-
ment of science, especially, of the natural sciences, which
has marked the present century. The growth of biology
and physiology has naturally reacted powerfully upon
the whole conception and method of psychological in-
vestigation. And it is worth observing that the general
scientific movement referred to coincided, especially in
Germany, with a revulsion against the idealistic specu-
lation which marked the beginning of the century.
Probably the two were partly connected as cause and
effect, the hunger for hard facts and patient detail- work
being a healthy protest of the human spirit against
over-hasty and over-confident attempts at universal
synthesis. Any way, the new psychology, as I have
said, has its roots in this movement. And therefore its
absorbing concern was and is to keep itself clear of
metaphysics, and of every hypothesis which it imagines
to savour of that region of mysteries. To a large class
of scientific and would-be scientific thinkers, metaphysics
is what clericalism is to the French Liberal : it is the
enemy, to be fought at all points. These two character-
istics of this militant psychology its renunciation of
metaphysics and its affiliation to biology are concisely
put by Eibot, one of its standard-bearers : " The new
psychology differs from the old in its spirit it is not
metaphysical. It differs in its aim it only studies
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 67
phenomena. It differs in its methods it borrows them
as far as possible from the biological sciences. Con-
sequently the sphere of psychology specifies itself; it
has for its subject nervous phenomena accompanied by
consciousness." l
I am far from asserting that this distrust is without
historical justification. Natural explanations i.e.,
regulated sequences and coexistences of phenomena
are what every science has to seek in its own
sphere ; and, accordingly, science justly regards as
suspect the explanation of any phenomenon by the
immediate causality of a metaphysical agent. The
interjection of such a causality into the empirical
connections which she seeks to unravel, she treats as
a form of ignava ratio. "It makes the investigation
of causes a very easy task," says Kant, " if we refer
such and such phenomena immediately to the unsearch-
able will and counsel of the Supreme Wisdom, whereas
we ought to investigate their causes in the general
mechanism of matter. This is to consider the labour
of reason as ended, when we have merely dispensed
1 ' La Psychologic Allemande,' Introduction. Ribot's deliverance dates
from 1879, but precisely the same position is formulated in the open-
ing and closing sentences of one of the most recent manuals on the sub-
ject, Ziehen's ' Introduction to the Study of Physiological Psychology.'
If the polemic against metaphysics is not always so marked, it is because
the enemy is supposed to have been beaten off the field.
68 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
with its employment." l In the old psychology, this
otiose method of explanation, by means of the soul
and its faculties, was no doubt often resorted to.
Hence, in shaking the dust of metaphysics off their
feet, the new psychologists accepted from Lange 2 as
their badge the somewhat paradoxical motto " Psycho-
logy without a soul." As Kibot puts it triumphantly :
" The soul and its faculties, the great entity and the
little entities, disappear ; and we have to do only with
internal events, events which, like sensations and
images, are translations (so to speak) of physical events,
or which, like ideas, movements, volitions, and desires,
translate themselves into physical events."
In this respect, however, the new psychology was not
so original as it perhaps imagined. The attempt to
dispense with a soul had been systematically made by
Hume and the Associationists long before the second
half of the nineteenth century. It was not simply the
determination to discard the soul that stamped the new
movement ; the second and more characteristic feature
was the affiliation of psychology to physiology and to
general biological science the study of the facts of
consciousness consistently and exclusively in correla-
1 Werke, vol. iii. p. 468 (ed. Hartenstein).
2 Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. ii. p. 381.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 69
tion with the organic facts of nerve and brain. This
method of explanation was declined, as we know, by
Locke and Hume ; and it has been made matter of
reproach against a modern associationist like Mill, that
he held by the old psychological method and went on
" exactly as he might have gone on if he had lived in
the days of Aristotle, ... at a time when a new method
highly fertile in fact and of more fruitful promise was
available." l The physiological method, in short, is the
distinguishing mark, and "physiological psychology" is
the term very generally given to the recent develop-
ments of " psychology as a natural science." It is to be
noted also that in speaking of the conditions of mental
states (and it is agreed that the discovery of conditions
constitutes scientific explanation) writers of this way of
thinking have exclusively physiological conditions in
view. Professor James tells us, for example, that he
has " treated our passing thoughts as integers, and re-
garded the mere laws of their coexistence with brain-
states as the ultimate laws for our science ; " 2 and Mr
Shadworth Hodgson defines psychology as " that posi-
tive and special science which takes its stand upon the
results of physiology and biology, and studies the phen-
1 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, p. 76.
2 Principles of Psychology, Preface.
70 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
omena of sentience and consciousness in connection
with their proximate conditions in individual living
organisms." l
Let me say at once that it is far from my intention
to object to this intimate linking of the psychological
and the biological. It may be taken as a postulate
generally admitted, that our mental life is at every
point physiologically conditioned ; and the physiologi-
cal method of study does indeed promise, as its vot-
aries say, to be most fruitful in its application. It
alone furnishes the basis for introducing experiment
into mental science ; and though it can only lay siege,
as it were, to the outworks of the mental citadel, to the
phenomena of sense-perception and movement and a
few of the simpler aspects of the mental processes, yet
the amount of patient detail-work accumulated in these
departments, and the light thrown on other departments
by the scientific study of abnormal mental states in
their physiological relations, are already enriching the
science in no ordinary degree, and transforming the very
look of our psychological text-books. The philosopher
would be singularly cross-grained who did not welcome
this accumulation of material, and who did not congrat-
ulate himself that all this detail-work was taken out of
1 Mind, vol. xi. p. 489 (October 1886).
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 71
his hands by those who, from their training and apti-
tudes, can do it so much better. But he will reserve
to himself, as philosopher, the ultimate verdict on the
validity and sufficiency of the theory on which physi-
ological psychology proceeds. For it is the most in-
defeasible function of philosophy to act as critic of the
sciences. The philosopher has to examine the concep-
tions which each science accepts without criticism, and
on which it proceeds in working out its results ; he has
to point out the limits or conditions within which the
conception or theory holds true. In other words, he
has to restrain the ardour of the specialist who would
build upon his results a philosophic theory of the uni-
verse, by showing that the results which the investiga-
tion seems to establish are really involved in the
conceptions or standpoint from which it started, and
are therefore in no sense to be accepted as an indepen-
dent proof of the theory. I propose to show that this
is pre-eminently the case with the main thesis of the
" new " psychology at least in the hands of its most
advanced representatives. In abjuring the soul and
limiting itself to the concomitance of physical and
psychical events, it is really dominated by a very
definite theory which dictates the character of its
results beforehand.
72 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
The result supposed to be proved, it had best be
stated at once, is the complete parallelism of the bodily
and the mental the denial, therefore, of any real
causality to consciousness, which remains the inert
accompaniment of a succession of physical changes
over which it has no control. In a word, the result is
the doctrine of human automatism. The doctrine of
conscious automatism has been ventilated a good deal
since 1870, or even earlier, by Mr Shadworth Hodgson,
Professor Huxley, Professor Clifford, and others ; but,
though no doubt definitely embraced by a few, it is
safe to say that by the most it has been rather talked
about, and toyed with, than fully conceived, much less
believed. The doctrine has, however, been recently
expressed with great clearness and force by Dr
Munsterberg, who is perhaps the ablest and most
stirring of the younger generation of physiological
psychologists, and one whose theories have attracted
considerable attention both in England and on the
Continent. He teaches in the most unequivocal
fashion that consciousness is simply, as he calls it,
a " Begleiterscheinung," a concomitant phenomenon,
or inactive accompaniment of a series of mechanical
changes.
Miinsterberg's work, which has appeared in a sue-
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 73
cession of pamphlets since the year 1888, takes largely
the form of a polemic against Wundt's doctrine of
Apperception. Wundt's ' Physiologische Psychologic/
first published in 1874, still remains, in its later
editions, the most authoritative work on the subject ;
and the psychological laboratory established by him
in Leipzig in 1879, as the first of its kind, is still
probably the chief centre of experimental work.
But, although he may thus fairly be called the father
of the whole movement, inasmuch as he has organised
experimental psychology and induced the world to
accept it as a new science, Wundt has never lent his
countenance to the automatist conclusions which the
young bloods are now drawing from their experimental
labours. His doctrine of Apperception is far from
clear, and its precise meaning has given rise to con-
siderable controversy, but it seems to imply a function
of subjective selection or central initiative analogous
to what Dr Ward calls Attention ; and this is apparently
in harmony with the general philosophical position
which the author has elaborated in his recently pub-
lished ' System of Philosophy.' But, be that as it may,
it is at any rate certain that Wundt has been attacked
by the upholders of thorough-going mechanism as an
inconsistent and retrograde thinker for attributing
74 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
activity to the Subject. So much by way of explana-
tion was necessary for the right understanding of
Mlinsterberg's work. His first pamphlet in this con-
troversy was ' Die Willenshandlung,' an analysis of the
act of will, published early in 1888. This was followed
in 1889-90 by three instalments of ' Contributions to
Experimental Psychology/ in which, after an eluci-
dation of principles, he endeavoured, by a series of
carefully devised experiments, to assimilate the apper-
ceptive process to the type of reflex action and thus
reduce the whole conscious action to a play of asso-
ciation. In 1891 he published an introduction to the
study of psychology, 1 in the course of which we get
a re-statement of his own position. The standpoint
does not vary throughout the different expositions, and
therefore, though illustrating freely from all, so far as
they throw light upon my points, I will draw chiefly
from the first and fullest statement that contained
in his very acute analysis of the act of will.
The ' Willenshandlung ' is divided into three parts,
the first treating of the voluntary act as " movement-
process " (B&wegungsvorgang) ; the second treating of it
1 ' Ueber Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologic,' 1891. A fourth
instalment of the ' Contributions to Experimental Psychology ' has since
appeared.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 75
as a phenomenon or appearance in consciousness (Be-
wusstseinserscheinuny) ; and the third, which is intended
to combine the results of the preceding parts, consider-
ing the act of will in its totality as " conscious move-
ment" (bewusste Bewegung). Mlinsterberg makes a
start from the well-known saying of Kant : " That my
will moves my arm is no whit more intelligible to me
than if any one were to tell me that it could hold back
the moon in its orbit." He accepts the problem as thus
indicated : How does my will move my arm ? The
first part of his treatise deals with the voluntary act
exclusively from the physiological side, and analyses it
into a series of movements. We may say analyses it
necessarily into a series of movements, for the succession
of bodily movements, whether visible movements of the
limbs or molecular movements of the nerves and brain,
are all of the process that could by any possibility be
seen ; and reduction to processes which are intelligible
in the sense of being pictorially presentable, is the pos-
tulate of explanation which he lays down. 1 There is
not much that is peculiar to Miinsterberg in this first
section ; the same has been vividly put by many
writers, 2 and in a sense this purely physical explana-
1 Zuriickfiihrung auf anschaulich verstanclliche Vorgange, p. 10.
2 Never better perhaps than by Lange, ' Geschichte des Materialismus,'
76 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
tion is true from the physiological side, though I think
it is possible to show that/ even from the physiological
standpoint, it is not the whole truth. Meanwhile it is
vol. ii. p. 370. The passage has been often quoted, but may do duty
again: "A merchant is sitting comfortably in his easy -chair, and
would find it hard to say with what the greater part of his Ego is
occupied whether with smoking, sleeping, reading the newspaper,
or digestion. Suddenly the servant enters with a telegram which
runs 'Antwerp, Jonas and Company failed.' 'Tell James to put
the horses to.' The servant flies. The master has sprung to his feet,
completely sobered ; some dozen paces through the room, down to his
office, instructions given to the confidential clerk, letters dictated,
telegrams despatched, then into the carriage. The horses pant ; he
visits the bank, the exchange, his business friends. Before an hour
is over, he throws himself again into his easy -chair with the sigh,
' Thank heaven, I have secured myself against the worst : now let
me consider further. ' A splendid occasion for a picture of the soul.
Terror, hope, feeling, calculation ruin and victory compressed into
one moment. And that all aroused by a single idea ! What does
not the human consciousness comprise !
" Softly, let us look at our man as an object in the material world. He
springs up, why ? His muscles contract in the appropriate way. Why
so ? They were moved by an impulse of nervous force which discharged
the stored-up stock of elasticity. Whence this impulse? From the
centre of the nervous system. How did it arise there ? Through the
. . . soul. The curtain falls, the salto mortale is made from science
to mythology." On the contrary, Lange proceeds, " we must trace back
the physical series of causes through the brain to the first occasion of
the whole sudden movement without taking any account whatever of
the so-called consciousness. Or let us take it in the opposite direction.
What came into the man ? The picture of certain strokes with blue
pencil upon a white ground. Certain rays of light fell upon the retina,
rays which in themselves do not develop more vital force in their vibra-
tions than other light-rays. The vital force for the propagation of the
impact is ready in the nerve as that for muscular contraction in the
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 77
enough to note the purely mechanical point of view
and the explicit reduction of all physiological facts to
physico-chemical processes. Passing to the more char-
muscles : it can be discharged by the infinitely weak impact of the light-
wave only as the elastic forces of the powder- cask are set free by the
glimmering spark. But how comes it, then, that just these lines pro-
duce in this man just this effect ? Every answer which falls back here
upon ideas and the like is as good as no answer at all. I wish to see
the channels, the paths of the vital force, the extent, the mode of propa-
gation, and the sources of the physical and chemical processes from which
the nervous impulses proceed which call into activity, and that precisely
in the manner required for springing to one's feet, first the musculus
psoas, then the rectus femoris, the vasti, and all the co-operating com-
pany. I wish to see the far more important nervous streams which dis-
tribute themselves to the organs of speech, the muscles of breathing,
producing command, word, and call, and which, by way of sound-waves
and the auditory nerves of other individuals, renew tenfold the same
performance. I will, in a word, make a present for the time being of the
so-called psychical action to the pedants of the schools, and will have
the physical action which I see explained by physical causes." In like
manner, Miinsterberg concludes that, "from the physiological stand-
point there must correspond to every centrally initiated movement a
complex of centripetal stimuli ; and in these stimuli acting from with-
out, taken together with the existing structure and condition of the
nervous mechanism, must lie the absolutely sufficient causes for the
necessary occurrence of the definite act of will." Innumerable past
stimuli in the life of the individual and the race are stored up as poten-
tial energy in the nervous mechanism. Hence the sound-waves of a
spoken word (on which, as in the case put by Lange, action follows) may
represent "scarcely a millionth part of the joint-causes which bring
about that particular movement in the hearer." But the mechanical
determination by the joint-causes is as absolute here as in the case of
the simplest reflex (pp. 17-20). It is, indeed, the avowed "postulate "
of the whole investigation that the act of will shall be explained " als
Mechanik der Atome" (p. 9).
78 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
acteristic psychological analysis, contained in the second
part of the treatise, we find- that Mlinsterberg is at some
pains at the outset to define the problem he sets himself.
It is purely a problem of empirical psychology, and does
not raise the metaphysical question as to the ultimate
ground of phenomena or as to how consciousness exists
at all. In that connection, Mlinsterberg seems to indi-
cate that he regards Will, conceived as Schopenhauer
conceived it, to be the most probable metaphysical
hypothesis. His present investigation, however, has to
do only with Will as a conscious fact ; it seeks " only to
establish the conscious phenomena which are peculiar
to the act of will" (p. 56). "Wherein consists the
content of our inner experience, empirically given to
each of us, which we designate will " (p. 60). Or, again,
" For our investigation, limited as it is to facts, the will
is a phenomenon like other phenomena ; and accordingly
we have only to ask in what it consists, what regularly
precedes it in consciousness, and what follows it " (p. 61).
This strictly empirical character of the inquiry has one
important consequence.
It is well known [he proceeds] that modern psychology
designates as sensations the ultimate irreducible .constitu-
ents into which the content of consciousness (Bewusstseinsin-
Tialt) may be analysed; ascribing to sensations a quality,
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 79
an intensity, and a tone of feeling which expresses their
relations to consciousness. But, if sensation is the element
of all psychical phenomena, and if, on the other hand, the
will, so far as we are concerned with it, is only a pheno-
menon of consciousness (Bewusstseinserscheinung), it follows
necessarily that the will too is only a complex of sensations. 1
Having thus marked out his goal beforehand, Miin-
sterberg proceeds to the actual analysis of the facts.
He analyses first what he calls the inward activity of
will i.e., the voluntary guidance of the train of thoughts
in the form of attention; and secondly, the outward
activity of will in bringing about muscular contractions.
Under the first head, then, the question is, " Wherein
consists the inner activity in the direction of the cur-
rent of our ideas ? or, more precisely, what must be
the nature of the feelings present in consciousness,
if they are to produce in us the feeling of inward
freedom, of active will ? " This more precise way of
putting the question, it will be observed, is not without
significance for the nature of the answer which it is to
elicit. Let us get to the details, however. Four cases
of the inward directive activity of will are analysed by
1 Page 62. The italics are Miinsterberg's own. It need hardly be
pointed out that this astonishing invocation of "modern psychology"
begs everything which is afterwards put forward as proved. Wundt
criticises the assumption. ' Philosophische Studien,' vol. vi. p. 382 et
seq. We shall return to it in discussing the theory as a whole.
80 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
Miinsterberg : (a) the case of voluntary recollection or
trying to remember ; (b) the exercise of choice between
different ideas presented, the concentration of attention
upon one of these and its retention in the field of con-
sciousness to the exclusion of the others ; (c) the case
of logical thinking or reasoning, in which we pass along
a definite and apparently self-directed path from prem-
isses to conclusion; and (d) the case of simple atten-
tion to an idea or percept which presents itself in con-
sciousness.
The analysis is most ingenious in the case of
voluntary recollection and logical thinking. How is
voluntary recollection distinguished from involuntary
reminiscence ? If a fact a has been connected in
experience with &, and the appearance of b calls up
in consciousness the idea of a, I do not attribute to
myself any voluntary action in the matter; I take
it as an instance of the ordinary play of association.
On the other hand, when I cannot remember a, when I seek
it in my memory, recall to myself the place where I saw it,
the connection in which I heard it, and when at last a actu-
ally emerges in consciousness, then it was plainly my will (we
say) which dragged to light the object of my search (p. 64).
How does the case stand, however, when more closely
analysed ?
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 81
If I try to remember a, if I seek it in my memory, a is
of course* not itself present in consciousness, but what I do
perceive does unquestionably correspond in content with a.
So long as I have not found a, I feel, it is true, only an x,
but I feel this a? in a series of relations, such that x can be
only a and nothing else. I try to remember a word. In
doing so, I see in memory the passage where I read the
word, I remember the moment at which I heard it, I know
exactly, too, the meaning of the word ; but the word itself
is not present to me. At last it rises in consciousness.
Can it be denied that that word was already given in its
full content (vollinlialtlicli gegeben) in the series of ideational
relations which I remembered 1 ? No doubt it was repre-
sented in consciousness by entirely different qualities; it
was given in its relations to other things, whereas it is
afterwards distinguished by its own characteristics. But
the two states of consciousness coincided with one another
as to their inner meaning (p. 67).
The only peculiarity, accordingly, which Mtinsterberg
is prepared to admit in this process as contrasted with
a case of involuntary association is that " the clear con-
sciousness of the idea a was preceded by another state
of consciousness which, in respect of its content, al-
ready contained the idea ." He italicises this as the
standing mark of voluntary control of our ideas.
Eeasoning is distinguished, he argues, by the same
characteristic. The premisses already contain the con-
clusion, or, to put it more pointedly, the whole process
of thought is determined from the outset by the idea
F
82 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
of the end to be reached. In the second case mentioned
above, where several ideas are presented, and we pur-
posely retain one of them, a, the same thing manifestly
holds. "Here," says Miinsterberg, "there is no need
to prove that this a was in consciousness beforehand.
The reasons why just a and not b remained in con-
sciousness are admittedly only the occasions or motives
of the voluntary act ; they are left therefore unnoticed
here, the remaining behind is itself the achievement
of the will (das Zurilckbleiben sellst ist die Willens-
leistung)" The same line of argument explains his
fourth case, the case of simple attention to any idea
presented in consciousness. " In the first moment in
which a sensation emerges in us, the perception appears
involuntary, because the a was till then preceded by a
not-a ; in the second moment, however, it appears to us
as intentionally retained, just because we were already
conscious of it in the preceding first moment."
The solemnity with which this is propounded as a
serious account of the facts in question would be too
impudent if it stood alone; but Miinsterberg hastens
to supplement it by reference to the bodily sensations
which usually accompany acts like attention and selec-
tion or efforts of thought and memory. He cites the
admitted fact that there are feelings of innervation in
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 83
the sense-organ, when ideas of that particular sense
are present in consciousness for any length of time.
Whenever there is a strain of attention, other sensa-
tions are usually present, such, for example, as feelings
of tension in the skin of the head and the knitting
of the brow in trying to remember or in thoughtful
consideration. Nor are such feelings confined to the
head ; they may be traced all over the trunk, and even
in the extremities. Miinsterberg does not hold, how-
ever, that such feelings of innervation necessarily
accompany all voluntary activity. In reasonings or
calculations that proceed without any particular diffi-
culty, for example, they are not observable ; but just
in these processes, he hastens to add, we are not
specially conscious of our voluntary activity. It is
only in subsequent reflection that we class them as
acts of will, and in so doing, we fall back upon the
criterion already signalised namely, the pre-existence
of the idea in the preceding moment of consciousness.
He concludes the first part of his psychological in-
vestigation thus :
The inner will has thus shown itself on analysis to be a
very complicated group of ideas (ein sehr mannigfaltiges
Vorstellungsgebilde), composed of certain definite series of
ideas plus feelings of innervation. Nothing unknown,
84 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
nothing which stands over against the ideas as something
heterogeneous, has been found, as we saw, in the first group
of ideas or sensations ; it only remains, therefore, to ask
whether any mysterious element is concealed in these
innervation processes. Should these also be found to be
a mere complex of sensations, the inner will would then be
reduced to a series of sensations, each one of which is of
the same order as blue, hard, sweet, or warm (p. 73).
The consideration of the feelings of innervation cannot,
however, be conveniently separated from the external
action of the will upon the body, and so we pass to the
second head of this psychological investigation. The
stock example will suffice I lift an object with my
hand.
But the result of this experiment is usually a very poor
one : the feeling of will which I seek (die gesuchte Willens-
empfindung) I cannot discover in myself. I perceive just
a slight feeling of tension in the head. For the rest, I
am only conscious that I actually execute the movement
viz., bending the joints of the elbow and hand. I feel
no special impulse to the movement, lying in time between
the theoretical intention and the practical execution of it.
It is quite different, however [he proceeds], when I do not
simply have the intention of lifting an object, and carry this
out, but slowly analyse the movement for myself, and direct
my attention to the individual parts of the bendings. Now
I really perceive more than the actually executed move-
ments ; the bending in the elbow is now preceded by the
feeling of a peculiar impulse. It is not a general feeling
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 85
of exertion, but a quite specific impulse, which is different
for every movement, and plainly stands in relation to the
special performance intended.
What, then, has analysis to say of these feelings of
innervation which immediately precede the movement,
and seem to be its cause ? Miinsterberg turns round
triumphantly to apply his former criterion. What we
call impulse in the case of muscular contraction is
simply the circumstance that the idea of the effect to
be produced precedes the effect as actually produced.
The feeling of innervation is just the memory-idea of
the movement anticipating the movement itself.
There has been much discussion as to the precise
nature of the so-called feelings of innervation ; but,
as Wundt, who had formerly held an opposite theory,
has explicitly accepted this view of them as the one
most consonant with the present state of our knowledge
of the subject, there is no need to reproduce here the
arguments which go to establish the position. It
commends itself by its naturalness and simplicity.
When we are on the point, say, of making a stroke
at a ball, we have a premonitory feeling of the energy
which we are about to expend ; it seems to flow forth
toward the limb which we are about to use. One
theory, formerly a good deal in evidence, explained
86 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
this feeling as due to an immediate consciousness of
outgoing energy ; but this physiological difficulties in
the way of such a conception are great. It is not
necessary here to decide whether an immediate con-
sciousness of effort is or is not possible; but, in any
case, this theory leaves unexplained the specific char-
acter of the feeling in question. For it is to be ob-
served that it is a premonitory feeling of the exertion
of that limb, not merely a general consciousness of
virtue going out from us. This is satisfactorily ex-
plained by supposing, as Miinsterberg does, that it
is due to the reproduction in memory of previous
movements of the same nature.
Plainly, however, Miinsterberg's theory of the feelings
of innervation may be accepted, without admitting that
this sequence of memory-image and actual perception
constitutes, as he contends, the differentia and suffi-
cient explanation of the voluntary act. But it will
be observed how ingeniously Miinsterberg has reduced
all cases of voluntary action internal and external
to examples of the same phenomenon, namely, to cases
of an idea or perception A preceded by a the same
idea in a different form. " The feeling of innervation,"
as he puts it, "is an anticipated idea of the actual
movement" (p. 88). Exactly the same analysis
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 87
applies to those voluntary actions which do not end
in a muscular contraction but aim at the production
of some effect in the external world.
When I move my finger, not in order to practise the differ-
ent movements, but to write something down; when I
contract the muscles of my organs of speech, in order to
make a communication to somebody; when I bend my
arm in order to greet a passer-by, in all these cases I
perceive in the first stadium the more or less distinct,
more or less clearly represented, idea of the end ; and in
the second stadium I have a sensation of (ich empfinde) the
end as attained. That alone is the type of the external
act of will (p. 89).
However complicated the action is, extending possibly
over a longer period of time (a journey, the erection of
a building), it may always be resolved into the ultimate
end in view and the subordinate actions which have to
be performed in order to attain that end. In the pro-
cess of execution, the ultimate end falls temporarily
into the background, and the subordinate actions or
means become, each in turn, in a definite series, the
proximate end before the mind. And, step by step, the
same analysis holds good : the end is first present as
idea, then as a perception of accomplished fact. Mtin-
sterberg goes on courageously to apply his analysis
to the usually received distinction between desire and
88
will. " In order that the desire of an attainable object
pass into the corresponding act of will, neither more
nor less requires to be added than just the carrying
out of the desire, so that the idea of the end may l>e com-
pleted ~by the perception of its attainment!' " The liveli-
est feeling of practical freedom cannot alter the fact
that the will itself is nothing more than the perception
(frequently accompanied by associated sensations of
tension in the muscles of the head) of an effect at-
tained by the movement of our own body, along with
an antecedent idea of the same effect drawn from
imagination i.e., in the last resort from memory ;
this anticipated idea being given as feeling of inner-
vation, when the effect is itself a bodily movement,
" A theory of the soul does justice, therefore, to the whole
field of psychical phenomena, if it assumes, as the only
function of the soul, sensation characterised by quality,
intensity, and tone of feeling ; a definite group of sensa-
tions we call will" (p. 96). *
This is the conclusion of the second part of the
investigation. The first, or purely physiological, part,
reduced the phenomenon to a series of reflex move-
ments ; the second, or purely psychological, part, has
reduced it to a series of sensations. The third, or
1 The italics are Miinsterberg's.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 89
psycho-physical, parfc, investigates the relation of these
two series to one another. We cannot believe that
the two series are quite independent, and if we are
driven to suppose that the one is conditioned by the
other, there can be little hesitation in settling which
is the conditioning factor. The psychical series is dis-
continuous, constantly interrupted by perceptions which
are shot inexplicably into its midst, without the possi-
bility of causal explanation from the foregoing train
of ideas ; there are many bodily functions which, so
far as we know, are not represented in consciousness.
These and similar considerations make the psychic
series unfit to be the explaining factor, and accordingly
Miinsterberg reaches the conclusion that "the series
of conscious phenomena is conditioned by the regular
course of material occurrence." This leads to the
inquiry, What are the processes in the sensory-motor
apparatus which correspond, when inwardly contem-
plated, to the sensational complex called a volition?
Mtinsterberg's results are reached in the course of
an interesting, and in some respects brilliant, discussion
as to the localisation of brain-function. It is beyond
our interest to follow him in his detailed criticism of
different theories. His own positions are mainly two :
(1) that there are no specifically motor centres; and
90 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
(2) that perception and memory are connected with
the same material substratum; or, to put it otherwise,
that ideas of sensation and the corresponding ideas
of memory are connected, not with different parts of
the brain, but with the same set of material processes
differently excited. There is much to be said for these
conclusions. Whether the will is analysable into sen-
sations and ideas or not, it is at least inseparable from
them, and therefore we may reasonably conclude that
the centres concerned in voluntary movement cannot
be separated physiologically from the sensory regions
of the brain. Similarly, it may be argued that in per-
ception and memory the same brain- tracts are excited,
the liveliness and strength of the impression being
greater when its stimulus proceeds from its peri-
pheral end-organs than when it is conducted by fibres
of association from other parts of the cortex.
On the physiological truth of these hypotheses I do
not feel competent to decide, nor is it necessary for
my purpose to do so. It is with Miinsterberg's appli-
cation of them that we are concerned. " Every ganglion
of the cerebral cortex," he resumes, " is thus end-organ
of a centripetal path but every ganglion is also the
initial organ of a motor path. Motor centres do not
exist, therefore, or, more properly, every centre is sen-
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 91
sory and motor at once ; every motor impulse has its
source in a sensory stimulus, and every sensory stimu-
lation presses on into a motor path" (pp. 141, 142).
What happens in consciousness, then, when a response
to stimulus takes place ? At first, nothing precedes
the movement except the sensation or perception which
causes its discharge. The movement, in other words,
" goes off," in a purely reflex way, through the force of
the incoming stimulus. But as soon as the movement
actually takes place, consciousness has something new
before it namely, the feeling of movement produced
in the contracted muscle. This feeling of movement
follows, therefore, immediately upon the perception
of the stimulus which discharged the movement; and
the sensory excitation of the central ganglion which
corresponds to this feeling of movement becomes
connected accordingly by an association - path with
the first excitation, which gave the impulse to the
movement.
If, now, this process is several times repeated, the con-
nection becomes so close that the first excitation inevitably
calls forth the second, directly by the path of association,
before it has time to be produced by the actual contraction
of the muscle. Psychologically expressed, that is as much
as to say, the perception of the stimulus must call forth by
association the memory-idea of the corresponding sensation
92 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
of movement, before that sensation itself is produced by the
actual execution of the movement. The former process takes
place by the shorter way of the association-paths in the
hemisphere ; the latter requires first to be conducted to the
muscle, the inertia of the muscle has to be overcome, the
contraction to be actually produced, the sensory nerve to be
affected, and the sensory stimulus conducted back to the cor-
tex. All this occupies an appreciable time, and the sensory
stimulus arrives accordingly considerably later. And now
we see clearly why our feeling of innervation precedes the
perception of the actual movement. In it, as the constant
signal of movement, a signal that is also the actual counter-
part of the movement, we involuntarily believe that we see
the movement's cause. This is the type of voluntary action,
from which all other forms may be developed (p. 145).
Take, for example, an act of choice. Here we have,
let us say, two stimuli, both alike in strength, but
incapable of combination in a common reaction. At
first no motor reaction can result, but each stimulated
ganglion rouses the centres which are connected with
it by association-paths ; and now it is not an opposition
of stimulus against stimulus, but on both sides there
collect the associations won by former experiences.
In the first place, naturally, there is the associated
idea of the movement corresponding to the stimulus.
If this is stronger upon the one side than upon the
other, or if it rouses more pleasurable feelings upon the
one side than upon the other, then the corresponding
movement will result. This is the type of any act
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 93
of choice ; but there may be indefinite complication,
both in the nature of the stimulus and in the mass
of associations brought to bear upon it. Still, however
great the complication may be, the sensory stimuli
with their associated ideas constitute the sufficient
and only verifiable cause of the resultant movement ;
or, as he puts it in another place, "the act of will
is the motor discharge of sensory excitation, whether
it be the sensation of a single stimulus or a world of
internally and externally combined ideas. As soon
as the sensory excitation-complex, the conscious con-
tent of ideas, is there, the movement is necessarily
given too " (p. 156). And thus the only psychical
criterion of the will remains what it was found to be
at the end of the psychological section namely, that
before the perception of the actual result, the idea of
the result is present in consciousness.
We have the theory now pretty fully before us, and,
as has been indicated, there is much in the physiological
analysis that is freshly put and that claims consider-
ation. It seems important to remember, alike in
physiology and psychology, that the sensory centre
in the brain, the central ending of the sensory nerve,
does not constitute a terminus, and, consequently, that
there is no such thing as passive sensation, sensation
94 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
which is simply received without producing further
effects. All consciousness is impulsive. If the
stimulus received does not find an immediate vent in
movement, it irradiates other brain-tracts in the form
of association. The phenomena of imitation, sugges-
tion, and many other considerations, reinforce this
conception of the dynamic quality which all sensations
and ideas possess. Miinsterberg, however, has skil-
fully woven these truths into the texture of a precon-
ceived theory. In the very act of emphasising move-
ment and the dynamic aspect of ideas, he eliminates
altogether the notion of action or activity. Ideas
" go off " or explode, as it were, in movement of their
own accord. There is first the idea of the movement,
as in contemplation ; and secondly, the perception of
the movement, as executed. In other words, there is a
series of happenings somehow passing before us, but no
real activity, no real actor in the whole affair. In all
so-called action, we only seem to act ; a sequence of
ideas exhausts the phenomena of will. The conscious
subject is reduced to an inactive spectator of these
psychological happenings, which are themselves the
inert accompaniments of certain transformations of
matter and energy. There results, in fact, as indicated
at the outset, the doctrine of conscious automatism in
the most unqualified sense of the words.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 95
Xow, I do not hesitate to say that this conclusion
is in the strictest sense incredible ; no amount of so-
called " evidence " in its favour would avail to make
it even momentarily believable. But as the theory
airs itself with a great deal of confidence, and troubles
a good many minds, I will endeavour to show that
such results are not reached by any cruel "logic of
facts," but are all involved in a few erroneous psycho-
logical presuppositions, perhaps I ought to say one
fundamental prejudice, by which the analysis is vitiated
from the outset. This prejudice may be called Pheno-
menalism, or perhaps best Presentationism ; Wundt
calls it in one place Intellectualism. It is the fore-
gone conclusion that the conscious life is analysable
without remainder into ideas or presentations. Evi-
dently, if phenomena or objects of consciousness are
alone to be accepted as facts, then all real activity on
the part of the subject is necessarily eliminated; the
subject remains only nominally, as a static impersonal
condition of the series of events. If we insist upon
phenomenalising the act of will, doubtless all the
phenomena in the case are the ideas that precede and
the perceptions that follow, with perhaps some feelings
of tension in the head thrown in. But does it not
require some effrontery to offer us these antecedent,
concomitant, and sequent ideas as an account of the
96 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
volition itself. To attempt to analyse a volition into
ideas is about as hopeful as trying to reduce miles and
furlongs to pounds avoirdupois ; there is no common
denominator. In the course of such analysis, the real
fact of volition is necessarily dropped ; it is overlaid
by the mass of antecedents, concomitants, and sequents
which acute introspection enables us to discover. But,
as M. Fouillee says, the physiological psychologists
might fill volumes with their analysis of the sensations
which accompany the voluntary act, without touching
the essence of the act itself. 1
The result of analysis infected with this phenomenal-
istic prejudice is necessarily a Panphenomenalism essen-
tially similar to that of Hume. There is the same
elimination of all real causality : sequent ideas are all.
And if, in deference to a quasi -Kantian theory of
Knowledge, the Self or subject is apparently retained,
this seeming difference from Hume is only skin-deep.
For, as Miinsterberg tells us twice over, " the subject
in question is entirely impersonal ; " 2 it is the static
or logical condition of consciousness in general. The
individual self is reduced, as with Hume, to groups
and sequences of ideas ; it is an object in consciousness
1 Revue philosophique, vol. xxxii. p. 238.
2 Aufgabe cler Psychologie, pp. 99 and 130.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 97
an object, presumably, for this impersonal spectator-
subject.
I pointed out in passing how entirely Miinster-
berg's psychology was dominated by this phenomenal-
istic point of view. It appears, incidentally, in the
very expressions he uses, as a reference to the passages
already quoted abundantly shows. In his equation of
phenomenon with fact, in the constantly repeated use
of the term Inhalt or content, it is presupposed that
objects or presentations in consciousness are the only
elements that will be allowed to stand as real. At
times, Mlinsterberg speaks, even more naively, of " the
sensation of will," of which he is in quest. This recalls,
even verbally, Hume's famous expedition into his own
interior, in order to discover the perception of the Self.
Show me the impression from which the idea is derived,
says Hume, and because no particular impression can
be found, the idea is pronounced a fiction ; the Self is
resolved into a bundle of perceptions. Show me the
sensation to which the word " will " corresponds, says
Miinsterberg, and finding a number of accompanying
sensations, he mistakes these for the act of will itself,
and concludes roundly, as we saw before, that " the
will is only a complex of sensations." But this
conclusion depends, on Mlinsterberg's own showing,
98 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
upon two all -important " ifs." If sensation is the
sole element of all psychical phenomena, and if the
will is only a phenomenon in consciousness, then,
and only then, does it follow necessarily that the
will is resolvable into a complex of sensations. In
support of the first " if," Miinsterberg, as we have
seen, has nothing to offer but a vague reference to
" modern psychology." Wundt, in criticising his specu-
lation, 1 justly censures this attempt to clothe an as-
sumption with the air of an accepted truth, and to
cover it with the aegis of " modern psychology."
Wundt's own phraseology has wavered in his different
editions, and its looseness may be partly responsible,
as Dr Ward suggests, 2 for the extreme conclusions of
his followers. Perhaps in view of these conclusions,
he now explicitly disavows the resolution of all con-
sciousness, including feeling and will, into sensational
elements. Sensations, he holds, are the ultimate ele-
ments of " those conscious contents which we refer to
external objects " that is to say, of our perceptions or
presentations. Whether this revised statement is un-
exceptionable or not, such a position is at least in-
telligible ; but it contains no warrant for identifying
1 Philosophische Studien, vol. vi. p. 382 et seq.
' 2 In an article in ' Mind,' January 1893.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 99
feeling and will with any presentation or combination
of such.
There is, in fact, no distinction more fundamental
to a sound psychology than that between the feeling-
directed activity, which, under all its forms, from the
simplest act of attention and response to stimulus, may
be summarised as Will, and the content or matter with
which that activity deals. Doubtless the two cannot
be separated ; each is an abstraction without the other.
But one thing at least is certain, that to resolve the
fact of conscious experience into a sequence of presen-
tations or conscious phenomena is to omit the vital
characteristic of all consciousness. It is to offer us
a machinery without any motor force; and when we
mildly point out the omission, we are met by the
ready but somewhat brazen retort, that the machinery
is self-acting. Wundt comments acutely on the way in
which this " intellectualistic " psychology substantialises
ideas or presentations, treats them as if they were
things or entities that could independently exist and
interact. Even when it is admitted that presenta-
tions have an existence only in and for consciousness,
so that the unity of consciousness is acknowledged to
be their necessary complement or point of reference,
the ideas still seem to stand over against the conscious-
100 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
ness to which they are referred, and to carry on their
evolutions independently. Consciousness, according to
this way of thinking, becomes a mere form inclusive
of a certain matter, but without influence upon it: it
is regarded as purely speculative or contemplative ; an
eye (shall we say ?) contemplating the movement, or,
to be strict and to avoid metaphor, merely an ideal
point of unity. Metaphor or no metaphor, the result
of this way of looking at things is obvious. The whole
weight is thrown upon the objects the ideas or pheno-
mena, thus quasi -independently conceived and the
recognition of the subject becomes an empty acknow-
ledgment. It is entirely denuded of activity, all action
being refunded into the play of presentations. 1
1 Dr Ward has very aptly called attention ('Mind,' xii. 50) to a current
form of words which favours this habit of thought viz., the way we
have of speaking of " conscious states " in abstraction from the activity
of the conscious subject whose states they are. We get into the habit
of thinking of the " states " " phenomena " is another word as if they
existed separately, as if they interacted and established relations be-
tween themselves, evolving in course of time the idea of the subject.
But, in strictness, we have no right to speak of a state as conscious ;
in so doing we are making an entity of it, and conferring upon an
abstraction attributes which it can possess only as an element in the
activity of a unitary conscious being. Dr Ward declaims with justi-
fiable warmth against the confusion in which our psychological nomen-
clature is involved. Even the favourite term " states of consciousness,"
of which " conscious states " may be supposed an abbreviation, is open to
a similar objection. Consciousness, as the form of the word proclaims, is
101
For this assumption, however, there is an entire ab-
sence of warrant. A psychology which aims at keeping
in touch with fact must strenuously resist this subtle
tendency to reduce everything to knowledge. Experi-
ence is, in this reference, a wider term than knowledge ;
and feeling and will are inexpugnable and irreducible
features of experience. Knowledge, feeling, and will
are three aspects of experience inseparable aspects, it
may be freely admitted but none of them can be ex-
pressed in terms of the others ; no one of them can be
reduced to simpler elements, no one of them can,
properly speaking, be defined or explained otherwise
than by pointing to the living experience in which it
is exemplified. Miinsterberg's position here is rather
inconsistent ; he denies will as more than a complex of
sensations, but he contrives to smuggle in feeling by
calling it an attribute which every idea possesses. He
follows Wundt in saying that every sensation, in addi-
an abstraction ; it is the quality or characteristic of a subject or con-
scious being. States are states of the conscious being, then, not states
of consciousness. This is not a mere piece of verbal purism. A great
deal of vague thinking thinking that has not faced an inevitable
issue and made up its mind clearly finds a convenient refuge under
the quasi-abstract term consciousness. People make no scruple about
admitting or postulating a transcendental unity, a unity of conscious-
ness, who would think their reputation for modernity at stake if they
were taxed with upholding a soul or subject as a real being.
102 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
tion to its intensity and its quality (as touch or taste,
red or blue, and so forth), also possesses a tone of feel-
ing, or, as Professor Bain puts it, an emotional side;
and to this third aspect of sensation, curiously enough,
he allows that there is no material counterpart. 1
This statement is curious, not in itself, of course, but
as coming from Miinsterberg. There can be no ma-
terial counterpart, in Mtinsterberg's sense, just because
feeling is not itself an object, phenomenon, presentation,
or stimulus, but the attitude of the subject towards a
given stimulus the relation of the stimulus to the life
of the individual as a whole. This subjective apprecia-
tion cannot, in the nature of the case, be represented in
objective terms. Feeling, as Dr Ward says after Ham-
ilton, is something subjectively subjective. If we are
to be strict, we do not know feeling ; for knowledge is
of objects, of phenomena, and feeling cannot be pheno-
menalised. We experience feeling, and we know about
it by its results ; but, using the term in this sense, we
know only the causes, accompaniments, and consequents
of feeling. It may be said that we remember our feel-
ings and emotions, and that we must know them at the
time, in order to remember. But we remember feeling
only in the sense that, when the ideas which caused or
1 Willenshandlung, p. 137.
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 103
accompanied it are recalled, they are recalled with the
same tone of feeling ; in other words, we re-experience
in a fainter degree the feeling which we then felt. It
is this characteristic of feeling that explains its frequent
neglect by psychologists. For feeling cannot be recalled
or considered, except in connection with its objective
causes or accompaniments : in recording the facts,
therefore, the psychologist is apt to forget the sub-
jective tinge of the ideas or presentations, and to
report upon them in an impersonal way, as, so to
speak, ideas-in-themselves. But it was only in virtue
of what I have called the subjective tinge that the
ideas were his ideas at all, and had any relation to his
life. As they presented themselves, they were felt to
be either a furtherance or a hindrance to the vitality of
the subject, to be either relevant to the dominant in-
terests of the individual or discordant. Interest and
desire are the result in the one case, indifference or
repulsion in the other. And it can hardly be too
strongly emphasised that the dynamic efficacy of ideas
is entirely excited through the feeling subject. Ideas
have hands and feet, as Hegel finely said, and how
often are we told that ideas move the world. It is
true, or at least we hope so. But every one must ac-
knowledge that to speak in that way is to use a vivid
104 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
metaphorical shorthand. Ideas entertained tend to pass
into action; a plan conceived and cherished tends to
execute itself; but, as Fichte long ago said, the real
force is not in the ideas, but in the will of the person
who adopts them as his. So, when psychologists like
Miinsterberg attribute the whole march of the conscious
life to the dynamic influence of idea upon idea, it is
well to remember again that this is at best a conven-
ient shorthand. Ideas in themselves are pale and in-
effective as the shades of Homeric mythology ; they are
dynamic only as they pass through the needle's eye of
the subject. It is the subject which acts upon its
appreciation of the stimulus, and the emotional atti-
tude of welcome or repulse is what is meant by feeling.
In its earliest and simplest forms, such an emotional
wave passes immediately into the appropriate motor
response. The food is clutched or somehow absorbed,
the disagreeable intrusion is evaded, edged away from,
as far as the powers of the being admits of. Feeling,
thus conceived, and allied thus closely with action,
forms what may be called the driving-power in all life.
Here we strike upon the roots of individuation, and
when we say that, is it going too far to add, upon the
fundamental characteristic of real existence ? In this
connection I am confident that, whether we look at the
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 105
matter psychologically or physiologically, we are shut
up to the conclusion that all action of living beings was
originally feeling-prompted, and that what we call re-
flex action is everywhere a secondary product, a de-
graded form of purposive action. We know that many
actions at first performed voluntarily, actions learned
with effort by repeated forth-puttings of concentrated
attention, become by degrees habitual, and are performed
automatically without attention i.e., without any need
for express volition to come into play at all. Great
part of the detail of our daily life is handed over to
mechanism in this way, and psychologists and physiolo-
gists have not been slow to emphasise the beneficent
operation of this fact. It is, indeed, the very condition
of progress, that aptitudes once acquired should estab-
lish themselves as definite tendencies within our mental
and physical organism definite co-ordinations of stim-
ulus and response which do their work without our
active superintendence. The powers of intelligence and
will the powers of personality, if I may so speak
are thus set free for new tasks and further achieve-
ments, till these in turn are, as it were, built into the
structure of the Self. Only thus is the spirit fitted to
advance upon its endless path. But mechanism is
thus, in every sense, posterior to intelligence and
106 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
will; it is a means created and used by will. In a
strict sense, will creates the reflex mechanism to which
it afterwards deputes its functions.
Mechanism, in fact, here as everywhere, is a means,
something secondary ; it is impossible to conceive it as
something primary, existing on its own account, much
less as carrying in it the explanation of the higher con-
scious and voluntary processes. Intelligent volition is
not reflex action grown complicated, and so become
conscious of itself. That is precisely to invert the
true relation an inversion that would be ludicrous,
if it were not disastrous. Eeflex action is purposive
action grown unconscious or sub-conscious, according
to the economy of nature, because consciousness is
no longer necessary to its proper performance. It
is not to be supposed, of course, that this takes
place within the life-history of the individual human
being, or of any highly developed organism. In such
an organism, many reflex paths, many co-ordinations
of stimulus and response, are doubtless fixed ; they
have been established in the long process of race-
evolution, and in virtue of their establishment that
evolution has proceeded. But follow the process as
far back as we may, all analogy points to the same
conclusion namely, that feeling - prompted action,
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 107
i.e., action which is germinally purposive, germin-
ally voluntary, is the Trporepov <f>vo-i, the first in the
order of nature. In the lowest organisms, the reaction
upon stimulus may be so simple and uniform as to
wear to an observer the appearance of a mere mechan-
ical reflex. But this is, if I may so speak, to make the
creature a mere outside ; it forgets, as this mechanical
psychology is constantly forgetting, that wherever there
is life, there is unity. Every organism is a unity, and
resumes itself as a unity. Feeling is the inward ex-
pression of this unity ; and, to my mind, it is not doubt-
ful that the movement of attraction or repulsion, which,
to us and from the outside, may seem a simple reflex, is
to be interpreted rather as the total response of a ger-
minal consciousness, as the expression of the being's
likes and dislikes.
Physiology, so long as it remains pure physiology, is
perhaps debarred from taking account of feeling or
consciousness as such. The psychical in all its forms
lies outside the scope of physiological methods. But
the self - preservative, recuperative, self-adaptive ten-
dencies of organisms and organic tissue are the
physiological way of expressing the same fact. Such
a mode of expression is imperfect and mythological,
perhaps, and one can understand that many physi-
108 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
ologists, supposing it to be put forward as an ex-
planation of the facts, grow impatient and fall back
upon a purely mechanical theory of vital function.
But these expressions are in no sense explanations, as
science uses that term ; they are rather finger-posts to
the unexplained; they merely name or indicate the
fundamental characteristic of life as such, which
differentiates it from mechanism or what seems to
us to be mechanism. Life is the presupposition of
physiology, the fact on which its existence is based,
a fact which it has simply to accept, as all the other
sciences have to accept their own presuppositions. Its
explanations move within the fact of life, and cannot
be used to explain that fact itself, or, in other words,
to explain it away. Yet that is, in substance, what a
purely mechanical physiology tries to do.
Physiology, for the last fifty years, has been dominated
by a reaction against what is called vitalism. The
older investigators were in the habit of calling in
" vital force " as a deus ex machina to account for any
phenomena which baffled their powers of natural
explanation. Vital force, conceived as extraneously
interfering with otherwise mechanical processes, was
evidently a hypostatised entity of the worst type, and
it was accordingly discarded by scientific physiology
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 109
as part of the baneful legacy of metaphysics. Mechani-
cal explanation, or, in other words, the resolution of
physiology into physics, became the watchword and
ideal of the best workers. But they did not observe
that they were in danger of throwing away the child
with the bath, as the Germans say. After all, physiology
is not physics ; living matter behaves differently from
dead matter. What is the difference and the basis of
the difference ? In rendering mechanically intelligible
the inter-relation and interaction of this and the
other part of the bodily structure, physiologists tend
to forget that all such mechanical arrangements are
arrangements in the service of life, arrangements per-
fected in the living being (in all probability) by the
responsive and self-adaptive action of its living ancestors
in the course of ages. Picrposiveness is the notion upon
which physiology is built, and it is worked into the
whole theory of development ; yet it is a notion entirely
alien to the blind vis a tergo of mechanism as such.
The more clearly a physiologist realises what pure
mechanism means, and the more fully he grasps the
import of the facts he has to deal with, the more ready
will be his acknowledgment that to call them mechani-
cal is at best an analogy. They belong to a different
order of facts ; life and purpose govern them from one
110 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
end to the other. A self-acting and self-regulating
machine is only by an abuse of language spoken of as
a machine at all.
It is in vain therefore that many psychologists at the
present time outdo the physiologists in the glibness
with which they talk of nervous currents and explosions
of nervous energy and paths of least resistance. The
appearance of explanation conveyed by the use of the
expression "path of least resistance" is in the last degree
illusory. We are transferring an expression which has
a perfectly definite and intelligible meaning in physics
or mechanics to a sphere where the conditions are
quite different, and where we are, moreover, almost
quite ignorant as to the nature of what actually takes
place. Path of least resistance means, in such a case,
simply the particular reaction which we find the
stimulus, as a matter of fact, to produce. We have no
right to go further than this. The use of the physical
phrase implies, however, that what takes place is pre-
cisely the same as the selection of a channel made by
a rill of water trickling down a hillside. This is to
make the living being simply a network of pathways
through which the energy of external nature takes its
course soaks in, and oozes out again. But this is not
a true account even of the humblest organism. Such a
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. Ill
representation totally ignores the unitary character of
the organic and sentient being. We are misled, in
short, by words like currents, and energy, and least
resistance. What do we mean by nerve currents ?
Nerve currents cannot be treated in this isolated
fashion, as if they took place in vacuo, or in an
indifferent medium ; they take place in a living
individual, and apart from the unity of that indi-
vidual they are mere abstractions. A nerve cur-
rent is a physiological process, which, originally and
normally, means central stimulation and appropriate
central reaction. You cannot separate either the
appreciation of the stimulus or the reaction upon it
from the organism as a whole. To speak psycho-
logically, it is the living being, as a unity, that is aware
of the sensation and responds to it. There is no need
here to revive any hypothesis as to the specific seat of
the soul, or to conceive any point of convergence in the
brain for the multitudinous nerves of sensation and
motion. However the nervous system acts, the unity
of consciousness, as we experience it every moment, is
proof sufficient of the fact that it does act as a unity.
Every living being is a similar individuate unity.
Abnormalities, as when the removal of the higher
centres gives rise to the establishment of independent
112 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
unities (in the spinal cord, for example), are no argu-
ments against what is here contended for ; they rather
go to prove that even the mutilated organism, so long
as it lives at all, reconstitutes itself into a kind of unity.
A living being, then, is, at the very least, a centre of
sensation and reaction ; and when sensation is so used,
it means not only intellectual awareness of some pres-
ence, but also a subjective drawing to, or away from,
the intruder. This second element of feeling proper is
the condition in virtue of which the sensation as know-
ledge calls forth the reaction as will. The appetitive
is the first phase of consciousness. And however the
growth of the intellectual life and of volitional self-
control may emancipate us from the promptings of the
moment, it is to the end through feeling that the whole
process of our life goes on. It is in feeling that we
assert our individuality, give expression to our prefer-
ences and distastes. Feeling leads each of us to select
from the infinite of the knowable and do-able, that
little world of interests and habits which differentiates
us one from another, and gives to each his peculiar
point of outlook upon the universe.
The necessity of taking feeling first has led us in
appearance away from our specific theme. But it is
only in appearance, for it was impossible to separate
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 113
the treatment of feeling and will, and what has been
said of the one applies mutatis mutandis to the other.
The presentationists endeavoured to make feeling a
relation between ideas, instead of the relation of ideas
to the subject of them. If the subject has identified
itself, as we say, with certain ideas or interests, then
any idea which conflicts with these ideas will result
in pain or displeasure to the subject. But here, as
always, it is not the relations of ideas as such rela-
tions, as it were, in the phenomenal plane but rela-
tion to a subject, that constitutes the fact of feeling.
Similarly with volition. Volition is the action of a
subject, and as such, it cannot be phenomenalised.
But this is just what the phenomenalists, from Hume
to Mtinsterberg, insist on doing. They resolve voli-
tion into a sequence of presentations ; first, an idea,
then a perception (as we have seen Miinsterberg put
it), but no intervening fiat, no power, no real action,
nothing corresponding to what we mean by volition
just the one first, and the other second. The answer to
be made to this ingenious theorem has been indicated
already. To ask to know the will as a presentation is
to ask to know it as it is not. The phenomena which
Miinsterberg offers us are very likely all the phenomena
in the case, or if there are more, the others are like unto
H
114 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
them. But his whole investigation is a petitio principii.
The heading of the psychological section of his treatise
runs, " The Will as a Phenomenon in Consciousness " ;
and that we may be in no doubt as to his meaning, he
says in his preface : " It might also run The Will as
Idea (der Wille ah Vorstellung)." The will as idea
that is the whole theory in a nutshell. No enemy
could have put the case more conclusively against
Mlinsterberg than he has done himself in these
words, which are, nevertheless, the key - note of his
whole inquiry.
II.
But this Presentationism or Phenomenalism, as has
been already hinted, is not a new doctrine. It is a
motive which has been widely influential in the history
of philosophy. Let us generalise our conclusions, there-
fore, and enforce them by historic example. Activity,
as Berkeley long ago said, is not an idea, or anything
like an idea, though doubtless activity is involved in
the existence of any idea, seeing that ideas exist only
for a subject, or, to be more exact, seeing that ideas,
from the psychological point of view, are in every case
just activities of some subject. But because, in the
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 115
nature of the case, action cannot be made a pres-
entation of, cannot be held up as an object in the
mental field of view, this theory proposes to efface
activity altogether. In saying this, we are not attrib-
uting to the Presentationists a conclusion which they
disclaim. All real action, all real causality, is elimin-
ated from their account of the universe as known.
Causality is reduced, as with Hume, to mere sequence.
We ourselves do not act we only seem to ourselves
to act; in reality, we merely look on at happenings.
Mlinsterberg suggests that the real agent in all these
sequences, including the events which we mistakenly
attribute to our own agency, may be, as Schopenhauer
conceived, a unitary unconscious will. To this extent,
therefore, he differs from Hume : he does not leave us
with a purely sceptical phenomenalism. He is pre-
pared to admit will or force, in this sense, as ultimate
metaphysical reality and sole cause. But such an ad-
mission has no bearing on our contention, so long as the
psychological reality of the individual Will is denied.
It must be admitted unreservedly that, if to know
means to have a presentation before us, then we do
not and cannot know the fact of our volitional activity.
In this sense, we can only know the motives which led
to it and the changes which followed upon it in the
116 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
phenomenal field. I am not advocating this usage, for
I admit that it sounds -absurd to say that we do not
know our own activity, our own existence. All I would
urge is that, if the associations of " knowledge " with the
objective, the presentable, the phenomenal, are ineradi-
cable, then we shall be obliged to fall back upon some
other term to express the acquaintance which the sub-
ject has with his own activity. This is exactly the
position which Berkeley took up, when he corrected
his first impulse to resolve the Self into a procession
of ideas. In his suggestive distinction between " ideas "
and "notions," he anticipates and combats the Pan-
phenomenalism of Hume and of such theories as we
have been considering.
There can be no idea formed [he says] of a soul or spirit ;
for all ideas whatever being passive and inert, cannot re-
present unto us by way of image or likeness that which
acts. A little attention will make it plain to any one that
to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of
motion and change of ideas is absolutely impossible. Such
is the nature of Spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be
of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it pro-
duceth. ... So far as I can see, the words will, soul,
spirit, do not stand for different ideas, or in truth for any
idea at all, but for something which is very different from
ideas, and which, being an Agent, cannot be like unto or re-
presented by any idea whatsoever, though it must be owned
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 117
at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit,
and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving,
hating inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning
of the words. 1
In a later section he formally repeats the distinction
in the same terms 2 and adds : " I will not say that the
terms idea and notion may not be used convertibly, if
the world will have it so ; but yet it conduceth to clear-
ness and propriety that we distinguish things very
different by different names." And with his accus-
tomed fine - edged irony, he remarks that " much
scepticism about the nature of the soul " has arisen
" from the opinion that spirits are to be known after
the manner of an idea or sensation." "It is even
probable that this opinion may have produced a doubt
in some, whether they had any soul at all distinct from
their body, since, upon inquiry, they could not find
they had an idea of it." 3 The modern doctrine of
automatism lends fresh point to this shaft of sarcasm.
1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 27.
2 Section 142. "We may not, I think, strictly be said to have an
idea of an active being or of an action, although we may be said to
have a notion of any mind and its acts about ideas inasmuch as I
know or understand what is meant by these words. What I know,
that I have some notion of."
3 Section 137. The preceding section is also so aptly expressed,
especially with reference to the subsequent argument of Hume, that I
118 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
Berkeley's proposed use of idea in this restricted or
specific sense is equivalent to that of the modern terms
presentation, phenomenon, or object ; and it will be
observed how he expressly defines mind and spirit as
" that which acts." It must be for ever impossible to
phenomenalise an action ; we cannot objectify the
subjective function as such. In his own words, that
which acts cannot be itself perceived, but only by the
effects which it produceth. But are we to conclude,
therefore, that there is no activity in the case, that
there is no active subject at all ? Surely not. On the
contrary, it is in activity or the will that we, as it
were, lay hold upon reality and have immediate
assurance of it. And if, as already said, the associa-
tions of " knowledge " are too narrow to permit of its
application here, we must even fall back upon some
cannot forbear reproducing it here. " It will perhaps be said that we
want a sense (as some have imagined) proper to know substances withal,
which, if we had, we might know our own soul as we do a triangle.
To this I answer that, in case we had a new sense bestowed upon us,
we could only receive thereby some new sensations or ideas of sense.
But I believe nobody will say that what he means by the terms soul
and substance is only some particular sort of idea or sensation. We
may therefore infer that, all things duly considered, it is not more
reasonable to think our faculties defective, in that they do not furnish
us with an idea of spirit or active thinking substance, than it would
be if we should blame them for not being able to comprehend a round
square."
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 119
such phrase as "immediate assurance," "immediate
experience," or " self-feeling." 1
There is, after all, a certain justification for the
narrower use of the term knowledge. For is it not
the case that knowledge, in its very nature, brings with
it a species of foreignness ? Of course we all see clearly
enough that there is another, and, I admit, a more im -
portant sense, in which knowledge may truly be said
to be just the overcoming, the banishing, of this strange-
ness. The knower and his knowledge, as Aristotle
said, are in a sense one. When we have thoughts, says
Hegel, we recognise in nature's inner heart only our
own reason, and feel at home there. " Spirit has the
certainty which Adam had when he saw Eve. 'This
is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.' " No one, I
say, will question that in this sense knowledge means
unity, appropriation, the breaking down of the middle
wall of partition. But that is without prejudice to the
other and more subtle aspect of the case which I desire
to emphasise. Knowledge, in its very nature, implies
difference. What we know is an object, something held
1 The last phrase is used by Mr Bosanquet (Logic, vol. i. p. 77) in a
passage in which he also speaks of "the immediate feeling of my own
sentient existence that goes with " any act of perception. " Immediate
experience" is used by Mr Stout in contrast to cognition or "discrim-
inative thinking," 'Analytic Psychology,' Bk. I. c. i., and Bk. II. c. i.
120 THE
as it were at a distance from us, something opposite to
us. What we know is in fact always something different
from ourselves. The knower and the known are never
in this sense one, even in the limiting case of psycho-
logical introspection. It is often said that here the
observer and the observed are one and the same ;
but the statement is not literally true. All intro-
spection, it has been more truly said, is really retro-
spection ; it is a post-mortem examination. When I
know a state, that state has already ceased to exist
as a living pulse of thought and feeling. It belongs to
the past. I recognise it as having been mine ; but it is
different from the present psychologically-minded self,
intent upon its examination. 1 The case of introspec-
tion has been mentioned, because there, if anywhere,
it might be said that there was an identity of knowing
and being. But, as we have just seen, it is not so.
Knowing and being are not identical ; they cannot help
being different. The fact is, we are face to face here
with a constant characteristic of knowledge, and if, as
we are apt to do, we take knowledge as exhaustive of
1 So Professor Sully and Professor James. The latest expression of
this fact is perhaps to be found in Mr Stout's 'Analytic Psychology.'
vol. i. p. 159 : " The immediate experience of any moment is never at
that moment an object of thought."
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 121
experience, a far-reaching vista of consequences soon
appears. We may interpret the characteristic in the
relativistic sense which is so popular in agnostic and
positivistic theories. We may say, knowledge never
gives us the real thing; we are always going round
about things, and always baffled with their mere out-
sides. We know only phenomena; reality, whether
of the self or the not-self, is beyond us. This is one
line of thought which meets us in certain forms of
Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism, in Hamilton, and
in Spencer. Or, if we do not take this line, we fall
into what I may call an Absolute Phenomenalism. In
this case, we spurn the unknown and unknowable
mystery of the relativists; we see that it is absurd
to speak as if knowledge were constructed merely to
baulk us. So far all seems well ; but we have not
really escaped the consequences of accepting know-
ledge as our ultimate. For we dissolve the universe
altogether into objects or phenomena; all things and
all finite persons, including ourselves, are merely
objects in experience. And thus, in another way
than the agnostic, we as surely deprive men and things
of reality ; for mere objects are not real, they are halves
craving completion. And that completion they do not
get from the addition of a universal self. That uni-
122 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
versal self has itself no nerve of reality about it, if it is
taken merely as the unifying self of knowledge. It is
simply the formal unity of a spectacular process of
phenomena. There is no warrant, on the theory, for
understanding this self in any other way.
If, then, we are to lay hold upon reality and lift our-
selves out of the flux of phenomena, we must do so by
a species of assurance different from knowledge, as
knowledge has just been analysed and explained.
Now, we have no such certainty of any reality, save
the reality of self-existence. We know other things
and other persons ; no sane person at least doubts that
we do. But we do not immediately feel or experience
their existence ; they are oilier beings, and their exist-
ence is a hypothesis to explain certain phenomena of
our own experience. And though the hypothesis is
infinitely probable, it is theoretically open to doubt.
Similarly, if we try to build even upon our own exist-
ence as known, that existence tends to melt away into
a dreamlike succession of phenomena passing before an
inactive spectator, and the result is, that we fail to
find reality anywhere. Existence resolves itself into
a magic-lantern march of pictures, but, as Fichte says,
without anything of which they are the pictures. It
is not in knowledge, then, as such, but in feeling and
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 123
action, that reality is given. In saying this, I do not
for a moment mean to do what I said before was im-
possible, to divorce any of the three aspects of experi-
ence from the others : the being who feels and acts
must also know. Knowledge may even be said, with
some truth, to be the pre-condition of the other two.
But the immediate certainty of real existence attaches
not to what is known in the knowledge, but to the
accompanying awareness of subjective activity in the
knowing act and the tinge of subjective feeling in
connection with it. Knowledge is itself from this
point of view an activity of the subject, and, as such,
it will serve perfectly well as a basis of certainty. It
is when the element of activity in knowledge is left
out of sight, and attention is concentrated on the
content or object of knowledge, that we enter upon
a false path, and end in the self -contradictory notion
of a knowledge which is nobody's knowledge, and a
knowledge of nothing. But knowing is not a colour-
less or impersonal function as it were a series of
happenings in vacua. Every cognitive act is suffused
with feeling, and in virtue of this suffusion it is felt
by me as mine, by you as yours. In knowing any
object, therefore, whether a thing in the external world
or a state of his own mind, the knowing subject pos-
124 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
sesses, in this element of feeling, an immediate assur-
ance of existence there and then.
This certainty is, in the first instance, in the moment
of acting, a pure immediacy, a mere awareness. After
action, and to the psychological observer, it must be
mediated by knowledge and reflection i.e., the changes
are presented or represented in consciousness, and with
them comes the feeling of self-origination, from which
remembered conjunction springs the reasoned convic-
tion of our active causality. But the reflective asser-
tion of the psychologist depends entirely upon the
immediate feeling the sense of living, as we might
call it which went with the action originally. I feel
the activity, the experience, at the moment, and in
virtue of this immediate accompanying feeling, I after-
wards acknowledge it as mine.
It was not, therefore, without reason that Fichte 1
eventually returned to this primal certainty, as the
sole means of escape from a limitless scepticism.
Descartes's cogito, though intended to embrace the
volitional aspect of consciousness, laid stress, designedly
or not, upon the intellectual ; and the result was, that
the real activity of the subject was discarded by his
immediate successors. The content of consciousness
1 The reference is to his treatise on c The Vocation of Man. '
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 125
became everything; the subject a mere empty vessel
or form for the content. And in Spinoza, accordingly,
we get a system or procession of idece, or modes of
thought, and a parallel procession of ideata, the cor-
responding modes of extension. The identity of in-
tellect and will is one of Spinoza's central doctrines,
and he presents us accordingly with a system in which
real activity, or real causality, has as little place as it
has in Miinsterberg's. His parallelism of modes of
thought and modes of extension is, in fact, the very
doctrine of Automatism which we have had under
consideration. And it results from the very same
considerations from exclusive attention to the intel-
lect, to the knowledge-content of the mind. Scan the
history of philosophy as we may, we shall find the same
cause everywhere producing the same effect, now in a
more materialistic form, now in the guise of Idealism ;
but whether the automatism be materially or ideally
conceived, matters practically not one jot. With the
elimination of real causality from the course of things,
the world is emptied of real meaning ; it is reduced to
a spectacular sequence of happenings, which have no
raison d'etre, seeing that all is absolutely predeter-
mined from the outset. There is no life or reality
in the show which passes before us ; for the nerve
126 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
of reality is furnished solely by the conviction of our
own activity, our own real causality.
And with the conviction of real activity, it is to
be noted, goes the belief in an end or aim which the
action is to realise. It is upon purposive, idea-guided
action that Fichte takes his stand as the ultimate
certainty. The idea is present to me, he says, not
as a Naclibild or copy, an after -picture of an inde-
pendent reality, but as a Vorbild, a fore-picture, an
ideal or purpose, which does not yet exist, but which
I have myself to make real. In the ingenious cari-
cature which Miinsterberg offers us, he does not deny
that this is the fundamental characteristic of voluntary
action ; but, in accordance with his .presuppositions, he
denies the reality of the nexus between the conception
and its execution. It is undeniable that the one is
before the other, but the first has no influence or
efficacy in bringing about the second; for the whole
train of happenings, he expressly tells us, is independ-
ent of our consciousness. 1 The whole train is driven,
in fact, a tergo by a Schopenhauerian dynamo-machine
in the background.
1 Die Willenshandlung, p. 3. The bodily and the mental series,
he says, are " zwei verschiedene Erscheinungsformen desselben
einheitlichen, von unserem Bewusstsein unabhaugigen, wirklichen
Geschehnisses. "
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 127
The same line of thought which leads to the elimina-
tion of real activity from the course of things, thus
leads necessarily to the denial of purpose everywhere.
And it is noteworthy, in this connection, that Spinoza
is the most embittered opponent of any doctrine of
teleology or final causes. To Spinoza, as to Mlinster-
berg, all determination is mechanical, a tergo or from
the past ; the notion of self-determination in view of
ideas, determination a fronte or by the future, was
inconceivable to him. The human being was to
Spinoza as completely determined, and determined in
the same way, as a stone propelled through the air.
We do not know whether there is anywhere ' such
purely mechanical causality as Spinoza took for granted
in the case of the stone ; but we do know that that is
not the mode in which the actions of conscious beings
are determined. The causality of the future, or of the
ideal, is coterminous at least with the confines of life.
All action of living beings, I have argued, is originally
purposive that is to say, in a wide sense, voluntary
directed more or less clearly by the creature towards
some aim. Only if this is so, is action in any sense
an action of the creature itself, and not, in Mlinster-
berg's language, "a phenomenal phase of the unitary
happening " which goes on in the creature irrespective
128 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM.
of its feelings or desires. With the acknowledgment
of purposive action, the wjiole process of things acquires
a new aspect. It is no longer a motiveless procession
of appearances, or, as Professor James well puts it, the
dull rattling off of a chain forged ages ago. It is an
evolution which is real at every point. And if it has
seemed, in the course of this exposition, that knowledge
and ideas have been depreciated at the expense of the
will, they are here restored to their rightful function
as the necessary conditions of selection or choice, the
springs of all activity, and so the guiding star of all
advance. But ideas in themselves are nothing, and the
analysis of knowledge as knowledge can never give us
reality. If we were to recast Descartes's formula, in
the light of all that has come and gone in philosophy
since his day, not Cogito ergo sum but Ago ergo sum
is the form his maxim would take.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 1
I.
fTlHEEE can be little doubt among those qualified
to judge, that Mr Bradley's 'Appearance and
Eeality' is the most important metaphysical work
which has appeared in England since the publication
of Green's ' Introduction to Hume ' in 1874. It is so,
in my opinion, not because its conclusions are likely
to become assured possessions of philosophical thought,
but because of the intrepidity of the treatment and the
singularly stimulating quality which belongs to all that
Mr Bradley writes.
1 Appearance and Reality : a Metaphysical Essay. By F. H. Bradley,
LL.D. (Glasgow), Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. London: Swan
Sonnenschein & Co. 1893. The criticism which follows appeared as
two articles in the ' Contemporary Review ' of November and Decem-
ber 1894.
I
130 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
The author modestly says in his preface that his
book does not design to be permanent. It is his
contribution to the sceptical discipline of the English
mind, from which he is not without hopes of seeing
" a rational system of first principles " emerge. And
it is true that the book is hardly likely to take its
place as a classical treatise in the literature of the
subject. The highly abstract character of most of
the discussion, suggesting at times a delight in logic
for logic's sake, the unadorned dryness (for the most
part) of the style, and the seemingly deliberate per-
versities of manner which mar it at times, forbid
such a destiny. But the brilliant dialectic of which
the book is full, the thoroughness and sincerity witli
which it sifts the most vital questions, its ruthless
criticism of conventional solutions, ensure for Mr
Bradley's latest volume an important influence upon
the thought of his contemporaries.
Mr Bradley's courage is also to be commended in
publishing a book which throughout deals avowedly
and in set terms with " the Absolute." What a shock
to the precisians of Agnosticism and the puritans of
the empirical tradition ! This particular bogy, so
potent in the middle of the century, has apparently
lost its terror even for the English mind. As soon as
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 131
men began to reflect a little on what was meant by
the term, it became evident that the ultimate object
of philosophy always is, and must be, the Absolute.
Mr Bradley's remarks, in his short Introduction, on the
unavoidableness of metaphysical inquiry, the necessity
of a new metaphysic for each fresh generation, and the
utility of even an imperfect knowledge of the Absolute,
may be commended to the candid reader who is still
unconvinced, or perhaps a confirmed sceptic, on those
points.
The chapters of destructive criticism, which form
the first part of the book, are largely in Hegel's
manner, and the influence of Hegel is unquestionably
predominant throughout. But in spite of this general
indebtedness, the book is distinguished by an independ-
ence of style and treatment not usual with followers
of this master, or indeed of any master. But Mr
Bradley has always insisted on calling his soul his own.
Whatever else this volume may be, and whatever criti-
cisms we may have to make upon it, it is certainly no
easy reproduction of another man's thoughts: in the
sweat of his own brow its author has conceived and
executed it.
This independence of treatment will prove of good
omen, it may be hoped, for the future of philosophical
132 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
discussion among those who may be regarded, in a
general way, as carrying on the traditions of Green
arid representing the influence of Hegel, or at least
of German Idealism, in British philosophy. In this
connection, Mr Bradley's book may be said, perhaps,
to mark the close of the period whose beginning was
signalised, twenty-three years ago, by the publication of
Green's work already mentioned. When we think of
the Hamilton - Mill controversy in the sixties, it is
obvious that serious study of the Critical Philosophy
and German Idealism had yet to begin. Only the
outworks of the Kantian scheme had been mastered
even by the accredited leaders of British thought ;
while Hegel, or at least his strangely refracted image,
was simply the philosophical "bogy-man," useful to
frighten back the unwary wanderer into the fold of
Empiricism or the Philosophy of the Conditioned. Yet
Hegel was probably the richest mind that had been
devoted to philosophy since Aristotle, and, whatever
judgment may be passed on his system as a logical
whole, had done more than any other man to mould
the thought of the century in all the humanistic
sciences.
The publication of Dr Hutchison Stirling's ' Secret of
Hegel/ in 1865, first removed the reproach of ignorance
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 133
and indifference, or worse, from British philosophy. It
was published in the same year as Mill's ' Examination
of Hamilton,' and in the noisy, multitudinous echoes of
that controversy, the accents of the new voice were
partly drowned. But they penetrated, like tidings of
a land that is very far off, to ears fit to receive them.
While Mr Spencer's philosophy gradually established
itself as the persuasion of the average man, the
majority of serious thinkers in England were devot-
ing themselves to the study of Kant and Hegel ;
and Green's 'Introduction' was the first noteworthy
symptom of this new direction of thought at the
universities. The movement thus inaugurated has
been growing in volume since then, and, as was to be
expected, it has somewhat changed its character ; and
Mr Bradley's book may perhaps be found in this
respect to mark the end of the period of absorption
or assimilation. During these Lehrjalire, English
writers have repeated too anxiously, and with too
minute exactitude, the formulae of a foreign master,
treating them rather as oracles of truth than as
utterances of finite wisdom, and showing too great a
reluctance to submit them to legitimate criticism.
But of late a calmer and more critical tone has been
noticeable, and a more catholic spirit has shown itself.
134 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
Other names have claimed attention, such as Lotze on
the one hand, and SchQpenhauer on the other (to
mention only these two). As Mr Bradley puts it
in his preface, " the present generation is learning
that to gain education a man must study in more
than one school." And the result of this wider range
can hardly be other than to diminish the somewhat
partisan zeal of the so-called neo-Hegelian party for
the ipsissima verba of Hegel's theory, and to set them
upon a more independent handling of the subject itself,
in accordance with the genius of their own time and
nation. Then the Lelirjalire and the Wanderjahre will
be ended and the Meisterjahre will begin. For dis-
ciples, as Bacon puts it in a well-known passage, do
owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a sus-
pension of their judgment till they be fully instructed,
and not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity.
Though Germany once possessed the hegemony of
Europe in matters philosophical, that time is past
and the fact that it once existed constitutes no reason
why we should remain in perpetual tutelage to German
masters. "I have a high opinion," says Mr Bradley
in his preface, "of the metaphysical powers of the
English mind ; " and his book is conceived throughout
in the spirit of intellectual freedom.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 135
The author describes his work in the preface as " a
critical discussion of first principles." " The chief need
of English philosophy," he tells us, " is a sceptical study
of first principles, and I do not know of any work which
seems to meet this need sufficiently." The object of
his own work is, therefore, " to stimulate inquiry and
doubt " doubt or scepticism being understood to mean
not doubt or disbelief in any particular tenets, but " an
attempt to become aware of and to doubt all precon-
ceptions." This is in Mr Bradley's mind and not
without good reason the first and all-important con-
dition of sound work in metaphysics. The short Intro-
duction puts unanswerably the necessity and the utility
of metaphysics. As it is impossible to abstain from
thought about the universe, " the question is merely as
to the way in which this should be done. . . . Meta-
physics takes its stand on this side of human nature,
this desire to think about and comprehend reality.
And it merely asserts that, if the attempt is to be
made, it should be done as thoroughly as our nature
permits." On the second count, he maintains, as we
have seen, that even a " miserably incomplete " know-
ledge of the Absolute must have its usefulness. But
in a passage of characteristic frankness and force he
contends that, even if metaphysics has no positive
136 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
results, it would still be highly desirable that it
should continue to be studied :
There is, so far as I can see, no other way of protecting
ourselves against dogmatic superstition. Our orthodox
theology on the one hand, and our commonplace material-
ism on the other (it is natural to take these as prominent
instances) vanish like ghosts before the daylight of free
sceptical inquiry. I do not mean, of course, to condemn
wholly either of these beliefs ; but I am sure that either,
when taken seriously, is the mutilation of our nature.
Neither, as experience has amply shown, can now survive
in the mind which has thought sincerely on first principles.
That is one reason why I think that metaphysics,
even if it end in total scepticism, should be studied by a
certain number of persons.
But, while thus insisting on the indispensable func-
tion of metaphysical inquiry, Mr Bradley is not the
man to magnify his office as metaphysician unduly.
And in the Meredithian extracts from his note-book
which conclude the preface, he characteristically turns
the shafts of his irony against his own occupation.
"Metaphysics," it is there written, "is the finding of
bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to
find these reasons is no less an instinct." From the
other glimpses vouchsafed into this note -book, its
aphoristic treasures would appear to be of a highly
various and piquant description. They cannot but
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 137
awaken an unchastened curiosity in the heart of many
students, which it is to be hoped the owner of the note-
book may take measures to satisfy.
Mr Bradley starts with a threefold general definition
of metaphysics. "We may agree, perhaps, to under-
stand by metaphysics an attempt to know reality as
against mere appearance, or the study of first prin-
ciples or ultimate truths, or again the effort to com-
prehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by
fragments, but somehow as a whole." These three
definitions are plainly intended to be taken as equi-
valent, but, though the third is probably the most
satisfactory of the three, it is the first which gives
the title to Mr Bradley 's volume, and it is the con-
trast between appearance or, as he calls it here,
"mere appearance" and reality that explains the
two parts into which it falls. The first book, entitled
" Appearance," is a sceptical or destructive criticism of
the phenomenal world as inherently self -contradictory
and incomprehensible, and therefore, in Mr Bradley's
use of the word, unreal. The second book, entitled
" Eeality," though also abounding in negative criticism
of obnoxious "preconceptions," is the constructive
complement of Book I., intended to describe the nature
of the Absolute, in which the contradictionsof pheno-
138 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
mena must be somehow reconciled or overcome. It
is important at the outlet, for the understanding of
Mr Bradley 's argument, especially in its negative or
sceptical aspect, to note the equivalence, or at least
interchangeableness, of these different formulations of
the metaphysician's task, even though his procedure
and conclusions should turn out to be unduly dominated
by the first. Keality is used by Mr Bradley through-
out in the sense of ultimate reality, so that reality and
the absolute are convertible terms, and he means by
both " the universe " comprehended " somehow as a
whole." Appearance, on the other hand, is applied to
the whole of the phenomenal world. Appearances,
of course, exist, as he repeatedly tells us, but they are
not real, in the sense of being independent, self-con-
tained and self-explanatory. We fall into hopeless
contradictions if we attempt to take them so. Every
finite or phenomenal fact betrays its character of
" mere appearance " by the " ragged edges " which
stamp it as a part torn out of its context. The self-
contradiction of the part taken as the whole, the
phenomenal taken as the real, is most obvious in the
infinite progress upon which it launches us a species
of treadmill exercise, best exemplified in the case of
such notions as time, space, and causation.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 139
The contradictions of the finite are, accordingly, the
theme of Mr Bradley's First Book, in which he sets out
to criticise the chief " ideas by which we try to under-
stand the universe." Taking up, first, the popular
scientific proposal to find the reality of the world in
the primary qualities, he has little difficulty in showing
that the line of thought which undermines the reality
of the secondary qualities can be used with equal
effect against the primary. The primary qualities
cannot be conceived or presented without the second-
ary ; and, further, we cannot think of extension with-
out thinking at the same time of a " what " that is
extended. Extension is, therefore, simply the abstrac-
tion of one element from the rest, from which it is
in reality inseparable an abstraction scientifically
convenient, but metaphysically indefensible, when it
puts itself forward as an ultimate account of things.
The distinction of "substantive and adjective"
the grouping of the world's contents into things and
qualities is next taken up (chap, ii.) and declared
to be "a clear makeshift." If we lay stress on the
unity of the thing, then the plurality of its attributes
is in no way explained ; they lie side by side in mere
distinctness one from another, as so many independent
coexistences.
140 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
The whole device is a clear makeshift. It consists in
saying to the outside world, " I am the owner of these my
adjectives," and to the properties, " I am but a relation,
which leaves you your liberty." And to itself and for itself
it is the futile pretence to have both characters at once.
. . . The thing with its adjectives is a device for enjoying
at once both variety and concord. But the distinctions, once
made, fall apart from the thing, and away from one another,
and our attempt to understand their relations brought us
round merely to an unity, which confesses itself a pretence,
or else falls back upon the old undivided substance which
admits of no distinctions (p. 23).
The next chapter (chap, iii.) analyses the ideas of
quality and relation. Qualities depend upon the
relation of things to one another; unrelated reals
would be qualityless. But, on the other hand,
"nothings cannot be related;" "relations must de-
pend upon terms, just as much as terms upon rela-
tions." Consequently, all thinking that moves by
the machinery of terms and relations is pronounced
to be "a makeshift, a device, a mere practical com-
promise, most necessary, but in the end most inde-
fensible." For there is the same attempt to bring di-
versity into the unity of the thing, an attempt which
proves impossible except by dividing the thing alto-
gether into an endless process of relations. Hence,
" our experience when relationed is not true ; " and
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 141
any one who has grasped the principle of this chapter,
we are told, " will have condemned, almost without
a hearing, the great mass of phenomena." Mr
Bradley proceeds, however (in the next five chapters),
to apply his principle more in detail to the cases of
" space and time," " motion and change," " causation "
and ''activity." In a time-honoured and somewhat
well-worn argument, the aspects of discreteness and
continuity in space are sceptically opposed to one
another, and the conclusion reached that " space
vanishes internally into relations between units which
never can exist." Precisely the same argument holds
of time ; hence, both are not real, but " contradictory
appearances." The problem of change
points back to the dilemma of the one and the many, the
differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing,
the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly
be anything else was a question which defied our efforts.
Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in
principle. ... It asserts two of one, and so falls at once
under the condemnation of our previous chapters. . . .
Change, upon any hypothesis, is impossible. It can be no
more than appearance (pp. 45-47).
So with causation. If you resolve cause into identity,
you eliminate the very fact to be explained the
difference of the effect from its cause. For surely the
142 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
very problem of causation " consists in the differences
and in their sequence in time." In fact,
it is the old puzzle how to justify the attributing to a subject
something other than itself, and which the subject is not.
If " followed by B " is not the nature of A, then justify
your predication. If it is essential to A, then justify, first,
your taking A without it ; and in the next place show how,
with such an incongruous nature, A can succeed in being
more than unreal appearance" (p. 57).
Activity is condemned because " nothing can be active
without an occasion, and what is active, being made
thus by the occasion, is so far passive." Hence, " it is
certain that activity implies finitude, and otherwise
possesses no meaning." It cannot, therefore, be an
ultimate principle of explanation. Chap. viii. deals
with " things," but the preceding argument has " under-
mined and ruined " any meaning we can attach to the
term. " The thing is a thing only if its existence goes
beyond the now and extends into the past;" but "it
does not appear how this relation of sameness can
be real." "The identity of a thing lies in the view
you take of it." "We seem driven to the conclusion
that things are but appearances."
So far, therefore, "our facts have turned out to be
illusory," but we have been dealing up to this point
with " the inanimate," and in order to complete his
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 143
argument Mr Bradley goes on in the next two chapters
(chaps, ix. and x.) to criticise the claims of the Self
to reality. In the first he passes in review different
meanings of the self, and in the second he concludes
that the self simply presents "the old puzzle as to
the connection of diversity with unity." It will be
necessary to return upon various points in these im-
portant chapters, but we must first have Mr Bradley's
main line of thought before us and the conclusion
at which he arrives. It is sufficient, therefore, for the
present, to note his verdict on the self, and the ground
on which the verdict is explicitly based. "The con-
sciousness of personal identity," he curiously says,
" may be supposed to have some bearing on the reality
of the self." Most people are probably benighted
enough to think it has.
But to my mind [proceeds Mr Bradley] it appears to be
almost irrelevant. Of course the self, within limits and up
to a certain point, is the same. ... As long as there re-
mains in the self a certain basis of content, ideally the same,
so long may the self recall anything once associated with
that basis. . . . This, of course, shows that self-sameness
exists as a fact, and that hence somehow an identical self
is real. But, then, the question is how ? The question is
whether we can state the existence and the continuity of a
real self in a way which is intelligible, and which is not
144 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
ruined by the difficulties of previous discussions. Because,
otherwise, we may have found an interesting fact, but most
assuredly we have not found a tenable view about reality.
. . . The end of metaphysics is to understand the uni-
verse, to find a way of thinking about facts in general which
is free from contradiction. . . . It is this, to repeat it
once more, on which everything turns. The diversity and
the unity must be brought to the light, and the principle
must be seen to comprehend these. But the self is so far
from supplying such a principle, that it seems, when not
hiding itself in obscurity, a mere bundle of discrepancies.
Our search has conducted us again, not to reality, but mere
appearance (pp. 113, 120).
The two short chapters on "Phenomenalism" and
" Things in Themselves," which conclude the First Book,
add nothing to this argument. They are rather of the
nature of appendices, which deal effectively with these
two phases of philosophic theory, as attempts either
to evade the philosophical problem altogether, or to
solve it by doubling it. As I am in complete agree-
ment with Mr Bradley 's arguments in these pages,
there is the less need to dwell upon them here. So I
pass at once to the opening chapters of the Second
Book, dealing with "The General Nature of Eeality,"
and containing the counter -stroke to the preceding
negative polemic.
The first position taken up is at once important, for
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 145
it alone enables a start to be made. Phenomena have
been condemned as self-contradictory, but what is thus
rejected as appearance admittedly still exists. " It
cannot bodily be shelved and merely got rid of, and,
therefore, since it must fall somewhere, it must belong
to reality." Eeality, therefore, " must own," and some-
how include, appearance ; it cannot be less than appear-
ance. But whereas appearances, taken as real, proved
self-contradictory, the absolute or ultimate reality must
be " such that it does not contradict itself. This is our
first criterion a criterion which has been implicit
in all the preceding negative criticism." Accordingly...
we may say, concludes Mr Bradley, that
everything which appears is somehow real in such a way as
to be self-consistent. . . . Appearance must belong to
reality, and it must, therefore, be concordant and other than
it seems. The bewildering mass of phenomenal diversity
must hence somehow be at unity and self -consistent ; for it
cannot be elsewhere than in reality, and reality excludes dis-
cord. Or again, we may put it so ; the real is individual.
It is one in the sense that its positive character embraces
all deficiencies in an inclusive harmony (p. 140).
In short, " reality must be a single whole " " a single
system." In his second chapter Mr Bradley supple-
ments this "formal and abstract" definition of the
Absolute by identifying existence with "experience,"
K
146 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
laying down the position, almost in Berkeley's lan-
guage, that existence has no meaning apart from
sentient experience. " There is no being or fact out-
side of that which is commonly called psychical
existence." Any supposed fact, other than this, "is
a vicious abstraction whose existence is meaningless
nonsense, and is not possible." If we combine this
with the former position, " our conclusion, so far, will
be this, that the Absolute is one system, and that its
contents are nothing but sentient experience. It will,
hence, be a single and all-inclusive experience, which
embraces every partial diversity in concord." Finally,
Mr Bradley proceeds to ask whether we really have a
positive idea of an Absolute, thus defined as " one com-
prehensive sentience ; " and he answers that, while we
cannot fully realise its existence, its main features are
drawn from our own experience, and we have also
a suggestion there of the unity of a whole embracing
distinctions within itself. This we have in "mere
feeling or immediate presentation," where we experi-
ence as an undifferentiated whole, what we afterwards
proceed, in the exercise of relational thought, to analyse
into the known world of self and not -self, with all
its manifold objects and distinctions. Combining this
primitive experience of felt unity with the later ex-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 147
perience of known diversity, we can recognise the
latter as a transitional stage, and reach the idea of
a higher experience in which thought shall, as it
were, return to the immediacy of feeling. "We can
form the general idea of an absolute intuition in which
phenomenal distinctions are merged; a whole become
immediate at a higher stage without losing any rich-
ness." This view of the Absolute is developed and
enforced in the immediately following chapter on
"Thought and Keality" (chap, xv.) which, in various
aspects, is one of the most important in the book. As
such, it will claim our attention in the sequel ; but it
is enough, in the meantime, to note a little more fully
the nature of the results arrived at. The position
reached is simply this, that "the relational form is a
compromise on which thought stands and which it
develops. It is an attempt to unite differences which
have broken out of the felt totality" (p. 180). It is
essentially an attempt to pass beyond itself and to
recapture this immediate unity. But, both in theory
and in practice, the attempt proves unsuccessful on
the basis of thought or relation ; it resolves itself
into the infinite progress. Thought's own ideal, there-
fore, can be reached only by passing beyond thought.
For us " this completion of thought beyond thought "
148 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
necessarily "remains for ever an other." Still " thought
can form the idea of an apprehension, something like
feeling in directness, which contains all the character
sought by its relational efforts" "a total experience
where will and thought and feeling may all once more
be one," and where consequently the distinction between
thought and its object between subject and predicate
is likewise transcended. 1
We have now before us one complete phase of Mr
Bradley 's position and argumentation, and it is time,
therefore, to investigate critically the legitimacy of the
method and the value of the conclusion. Mr Bradley
started, as we saw, with two somewhat different defini-
tions of the Absolute ; and, in like manner, his criticism
throughout the First Book seems to rest upon two some-
what different principles. The one condemns pheno-
mena because they are fragmentary ; no object of
experience is by itself a res completa, an independent
and self-contained individual, strong in solid singleness,
self-explaining, harmonious and all-inclusive. What-
ever fact we take proves to be infected by external
relations, and so carries us beyond itself, and ultimately
brings in the whole context of the universe. Thus
1 See pp. 160, 172, 179, 181.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 149
activity transforms itself into passivity, because we
cannot think of activity as (so to speak) a mere bolt
from the blue an unconditioned fiat out of a blank
eternity. The beginning of the activity of anything
depends, for our thinking, upon a stimulus from beyond
the nature of the thing itself ; and the thing, therefore,
is quite as much passive as active. This argument may
be applied all round. Thought cannot rest in any finite
individual, but is carried beyond it in an infinite pro-
gress. So with any portion of space or time in which
we arbitrarily and momentarily rest ; so with things, so
last of all with the finite self. For I do not imagine
that those who insist most strongly on the reality of the
self, and hold that " it provides us with a type by the
aid of which we may go on to comprehend the world/'
are at all inclined to assert its reality in Mr Bradley's
sense of all-inclusive self-sufficience. Obviously, the self
of any individual, in the determinations of its character
and the occasions of its activity, carries us beyond the
self, just as in the case of things which are not selves.
The self cannot be torn from its environment except by
a process of violent abstraction ; and the environment,
if we are to be exact, must be ultimately extended so
as to include all time and all existence. To my mind,
it requires no argument to establish the position that
150 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
there can be only one individual as a res completa, and
consequently, in Mr Bradley's sense, only one reality,
namely, the Absolute or the universe as a whole. To
fail to realise this is to fail to rise to the light of reason
at all ; it is, in Spinoza's phrase, to remain at the stage
of "imagination," with its blind substantiation of the
individuals of sense just as we find them, or seem to
find them.
In this whole line of argument, therefore including
his admirable exposure of the fallacy of a plurality of
independent reals Mr Bradley is certain to meet with
hearty acquiescence in most quarters that are worth
considering. But this line of argument does not seem
sufficient of itself to justify the sweeping condemnation
of phenomena as " mere appearance," " illusion," " self-
contradictory appearance," "irrational appearance,"
" essentially made of inconsistencies," and the other
terms of excommunication in which Mr Bradley in-
dulges. Because a thing is not the Absolute, and never
pretended to be, it seems a little hard to "ruin" its
character by a string of bad names like this. And, as
a matter of fact, the " ruin " in which Mr Bradley in-
volves the phenomenal is more properly the consequence
of a second line of argument, which is on the whole
more prominent throughout the First Book. This argu-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 151
ment is neither more nor less than the complete dis-
crepancy of the One and the Many the impossibility
of realising at all in thought any kind of identity in
diversity. The passages quoted in the earlier part of
this essay illustrate sufficiently the constant recur-
rence of this idea. At the very outset, in dealing with
substantive and adjective, it is referred to as " the
old dilemma." If you predicate what is different, you
ascribe to the subject what it is not ; and if you predi-
cate what is not different, you say nothing at all (p. 20).
The dilemma is, in truth, as old as the early Greek
nominalists and sceptics who denied on these grounds
the possibility of predication altogether, except in the
form of an identical proposition. To say that " Socrates
is good," would be to say the thing that is not; for
" Socrates " and " good " are not the same, but different.
"Socrates" is one idea, and "good" is another. "Socrates
is Socrates," and " good is good ; " but that the one should
be the other, is quite unintelligible. We are limited,
therefore, to the one kind of proposition which we
never make, A = A. Now, strange as it may seem, Mr
Bradley's First Book is, in essence, neither more nor less
than a restatement and re- enforcement of this sceptical
thesis. He adopts this logic of abstract identity
apparently without reserve, and because it brings him
152 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
to a dead-lock, he pronounces the actual world to be
" unintelligible," " inconsistent," " self - contradictory,"
" irrational," " untrue," " illusory." His multitudinous
repetitions seem designed to leave us in no doubt that
it is everywhere the same touchstone which he applies.
Thus, the conclusion of the third chapter, on " Eelation
and Quality," is, as we have seen, that a relational way
of thought is "a mere practical compromise, most
necessary, but in the end most indefensible."
We have to take reality [he continues] as Many, and to
take it as One, and to avoid contradiction. . . . But
when these inconsistencies are forced together, as in meta-
physics they must be, the result is an open and staring
discrepancy. . . . Our intellect, then, has been con-
demned to confusion and bankruptcy, and the reality has
been left outside uncomprehended (pp. 33, 34).
In the next chapter, " Space ... is a peculiar form
of the problem which we discussed in the last chapter,
and is a special attempt to combine the irreconcilable "
(p. 36). In the fifth chapter (in the passage already
quoted) the problem of change
points back to the dilemma of the One and the Many, the
differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing,
the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly
be anything else was a question which defied our efforts.
Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 153
principle. . . . Change, it is obvious, must be a change
of something, and it is obvious, further, that it contains
diversity. Hence it asserts two of one, and so falls at once
under the condemnation of our previous chapters (p. 45).
So in the following chapter, on " Causation " :
If the sequence of the effect is different from the cause,
how is the ascription of the difference to be rationally
defended ? If, on the other hand, it is not different, then
causation does not exist, and its assertion is a farce (p. 55).
We assert something of something else. ... It
is the old puzzle, how to justify the attributing to a subject
something other than itself, and which the subject is not
(p. 57).
Having found things "go to pieces" when confronted
with this test, he finds the same result on applying it
to the self.
It is the old puzzle as to the connection of diversity with
unity. As the diversity becomes more complex and the
unity grows more concrete, we have, so far, found that our
difficulties steadily increase, and the expectation of a sudden
change and a happy solution, when we arrive at the self,
seems hence little warranted. . . . You may say that
we are each assured of our personal identity in a way in
which we are not assured of the sameness of things. But
this is unfortunately quite irrelevant to the question. That
selves exist, and are identical in some sense, is indubitable.
But the doubt is whether their sameness, as we apprehend
it, is really intelligible. . . . Does it give an experience
154 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
by the help of which we can really understand the way in
which diversity is harmonised 1 (pp. 103, 104).
The self, as feeling, thrusts upon us, " in a still more
apparent form, the discrepancy that lies between
identity and diversity, immediate oneness and relation"
(p. 107). If, again, self-consciousness is proposed as
" a special way of intuition or perception," we are
forced to ask (supposing such a " self-apprehension of
the self as one and many " to exist) how it can " satisfy
the claims of understanding." "For the contents of
the intuition (this many in one), if you try to re-
construct * them relationally, fall asunder forthwith.
I am, in short, compelled to this conclusion,
even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an under-
standing of the self or of the world. It is a mere
experience" (p. 108). In whatever aspect the self is
taken, therefore, it does not teach us " how to under-
stand diversity or unity" (p. 112). What we want
is " a view . . . combining differences in one so
as to turn the edge of criticism" (p. 114), and this
we have not met with. The self, as will or volition,
leaves us involved in all "the old troubles as to
1 The italics in the passage last quoted are Mr Bradley 's own, and I
desire specially to call attention to the emphasis, as it corroborates my
contention and contains the key to Mr Bradley's position.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 155
diversity in union with sameness " (p. 115). In com-
menting on the theory of Monads, towards the close
of his discussion, he repeats his old question :
Will it in the least show us how 1 the diversity can exist
in harmony with the oneness, (p. 118). . . . "We have
found so far [he says] that diversity and unity cannot be
reconciled. Both in the existence of the whole self in
relation with its contents, and in the various special forms
which that existence takes, we have encountered everywhere
the same trouble. We have had features which must come
together, and yet were willing to do so in no way that we
could find. In the self there is a variety, and in the self
there is an unity ; but in attempting to understand how, we
fall into inconsistencies which, therefore, cannot be truth
(p. 118).
The self, he finally concludes, does not yield us " any
defensible thought, any intellectual principle, ly which
it is possible to understand how diversity can be com-
prehended in unity. It is this, to repeat it once more,
on which everything turns. The diversity and the
unity must be brought to the light, and the principle
must be seen to comprehend these" (pp. 119, 120).
The short chapter on " Phenomenalism " adds two
further references to " the metaphysical problem of
the Many in One" (pp. 124, 125); and, in the last
chapter, things-in-themselves are found to " offer pre-
1 The italics are again Mr Bradley's own.
156 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
cisely the old jungle in which no way could be found "
(p. 130).
I have multiplied these references, at the risk of
wearying the reader, in order to convince him, if he
needs convincing, of the uniform and persistent nature
of Mr Bradley 's demand. It seems to me, moreover,
that Mr Bradley's position here conditions the whole
nature of the results he arrives at later. For the logic
of abstract identity which he brings into the field
against phenomena is fatal in the end to his Absolute
also, reducing it, in spite of Mr Bradley's disclaimer
in spite of his sincere endeavour to avoid such a con-
summation to the undifferentiated unity of Spinoza's
Substance. According to this logic, each qualityless
point remains identical with itself (A = A), and so
does each unreferred quality, flying loose in the heaven
of abstraction (red is red, a is a, and b is 5). But the
living synthesis of fact the qualified thing, A that is
a, b, c, d, any number of differences, in unity this, if
not actually denied as in some sense existing, is yet
declared to be unintelligible, hopelessly contradictory.
But surely such an argument marks the very acme of
logical perversity. Such an argument, in truth, imports
into predication a meaning or intention of which predi-
cation never dreams. When we say "man is mortal,"
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 157
or "the beech has a smooth stem," we do not mean
that the concept " man " is identical with the concept
" mortal," or that the two concepts " beech " and
" smooth - stemmed " are actually one and the same
concept. What we mean is that the reality, which
we have already qualified as "man" or "beech,"
is further qualified as " mortal " or " smooth-stemmed."
All predication, in short, is about facts, not about
concepts except in the special cases where we
happen to be defining a word. Certainly every
concept or meaning remains itself, and only itself,
to all eternity. That at least is the convention on
which logic stands; our terms must bear the same
meaning throughout, otherwise all reasoning would be
impossible. The law of identity or of non-contradiction
means no more than this obviously indispensable con-
vention a convention which, if we are so minded, we
may truthfully describe as a fundamental and necessary
law of thought, so long as we see clearly its innocent
and unobtrusive meaning. The law of identity says
that, if we predicate mortality of man, we cannot also
predicate non-mortality ; it says that, if it is the nature
of the beech to be smooth - stemmed, it cannot also
be its nature to be rough-stemmed. But, as to the
nature of predication, or as to the possibility or impos-
158 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
sibility of a thing existing as the unity of diverse qual-
ities, it gives no verdict one way or another. These
are questions of fact or of metaphysics which lie
beyond its scope. To proceed, therefore, on the
strength of the law of identity, to condemn the idea
of a thing possessing qualities, or, in general, the idea
of unity in diversity, as a contradiction in terms, is
logically a complete nerd/Baa-is et? aXXo <yevos.
Now Mr Bradley tells us that "a thing without
qualities is clearly unreal" (p. 130), and in his
chapter on "Phenomenalism" he proves that the
opposite attempt, to rest in qualities without a thing,
is equally untrue to reality. But his own doctrine is
that the attempt to think a thing with qualities, or, in
general, the attempt to think a unity in diversity, ends
in hopeless contradiction. It looks, therefore, as if
thought were brought face to face with an absolute
impasse. The whole force of his argument appears,
however, to rest on this illegitimate extension to reality
or experience of a law which holds true only of con-
cepts, as concepts, in the narrow sense just explained.
Eeality, it may be said boldly, is essentially a many-in-
one, and this holds true of any part of reality i.e., of
any existent fact. This, it seems to me, was the in-
sight that lent force and cogency to Hegel's life-long
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 159
polemic against the abstract understanding and its
vaunted law of non-contradiction. Against its abstract
identity he held up the concrete facts of experience:
there is nothing which is a mere one, an eternal self-
sameness. Identity only exists through difference,
unity through multiplicity. Such is the constant
thesis of the Hegelian philosophy, of which Mr
Bradley is one of the profoundest students; and it
was, I confess, a surprise to me to find the ancient
weapon of the sceptical schools so carefully furbished
up and so confidently brandished. All the more so,
because Mr Bradley himself, aliud agenda with the
atomic sensationalism of the English tradition in view
gives a most impressive statement of the true position,
and declares in his own emphatic way that "every
movement of our intellect rests wholly upon it," and
that the contrary opinion is founded upon "one-sided
and uncritical metaphysics," or " in short had no basis
but confusion and traditional prejudice" (pp. 349-351).
" There will be neither change nor endurance, and still
less motion through space of an identical body ; there
will neither be selves nor things, nor, in brief, any
intelligible fact, unless on the assumption that sameness
in diversity is real. Apart from this main principle
of construction, we should be confined to the feeling
160 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
of a single moment." Now these " intelligible facts" are
the very facts paraded as unintelligible in Book I.
Hegel no doubt gave a dangerous opening to mis-
conception, when he spoke of the dialectic as exhibiting
itself in the conceptions of the " Logic." It is only by
a sustained use of metaphor that the appearance of
success is obtained ; for conceptions, as such, are pre-
cisely what do not " pass over " into their opposites.
The conception "One" never becomes the conception
" Many." What is true is, that every fact can be shown
to combine in itself these two aspects. It is in this
way that Hegel uses the nature of reality to explode,
and (by exploding) to unite, the fixed opposites of con-
ceptual thought. These opposites, it must be remem-
bered, are, and remain, opposites in the abstract world
of logic ; viewed, that is to say, simply as meanings, the
one remains just the opposite of the other. But this
opposition of the two as meanings, as concepts, tells
us nothing about the possibility or impossibility of a
fact to which, in different aspects, both shall be applic-
able. On that the nature of reality itself must decide :
we must appeal to experience.
In making this appeal, we have no need to go further
than the fact of our own existence, which is indeed
the key of the whole position. The self is very severely
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 161
handled by Mr Bradley, though he does admit at the
close that it is " no doubt the highest form of experience
which we have" (p. 119). His argument consists
largely in enumerating, and setting against one another,
different senses in which the term "self" has been,
or is currently, used. Some of these may be dismissed
as irrelevant that is to say, we may surrender them
at once to Mr Bradley's criticism as of no particular
interest. The remainder of his argument seems to me
to rest partly on the first line of thought viz., that
no self of which we have experience is an absolute,
perfect, or self-sufficient unity, which, again, may be
fully granted and partly on the practical difficulty
of precisely defining the amount of diversity which
shall be included within the unity of the individual
self. Here also many a point might be surrendered
to meet Mr Bradley's criticism. He reminds us, for
example, that " in the lifetime of a man there are
irreparable changes. Is he literally not the same
man if loss, or death, or love, or banishment has turned
the current of his life ? " (p. 79.) This is a question
of degree. The wrench may be so great as actually,
in the common phrase, to unhinge the mind; and in
that case, we admittedly cease to regard the man as the
same. His personality is altogether suspended; he
L
162 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
is insane. So with " the strange selves of hypnotism,"
to which Mr Bradley several times refers. Such ab-
normalities involve practical difficulties, just like the
"monsters" to which Locke so frequently recurs, or
the cases where it may be difficult to decide whether
an object belongs to the animal or the vegetable
kingdom. But they do not touch the question of
principle with which we are here concerned. It is
not necessary that a self should be an all-inclusive
whole ; nor is it necessary that we should be able, in
every case, to say what is a self and what is not a
self. It is enough if there is such a thing as self-
consciousness or personal identity at all. For that
self - consciousness is the living experience of unity
in diversity.
Now Mr Bradley admits that "of course the self,
within limits and up to a certain point, is the" same,"
though, as we saw, he strangely treats this conscious-
ness of personal identity as " almost irrelevant." The
key to this utterance is found in the following page,
where he adds, " This, of course, shows that self-
sameness exists as a fact, and that hence somehow
an identical self must be real. But then the ques-
tion is how?" (p. 113.) To this I see no answer
save Lotze's retort in similar circumstances, that
A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 163
such a question is as unreasonable, and as perfectly
impossible to satisfy, as the demand to know how
being is made. How there comes to be existence
at all, and how existence or experience in its basal
characteristics comes to be what it is these are
questions which, so far as one can see, omniscience
itself would not enable us to answer. The funda-
mental nature of experience may enable us to ex-
plain derivatively any special feature of experience;
but that fundamental nature itself must be learned
from experience and simply accepted. Now I main-
tain that unity in multiplicity, identity in diversity,
is just the ultimate nature of universal experience.
Such a unity or identity is lived or experienced in
every instance of self - conscious existence ; and it
cannot be other than a misleading use of language to
speak of our most intimate experience, the ultimate
bed-rock of fact, as unintelligible or contradictory.
The whole procedure of thought belies such a sup-
position; for, instead of stumbling over this unity
and identity as unintelligible, we proceed to make it
the measure or standard of the intelligibility of every-
thing else. The thing and its qualities is a mere
analogue of the self as a many in one ; all our terms
of explanation, all the categories of thought, are drawn
164 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
in like manner from the life of the self. They either
reproduce it with more- or less fulness, or, if they
do not do this, then they express one or other of its
aspects. But it is our own fault if we choose to
substantiate these aspects, stated thus for the moment
in logical or ideal separation ; for they are never given
or experienced separately. On the contrary, their
concrete unity is the one fact behind which we cannot
go. Thought, when it occupies itself in dissecting its
own nature, is led into many a bog by the will-o'-the
wisp of a false subtlety by none more so than by
this phantasm of abstract identity. But thought,
which is directed on its object, and bent only on
learning more and more of the nature of things, never
seeks thus to overleap itself, and consequently finds
none of the unintelligibility of which Mr Bradley
complains. In truth, as Berkeley happily puts it,
philosophers are often indebted to their own pre-
conceptions "for being ignorant of what everybody
else knows perfectly well."
And seriously, according to the well-worn brocard,
if water chokes us what shall we drink ? If our own
existence is unintelligible to us, where are we likely
to find intelligibility ? If the one and the many
are as absolutely incompatible as they have been
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 165
represented, how are they to be brought together at
all ? In other words, if the criticism in the First Book
is really valid, it would seem to be equally fatal to the
construction of the Absolute attempted in the Second.
For the Absolute, we have seen, must " own " or include
appearances, and it must do so in such a way as to
exclude contradiction. It is to be "a single and all-
inclusive experience, which embraces every partial
diversity in concord " (p. 147). Doubtless this is our
ideal of what an Absolute should be ; but surely (to
quote Mr Bradley's own words) we have here "at
once upon our hands the One and the Many." This
Absolute " offers precisely the old jungle in which no
way could be found " ; and it is irrational to suppose
that a sheer contradiction will prove more amenable,
when multiplied to infinity, and housed in the Absolute.
An unkind critic might say, indeed, with some show
of reason, that Mr Bradley has the air of swallowing
at a gulp, in Book II., what he had choked over in the
successive chapters of Book I. For, if, as was insisted
in the case of the self, " the question is how," the Second
Book is full of the most ample acknowledgments that
the " how " remains as insoluble as ever. " Certainly
in the end," we are told, " to know how the One and
the Many are united is beyond our powers. But in
166 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
the Absolute, somehow, we are convinced the problem
is solved" (p. 281). But this is the language of pious
conviction rather than of scientific demonstration ; and
though the attentive reader discerns plainly the author's
resolve that the Absolute has got to include all differ-
ences and solve all contradictions, he will be apt to
feel that the contradictions forced upon his notice
throughout the book have been handed back to him,
to digest as best he may.
In the end, this impression would not, I think, be
substantially incorrect ; and yet it would certainly not
be entirely just to Mr Bradley, for he certainly does
attempt in the Second Book to give in outline a theory
of the " how." What he would undoubtedly have us
regard as his real contribution towards a solution of
the difficulty, is to be found in the chapter on " Thought
and Eeality." He still maintains that the "contra-
diction " is insoluble on the level of relational thought ;
but founding in this chapter on the analogy of feeling,
as containing the immediate experience of a whole,
he throws out the idea of a supra-relational existence
of the Absolute, which shall, so to speak, fuse once
more, in an immediate unity, the differences which
the process of knowledge has shown were implicit
in the primitive undifferentiated unity of feeling. On
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 167
examination, however, it will be found, I think, that,
in the end, this theory meets the difficulty by abolish-
ing the differences. Instead, therefore, of being a real
solution, it is at bottom a reaffirmation of Mr Bradley's
fundamental preconception as to the incompatibility
of the One and the Many. Notwithstanding this,
the presentation of the theory is full of speculative
interest.
It is not a new thing in philosophy to attempt to
name, and even to conceive, the divine life in this way,
as a knowledge that is more than relational, that does
not proceed from part to part, but sees the whole in every
part, or rather sees all differences in unity, by a species
of immediate apprehension or intuition. So much may
be said to be a commonplace of philosophical theology.
And in the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy of
Germany, as is well known, the doctrine of a per-
ceptive understanding or an intellectual intuition played
an important part. But what lends importance to this
fresh attempt to put a meaning into the phrase is the
independence of the treatment the way in which the
idea is seen to grow organically out of the author's
whole scheme of thought and also the deliberate
endeavour which is made really "to form the idea"
168 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
of such an apprehension, even though only " in vague
generality." But, ungracious return as it may seem
for the metaphysical feast which Mr Bradley has
spread, the objection must still be urged that this
supra-relational reconciliation either remains, on the
one hand, altogether a name for " we know not what,"
or, on the other hand, if we press the analogy of feeling,
as Mr Bradley frequently does, and endeavour to con-
struct, even in vague generality, the nature of the
absolute experience, the conviction is forced upon
us that this Absolute excludes contradiction, only
because it excludes all variety and difference. In the
former case, the diversity is acknowledged, but no
light is thrown upon the problem of combining Many
in One without contradiction. " In the end," says Mr
Bradley, "the whole diversity must be attributed as
adjectives to a unity which is not known" (p. 469).
Our assertion of a unity becomes then no more than
an expression of the faith that with God all things
are possible. In the latter case, finite existence is an
illusion, which ceases when the standpoint of the
Absolute is reached.
Finite existence is said to be harmonised, or, in Mr
Bradley's favourite expression, "transmuted" in the
Absolute ; but for transmuted, we also find such sinister
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 169
synonyms as "suppressed," "dissolved," "lost." In
one place, "transmuted and destroyed" are expressly
coupled ; while, in another, we are told that the " pro-
cess of correction " which finite existence undergoes in
the Absolute may " entirely dissipate its nature."
Of course, Mr Bradley protests in numerous passages
against this interpretation of his Absolute as a blank
or undifferentiated unity, like Spinoza's Substance or
Schelling's Neutrum, the night in which all cows are
black. And we may readily believe that he does not
mean simply to " merge " or " fuse " all distinctions into
an indistinguishable mass, but somehow to retain them,
in a richer form, in a single concrete experience. I
will go further, and say that one whole line of Mr
Bradley's thought the line in which he stands nearest
to Hegel leads him to emphasise the function of differ-
ence and the permanence of distinctions even within
the Absolute. But that line of thought is more than
neutralised by the Spinozistic or Schellingian tendency
which we are at present considering. The best of
intentions cannot avail him, therefore, against the
manifest destiny of this way of thinking.
In the very title of his book, Mr Bradley seems to
me to have started upon the road which leads to this
I, for " appearance " is certainly, on the whole, a
170 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
term of condemnation ; and, as we have seen, it is
frequently qualified throughout the first book, and
also in the second, as " mere appearance," and even
as " illusion." Appearance, therefore, takes on, whether
we will or no, the sense of illusory or unreal.
And it is to be observed that Mr Bradley is con-
sistent, to the end, in his refusal to tolerate difference.
The distinction of subject and predicate remains to
him a contradiction, an imperfection, and consequently
must disappear in the Absolute ; and, with it, the dis-
tinction of subject and object from which it is derived.
And that the last vestige of difference may be seen to
disappear from the pure aether of " all-pervasive trans-
fusion," we have the position pushed to its most
quixotic length in the sections of the concluding
chapter which remind us that "not even absolute
truth is quite true." It is not true, for the extra-
ordinary reason that it is only true of reality ; it is not
itself reality. The fatal "difference between subject
and predicate " remains, and therefore " even absolute
truth in the end seems thus to turn out erroneous " !
I cannot but think that speculation is here upon an
entirely false track. What Mr Bradley really means,
I suppose, is to renew his famous, and in my view
important, protest against the identification of reality
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 171
with "an unearthly ballet of bloodless categories."
He is arguing against the tendency, observable in some
representatives of Hegelian thought, to overstate the
position and function of knowledge. Because know-
ledge (especially in its highest form as philosophy)
is in its own sphere, as Mr Bradley puts it, " utterly
all-inclusive " that is, because knowledge, if perfect,
may be said ideally to grasp or include every aspect
of reality these thinkers speak as if such knowledge
were the reality " bodily," as if the universe were
nothing but an intellectual process, a species of dia-
lectic. Against this tendency Mr Bradley rightly
urges, that " truth " or perfect knowledge is only one
aspect of the universe or of experience. "The uni-
verse is not known, and it never, as a whole, can be
known, in such a sense that knowledge would be the
same as experience or reality " (p. 547). " This general
character of reality is not reality itself " (p. 547).
Truth is not intellectually defective or limited, for the
idea of an unknowable may easily be shown to be
self-contradictory; it is not, therefore, "intellectually
corrigible " " it cannot be intellectually transcended."
Still there are other aspects of experience besides the
intellectual, and if we are to have reality " bodily," we
must "take in the remaining aspects of experience."
172 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
But this sound and valuable contention is surely pre-
sented in a misleading, form, when Mr Bradley talks
of an " internal discrepancy " which belongs to truth's
proper character, and represents truth as achieving
its consummation "in passing beyond itself, and in
abolishing the difference between the subject and
predicate " (p. 547). For " in this passage the proper
nature of truth is, of course, transformed and perishes."
But this extinction of difference throws us back at once
on the distinctionless supra-essential one of mysticism,
in which all " details are utterly pervaded and em-
braced." The collapse of the distinction between
subject and predicate (or subject and object) means,
however, the extinction of self-consciousness altogether,
and throws us back upon the state of dull, diffused
feeling, which we suppose to be asymptotically ap-
proached in the lowest organisms, and from which
(in the same asymptotic fashion) we are accustomed
to derive the beginnings of conscious life. Here, there-
fore, extremes would meet with a vengeance, and the
highest become interchangeable with the lowest."
Dissatisfaction with the form of knowledge as such
seems to me, I must confess, chimerical ; and I am
sure that repudiation of it leads not to any higher
unity, but to the pit of undifferentiated substance out
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 173
of which Hegel dug philosophy. And I venture to
add that this is verified in Mr Bradley's own case.
On this whole side of his thought, he seems to me to
reproduce in essence, and often almost in expression,
the Spinozistic doctrine of " imagination," which re-
duces finite existence to a species of illusion. No
doubt there were two tendencies at strife in Spinoza
also. But his dominant thought is, " all determination
is negation " ; and therefore all determinations are de-
voured, like clouds before the sun, in the white light
of the unica substantia. But if finite experience is
illusory, and its distinctions simply disappear, then,
of necessity, the unity which we reach by the denial
of these distinctions is quite characterless ; we have
illusion on the one side, and, as the counter -stroke,
nonentity on the other. For does not Erigena tell us
at the end of a similar line of thought, " Deus propter
excellentiam non immerito nihil vocatur " a phrase the
piety of which seems to me with difficulty to conceal
its humour ?
Mr Bradley displays an extraordinary fertility in
metaphors to describe the consummation of finite ap-
pearance in the Absolute; but the nature of these
metaphors involuntarily confirms the view of his
Absolute which we have already arrived at on general
174 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
principles. Appearances are merged, fused, blended,
absorbed, run together,, dissolved in a higher unity,
transformed, transmuted ; but to transform is found
to mean the same thing as to dissipate, and to trans-
mute is to " destroy " or to " suppress." To " embrace "
and " harmonise " self-consciousness by transmuting
and suppressing it as such (p. 183) recalls too vividly
the Roman method of pacification : ubi solitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant. And if Spinoza's Absolute
has been called a lion's den, the description is at least
as applicable to Mr Bradley's. " All the content, which
the struggle has generated, is brought home and is laid
to rest undiminished in the perfect" (p. 244). Does
not this suggest the stillness of the grave ? Or when
we are told that " the finites blend and are resolved "
(p. 429); that "every finite diversity is supplemented
and transformed ; its private character remains and is
but neutralised by complement and addition " ; does it
not seem like saying " yes " and " no " in the same
breath ? How can a private character remain, if it is
neutralised ? Plus and minus are equivalent to noth-
ing; our result is a blank Schellingian Neutrum.
And Mr Bradley's statement, that " the theoretic ob-
ject moves towards a consummation in which all dis-
tinction and all ideality must be suppressed," is almost
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 175
verbally identical with Schelling's account of the ulti-
mate goal of the finite Ego.
The ultimate goal of the finite Ego is enlargement of its
sphere till the attainment of identity with the infinite Ego.
But the infinite Ego knows no object, and possesses, there-
fore, no consciousness or unity of consciousness, such as we
mean by personality. Consequently, the ultimate goal of
all endeavour may also be represented as enlargement of
the personality to infinity that is to say, as its annihil-
at'on. The ultimate goal of the finite Ego, and not only
of it but also of the Non-Ego the final goal, therefore, of
the world is its annihilation as a world. 1
The coincidence seems worth noting, because it in-
dicates that both thinkers are haunted by the same
ideal, the ideal against which Hegel protests.
So again, when talking of the finite self, Mr Bradley
uses a metaphor which, though he excuses its " mise-
rable inaccuracy," I cannot help regarding as exceed-
ingly significant in this connection. " Because I can-
not spread out my window until all is transparent, and
all windows disappear, this does not justify me in insist-
ing on my window-frame's rigidity. For that frame
has, as such, no existence in reality, but only in our
impotence " (p. 253). This seems to me as exact a re-
production as can well be imagined of the Spinozistic
1 Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, 14.
176 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
doctrine of imaginatio. The window-frames of the self
disappear or melt away, because in reality they do not
exist at all ; it is our impotence which causes us to
imagine this severance from others and from the source
of all. According to the metaphor by which Erdmann
illustrates Spinoza's system, wipe out from any spatial
surface the lines which mark it off into distinct figures,
and pure or empty space remains. Abolish, in like
manner, all window -frames, and "limited transpar-
encies " disappear, as Mr Bradley puts it, in " an
all-embracing clearness." But, as we know, the dis-
tinction of subject and object has disappeared with
the other distinctions of finite appearance ; and the
clearness, therefore, is not a vision seen by any self.
It is the viewless unity of the absolutely infinite
Substance.
On whatever line of metaphor or analogy we follow
Mr Bradley, the same result is arrived at the same
inherent tendency of his thought is revealed. This is
curiously seen in his recurring illustration from Love.
Thought, he says, desires "a consummation in which
it is lost." And he adds, by way of establishing such
a possibility, " does not the river run into the sea and
the self lose itself in love ? " (p. 173.) The river does
run into the sea, but so far is the self from losing it-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 177
self in love, that it may be said therein to attain to its
intensest realisation not realisation in Mr Bradley's
equivocal sense of " disappearing " or " ceasing," but
realisation in the sense of intensest life and enjoyment
in that particular finite centre. So, again, Mr Bradley
tells us (p. 182) that, in feeling, thought, or volition, the
one reality is present in " a form which does not satisfy."
" In each it longs for that absolute self-fruition which
comes only when the self bursts its limits and blends
with another finite self." But the self never " bursts "
and " blends " in the way suggested. In all enjoyment,
in all fruition, there is the return of the self upon
itself, without which consciousness would be impossible.
What is meant by a self- fruition, in which the self
disappears ? I do not mean to deny that in extreme
sensual passion, and in the curiously allied mystical
straining to swoon, as it were, into Deity, this self-
deception is observable as to the goal pursued. But I
assert that, in both cases, the desire is self-contradic-
tory ; for of love, whether sexual or divine, the poet's
words (in another sense) are true, that its dearest
bond is "like in difference." If difference could be
abolished, whether as regards two human beings or
as regards a finite individual and its creative source,
" sweet love were slain " its very conditions would be
M
178 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
destroyed. Consciousness itself would be abolished,
existence would collapse into nothingness.
We come back, therefore, to our main contention.
There is no contradiction in the form of knowledge as
such, nor in finite experience merely on the ground
that it is in this form. On the contrary, knowledge
is rather, as Hegel said, the absolute relation ; and all
speculation which proceeds by repudiation of this form
is found historically to lead straight to the " abyss " of
the older mystics. Mr Bradley's speculation simply
repeats this lesson. Clearly, the finite is, in Mr Brad-
ley's phrase, essentially self-transcendent. That is as
much as to say, more simply, that our experience is
fragmentary ; and however much we enlarge it, it still
remains fragmentary. On all sides it seems to stretch
infinitely beyond itself. Knowledge, it cannot be denied,
is in our experience an infinite progress ; and if to have
this character is to be contradictory, then the charge
must be freely admitted. But it does not seem as if
this defect this contradiction were inherent in the
form of knowledge as such (the form of subject-object,
unity in difference) ; the cause lies rather in our finite
position, as that is determined in time and space. We
work along infinite radii from an individual locus, but
we cannot actually transport ourselves, as it were, to
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 179
the central hearth of the universe, from which we con-
ceive that all may possibly be seen resumed into unity
as a harmonious system. For an intelligence occupying
that standpoint, the contradictions of finite experience
might possibly disappear, without any abandonment of
the form of knowledge. / But what is quite plain is,
that we cannot by any possibility conceive the nature
of that insight. We cannot step out of the infinite
progress ourselves. So it is that in Spinoza's system
the two sides are never brought together. We may
transcend "imagination," and refuse to take facts in
isolation ; we may trace out endlessly the dependence
of any given fact upon the infinite series of its de-
termining causes (nay, upon an infinite number of such
converging series), but we never reach the absolute
Substance, the immanent cause of the whole. So from
the other side there is no process of self-determination
by which we can pass from Substance to its infinite
attributes, or from any attribute to its particular finite
modes. If we could really contemplate existence from
the point of view of the Absolute, doubtless the deriva-
tion of the finite world might not be so inexplicable;
but we never do reach that specular mount. When
we attempt to assume such a standpoint, the result is,
as with Spinoza, simply emptiness. Abstracting from
180 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
the finite, we have nothing left within our grasp. So
it is again with Schelling.; and the side of Mr Bradley's
thought which we have been considering verifies this
experience afresh.
Moreover, an analysis of the arguments by which
Mr Bradley reaches his Absolute throws, I think, an
instructive light upon its nature, and upon the value
which the result can have for us. The Absolute is a
high-sounding title, and rouses proportionate expecta-
tions. Let us inquire whether these are satisfied ; let
us ask ourselves precisely how much Mr Bradley's argu-
ments suffice to establish. "Beality," he says, "must
be a single whole." " The character of the real is to
possess everything phenomenal in a harmonious form."
Absolute Eeality, therefore, " embraces all differences in
an inclusive harmony " (pp. 140, 143). " The standard "
is always "the same," and it is applied always under
the double form of inclusiveness and harmony" (p.
371). Now if this were advanced as a definition of
the Absolute, it would obviously be a true, though not
an exhaustive, definition. Taken as implying the ex-
istence of the Absolute, it might also be accepted as
the expression of an inextinguishable metaphysical
faith. But when the Absolute in this sense is thrust
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 181
upon us as "indubitably real," something which it is
actually impossible to doubt, the very excess of pro-
testation awakens suspicion as to how much the har-
mony and all-inclusiveness imply. And upon scrutiny,
it seems to me, I must confess, that the assertion re-
solves itself into something very like an identical
proposition. The mere consideration, it might be
urged, that the universe exists that Being is proves
that it is in some sense a harmony. All its aspects
co -exist, and the business of the universe goes on.
Then, as to the systematic unity of the real, I doubt
much, here too, whether what is really proved is not
unduly magnified by the nature of the terms employed.
Mr Bradley successfully disposes of the idea of a
plurality of reals ; for each real would in that case be
a universe by itself, or rather a bare unqualified point,
and plurality could never emerge. The mere co-exist-
ence of objects in Knowledge the fact that we are
able to pass from one object to another is sufficient
proof that they are not absolutely independent reals,
but exist as parts of one universe that is, exist, in
some sense, together. To suppose anything else would
be to imagine the continuity of existence to come, as it
were, suddenly to a stop in mecliis rebus. But does the
postulate that the universe is one, in this sense, carry
182 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
us beyond the fact which it explains or names, the
fact that we are able to pass indefinitely from one fact
to other facts, reducing them to law as we proceed ?
Does it carry us beyond the infinite progress of finite
knowledge, and give us any real idea of an experience
which resumes the life of all the worlds in a central or
focal unity? I do not see that it does. Yet unity,
harmony, system, must mean more than the almost
tautologous result we have just considered, if their
presence or absence is to be of any vital concern to
men.
But it will be said that these formal and abstract
criteria must be supplemented by the further prin-
ciple that reality, existence of any kind, is one with
" sentience " or " sentient experience." Even if this
be granted, however, I do not see that Mr Bradley's
criteria enable us to pass from an aggregate of experi-
ence to " one comprehensive sentience " or " total
experience " (elsewhere spoken of as " an absolute
intuition," " an individual intuition ") in the sense of
a living, or, if I may so express myself again, a focal
unity. They do not guarantee unity or harmony, ex-
cept in the abstract and tautological sense already con-
sidered ; and the fact that all the varieties of sentient
experience coexist somehow, and are therefore com-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 183
patible resulting even in a balance of pleasure on the
whole is by no means equivalent to the assertion of
a single Being by whom these experiences are felt as
a whole, and who enjoys the balance of pleasure which,
when " neutralised," " complemented," and " blended,"
they may be supposed to yield. The notion of a single
life, in which and for which the experiences are organ-
ically related and unified, is derived by Mr Bradley
not from his criteria, but from the nature of the self ;
although, strangely enough, in the sections of his book
devoted to the self he does his best to disintegrate it
into a mere aggregate. To extend the analogy of the
self to the Absolute is probably inevitable, and I am
far from objecting to it; although, in the form in
which Mr Bradley presents the idea, it seems to come
dangerously near to the crude conception of a Welt-
seek, or soul of the world a fused aggregate or mass
of sentience. As a speculation, however, that might
pass, criticism in detail being reserved. But what I
cannot see is, how Mr Bradley can claim the result
as the immediate consequence of his criteria, and
how he can speak of it as absolutely "certain" and
"indubitably real."
This claim is repeatedly made by Mr Bradley, in
a piece of reasoning which is sufficiently remarkable
184 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
to challenge examination. The argument is introduced
a great many times, almost in the same words, as
finally closing discussion ; and evidently great stress
is laid upon it. Curtly stated it is this " what is
possible and what a general principle compels us to
say must be, that certainly is" (p. 196); or still more
shortly, "what may be, if it also must be, assuredly
is" (p. 199). 1 "Here, as before, possibility is all we
require to prove reality" (p. 218). The first of these
passages is the concluding sentence of the chapter
on " Error " ; the second occurs in the chapter which
follows on " Evil " ; and the third in the chapter on
"Temporal and Spatial Appearance." In the next
chapter (chap, xix.), on " The This and the Mine," the
argument is again repeated in exactly the same way,
to clinch Mr Bradley 's position : " This consummation
evidently is real, because on our principle it is neces-
sary, and because again we have no reason to doubt
that it is possible " (p. 227). These four chapters deal
with recalcitrant facts or aspects of experience, which
an opponent might advance as inconsistent with the view
of the Absolute just expounded. In them, it must be
said that Mr Bradley treats the difficulties in question
somewhat lightly. He expressly repudiates the design
1 The italics in these two quotations are Mr Bradley's.
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 185
of " showing how " the facts are reconciled in the Abso-
lute, and limits himself to the suggestion of possibilities
which he seems sometimes not to take very seriously
himself. Having done so, he turns upon us with the
assertion that the abstract possibility is enough, for we
have behind us the general principle of a " must." The
Absolute must be all-inclusive and harmonious ; there
is nothing about which we cannot say that possibly
it may be included in the Absolute ; therefore every-
thing is included in the Absolute. I cannot see that
there is any real advance in the argument here. Un-
less we can "show how" i.e., give some reasonable
theory of the relation of these aspects to the Absolute
we may as well remain content with the first step :
the Absolute must be all-inclusive and harmonious,
though we are quite unable to see how. How far we
are from being able to see how, may be exemplified
from a passage in Mr Bradley's treatment of evil :
Our old principle may still serve to remove this objection.
The collision and the strife may be an element in some
fuller realisation. Just as in a machine the resistance and
pressure of the parts subserves an end beyond any of them,
if regarded by itself so at a much higher level it may be
with the Absolute. Not only the collision but that specific
feeling, by which it is accompanied and aggravated, can be
taken up into an all-inclusive perfection. We do not know
UNIVERSITY
186 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
how this is done, and ingenious metaphors (if we could find
them) would not serve to explain it. ... Such a per-
fect way of existence would, however, reconcile our jarring
discords ; and I do not see how we can deny that such a
harmony is possible (p. 203).
This language is surely far more suggestive of pious
hope than of philosophic insight ; and yet Mr Bradley
proceeds in the very next sentence to conclude, " But
if possible, then, as before, it is indubitably real." The
reference here and repeatedly to " our old principle "
recalls us, however, to the precise meaning which we
found that principle must bear. It is simply the
principle that reality must be one. " It must be single,
because plurality contradicts itself " (p. 519). " Eeality
is one system, which contains in itself all experience "
(p. 536). " It must include and must harmonise every
possible fragment of experience " (p. 548). These
statements, taken from the recapitulatory and con-
cluding chapters of the volume, prove afresh that
the general principle, on which the whole is founded,
is so extremely general as to be of no avail in
" harmonising " experience in any vital sense. The
"conclusion is certain, and to doubt it logically is
impossible" (p. 518); but it is the perfectly abstract
conclusion or assumption already discussed, that ex-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 187
istence is in some sense one, and does not fundament-
ally contradict itself, inasmuch as we see that " birth
proceeds and things subsist." We are forced, therefore,
to conclude that this argument, from necessity through
possibility to reality, is more specious than sound,
seeing that it passes from a unity and harmony which,
as necessary, are purely abstract, to a unity and har-
mony which, as real, are understood to imply the con-
crete " perfection " of a single Being, and to include the
"consummation" of "the main tendencies of our
nature" (p. 148). It is, to all intents and purposes,
an argument based on our ignorance of the possibilities,
coupled with the general conviction that things must
get along together somehow ; since it is plain that
existent fact contains all opposites within itself, and
still exists. This is certainly " a faith as vague as
all unsweet " ; but I greatly fear that all conclusions
about the universe which it is logically impossible
to doubt will be found, on examination, to partake
of a similar tautology, and to be of no more real value
in proving the universe a harmonious and perfect
system.
Lest I should seem to exaggerate the vagueness of
the result, I will add here a few quotations from Mr
Bradley's Second Book, a selection from a larger an-
/fa
188 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
thology. These passages seem to me to bear out the
contention that, instead, of solving the contradictions of
the First Book, the Second Book is mainly devoted to
"laying them to rest in the Absolute" with a large
draft upon our metaphysical faith. "Somehow an
identical self must be real," said Mr Bradley in Book
I., " but then the question is how ? " And accordingly
the identical self was curtly dismissed, as riddled with
contradictions. But " somehow " is the very word
which has inscribed itself on page after page of Book
II., with an almost pathetic frequency of repetition.
Or, if the word itself does not occur, there is the
admission that " we do not know how " the reconcilia-
tion is effected ; but still " we may be sure " that the
reconciliation is a fact.
We may say that everything, which appears, is somehow
real in such a way as to be self -consistent (p. 140).
The bewildering mass of phenomenal diversity must hence
somehow be at unity and self -consistent (p. 140).
We know what is meant by an experience, which em-
braces all divisions, and yet somehow possesses the direct
nature of feeling (p. 160).
If we can realise at all the general features of the
Absolute, if we can see that somehow they come together in
a way known vaguely and in the abstract, our result is
certain (p. 160).
We cannot understand how in the Absolute a rich
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 189
harmony embraces every special discord. But, on the
other hand, we may be sure that this result is reached (p.
192).
As with error, even our one-sidedness, our insistence and
our disappointment, may somehow all subserve a harmony
and go to perfect it (p. 201).
Then follows the significant passage already quoted as
to the possibility of collision and strife being an element
in some fuller realisation :
We do not know how this is done. Such a perfect way of
existence would, however, reconcile our jarring discords (p.
202).
All differences, we have urged repeatedly, come together
in the Absolute. In this, how we do not know, all dis-
tinctions are fused, and all relations disappear (p. 203).
We do not know how all these partial unities come
together in the Absolute, but we may be sure that the
content of not one is obliterated (p. 204).
To explain time and space, in the sense of showing how
such appearances come to be, and again, how, without
contradiction, they can be real in the Absolute, is certainly
not my object. Anything of the kind, I am sure, is
impossible (p. 205).
Hence we are led to the conclusion that subject and
predicate are identical, and that the separation and the
change are only appearance. . . . They somehow are lost
except as elements in a higher identity (p. 220).
The plurality of presentations is a fact, and it, therefore,
makes a difference to our Absolute. . . . And the Universe
is richer, we may be sure, for all dividedness and variety.
190 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
Certainly in detail we do not know liow the separation is over-
come. . . . But our ignorance here is no ground for rational
opposition. Our principle assures us that the Absolute is
superior to partition, and in some way is perfected by it (p.
226).
The collision is resolved within that harmony where
centre and circumference are one (p. 229).
We have no basis on which to doubt that all content
comes together harmoniously in the Absolute. . . . All this
detail is not made one in any way which we can verify.
That it is all reconciled we know, ~but how, in particular, is
hid from us (p. 239).
The Reality, therefore, must be One, not as excluding
diversity, but as somehow including it in such a way as to
transform its character (p. 241).
We laid stress [he says in his "Recapitulation" (p. 242)]
on the fact that the how ivas inexplicable.
The material world is an incorrect, a one-sided, and self-
contradictory appearance of the Real. ... In other words
it is a diversity which, as we regard il, is not real, but which
somehow, in all its fulness, enters into and perfects the life
of the Universe. But, as to the manner in which it is
included, we are unable to say anything (p. 266).
Certainly, in the end, to know how the one and the
many are united is beyond our power. But in the Absolute
somehow, we are convinced, the problem is solved (p. 281).
How these various modes come together into a single
unity must remain unintelligible (p. 457).
We have seen that the various aspects of experience
imply one another, and that all point to a unity which
comprehends and perfects them. And I would urge next,
that the unity of these aspect^ is unknown. By this I
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 191
certainly do not mean to deny that it essentially is ex-
perience, but it is an experience of which, as such, we have
no direct knowledge. . . . In the end the whole diversity
must be attributed as adjectives to a unity which is not
known (pp. 468, 469).
Mr Bradley's candour in this array of passages is
obviously beyond all praise, but they surely amount
precisely to the assurances of the mystic choir at
the end of ' Faust ' : " Das Unzulangliche, hier wird's
Ereigniss ; Das Uribeschreibliche, hier ist es gethan" Or
in plain prose, so far as the result is metaphysically
certain, it seems too vague to be of use ; where it offers
itself as more, it remains the expression of a deep-
seated faith, whose roots are ethico - religious and
aesthetical rather than purely intellectual.
II.
That brings us, however, to an important turning-
point in our investigation. It has been hinted more
than once that Mr Bradley's volume seems the product
of two conflicting tendencies or lines of thought. The
first of these, the Spinozistic or Schellingian tendency,
which is, on the whole, predominant, has been criticised
192 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
in the preceding pages. It shapes, perhaps uncon-
sciously, the general view of the Absolute. In his
second line of thought, Mr Bradley stands much more
closely under the influence of Hegel. I propose, in
what follows, to examine this second line of thought,
and to consider the relation of Mr Bradley's theory as
a whole to the Hegelian philosophy, and also to the
limitations of human knowledge.
The Spinozistic tendency, I have said, is, on the
whole, the predominant tendency ; but the second line
of thought appears in some important chapters, and
also in the author's statement, towards the close, of
the purpose he had in view in writing the book. The
chapter which seems to me most fully to represent the
second point of view is that on " Degrees of Truth and
Eeality." According to the Spinozistic view, appear-
ance is throughout illusion ; and the nature of the
Absolute is to be reached by passing beyond appear-
ances to a wholly different mode of being. But this
Being, above or behind appearances, we naturally find
to be entirely predicateless, for in abstracting from
appearance we cut ourselves off from all positive know-
ledge. According to the second view, which I have
called for convenience the Hegelian, appearances are
not contrasted in a body with the Absolute, and
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 193
branded as untrue or illusory ; on the contrary, it is
recognised that, except in the world of appearances,
we have, and can have, no clue to the nature of the
Absolute. Attention is concentrated, therefore, in
Hegelianism upon the world of appearances, with the
result that this world is shown to be a graded or hier-
archical system. In this system as a whole, the Absolute
is said to be realised or revealed. But appearances only
become a safe guide, when regard is had to the sys-
tematic or hierarchical character of the revelation.
This doctrine of degrees belongs unquestionably to
the abiding essence of the Hegelian philosophy; and,
although we have seen that Mr Bradley's speculations
often convey another impression, it would appear from
his account of the purpose of his volume (given in the
concluding paragraphs) that this is the lesson his
pages were meant to enforce. The immense import-
ance of the Hegelian position, as against a twofold
error, could not in fact be more forcibly put than is
done by Mr Bradley in these sentences:
It is a simple matter to conclude . . . that the Eeal
sits apart, that it keeps state by itself and does not descend
into phenomena. Or it is as cheap, again, to take up
another side of the same error. The Keality is viewed,
perhaps, as immanent in all its appearances, in such a way
N
194 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
that it is, alike and equally, present in all. 1 Everything
is so worthless on one hand, so divine on the other, that
nothing can be viler or can be more sublime than anything
else. It is against both sides of this mistake, it is against
this empty transcendence and this shallow Pantheism, that
our pages may be called one sustained polemic. The positive
relation of every appearance as an adjective to Eeality ; and
the presence of Eeality among its appearances in different
degrees and with diverse values this double truth we
have found to be the centre of philosophy (p. 551).
This view is most consistently maintained, as I have
indicated, in the chapter on "Degrees of Truth and
Eeality " (chapter xxiv.), and those that follow. It is
recognised as the ideal of a system of metaphysics " to
show how the world, physical and spiritual, realises by
various stages and degrees the one absolute principle "
(p. 359). In another place he sketches the task of a
" philosophy of Nature " thus :
All appearances for metaphysics have degrees of reality.
We have an idea of perfection or of individuality ; and, as
we find that any form of existence more completely realises
this idea, we assign to it its position in the scale of being.
And in this scale (as we have seen) the lower, as its de-
fects are made good, passes beyond itself into the higher.
The end, or the absolute individuality, is also the principle.
Present from the first, it supplies the test of its inferior
1 " As full, as perfect in a hair as heart," according to a line which
Hegelian writers are fond of putting in the pillory.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 195
stages, and, as these are included in fuller wholes, the prin-
ciple grows in reality. Metaphysics, in short, can assign a
meaning to perfection and progress
though, as he immediately explains, there would, in
setting out the various kinds of material phenomena
" in an order of merit," be no reference to the scien-
tific questions of genesis and progress in time.
In a complete philosophy [he proceeds] the whole world
of appearance would he set out as a progress. It would
show a development of principle, though not a succession
in time. . . . On this scale pure Spirit would mark the.
extreme most removed from lifeless Nature. And, at each
rising degree of this scale, we should find more of the
first character with less of the second. The ideal of
spirit, we may say, is directly opposed to mechanism.
Spirit is a unity of the manifold in which the externality
of the manifold has utterly ceased (pp. 497, 498).
And in the opening of the final chapter he returns to
emphasise this hierarchical aspect of appearances : " In
the end no appearance, as such, can be real. But
appearances fail of reality in varying degrees ; and to
assert that one on the whole is worth no more than
another, is fundamentally vicious" (p. 511).
Yet, all through these chapters too, Mr Bradley is
still bent upon reaching an esoteric existence of the
Absolute, as suck, in contradistinction to its existence
196 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
in the system of its appearances. And if this quest
does not lead him exactly to an " empty transcend-
ence," it lands him in an abyss of Brahmanic indiffer-
ence, which threatens to throw us back into the
" shallow Pantheism " from which the doctrine of
degrees was to deliver us. It prompts him to a series
of utterances which, though the qualification of an
" as such " may save them from the charge of direct
verbal contradiction, are still the expression of two
opposite philosophies. Thus, when he tells us (p. 486)
with the aid of italics, "The Absolute is its appear-
ances," and again, with the same aid (on p. 411), " The
Absolute is not its appearances," he may perhaps claim
with some reason to be enunciating two complementary
half-truths. But when he declares emphatically in an
eloquent passage (p. 550)
There is no reality anywhere except in appearance, and
in our appearance we can discover the main nature of real-
ity. ... It is, really and indeed, this general character of
the very universe itself which distinguishes for us the
relative worth of appearances. . . . Higher, truer, more
beautiful, better and more real these, on the whole, count
in the universe as they count for us
or, again (p. 430), "Whether anything is better or
worse does without doubt make a difference to the
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 197
absolute ; and certainly the better anything is, the less
totally in the end is its being overruled " ; and when
he yet says, at other times, that " The Absolute is per-
fect in all its detail, it is equally true and good through-
out " (p. 401) ; that, " viewed in relation to the Absolute,
there is nothing either good or bad, there is not any-
thing better or worse " (p. 411) ; that " we may even say
that every feature in the universe is absolutely good "
(p. 412) the burden of the contradiction threatens to
become excessive. We feel that we are losing our hold
upon the first view altogether, and drifting back into
the gulf of absolute indifference which the poets of
mysticism, Eastern and Western, have hymned. The
passages last quoted all occur, it is perhaps worth
noting, in . the chapter on Goodness, in which Mr
Bradley's zeal against what he calls "the common
prejudice in favour of the ultimate truth of morality
or religion" is perhaps not untinctured by counter-
prejudice. His anxiety to expose what he quaintly
calls "the radical vice of all goodness" betrays him
into expressions which seem to take all vital, meaning
out of his first set of phrases, and make the doctrine
of degrees itself an illusion, instead of reflecting, as
he says elsewhere, " the essential nature of the world."
The essential nature of the world for metaphysics
198 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
turns out once more to be the identity in which all
distinctions vanish to which all things, therefore, are
the same. This is brought out, with almost startling
distinctness, in the description in this chapter of the
kind of consummation which the finite attains in the
Absolute :
In the Absolute everything finite attains the perfection
which it seeks; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain
perfection precisely as it seeks it. For, as we have seen
throughout, the finite is more or less transmuted, and, as
such, disappears in being accomplished. This common des-
tiny is assuredly the end of the Good. The ends sought
by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each alike, unattain-
able. The individual never can in himself become a har-
monious system. . . . In the complete gift and dissipation
of his personality, HE, as such, must vanish ; and, with that,
the Good is, as such, transcended and submerged. . . . Most
emphatically no self-assertion nor any self-sacrifice, nor any
goodness or morality, has, as such, any reality in the Absolute
(pp. 419, 420). 1
Comment would but weaken the audacious irony
of phrases which make accomplishment tantamount to
disappearance, and interpret the "gift" of personality
i In this short passage it will be observed the phrase "as such"
occurs no fewer than four times ; it would be interesting to calculate
how often it occurs in the course of Mr Bradley's volume. It exactly
corresponds to Spinoza's quatenus, which has been described as the
magic formula which makes all things possible in his system.
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 199
as meaning the "dissipation" of the personality in
question. But it is plain that, if every aspect of finite
existence if all appearances, even the highest cease
or disappear, " as such," in the Absolute, and we have
no knowledge whatever of the Absolute as such,
in which it is said to be preserved (" transmuted,"
"merged and recomposed," p. 306), then surely the
Absolute is for us, in the Kantian phrase, as good
as nothing at all. To say we know that it is ex-
perience, when it is not like any experience that we
know, does not seem greatly helpful. Mr Bradley
tells us himself that "an absolute experience for us,
emphatically, could be nothing" (p. 550); and again
he says more explicitly in a passage which has been
already quoted: "The unity of these aspects is un-
known. But this I certainly do not mean to deny,
that it essentially is experience, but it is an experience
of which, as such, we can have no direct knowledge.
. . . In the end the whole diversity must be attributed
as adjectives to a unity which is not Jcnoivn" (pp. 468,
469).
The last passage certainly carries us very near the
perilous verge of Agnosticism, if indeed it does not
take us well over it. What becomes of the sustained
polemic against "empty transcendence" (of which
200 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
Agnosticism is the most accentuated expression) if
we are forced to admit that, though the Absolute en-
gulfs, and in engulfing harmonises, all we know, it
is itself not known ? We have no reason to suspect
either the good faith or the accuracy of the account
which Mr Bradley gives of the purpose of his book
Much of the polemic of the latter part of the book
is directed against empty transcendence and shallow
Pantheism ; and when this polemic is going on, and
Mr Bradley is insisting that the Absolute is its ap-
pearance (" there is no reality at all anywhere except
in appearance," p. 550), then he is also found teaching
the doctrine of degrees, and insisting that our scale
of worth discovers to us the main nature of reality.
But when he is engaged in his favourite occupation
of dissolving finite experience in contradictions, and
insisting that the Absolute is not its appearances, the
other half-truth seems entirely forgotten. In discard-
ing appearance, he falls back himself into an empty
transcendence which, by the very energy with which
it repudiates all the distinctions of finite existence, re-
duces all the aspects of experience to a dead level
of indifference, and thus strikes round once more into
that shallow Pantheism from which we were promised
a deliverance the Pantheism to which "nothing can
A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 201
be viler or can be more sublime than anything else."
For empty transcendence and shallow Pantheism are
two sides of the same mistake, and although Mr Bradley
makes a strenuous effort, in his second or Hegelian line
of thought, to combat and disavow the error, he cannot
cut himself loose from the implications of his Spinoz-
istic logic. The result is, that what I have called the
Hegelian passages have the air of being more or less
inconsequent disclaimers in a book which, as a whole,
expresses an essentially Brahmanic attitude of mind.
Nevertheless, Mr Bradley seems to me to have
rendered a very important service to philosophy in
this book. I will endeavour shortly to indicate what
I consider that service to be. Mr Bradley has at-
tempted to supplement Hegel, or to make an advance
upon Hegel, in one important particular. Hegel's
philosophy is notoriously a philosophy of immanence,
and a vindication of the validity of knowledge. Its
polemical emphasis is directed against the agnostic
relativism of the Kantian " Critique," with its doctrine
of the thing-in-itself, and against the easy mysticism
of the Schellingian Identitatsphilosophie, which are
both expressions, in different directions, of an empty
transcendence. By exposing the impossible nature of
202 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
the ideals which underlie these doctrines, and vindi-
cating the omnipresence of difference, as woven into
the very fibre of existence, Hegel closed one long
chapter of philosophical thought although his results
in this respect may doubtless not have been assimilated,
even yet, by many of our popular leaders of opinion.
But in reaction against this error, Hegel's gift of
forcible statement led him into expressions which
seem to imply a no less questionable extreme. In
preaching the truth that the nature of the Absolute
is revealed in the world of its appearances, not craftily
concealed behind them, he seems to pass to a sheer
identification of the two. Now it is unquestionably
true that the two aspects must be everywhere com-
bined : an Absolute which does not appear or reveal
itself, and an appearance without something which
appears, are correlative abstractions. But that is not
tantamount to saying that the appearance of the
Absolute to itself is identical with the appearance
which the world presents to the Hegelian philosopher.
Hegel, however, tends to put the philosopher in
the place of Deity, and literally to identify the
history of humanity with the development of the
Absolute. It was this aspect of the Hegelian system
which called forth Lotze's sarcastic reference to the
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 203
dialectical idyll of an Absolute whose spiritual evolu-
tion was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean.
I do not think the presence of this tendency in Hegel
can fairly be denied. It is an overstatement, as I hold,
and as I may partly be able to show, of a great truth ;
but, to my mind, the deification of humanity only re-
quires to be clearly stated, in order to condemn itself.
This aspect of the Hegelian system found an inadequate
counterpoise in the logical dialectic of the categories,
from which standpoint the time-process is reduced to
a projection of thought - distinctions in a series of
dissolving views, and the ultimate reality of existence
seems to be placed in a timeless system of abstract
conceptions. The logical strain in Hegelianism had
been showing some signs of vitality in England, when
Mr Bradley, in his ' Principles of Logic ' (1883), uttered
his memorable protest against the reduction of the
universe to an " unearthly ballet of bloodless categories."
Since then, it may be said to have fallen into the back-
ground, much as it did in Germany, and the school has
mainly devoted itself to the historical development of
God. Sometimes this is done, as it is by Hegel himself,
with an attempt, either unconscious or deliberate, to
keep out of view the ultimate implications of the
position, as bearing on the doctrine of the being and
204 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
nature of God. At other times, the identification of
man with God is made with an under - current of
negative polemic, resulting in a phase of thought
which may fairly be described as Hegelian positivism.
If I read Mr Bradley aright, he has clearly realised
that neither of these positions can be entertained for
a moment, as literal and ultimate truth. Life is more
than logic, and God is more than man. The categories
that is to say, the structure of reason may be said
to constitute the essence of God, the ground-plan of the
world ; we can understand such a statement and recog-
nise the truth it expresses. But " neither gods nor men
are in very truth logical categories." And again, God
is in history without doubt ; but yet we trust He has
a richer outlook than He enjoys through any pair of
human eyes. Eealising, then, these twin defects of the
Hegelian position, Mr Bradley, in this volume, has made
a strenuous attempt to treat the life of the Absolute as
a reality. With the instinct of the true thinker, he
recalls us from a too narrow Humanism to an insight
into the vastness of the sustaining life that " operates
unspent " throughout the universe. This insight is no
doubt as simple as it is profound ; and it is sufficiently
strange that man should forget his position as a finite
incident in the plan of things, and measure himself
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 205
with the immeasurable Spirit of the Universe. Still
the fact remains, that the most elementary truths are
sometimes most easily forgotten, in the eagerness of a
polemic against some particular error. We become so
preoccupied with the ideas which we perceive to be
true in that particular reference, as against the error
we are combating, that we forget the essentially limited
nature of the truth we are defending. We forget the
limited sphere within which both affirmation and
denial have relevancy. Indeed, we become so jealous
on behalf of the truth for which we tight, that we
cannot brook the least criticism upon it. We con-
found in a common condemnation the man who denies
its legitimate truth, because he lags at the standpoint
of exploded error, and the man who, having got beyond
these controversial issues, calls attention to the modifi-
cations which the principle must submit to, before it
can be advanced as the absolute verity.
Elemental, therefore, as the truth is, the stress which
Mr Bradley lays, throughout his volume, upon the
necessarily superhuman character of the Absolute
its inexpressible and incomprehensible transcendence
of human conditions of being and thinking is a
salutary correction to a good deal of current specula-
tion. After all, if it comes to a question of reality,
206 A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
the Absolute is the great and only Beality. We have
reality only within its -all - comprehensive bounds.
True, therefore, as it is, in the proper reference, to
say that the Absolute realises itself in human self-
consciousness, it becomes fundamentally absurd, if the
saying is taken to mean that the Absolute exists, so
to speak, by the grace of man, and lives only in the
breath of his nostrils. Is it not both absurd and
blasphemous to suppose that the Power which cradles
and encompasses all our lives is not itself a living fact,
and that it is reserved for man to bring the Absolute,
as it were, to the birth ? A moment's reflection con-
vinces us that it is so, and also that it must be essen-
tially impossible for a finite being to realise the manner
of that Absolute Life.
But Mr Bradley has not been content simply to
restore to us this fundamental insight. He is a meta-
physician, and his book, if not presenting a complete
system of philosophy, yet contains a pretty definite
theory of the Absolute. And the curious thing is that,
based as it is upon an important truth, and aiming at
correcting an undoubted defect in the Hegelian state-
ment, the theory turns out to be further from the truth
turns out, at all events, to be more misleading
than the theory it attempts to improve. But I perhaps
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 207
exaggerate the strangeness of the phenomenon, for the
result is, in the circumstances, inevitable, as soon as we
proceed to a constructive account of absolute expe-
rience. As water cannot rise higher than its source,
so our speculative grasp cannot transcend the experience
which is ours in this seed-plot of Time. The higher
may comprehend the lower, but how shall the lower
reach out to comprehend the higher ? Denying, there-
fore, that the life of the Absolute can be construed in
terms of our actual human experience, even in its
highest reaches, Mr Bradley is obliged, as we have
seen, to fall back upon the analogy of a lower life, out
of which our conscious experience seems to rise the
life of feeling.
It would be trite to dwell here on the ambiguities of
the term " feeling " and the varieties of usage in its
regard. It will be sufficient if we understand the
meaning Mr Bradley intends to convey. Mere feeling,
he would probably acknowledge, is a state which we
never actually realise, though we seem to approximate
to it at times, and conceive it to be approached asymp-
totically in the lowest forms of organic life. Never-
theless, it is not to be denied that feeling, in Mr
Bradley's usage, represents one feature one funda-
mental aspect of our actual experience. All our
208 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
experience is rooted in the immediacy of perception;
and feeling names this .perceptual or immediate aspect,
as opposed to the conceptual or abstract world, which
we rear on the basis of inner or outer perception, and
offer as its explanation or interpretation. I foresee
the outcry that will be raised, in certain quarters,
against this way of stating the fact, and I hasten to
add that this in no way implies the separability of
these two aspects in actual experience. Our actual
perceptions are full of the distinctions of thought;
a state of pure perception, entirely without the
shaping presence of the conceptions of the under-
standing, can only be regarded as a Trpcorij v\r), a
vanishing-point or limitative conception, essentially
unrealisable within experience. The notion from which
empiricism started, that the object of perception is
given, as we perceive it, without any activity of thought
the notion that thought simply analytically assorts
the objects of which we thus passively become aware,
doing them up into classes and discovering their laws
of combination this complete severance of perception
from thought we are surely at liberty to treat nowadays
as an exploded fiction. But the amplest acknowledg-
ment of the victory of transcendentalism in this con-
troversy leaves the immediacy of perception untouched,
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 209
and leaves the difference as wide as ever between the
concrete world of fact, which reveals itself in percep-
tion (inner and outer), and the abstractions of con-
ception as such.
Conception deals wholly with dbstracta, with isolated
aspects or points of view. Such are the discrete or
abstract units which, from its very nature, it cannot
fuse into continuity, and the multiplicities which it
cannot resolve into unity. It can never, therefore,
express the facts of experience as they exist ; in trying
to do so, it inevitably falls into contradictions or an-
tinomies. It then proceeds, on the basis of its own
impotence, to impeach our whole experience as con-
tradictory, and no better than an illusion. But if its
impotence is perfectly intelligible is seen indeed to
be inevitable then experience itself can hardly be
called unintelligible. It may be unintelligible in a
technical use of the word ; in the sense that it cannot
be reduced to, or exhaustively expressed in, the abstrac-
tions which the isolating touch of understanding frames.
But this is merely to say that understanding is not itself
life, but a useful instrument in the service of life. In
the only reasonable sense of intelligibility, life or ex-
perience is itself the norm of intelligibility. We find
united there all the aspects which, merely by detecting
o
210 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
and naming them, understanding tends to fix in isola-
tion and mutual repugnance. Take the typical instance
of unity and multiplicity, which furnished forth Mr
Bradley's whole First Book. The unity of the self and
its states is the sufficient, and the only possible, answer
to the so-called contradiction. True, you cannot name
unity and multiplicity, in the same indivisible moment
of time ; you must get your breath, as it were, after
articulating the one, before you go on to the other.
And what applies to the articulation of the words
applies to the mental thinking of the thoughts. If you
think of the unity of the Self, you necessarily pause
upon that aspect, before supplementing it by turning
round the eye of the mind to the other aspect, multi-
plicity. In conception, the mind takes a step, as it were,
from the one to the other, and so the two come to ap-
pear separate. Then dialectic supervenes, and tells us
that A is A, and, consequently, these two can never
be brought together; whereas we have simply looked
at one fact from two sides. That one fact our own
inmost experience exhibits the two sides indissolubly
united, and, accordingly, instead of calling this a con-
tradiction, we adopt it as the norm of all our ex-
planations.
All our experience, then, is rooted in the immediacy
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 211
of perception, and experience, from the perceptive side,
is a continuum in which we make distinctions. As we
do not "make" them in an arbitrary sense, we may
also be said to find them. They were not there for us
till we made them ; but, in making them, we hold our-
selves to be analysing more exactly what was implicit
in the presentation from the first to be acquiring, in
short, a fuller and truer knowledge of the fact. The
whole progress of knowledge appears, therefore, as the
breaking up of what is given as a vague mass of feeling
or undefined consciousness, which can hardly as yet be
described even as general awareness. Inasmuch as this
state is assumed to occur in the experience of some
individual creature, and to constitute the whole state
of the creature in question, it may be permissible to
speak of it (with Mr Bradley) as an undifferentiated
unity, an undivided whole. This inexhaustible back-
ground of " feeling " constitutes for us the being of the
world (including ourselves), and, in that sense, it is
the ultimate subject of all predication ; but, obviously,
it is only so far as it becomes determined or formed,
that we can say anything about it. In its character of
unexhausted remainder, it is not anything we actually
realise; it cannot itself be properly spoken of as ex-
perience, although it is that out of which all experience
212 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
seems to arise. It is essentially a limitative concep-
tion, and, as such, it is the necessary implicate of our
experience ; but again, as such, it cannot be con-
structed within experience. We approach it per
mam negativam, only approximating towards it by
throwing out one determination after another; and,
if we examine our supposed realisation, we find
that we have merely thrown our negatives into a
positive form.
But what is itself describable only by negatives, and
what, if realisable, would mean a lapse into uncon-
sciousness, cannot be expected to throw any valuable
light upon the nature of an absolute experience. That
experience, as we have seen, is to be a whole in which
the distinctions elicited in the progress of knowledge
are again to be merged in such a way that thought
returns to the immediacy of feeling; but it is added
that, " in that higher unity no fraction of anything is
lost " (p. 182). We have already examined this notion,
and come to the conclusion that, though Mr Bradley
says, and is bound to say, that all the " richness," all
the distinctions, of the world we know are somehow
conserved for the Absolute, the main principle on which
his criticism depends points directly to the collapse of
all distinction whatever; and he seems himself con-
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 213
tinually impelled in that direction. Here we need
only add that, if the utter unity of feeling, out of
which our experience seems to take its rise, is an
utter unity into which all distinctions collapse, and
so a purely negative conception, it will be equally
negative when transferred to the other end of the
scale, and used to illustrate the transcendent unity
in which all the differences of finite experience are
resolved. In short, in the one case as in the other,
we are dealing with a limitative conception, which it
is sheerly impossible for us positively to construct, or,
in any true sense, to conceive. Our experience has
the stamp of incompleteness upon it; it has the ap-
pearance of moving from an unknown source to an
unknown goal. This incompleteness is expressed in
the two limitative conceptions we have had before
us, the unity below and the unity above experience,
the extreme of mere sense and the extreme of omni-
science. Within experience we may approximate to
one extreme or the other, but any attempt positively
to realise either leaves us baffled, with nothing in our
grasp. Beyond experience, in short, all is and must
be, for us, absolute emptiness ; and whatever " sail-
broad vans" we spread for flight, we drop at once
plumb down, like Milton's Satan, in a vast vacuity.
214 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
It is impossible, therefore, to construct for ourselves,
even in outline or vague, generality, the nature of an
absolute experience. Our general descriptions are seen,
on examination, to be either purely formal, and, as I
have argued, identical propositions, or they are postu-
lates of faith, realised, we believe, somehow, but always
with this for an afterword, that the " how " is hidden
from us. And this is so for the simplest of all reasons,
because we are men and not God. We are ourselves
immersed in the process of the universe. We can
only live our own life, and see through our own eyes.
If we could do more, that would mean that we our-
selves had vanished from the universe ; the place which
had known us would know us no more, and there would
be, as it were, a gap created in the tissue of the world.
Take the crucial case of time. " If time is not un-
real," says Mr Bradley, "our Absolute is an illusion"
(p. 206). But, however " contradictory " we may find
the infinite progress to be, which time involves, can we
even adumbrate to ourselves what " a timeless reality "
would be ? I am quite certain, for my own part, that
the utmost we can attain is the idea of something
permanent in time, lasting unchanged through time ;
but that leaves us with all the difficulties of the infinite
series still on our hands. Mr Bradley 's suggestion
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 215
that there may be many time-series in the Absolute,
unrelated to one another, seems to me to throw no
light on the subject whatever. The notion of many
" times " seems to me one of these empty possibilities
inconceivable verbal combinations which Mr Bradley
elsewhere, I think, discourages. All our notions of
reality being drawn necessarily from our own experience,
and all our experience being in time, a timeless reality
remains for our minds as inconceivable as wooden iron.
Besides, the difficulty of passing from the timed to the
timeless remains just as great, whether the times be
many or one.
Mr Bradley's attempt to determine the Absolute " as
such " i.e., the Absolute as beyond or more than the
process of human experience has the unexpected re-
sult, therefore, which I indicated a few pages back. It
proves an unexpected vindication of the real strength
of the Hegelian position. The cloud of negations in
which the attempt involves us, the abstract and empty
character of the Absolute supposed to be reached, are
a fresh and involuntary confirmation of Hegel's wisdom
in refusing to step beyond the circle of knowledge and
the process of history. I have said, and I repeat, that
Hegel's identification of the Absolute with human ex-
perience is indefensible. Nevertheless, his refusal to
216 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
seek the character of the Absolute elsewhere than in its
appearances i.e., in hurnan experience was entirely
justified. As we have no predicates save those drawn
from this experience, the attempt to determine the
Absolute, so far as it is something more than this
experience, necessarily throws us back upon the
purely indeterminate, and we drift easily towards the
doctrine of the Unknowable. Professor Eoyce has
already accused Mr Bradley of this tendency. 1 The
fruitfulness of Hegel's philosophy lay in his repudiation
of this barren search. The real is revealed in its ap-
pearances, and is not to be sought behind or beyond
them. Extension of experience will bring increased
and deepened knowledge of the Absolute :
" For all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untra veiled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."
But as we shift our margin and enter that untravelled
world, however far we go, the new is still an extension
of the old on the same plane the plane of finite ex-
perience not a passage to another species of insight.
Along with this resolute correlation of the real with
its manifestations, there goes in Hegel the organisation
of the phenomenal world itself. Eelieved from an im-
possible quest, he devotes himself to the exposition of
1 Philosophical Review, vol. iii. p. 217.
A NEW THEORY OF THE
217
experience as the only possible revelation of the Abso-
lute for us, and he finds it to be not an indifferent
congeries, but a graded system. The significance of
this doctrine of degrees I have already dwelt on, in
commenting upon what seem to me two conflicting
lines of thought in Mr Bradley's book. The result
for Hegel of this doctrine, taken together with his
fundamental correlation of the real with its manifes-
tation, was, not unnaturally perhaps, a theory which
identified, or seemed to identify, the Absolute with the
culminating aspects of human experience in art, reli-
gion, the State, and philosophical system. The theory
is false only so far as it is taken to confine the Spirit
of the universe to these earthly tabernacles. So under-
stood, it cabins the spirit of man within a narrow and
self-sufficient positivism. It undermines the sentiment
of reverence, and dulls our sense of the infinite great-
ness and the infinite mystery of the world. But it is
profoundly true, so far as it asserts that, only by predi-
cates drawn from these spheres, can we determine the
Absolute at all, and that, moreover, such determination
is substantially, though doubtless not literally, true :
" So weit das Ohr, so weit das Auge reicht,
Du findest nur Bekanntes, das ihm gleicht,
Und deines Geistes hochster Feuerflug
Hat schon am Gleichniss, hat am Bild, genug."
218 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
The dangers that lurk in any attempt to determine
the Absolute as such are well exemplified, I think, in
the negations to which Mr Bradley is driven. Thus
" morality cannot (as such) be ascribed to the " Abso-
lute " (p. 197). " Goodness as such is but appearance,
and is transcended in the Absolute" (p. 429). "Will
cannot belong as such to the Absolute " (p. 413). In
the Absolute even thought must "lose and transcend its
proper self" (p. 182). "If the term 'personal' is to
bear anything like its ordinary sense, then assuredly
the Absolute is not merely personal " (p. 531). " The
Absolute is not personal, nor is it moral, nor is it
beautiful or true" (p. 533). What is the inevitable
effect upon the mind of this cluster of negations ?
Surely it will be this : Either the Absolute will be
regarded as a mere Unknowable with which we have
no concern, or the denial of will, intellect, morality,
personality, beauty, and truth will be taken to mean
that the Absolute is a unity indifferent to these higher
aspects of experience. It will be regarded as non-
moral and impersonal in the sense of being below
these distinctions ; and our Absolute will then remark-
ably resemble the soulless substance of the materialist.
Nothing is more certain than that extremes meet in
this fashion, and that the attempt to reach the super-
human falls back into the infra -human. Now Mr
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 219
Bradley, of course, intends his unity to be a higher,
not a lower unity. " The Absolute is not personal,
because it is personal and more. It is, in a word,
super-personal" (p. 531). But he is not blind to the
danger that lurks in his denials. "It is better," he
even warns us, if there is a risk of falling back upon
the lower unity, " to affirm personality than to call the
Absolute impersonal." But there is more than a risk,
I maintain ; there is a certainty that this will be the
result. And therefore the conclusion deducible from
Mr Bradley's discussion seems to me to be that the
attempt, metaphysically, scientifically, or literally 1 to
determine the Absolute as such, is necessarily barren.
Where the definition is not tautologous, it is a com-
plex of negations, and if not technically untrue, it
has in its suggestions the effect of an untruth. Our
statements about the Absolute i. e., the ultimate
nature of things are actually nearer the truth when
they give up the pretence of literal exactitude, and
speak in terms (say) of morality and religion, apply-
ing to it the characteristics of our own highest experi-
ence. Such language recognises itself in general (or,
at least, it certainly should recognise itself) as pos-
sessing only symbolical truth, as being, in fact,
"thrown out," as Matthew Arnold used to say, at a
1 I use these for the moment as equivalent terms.
220 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
vast reality. But both religion and the higher poetry
just because they give f up the pretence of an im-
possible exactitude carry us, I cannot doubt, nearer
to the meaning of the world than the formulae of an
abstract metaphysics.
Such a conclusion may be decried as Agnostic, but
names need frighten no one. The Agnosticism which
rests on the idea of an unknowable thing-in-itself
the Agnosticism which many of Kant's and Spencer's
arguments would establish is certainly baseless ; but
there are regions of speculation where Agnosticism is
the only healthy attitude. Such a region I hold to be
that of the Absolute as such. If it be objected that
the mere mention of such an Absolute is an acknow-
ledgment of the Thing-in-itself, I must allow myself
Mr Bradley's privilege, and simply " doubt if the ob-
jector can understand " (p. 183). It is, in a word, not
an Absolute -in -itself, but the Absolute -for -itself, of
which we are speaking. It is the nature of the
existence which the Absolute has or enjoys for
itself. This is incomprehensible, save by the Abso-
lute itself. Because it is incomprehensible by the
finite mind, it . does not, however, follow that such
an all-embracing experience is not a Eeality ; and the
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 221
denial of such a possibility would seem to be more
than presumptuous. So far, therefore, as the Hegelian
philosophy disregarded this wider outlook, and im-
plicitly identified the Absolute with the process of
finite experience, its scheme of things is out of pro-
portion, and the ineffable transcendence of the Absol-
ute as such required reassertion. But this reassertion
must not be construed to mean that our own existence
is a vain show which throws no light on the real
nature of things. Eightly Agnostic as regards the
nature of the Absolute as such, no shadow of doubt
need fall on our experience as a true revelation of the
Absolute for us. Hegel was right in seeking the
Absolute within experience, and finding it too ; for
certainly we can neither seek it nor find it anywhere
else. The truth about the Absolute which we extract
from our experience is, doubtless, not the final truth.
It may be taken up and superseded in a wider or fuller
truth ; and in this way we might pass, in successive
cycles of finite existence, from sphere to sphere of
experience, from orb to orb of truth. But even the
highest would still remain a finite truth, and fall
infinitely short of the truth of God. Such a doc-
trine of relativity in no way invalidates the truthful-
ness of the revelation at any given stage. The fact
222 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
that the truth I reach is the truth for me, does not
make it, on that account, .less true. It is true, so far
as it goes ; and if my experience can carry me no
further, I am justified in treating it as ultimate, until
it is superseded. Should it ever be superseded, I shall
then see both how it is modified by being compre-
hended in a higher truth, and also how it and no other
statement of the truth could have been true at my
former standpoint. But "before the higher standpoint is
reached, to seek to discredit our present insight by the
general reflection that its truth is partial and requires
correction this is a perfectly empty truth which, in
its bearing upon human life, may easily come to have
the effect of an untruth. We hear much in denunci-
ation of the practice of testing truth by its supposed
consequences. And no doubt the argument is often
a weapon in the hands of obscurantism and timid con-
servatism. Yet, in the long-run, truth and life are not
dissevered, and there is a line of Goethe's which ex-
presses, with his usual calmness and breadth, the in-
sight of which the popular doctrine is a superficial
distortion, Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr.
While Mr Bradley 's main thought, therefore, un-
doubtedly possesses a real importance as emancipat-
ing us from the too narrow humanism of a dogmatic
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 223
Hegelianism, the impression produced by his volume
upon an unbiassed mind will be, I fancy, to foster a
wise Agnosticism in regard to assertions about the
Absolute as such. Human experience, not as itself
the Absolute "bodily," but as constituting the only
accessible and authentic revelation of its nature to
us, is the true subject-matter of Philosophy. And
here, as Mr Bradley says, " the doctrine of degrees in
Eeality and Truth is the fundamental answer to our
problem " (p. 487). Mr Bradley, as we have seen,
acknowledges his special indebtedness to Hegel in this
part of his discussion; but, in its general form, the
doctrine is no exclusive property of any philosophical
school. Eather it has always been
" Der Volker loblicher Gebrauch
Dass jeglicher das Beste was er kennt,
Er Gott, ja seinen Gott, benennt."
We speak most truly, most in accordance with the
real nature of things, when we thus characterise the
Absolute in terms of the best we know.
But that Hegel has given systematic expression to
this old world -wisdom gives his system a place in
history quite beyond the brilliant but arbitrary specu-
lations of individual genius, and ensures for it an
abiding influence upon modern thought. It must be
224 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
acknowledged, however, that, in his hands, the doctrine
of degrees tends to assume, a too purely intellectual and
formalistic character. If we look simply at his own
methodic statement, the scale seems to resolve itself
into a series of repetitions of the fundamental formula
of the One and the Many. As we rise in the scale,
we get more comprehensive wholes wholes, too, which
include a more intricate complexity of detail, and which
embrace their detail in a more intimate union. We
have thus a series of types (different powers or Potenzeri)
of the same formula. But the realisation of this ab-
stract scheme possesses in itself no interest or import-
ance. It is the content of any experience which makes
it " higher " in any vital sense, and makes it of decisive
importance in an inquiry as to the meaning of experi-
ence as a whole. Hegel's results in this connection are
substantially true, just because they are based not upon
the mere application of a formula, but upon an implicit
reference to the content of experience and the judgments
of value which that legitimates. The formula itself is
derived, in fact, from the self-conscious life of man, and
to Hegel, in even a wider sense than to Kant, man in
his typical activities is an End-in-himself.
The life, that is to say, which is guided by the ideals
of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and which partially
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 225
realises these, possesses an absolute and indefeasible
worth. It is only in such judgments of value that we
can be said to possess "an absolute criterion." Mr
Bradley says in more than one place that we possess
such a criterion, but he also, like Hegel, confines him-
self too exclusively throughout his book to the in-
tellectual necessities of all-inclusiveness and internal
harmony, which, we found, did not carry us so far as
he supposed. Our idea of what the Absolute must be
is founded on the ideal necessities which our nature
compels us to acknowledge. But the ideal necessities
in question are not merely intellectual ; they are
sesthetical, ethical, and religious as well. For "we
must believe" (to quote Mr Bradley's own words)
" that reality satisfies our whole being ; our main
wants for Truth and Life, and for Beauty and Good-
ness must all find satisfaction " (p. 159). The
necessity of our belief is not due, however, to any
esoteric assurance on the point which we possess direct
from the Absolute. It is an absolute certainty in
the sense simply that it is an ultimate judgment on
our part. It represents our deepest conviction as to
absolute and relative worth a conviction which does
not admit of being supported, and therefore does not
admit of being assailed, by argument.
p
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS,
niHEEE is some danger that the philosophical import-
-*- ance of Mr Balfour's c Foundations of Belief ' may
be obscured by the very circumstances which gave
the book for a time such an extraordinary prominence.
The tide of reviews and criticisms, which flowed so
high in the weeks and months immediately following
its appearance, has, for the time at least, completely
ebbed ; and the volatile curiosity of the general public
has doubtless been transferred to other themes. But
the book appeals to deeper interests and a more per-
manent audience. To that audience I venture to
submit the following reconsideration of the subject.
The multifarious and divergent estimates of the book
may themselves serve, I think, by the very misap-
prehensions they reveal, to set its essential argument
in a clearer light. And in the second place, I de-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 227
sire to call attention to an important change, an im-
portant advance, as it seems to me, in Mr Balfour's
philosophical position, since the publication of his
earlier volume. No critic, so far as I know, has
commented on this change, although it serves, in great
measure, to explain the conflicting judgments of Mr
Balfour's argument ; and the author himself seems
hardly aware that he has in any way shifted his
ground. But however insensible the advance may
have been, and however closely the two positions
may still seem at times to approach one another, the
difference between them, from the point of view of
philosophical construction, is vital.
Eeviews and criticisms always indicate the personal
equation of the reviewer. But in Mr Balfour's case
the divergence of the critical voices had in it some
of the elements of surprise. It was to be expected
that naturalists and theologians would judge the book
by different standards, and take diametrically opposite
views of its value.; and it is true that in general the
Naturalist denounced it as " a plea for supernaturalism,"
or as "written in the interest of the powers that be
and the established creed." But theologians them-
selves were found as widely at issue with one another.
It would have been natural, again, to find reviewers
228 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
of a Eadical tendency inclined to pick flaws in the
book, and those of a Conservative colour inclined to
bless it altogether. And no doubt such a stream of
tendency may be traced in some of the less important
notices of the daily and weekly press. But perhaps
the most acrid and unsympathetic notices that were
written appeared in the Tory columns of ' Blackwood '
and the ' Saturday Eeview.' The contrast of opinions
was fairly typified in the titles given in the same
week to their articles by two of our prominent
weeklies. " Mr Balfour as a Christian " was the one
headline; "Mr Balfour the Sceptic" was the other.
Both are written avowedly from an orthodox Christian
standpoint ; yet the one finds " the last hundred pages
of the book," that is to say, the constructive sugges-
tions towards a provisional philosophy, "almost un-
readable." "We are supposed," says the critic, "to
be taught theories of ' beliefs and realities ' ; but we
find the beliefs qualified out of existence, and the
reality attenuated till it is slighter than a shadow."
The other reviewer is of opinion that Mr Balfour writes
in these sections of his book "with amazing fresh-
ness and interest"; and he concludes by saying that
" preachers will find much in it to repay their study,
and to contribute to their work." If we confine our
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 229
attention to theologians who write above their own
signature, Principal Fairbairn confesses to "deep
disappointment." "Pleasure turned to pain, as the
underlying philosophy was seen to be shifting sand
rather than solid rock; the farther the reading pro-
ceeded, the less satisfactory the argument appeared."
Professor Marcus Dods, on the contrary, declares
that " if Mr Balfour's volume is the result of his
enforced absence from the helm of the State, it is
a strong argument for the continuance of the Liberal
Government." He compares the book to Butler's
'Analogy,' and adds that "there are many who have
read the older master with dissatisfaction, who will
find in the teacher of to-day the conviction and help
they seek."
Looking at another part of the field, we find Mr
Alfred Benn, who writes in the main from the
Naturalistic standpoint, confidently recommending the
book to Eoman Catholic believers " as bringing water
to their mill." But Dr Barry, who is doubtless more
entitled to speak for the Eoman Catholic theologians,
pronounces, in the 'Dublin Eeview,' that "the foun-
dation is not true and will never stand." " Universal
doubt, rather than religious dogma, will gain by the
stroke that smites reason to the ground." " Montaigne
230 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
had said all these things before, with infinite vivacity
and eloquence, but to the praise of a dissolving and
pernicious doubt rather than to the gain of Chris-
tianity." For Montaigne, the writer in 'Blackwood'
substitutes Pilate and Mephistopheles. " God forbid,"
he ejaculates, " that religion should ever be led to rest
its case on pleadings like these ! "
In sum, it may be said that while many representa-
tives of the Churches accept the new champion with
acclamation, and without too narrow a scrutiny of his
weapons or methods of warfare, an important section
will have none of such a defender. They are more
afraid of what they take to be the sceptical premisses
of the book, than grateful for its orthodox conclusions.
" Non tali auxilio" they seem to say ; " we prefer to
fight with our own weapons, and take the chances of
the war."
Which of these two last-named parties is the better
advised, and what is the truth about the scepticism
which is said to pervade the book, and to defeat what
was avowedly the author's intention in writing it ? In
general, is there any explanation to be found in the
book itself of these contradictory estimates of its con-
tents and result ? If, as I am convinced, the volume
is much more than the tour de force of an eminent
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 231
statesman, and the wonder of a literary season, this
is a question which it will well repay us to consider.
I do not speak here of the classical graces and felicities
of the style, which have been on all hands sufficiently
acknowledged. Whether the argument, moreover, is in
all points consistent with itself, whether all the posi-
tions advanced are equally tenable, these are questions
on which we may easily differ ; but to fail to recognise
the vitality of the discussions, the mastery with which
the great philosophical debate is handled, is to show a
mind which either cannot rise above long-incrusted
prejudice, or cannot detach itself from the technical
shibboleths of its own philosophic sect.
What then, let us ask, does the book itself profess to
be ? It is an inquiry into " the foundations of belief,"
and the sub-title (" Notes introductory to the Study of
Theology ") indicates at once the practical, or perhaps
one might rather say more broadly the human, interest
that underlies and prompts the investigation. Through-
out the book, nothing is more remarkable than the
spirit of intellectual detachment which it exhibits, the
perfect freedom, at times one might say the airy free-
dom, with which the discussion is conducted. Yet
we are made to feel that it has not been undertaken
232 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
for the mere delight of dialectic fence. The book is in-
spired by a keen human interest, which breaks through,
from time to time, in passages of deep feeling or in-
dignant irony. The author conceives the spiritual
heritage of mankind to be endangered by certain cur-
rent assumptions of a would-be philosophic nature.
He submits these assumptions, accordingly, to scrutiny
(and with them the assumptions that underlie the
whole fabric of human knowledge), in order to discover
whether we are really under an intellectual obligation
to surrender the beliefs in question beliefs as to the
cause of the world and man's place in it, which form
the basis of all theological teaching, and which con-
stitute what may be called the spiritual view of the
world.
Mr Balfour's attitude, it will be seen from what has
been said, is to a large extent the same as when he
wrote his 'Defence of Philosophic Doubt' in 1879.
The fact that the earlier work is described, in a sub-
title, as " an Essay on the Foundations of Belief," indi-
cates the amount of ground which the two volumes
occupy in common ; and the second part of the present
work ("Some Eeasons for Belief") is largely a more
popular restatement of some of the criticisms contained
in ' Philosophic Doubt.' The motive of the two books
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 233
is also the same ; for, in his first publication also, the
avowed occasion of Mr Balfour's attack was the ag-
gressive attitude assumed towards religion by " ad-
vanced thinkers," who claimed to speak in the name
of science. But though the two books have much
in common, it would be a mistake to suppose that
Mr Balfour has, in the second, simply repeated, with
variations, the theme of the first. The many resem-
blances of the two volumes have fostered the impres-
sion that this is the case ; and I cannot but think that
injustice has been thereby done to the scope of the
argument in the 'Foundations of Belief.'
Under this impression, the sceptical criticism of
Empiricism and Transcendentalism, and the laudation
of Authority, assumed an undue importance, over-
shadowing what I take to be the substantive thesis
of the book and its more enduring contribution to
philosophical thought. Some have maintained, indeed,
that ' The Foundations of Belief ' is a misnomer (like
the chapter on snakes in Iceland), inasmuch as the
whole purpose of the book is to prove that belief has
no foundations. This, as I hope to show, is true of the
more recent argument only in a technical sense which
robs the assertion of its sting. But it might claim
to be a fairly accurate description of the position in
234 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
which we are left at the conclusion of the earlier
volume. The ' Defence of Philosophic Doubt ' is really
an exposition of the purest scepticism. It is, accord-
ing to the author's own description, a piece of purely
destructive criticism, directed against the foundations
of scientific knowledge, or what claims to be such. The
argument is conducted, it is true, with an arribre pensfo
in the shape of " practical results " which it is supposed
to yield in the interests of religious truth. But the
actual conclusion drawn is, that both the creed of
religion and the creed of science are equally baseless,
in the sense of being "incapable of any rational de-
fence." Hence Mr Balfour concludes that "religion
is at any rate no worse off than science in the matter
of proof" (pp. 315-319). We have as much right
to believe the one as the other. " I am content to
regard the two great creeds by which we attempt to
regulate our lives as resting in the main upon separate
bases. So long, therefore, as neither of them can lay
claim to philosophic probability, discrepancies which
exist, or may hereafter arise, between them cannot be
considered as bearing more heavily against the one
than against the other" (p. 322). Both science and
theology have " claims on our belief," but these
claims are not to be construed as reasons.
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 235
Whatever they may be, they are not rational grounds of
conviction. ... It would be more proper to describe them
as a kind of inward inclination or impulse, falling far short
of or, I should perhaps rather say, altogether differing in
kind from philosophic certitude, leaving the reason, there-
fore, unsatisfied, but amounting, nevertheless, to a practical
cause of belief, from the effects of which we do not even
desire to be released (p. 317).
If it be objected tha't this " impulse " is not universal,
Mr Balfour rejoins that to build upon the universality
of the impulse would be to erect the impulse to believe
into a reason for believing, and so entirely to misread
the situation. The contention expressly is that there
is no reason for belief in either case ; and where the
impulse is wanting in any number of individuals, we
simply note its absence in their case, as we note its
presence in other individuals. But there can be no
argument in such a matter from one individual to
another.
I and an indefinite number of other persons, if we con-
template religion and science as unproved systems of belief
standing side by side, feel a practical need for both. . . .
But as no legitimate argument can be founded on the mere
existence of this need or impulse, so no legitimate argument
can be founded on any differences which psychological
analysis may detect between different cases of its manifesta-
tion. We are in this matter, unfortunately, altogether
outside the sphere of Reason (p. 320).
236 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
Such passages are obviously a formulation of the purest
scepticism which can weU be conceived. To find their
parallel we must go back to Hume the Hume of the
' Treatise/ who also concludes that
after the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can
give no reason why I should assent to it, and feel nothing
hut a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that
view under which they appear to me. ... I may, nay,
I must yield to the current of nature in submitting to my
senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I
show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles.
... If we believe that fire warms or water refreshes, it is
only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise
(part iv. section 7).
Moreover, the earlier volume contains no indication,
or next to none, of the precise nature of the theological
beliefs by which the author would supplement the
creed of science. Mr Balfour apparently identifies
himself with "the ordinary believer" (p. 325). His
language seems to imply an uncriticised acceptance
of the traditional creed as a whole. It can hardly,
however, be argued with any plausibility that the
impulse to religious belief extends to the details of a
dogmatic scheme like that of historical Christianity.
Hence, the man who believes on such terms seems to
have no course open to him but unquestioning submis-
sion to authority and tradition.
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 237
The impression, therefore, produced by the earlier
volume and I think not unnaturally produced was
that it was essentially a new version of the often-
repeated attempt to aggrandise authority by sapping
the foundations of all rational certainty; an attempt,
therefore, to found religious faith upon intellectual
scepticism. Taken barely thus, and as historically
exemplified in writers like Pascal, Newman, and
Mansel, such an attitude obviously surrenders all
claim to rational criticism of the dogmas offered
for acceptance, and offers no safeguard against the
re -invasion of the grossest superstition. A more
dangerous defence of religious truth cannot, I think,
be imagined. And if this is supposed to be the sum
of Mr Balfour's contribution in the 'Foundations of
Belief,' I can understand Principal Fairbairn's "deep
disappointment " with the volume, and his comparison
of the author's method to that of "the blind Samson
who sacrificed himself, in order that he might the more
effectually bury the Philistines under the ruins of
their own temple." As Dr Barry puts it, " Universal
doubt, rather than religious dogma, will gain by the
stroke that smites Eeason to the ground." But, in
this respect, the two books do not appear to me
to stand upon the same level. It is not without
238 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
significance that the title of the first has for its leading
word " doubt," while the* leading word of that of the
second is "belief." Although the later volume takes
up into itself the distinctive theses of the earlier,
and elaborates them in some cases with far greater
resources of irony and felicitous illustration (for
example, in Part III. on " Some Causes of Belief "),
the second work is undoubtedly to be understood, in
the main, as the constructive complement of the first.
Its principal line of argument, that from needs to their
satisfaction, is implied in a few phrases in the con-
cluding pages of the ' Defence of Philosophical Doubt ' ;
but it is here developed in such a way as to overshadow,
and, indeed, to place in a new light, the sceptical
argumentation with which it is associated. The first
and the last of the four parts into which the book is
divided are, in this respect, completely new, and could
almost be read perhaps, I might say, they would retain
their substantive value without the intervention of
the sceptical analysis contained in Parts II. and III.
At all events, when the argument of the volume is
considered as a whole, and in its logical sequence,
Mr Balfour's " scepticism " is seen to be of a strictly
limited and hypothetical character. If its scope has
been exaggerated, that is largely due to the influence
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 239
of an unfortunate terminology. But the majority of
the critics, coming to the book with the current idea
of the author's position derived from the previous
volume, were not prepared to catch the true perspective
of the argument. Those parts of it with which they
seemed to be already familiar bulked more largely in
their eyes than the more fundamental, but perhaps
more unassuming, line of thought upon which Mr
Balfour here depends for his positive conclusions.
Mr Balfour has himself also partly to blame for the
misconception. In the chapters on " Philosophy and
Eationalism " and on " Eeason and Authority," he has
devoted himself, with manifest relish, to the task of
exposing the ineptitude of much of the language habit-
ually indulged in by the devotees of pure reason. In
this part of the book he has given the reins to his
powers of epigram and irony, and he displays an almost
wilful pleasure in shocking the reader by the audacity
with which he tears to pieces the most respectable
commonplaces. The outcome of these chapters, taken
by themselves, appears to be a depreciation of reason
which verges on cynicism, and a corresponding glorifi-
cation of authority as the principle of coherence and
continuity in human life and society. The very choice
of the obnoxious term " authority " to designate the
240 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
group of causes which Mr Balfour here opposes to
" reason " may be looked upon as part of the " delight
of battle " which so plainly inspires this section of the
book. The defence of authority might have been sup-
posed in these days to be limited to those whom Pro-
fessor James lately described with more force than
politeness as " the stall-fed officials of an established
Church." Yet, meeting it here in Mr Balfour's pages,
the exasperated critics, after the first impulse of in-
dignation, determined that it was the natural and
becoming attitude of the Tory leader, and communi-
cated this to the British public as the gist of the book.
It has to be added, however, in extenuation of this
misapprehension, that the chapters in question are so
brilliantly written, and, in spite of apparent paradoxes,
so full of the wisdom of life, that they cannot but
dwell in the memory of most readers, when they come
to give an account of the book.
But for my own part, sorry as I should be to miss
these brilliant and suggestive dissertations, taken as
such on their own merits, I am so far from regarding
them as the essence of the book that, looking merely to
the coherence of the main argument, I have sometimes
been inclined to echo Dr Barry's complaint that Mr
Balfour has interposed these sections " almost wan-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 241
tonly, between his criticism of the Naturalist and his
apology for the Theologian." Such a drastic " cut " is,
of course, not seriously to be thought of. The author
in these chapters unquestionably advances positions
which are much too important to be treated merely as
incidents ; and their elimination would greatly alter
the character of the book. I refer especially to the
limitation of Eeason to conscious ratiocination, and
the treatment of Eationalism as undeveloped and in-
consequent Naturalism. Both these propositions, if
understood in the sense which has been commonly put
upon them, appear to me philosophically untenable, as
well as inconsistent with Mr Balfour's own argument.
But a closer examination of the sections in question,
in their relation to the rest of the book, has convinced
me that the general impression of their meaning is
largely a misapprehension, caused by Mr Balfour's
terminology, and that, when taken in their true in-
tention, they bear a much more harmless, indeed, a
perfectly defensible, sense. Without proposing to de-
fend his terminology, I am prepared, therefore, to do
more justice to the logical sequence of Mr Balfour's
thought than is implied in Dr Barry's stricture. But
I have no hesitation in saying that if it were necessary
to put upon these chapters the interpretation put by
242 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
Dr Barry and many other critics, it would be impos-
sible to reconcile this part of the book with the con-
structive philosophy suggested in Part IV. This, as I
take it, is the explanation of the divergences of critical
opinion, to which reference was made at the outset.
Failing to detect the coherence between these two
parts of the book, the critic is, in a manner, obliged to
choose between them ; and, according as he chooses the
one or the other, he effects a corresponding change in
the centre of gravity of the volume.
A short review of the course of the discussion will,
I think, substantiate this view of the true perspec-
tive of the argument. It will at the same time fur-
nish evidence of the change which has, to some
extent unconsciously, effected itself in Mr Balfour's
own position.
The book is divided, it will be remembered, into
four parts, called respectively, " Some Consequences
of Belief," " Some Eeasons for Belief," " Some Causes
of Belief," and " Suggestions towards a Provisional
Philosophy." Mr Balfour begins, that is to say, by
drawing out the implications of Naturalism in the
domain of ethics and esthetics, and exhibiting the
general aspect which the world presents according to
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 243
" this theory of the non-rational origin of reason." The
substance of current morality, he points out, is taken
for granted by the naturalistic evolutionist, as it is,
curiously enough, by the most various schools of
moralists. But, in this case, there is a fundamental
" incongruity between the sentiments subservient to
morality and the naturalistic account of their origin."
Nature's sole aim, according to the theory, is the sur-
vival of the individual or the race in the struggle for
existence. There can be no ground, therefore,
for drawing a distinction in favour of any of the pro-
cesses, physiological or psychological, by which the indi-
vidual or the race is benefited. . . . We can hardly doubt
that the august sentiments which cling to the ideas of duty
and sacrifice are nothing better than a device of nature to
trick us into the performance of altruistic actions. ... It
is because, in the struggle for existence, the altruistic virtues
are an advantage to the family, the tribe, or the nation, but
not always an advantage to the individual; it is because
man comes into the world richly endowed with the inheri-
tance of self -regarding instincts and appetites required by
his animal progenitors, but poor indeed in any inbred in-
clination to the unselfishness necessary to the wellbeing of
the society in which he lives ; it is because in no other way
can the original impulses be displaced by those of later
growth to the degree required by public utility, that Nature,
indifferent to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, but
sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested virtue to
244 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
our practice by decking it out in all the splendour which
the specifically ethical sentiments alone are capable of
supplying (pp. 16, 17).
In a world, indeed, in which we recognise that " our
conduct was determined for us by the distribution of
unthinking forces in pre-solar seons," the emotions with
which we are wont to contemplate virtuous actions
become entirely unmeaning. Moreover, there is the
same want of harmony " between the demands of the
ethical imagination and what naturalism tells us con-
cerning the final goal of all human endeavour " (p. 26).
" We desire, and desire most passionately when we are
most ourselves, to give our service to that which is
universal and to that which is abiding." But man,
according to Naturalism, is " no more than a pheno-
menon among phenomena, a natural object among
other natural objects. His very existence is an acci-
dent, his story a brief and transitory episode in the
life of one of the meanest of the planets ; " l and as this
lesson is driven home, " we may well feel inclined to
ask whether so transitory and unimportant an accident
1 Did space permit I would fain transcribe the whole of the striking
passage in which Mr Balfour depicts the ultimate issue of Natural-
ism a passage in which speculative imagination and intense human
feeling have combined to add a page of rare and moving eloquence to
English literature.
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 245
in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the
human race can any longer satisfy aspirations and
emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Everlasting
and the Divine." We may expect, in short, in the case
of those holding the naturalistic creed, " that the more
thoroughly the intellect is saturated with its essential
teaching, the more certain are the sentiments violently
and unnaturally associated with it to languish or
to die."
The obvious objection that among the professors of
naturalism are to be found some of the most shining
examples of unselfish virtue, is met by the parable of
the parasites. " Biologists tell us of parasites which
live, and can only live, within the bodies of animals
more highly organised than they." Similarly, the
spiritual life of such men is " sheltered by convictions
which belong not to them but to the society of which
they form a part ; it is nourished by processes in which
they take no share." The argument based upon such
examples would not hold, therefore, of a society com-
pletely impregnated by naturalistic principles.
But the further and apparently more radical objec-
tion has been raised, that Mr Balfour has presented
the world with a caricature of Naturalism, even in its
purely theoretical aspect. He is fighting, it is said,
246 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
with a man of straw, with a bogy of his own creation.
There are no Naturalists, in Mr Balfour's sense of the
term; existing Naturalists would disclaim, with one
accord, the creed which he puts in their mouth. The
disclaimer has, as a matter of fact, been made in many
quarters since the appearance of the volume, with con-
siderable display of indignation ; and I think we may
readily admit the sincerity of those who make it,
without concluding, on that account, that Mr Balfour
has been terrifying himself and his readers by a fancy
sketch. Tew persons take the trouble to connect their
various opinions into a coherent system of belief;
many points have commonly been left vague, others
have been qualified by inconsistent admissions. Hence
they fail to recognise the lineaments of a system which
they have never consciously surveyed as a whole, much
less embraced, and from which, when stated with rigor-
ous consistency and remorseless clearness, they shrink
with unaffected horror. But this constitutes no im-
peachment of Mr Balfour's method. Only by the
development of a system into all its consequences can
the true features of the system be discerned, and judg-
ment passed upon its adequacy. And, for my own
part, I cannot admit that Mr Balfour's picture is too
highly coloured.
MR BALFOUE AND HIS CRITICS. 247
The distinction between Naturalism and Science has
also to be kept carefully in view at this point. Many
critics have fallen into the mistake of supposing that
Mr Balfour has a quarrel with Science, and that his
object is to discredit its methods and results. They
have accused him of identifying Naturalism and Science,
of treating the former creed as the inevitable inference
from scientific facts and theories, and of attributing it
accordingly to all scientific men. Many honest pro-
tests have been made, from the side of Science, against
this supposed identification. On the other hand, the
Naturalists, less ingenuously perhaps, have sedulously
fostered the same impression. As no one can seriously
hope to prevail in a contest with Science, they have
put it about that the whole attack is no more than
a display of dialectic fireworks, of which nobody is a
penny the worse. They have pursued in this their
accustomed tactics ; it has been long their practice to
seek shelter behind the segis of Science. But, on the
present occasion, it is not Mr Balfour 's fault if the
stratagem succeeds; he has denounced it in advance.
In concluding his criticism of " The Philosophic Basis
of Naturalism," he is at special pains to expose
the speculative, but quite illusory, title by which the empiri-
cal school have endeavoured to associate Naturalism and
248 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
Science in a kind of joint supremacy over the thoughts and
consciences of mankind. . . . With empirical philosophy [he
says in a characteristic passage], considered as a tentative
contribution to the theory of Science, I have no desire to
pick a quarrel. That it should fail is nothing; other phil-
osophies have failed. Such is, after all, the common lot. . . .
But that it should develop into Naturalism, and then, on
the strength of labours which it has not endured, of vic-
tories which it has not won, and of scientific triumphs in
which it has no right to share, presume, in spite of its
speculative insufficiency, to dictate terms of surrender to
every other system of belief, is altogether intolerable.
Who would pay the slightest attention to Naturalism
if it did not force itself into the retinue of science, assume
her livery, and claim, as a kind of poor relation, in some
sort to represent her authority and to speak with her voice.
Of itself it is nothing. It neither ministers to the needs of
mankind, nor does it satisfy their reason (p. 135).
It is not with Science, or with scientific results as
such, that Mr Balfour has any quarrel. I do not
know any modern philosophical book which indicates
more unqualified acceptance of these results, or which
is more pervaded by the atmosphere of the most recent
science. It is the naturalistic interpretation of science
which he attacks, the attempt to make Science do duty
for philosophy, to substitute the history of a process
for a theory of its ultimate ground and source. There
is not a proposition of science, even the most material-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 249
istic in seeming, which may not be unhesitatingly ac-
cepted, if combined with Bacon's acknowledgment of
" a divine marshal." And this is a question on which
Science, dealing only with secondary causes and the
sequences of phenomena, is necessarily dumb.
Having thus in Part I. reduced Naturalism to its
essentials, and developed it into its consequences, Mr
Balfour proceeds (in Part II.) to examine the philo-
sophic basis of the theory, and the rational justification
which it has to offer of its first principles. For such a
justification he naturally turns first to empirical phil-
osophy. He begins, however, by remarking most truly
upon the comparative neglect by all schools (at least
before Kant) of a philosophy of science, or, to put it
more broadly, of a theory of knowledge, and in par-
ticular upon the tendency of the empirical school to
substitute psychology for philosophy to deal "with
the origins of what we believe rather than with its
justification." "A full and systematic attempt, first
to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions
on which all science finally rests, has, it seems to me,
still to be made." And he lays down the unquestion-
ably sound position that " no general theory of know-
ledge has the least chance of being successful, which
does not explicitly include within the circuit of its
250 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
criticism, not only the beliefs which seem to us to be
dubious, but those also /which we hold with the most
perfect practical assurance/' "Nothing stands more
in need of demonstration than the obvious."
After effectively contrasting the common-sense view
of the world, based upon the immediate judgments of
perception, with the scientific account of material reality,
and contrasting both with the train of psychical se-
quences from which they are supposed to be deduced,
he proceeds to apply to empirical philosophy his test
of a satisfactory theory, securely grounded and firmly
concatenated. Does it admit of being stated "as a
series of premisses and conclusions, starting from those
which are axiomatic i.e., for which proof can be
neither given nor required and running on through a
continuous series of binding inferences until the whole
of knowledge is caught up and ordered in the meshes of
this all-inclusive dialectic network ? "
The argument proper is compressed here within
small compass, partly because Mr Balfour is able to
refer to his more detailed and technical treatment in
' Philosophic Doubt,' partly because it is, in reality, so
easy to show that Hume's is the only legitimate con-
clusion that can be drawn from any philosophy " which
depends for its premisses in the last resort upon the
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 251
particulars revealed to us in perceptive experience
alone." As he pointedly says :
Nothing in the history of speculation is more astonishing,
nothing, if I am to speak my whole mind, is more absurd,
than the way in which Hume's philosophic progeny, a most
distinguished race, have, in spite of all their differences, yet
been able to agree, loth that experience is essentially as
Hume described it, and that from such an experience can
be rationally extracted anything even in the remotest de-
gree resembling the existing system of the natural sciences.
The whole fabric of the sciences depends upon the
principle of universal causation, but it is impossible
to extract from particular experiences anything more
than the habit of expecting
among sequences familiar to us in the petty round of daily
life the recurrence of something resembling a former con-
sequent, following on the heels of something resembling a
former antecedent. . . . When we come to the more com-
plex phenomena with which we have to deal, the plain
lesson taught by personal observation is not the regularity,
but the irregularity, of Nature. . . . This apparent ir-
regularity of Nature, obvious enough when we turn our
attention to it, escapes our habitual notice, of course, be-
cause we invariably attribute the want of observed uni-
formity to the errors of the observer. And without doubt
we do well. But what does this imply ? It implies that
we bring to the interpretation of our sense-perception the
252 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
principle of causation ready-made. It implies that we do
not believe the world to be governed by immutable law,
because our experiences appear to be regular ; but that we
believe that our experiences, in spite of their apparent
irregularity, follow some (perhaps) unknown rule, because
we first believe the world to be governed by immutable law.
But this is as much as to say that the principle is not proved
by experience, but that experience is understood in the light
of the principle (pv- 132, 133).
With this important conclusion Mr Balfour passes
to the consideration of "Transcendental Idealism."
This chapter is printed by the author in smaller type
than the rest of the book, and the general reader is
recommended to omit it. I propose on this occasion
to claim the privilege of the general reader for a variety
of reasons. In the first place, the position which Mr
Balfour ' has himself assigned to it indicates that it
stands to some extent apart from the main argument
of the book, which is intelligible and sufficiently com-
plete without it. Moreover, it is limited, for the most
part, to a criticism of the idealistic theory as it appears
in the works of the late Professor Green. As a matter
of fact, I am in agreement with most of the criticisms
which Mr Balfour here makes upon Green's formulae.
But the weaknesses of Green's version of idealism
have (thanks largely to Mr Balfour's criticisms of
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 253
earlier date) come to be pretty widely acknowledged,
even by Idealists themselves, and his specific doctrines
do not occupy, therefore, the position of authority in
the school which they held when Mr Balfour began to
write. It may be said also, that in pressing his critical
advantage over Green, Mr Balfour, in this chapter, is
disposed to put out of sight the larger aspects of ideal-
ism, and to forget the real affinities of the idealistic
theory to his own constructive doctrines. I will try
to show, before I close, that these affinities have been
underestimated, both by Mr Balfour himself and by
his idealist critics.
In what follows, we enter upon the most question-
able part of Mr Balfour's speculations, a part in which
his use of terms has proved, and could hardly fail to
prove, misleading. The sections to which I refer, the
last two chapters of Part II. and the whole of Part III.,
begin by drawing from the foregoing investigations the
ill-omened, and purely Humian, conclusion that " Cer-
titude is found to be the child, not of reason, but of
custom." " If this be true," continues Mr Balfour, " it
is plainly a fact of capital importance. It must re-
volutionise our whole attitude towards the problems
presented to us by science, ethics, and theology."
Obviously, we must refuse "arbitrarily to erect one
254 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
department of belief (the scientific) into a lawgiver for
all the others."
Here Mr Balfour, for the moment, does not advance
beyond the attitude which he inculcated as the " Prac-
tical Eesult " of ' Philosophic Doubt.' Both creeds, he
there argued, the creed of Science and the creed of
Eeligion, being equally without rational foundation,
it is quite indefensible to make one the norm of the
other. Later on in the present volume, Mr Balfour
expressly discards the remedy which " consists in
simply setting up, side by side with the creed of
natural science, another and supplementary set of
beliefs which may minister to needs and aspirations
which Science cannot meet" (p. 186). He recognises
how impossible it is " to acquiesce in this unconsidered
division of the ' whole ' of knowledge into two or more
unconnected fragments" (p. 187), and accepts as a
necessary ideal, and one which, at least in part, he
attempts himself to realise, " the unification of all be-
lief into an ordered whole, compacted into one coherent
structure under the stress of reason " (p. 233). But, in
the sections we are considering, he continues to work
the earlier sceptical vein. This is exemplified in the
account of reason and rationalism which follows, certain
passages of which are among the most unguarded in
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 255
the book, and have given offence in quarters where, it
is certain, they were never intended to do so. Mr
Balfour, it will be remembered, repeatedly connects
rationalism and naturalism, treating the latter as the
logical outcome of the former, the former as merely
a half-way house to the latter, occupied by thinkers
too timid or too inconsequent to realise their proper
destination. " Naturalism," he says, " is the completed
product of Bationalism" (p. 173); again he speaks of
"rationalising methods and naturalistic results" (p.
174) ; " Eationalism," he repeats, " is the high road to
naturalism " (p. 175) ; " Eationalism is Naturalism in
embryo" (p. 185).
Now if Reason is used here in the large, philosophic
sense of the word, and if by Rationalism is understood
any system of thought which builds unreservedly upon
Reason, and involves no other organ for the appre-
hension of truth, then it must be admitted that these
propositions are among the most insidious and sub-
versive which it is possible to conceive. It must have
been such statements that Mr Benn had in view when
he recommended the volume to Roman Catholics as
bringing water to their mill. So interpreted, they
would compel us to class the systems of Plato and
Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, as Naturalism in embryo,
256 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
because they build throughout upon the rational nature
of man, without feeling it necessary to invoke, without,
indeed, leaving any place for, the supernatural in the
ecclesiastical sense of the term. Mr Balfour explains,
however, at the outset that he proposes to "employ
the word in a much more restricted sense." He will
use it, he says, to indicate
a special form of that reaction against dogmatic theology
which may be said with sufficient accuracy to have taken
its rise in the Renaissance, to have increased in volume
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to
have reached its most complete expression in the Natural-
ism which has occupied our attention through the first
portion of these Notes (p. 168).
Even this definition, as it stands, is too wide, if we are
to acquiesce in the censures heaped upon Rationalism,
and in the account which Mr Balfour gives of its
necessary goal. For the definition would naturally
include the whole movement of modern thought
Descartes and Leibniz, as well as Hobbes and Hume,
Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, as well as Comte, Mill, and
Spencer. And, in that case, it cannot easily be dis-
tinguished from similar dicta of Newman and other
Catholic theologians. But, in point of fact, Mr Balfour
uses the term in a still more special and restricted
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 257
sense than his own definition might lead us to expect.
He understands by it, he says, " a view of the universe
based exclusively upon the prevalent mode of inter-
preting sense -perception" (p. 170); it involves "the
assumption that the kind of 'experience' which gave
us natural science was the sole basis of knowledge"
(p. 171). His definition would therefore apply, at
most, to the empirical or sensationalist philosophies;
and the course of the discussion makes it plain that
he has in view, not so much the systems of philoso-
phers, 1 as the body of thought occupied largely with
theological and social discussion, which arrogated to
itself, in the second half of the eighteenth century,
the prerogatives of reason and common-sense. To this
widespread movement in England and Germany a
movement characteristic of the eighteenth century,
though doubtless having its origin in an earlier period,
and continuing its influence into the present century
the name Eationalism, in a specific sense, is very
frequently applied in philosophical and theological
writing. It is the period which Hegelian writers
commonly designate as that of the Aufklarung or
Enlightenment. That these are the discussions and
1 " nationalists," he says, "as such, are not philosophers. e . They
judge as men of the world" (p. 171).
R
258 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
this the temper of mind which Mr Balfour intends
to condemn, is proved, to my mind, beyond doubt,
by the chapter on "Kationalist Orthodoxy," which
concludes this part of the book. It has often been
remarked that the orthodox defenders of Christianity
were as completely under the influence of the domi-
nant spirit as its assailants. The presuppositions and
methods of both parties were the same. The attack
was delivered and the defence conducted with the
same weapons. Mr Balfour accordingly turns, in this
chapter, to the defenders of the faith, and condemns
unsparingly the inadequacy both of the systems of
" Natural Eeligion " and of the " Christian evidences "
which were then so much in vogue. By this method
of treatment, he declares, theology becomes
a mere annex or appendix to Science, a mere footnote to
history. . . . "We are no longer dealing with a creed whose
real premisses lie deep in the nature of things. . . . We are
asked to believe the Universe to have been designed by a
Deity for the same sort of reason that we believe Canter-
bury Cathedral to have been designed by an architect ; and
to believe in the events narrated in the Gospels for the
same sort of reason that we believe in the murder of Thomas
a Becket (p. 178).
Professor Wallace is one of the critics who censures
most severely Mr Balfour's dealings with Eeason and
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 259
Eationalism ; but in a chapter of his recent Pro-
legomena to Hegel's 'Logic/ entitled "Two Ages of
Keason/' he comments in a similar strain upon the
period and spirit in question, and even while em-
phasising the larger use of Eeason, his language ac-
knowledges the frequent appropriation of Eeason and
Eationalism (but especially of the latter) in a narrower
or lower sense :
The eighteenth century, it has been often said, was a
rationalising, unhistorical age. ... To simplify, to level,
to render intelligible and self -consistent, was the task of
enlightenment in dealing with all institutions. It was
assumed that the standard of adjudication was to be found
in the averagely educated and generally cultured individual
among the class of more or less " advanced thinkers " who
asked the questions and set up the aims. . . . They took
themselves as the types of humanity and what their under-
standings found acceptable they dubbed rational : all else
was a survival from the ages of darkness.
But, in course of time, he proceeds,
it was made apparent that intelligence, with its hard-and-fast
formulae, its logical principles, its keen analysis, was not deep
enough or wide enough to justify its claim to the august title
of reason. . . . There are more things in heaven and earth
than are heard of in the philosophy of the logical intellect.
This phrase, " the logical intellect," or, as he elsewhere
varies it, the " merely intellectual and abstract in-
260 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
telligence," exactly covers the old Eationalism which
Mr Balfour attacks. Professor Wallace contrasts it
with " the Eeason of German Idealism," which he
describes as "intelligence charged with emotion, full
of reverence, reverent above all to the majesty of
that divinity which, much disguised and weather-
beaten, like Glaucus of the sea, resides in common
and natural humanity." But these words might have
been written as a description of the provisional phil-
osophy which Mr Balfour sketches in his concluding
chapters, and proposes to substitute for Naturalism and
abstract Eationalism. They dwell, at any rate, with
felicitous emphasis on its leading characteristics ; and,
on this showing, Mr Balfour's ' Suggestions,' no less
than German Idealism, might fairly be styled a doc-
trine of the larger Eeason.
In the substance of his contention, therefore, Mr
Balfour may claim to have powerful philosophical
support from a quarter sufficiently free from the sus-
picion of clericalism or supernaturalism ; and even
his terminology, when examined, is found not to stray
so far from common usage. Eationalism is, I think,
most commonly used in the hard and narrow sense
he attributes to it. At the same time, the usage is
undeniably open to misconception ; and it was a thou-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 261
sand pities that it was not more carefully fenced about
with explanation. Moreover, what a man may safely
do often depends on his own past record. Mr Balfour's
antecedent reputation for scepticism (not undeserved,
as we saw) made it almost certain that, in his case,
an attack on Eationalism would be interpreted in the
worst sense. And when to this was added the glorifi-
cation of authority at the expense of reason, in the
chapters which immediately follow, this interpretation
became inevitable.
The dissertation on Authority and Eeason may be
best understood as a supplement to the criticism of
Eationalism which precedes it. After denying the
competency of the logical intellect to solve the phil-
osophical problem, Mr Balfour proceeds to show, by
reference to everyday experience, how few human
beliefs have been reached by a conscious process of
ratiocination in the minds of the individuals who hold
them. He amplifies, that is to say, the Humian dictum
quoted above, that certitude is the child not of reason
but of custom. The vast majority of our beliefs, of our
ethical, social, and religious beliefs in particular, are
in this sense without a logical substructure; they
have been generated in the individual by "custom,
education, public opinion, the contagious convictions
262 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
of countrymen, family, party, or Church." Immense
tracts of human life thiis lie apparently altogether out-
side the purview of the abstract reason ; indeed, so
far from the mass of our fundamental beliefs de-
pending on the reasoned assent of the individuals
who entertain them, we know from history that
when men do begin to analyse their beliefs and
usages, their abstract theorising is apt to be purely
disintegrative in its tendency. Stated in this form,
Mr Balfour's contention is so obviously true that it
is difficult to imagine any one dissenting from it. But
he has chosen to express his meaning by opposing
Authority to Eeason, and contrasting its beneficent
and all - pervading influence with "the comparative
pettiness of the role played by reasoning in human
affairs."
To Eeason we are in some measure beholden, though
not, perhaps, so much as we suppose, for hourly aid in
managing so much of the trifling portion of our personal
affairs intrusted to ourselves by nature as we do not happen
to have already surrendered to the control of habit. By
reason also is directed, or misdirected, the public policy of
communities within the narrow limits of deviation per-
mitted by accepted custom and tradition. . . . (But) if
we are to judge with equity between these rival claimants,
we must not forget that it is Authority rather than Reason
to which, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 263
and politics ; that it is Authority which supplies us with
essential elements in the premisses of science ; that it is
Authority rather than Eeason which lays deep the foun-
dations of social life; that it is Authority rather than
Eeason which cements its superstructure (pp. 227-229).
Mr Balfour must have foreseen that round phrases
like these there would gather at once a hubbub of
excited and ill-informed controversy; and the love of
mischief would seem to have had some share in promp-
ting their use. Both the terms are, in this respect,
unfortunate. In the case of "Eeason," Mr Balfour
remarks, in a note, that the term is used "in its
ordinary and popular, not in its transcendental sense ;
there is no question here of the Logos, or Absolute
Eeason"; and the course of the discussion makes it
plain that he uses it as strictly equivalent to " reason-
ing," or conscious logical ratiocination. The two terms,
" reason " and " reasoning," sometimes cross and recross
one another several times in the course of the same page,
with no distinction between them. Now, this usage is
no doubt common among the older English thinkers ;
but it is certainly not the ordinary sense of the term
in recent philosophic writing. Eeason, if it does not
always explicitly convey a larger meaning, at least
constantly tends to assume that sense, and by no
264 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
means only with thinkers of a transcendental cast.
Mr Balfour himself speaks of Naturalism as deposing
" Eeason from its ancient position as the ground of all
existence" (p. 75) ; he speaks of Eeason as "the roof
and crown of things " of the universe as " the creation
of Eeason" (p. 72), and of all things as working to-
gether " towards a reasonable end " (p. 83). Clearly,
when he uses these expressions, he has something more
in view than the "intellect," or "discursive reason,"
which is only " permitted to have a hand in the simplest
jobs" (p. 72). It is the limited range of the latter which
he intends to contrast with the omnipresent action of
authority ; but by insisting, as he does repeatedly, on
the "non-rational" character of the causes which he
groups under that name, he conveys the impression
that they have no relation to Eeason in the larger
sense that they are really what he calls in one place
" utterances of unreason."
Then, again, the use of the term Authority in this
connection has even less excuse. It has no justification
in ordinary usage ; on the contrary, owing to the fixed
associations of the word, it is a use which invites mis-
conception. What are the causes which Mr Balfour
groups under this head? He enumerates them vari-
ously, but they include " custom, education, public
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 265
opinion" (p. 213), "the contagious convictions of
countrymen, family, party, or Church," and, not least,
" the spirit of the age," producing a certain " psycho-
logical ' atmosphere/ or ' climate,' favourable to the life
of certain modes of belief, unfavourable, and even fatal,
to the life of others " (p. 206). Habit, in the manage-
ment of our personal affairs, is also contrasted with
Eeason, as we have seen, in the same way as " accepted
custom and tradition," in the direction of the public
policy of communities ; and both are apparently in-
cluded under the head of authority. " Authority," he
says in the passage which most nearly approaches to a
definition " Authority, as I have been using the term,
is in all cases contrasted with Eeason, and stands for
that group of non-rational causes, moral, social, and
educational, which produces its results by psychic
processes other than reasoning" (p. 219). This ap-
pears to me to involve a complete departure from
ordinary usage. Newman, it is true, gives a similar
extension to the term in a note to his ' Apologia,' but
he acknowledges that he is using the word " in a broad
sense " ; and even there the reference seems to be, not
to the unconscious action of the forces referred to, but
to the conscious use of them as sanctions. Certainly
in ordinary usage the term is limited conveniently
266 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
and intelligibly limited to the conscious adoption by
the individual of the beliefs of some other person, or
of some historical organisation, without personal exam-
ination of the beliefs in question. Mr Balfour refers
to this usage, which he distinguishes from his own.
He rightly points out that in this sense Authority
"becomes a species of Keason," but a reason which
can in no case furnish us with the foundation for a
system of belief, seeing that there is always involved
a prior reason for submitting individual belief and
conduct to the particular authority in question. But
however inconsistent it may be to appeal to Authority
as a logical foundation for a system of beliefs, the fact
remains that the term Authority has been appropriated,
by almost universal usage, to designate this attitude of
conscious submission on the part of the individual
reasoner ; and Mr Balfour can hardly fail, therefore,
to be misunderstood when he uses it in a sense so
widely different. He uses it to cover the manifold
forces that unconsciously mould the belief and con-
duct of the individual, his own training in the past,
his social environment, the historic life of the com-
munity and the race to which he belongs above all,
the influence of history. As it is put by a German
reviewer, otherwise sympathetic, who objects to the
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 267
misleading implications of the term Authority : " What
Mr Balfour says may all be covered by the proposition
that we men, in our higher spiritual life, are the pro-
ducts of history before we are its producers, and that
in this double relation of ours to history the weight is
permanently to be placed upon the first member, upon
our dependence on the historical factors which surround
and determine us." l
But if this is so, it disposes at once of the absolute
opposition supposed to exist between these two groups
of causes. Habits are, as it were, the deposits of
reason. An action is first performed consciously,
with minute supervision of every step or detail; but,
according to the beneficent provision of nature, the
action goes more smoothly the oftener it is repeated,
and the active supervision of consciousness is no longer
required. The action has become habitual, and the
higher energies of the living creature are set at liberty
for the performance of new tasks, the acquirement of
other dexterities. This applies to the humblest bodily
exercises ; but we have only to recall Aristotle's defini-
tion of virtue as a habit, to recognise that it holds
equally in the highest reaches of the ethical life.
Habit, being thus the creation of reason, cannot be
1 Professor Kaftan in the ' Preussische Jahrbiicher,' vol. Ixxxii.
268 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
opposed to it as an alien force. And the same is true
of custom, tradition, public opinion, the spirit of the
age. They are non-rational, certainly, in the sense
that their determining influence over the individual
does not depend on a conscious process of ratiocination
on his part a progress from premisses to conclusion.
But customs and institutions are themselves originally
the product of the conscious activities of human beings.
They constitute, in their first intention, the objective
realisation of a rational system; and so long as they
continue to hold society together at all, they still are
this in their degree. Doubtless, no customs or institu-
tions are the adequate or final embodiment of Eeason ;
and hence they are subject to progressive modification,
or, if you like, rationalisation. In this way, the old
comes to be opposed to the new, and to be regarded as
a mere obstruction on the path of Eeason. But tra-
dition and custom are opposed to Eeason, only as the
good is opposed to the better. They have their birth
from Eeason originally, and they continue throughout
accessible to its transforming influence.
In fact, it does not seem too much to say that Mr
Balfour, continuing in these chapters his attack upon
the abstract, or, as he afterwards calls it, the "un-
assisted Eeason" of the rationalists, is really vindi-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 269
eating, in his own way, that larger sense of Eeason,
characteristic of the present century, which recognises
that thought becomes formal and empty, just in propor-
tion as it cuts itself adrift from the historical develop-
ment of mankind. To take only the case of ethics, the
advance of historical study has long lifted us above the
notion of an abstract conscience, promulgating to all
men the same perfect moral law. The content of the
moral law grows every way from age to age. The
progress of man upwards, from " the ape and tiger " to
the civilisation of the present day with its altruistic
and humanitarian ideals this whole ethical process
with the customs and institutions in which it embodies
itself, its laws, its public opinion, its shifting but ever
deepening and widening ideals of honour and chivalry,
of heroism or saintly life, of justice and self-control
all this development can only be rightly understood
when regarded as the progressive revelation from
within of an ideal of goodness, which in itself is the
most real of realities. From this development we
derive the substance of the ethical code. If, like
Kant, we neglect to root the individual in the cor-
porate life of humanity, the categorical imperative
remains a form void of specific content a command
which refuses to translate itself into any concrete duty.
270 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
In ethics, as in other spheres, the advance of specula-
tive thought since Kant has mainly consisted in sur-
mounting the abstract and unhistoric individualism of
preceding philosophy. Hence, as Professor Wallace
eloquently puts it, in its modern conception, "Phil-
osophy is not the work of abstract or ' unassisted '
Reason. The pure reason of philosophers is a reason
which has been purified of dross, corruption, and
sluggishness by the discipline of the sciences, by the
heroism and conscientiousness of religion, by the fair
and noble intuitions of art; otherwise it is little
worth." 1
To this view of Reason, to this interpretation of the
historical process, Mr Balfour seems to be working his
way, even in those sections which appear at first sight,
owing to their unfortunate terminology, most uncom-
promisingly opposed to it. The sheer distinction be-
tween Reason and Authority, or, as we may agree to
put it, between Reason and History, is not in the end
adopted as true. It is employed as a weapon with
which to destroy Naturalism and the barren Rational-
ism whose offspring Naturalism is represented as being.
It is in this sense an argumentum ad hominem. If we
limit reason to the discursive intellect in its conscious
1 'Fortnightly Review,' April 1895.
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 271
exercise, and if we refuse to take a theistic view of man
and the world, then undoubtedly the beliefs and prac-
tices which fill out our life must appear as the products
of non-rational causes, just as our existence as living
and conscious beings is itself, on these terms, the
outcome of unreasoning material forces. But the
whole aim of the demonstration is to impress upon
the reader the necessity of the theistic postulate.
That this is the real significance of Mr Balfour's
argument, and the true place of this discussion in
the sequence of his thought, is proved by the account
he gives of it himself, in retrospect, in his concluding
chapter. The fundamental difficulty of Naturalism,
he says, the difficulty the book is designed to press
home, is
the ineffaceable incongruity between the origin of our beliefs,
so far as these can be revealed to us by Science, and the
beliefs themselves. This it was that, as I showed in the
first part of this Essay, touched with the frost of scepticism
our ideals of conduct and our ideals of beauty. This it was
that, as I showed in the Second Part, cut down scientific
philosophy to the root. And all the later discussions with
which I have occupied the attention of the reader, serve but
to emphasise afresh the inextricable confusion which the
naturalistic hypothesis introduces into every department of
speculation and practice, by refusing to allow us to penetrate
beyond the phenomenal causes, by which, in the order of
272 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
Nature, our beliefs are produced. . . . When once we have
realised the scientific truth that at the root of every rational
process lies an irrational one ; that reason, from a scientific
point of view, is itself a natural product ; and that the
whole material on which it works is due to causes, physical,
physiological, and social, which it neither creates nor con-
trols, we shall be driven in mere self-defence to hold that,
behind these non-rational forces, and above them, guiding
them by slow degrees, and, as it were, with difficulty, to a
rational issue, stands that Supreme Reason in whom we
must thus believe, if we are to believe in anything (pp.
321-323).
The last sentences carry us already far into the
heart of Part IV., in which the author passes from
criticism to the more difficult task of construction. If
the preconception of Mr Balfour's misology and scepti-
cism still lingers in any reader's mind, it should be
effectually dispelled by his language here. He ex-
pressly denies " that the object aimed at in preceding
discussions is to discredit reason " (p. 246), and declares
that " the unification of all belief into an ordered whole
compacted into one coherent structure under the stress
of reason is an ideal which we can never abandon"
(p. 233). But, as he truly adds, " Eeason is not
honoured by pretending that she has done what, as
a matter of fact, is still undone"; "the best system
we can hope to construct will suffer from gaps and
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 273
rents, from loose ends and ragged edges. It does not,
however, follow from this that it will be without a
high degree of value."
If we have to submit, as I think we must, to an incom-
plete rationalisation of belief, this ought not to be because,
in a fit of intellectual despair, we are driven to treat Reason
as an illusion ; nor yet because we have deliberately resolved
to transfer our allegiance to irrational or non-rational inclin-
ation; but because Reason itself assures us that such a
course is, at the lowest, the least irrational one open to
us (p. 234).
What is this but an acknowledgment in fitting terms
of the incompleteness and imperfection of any finite
synthesis ? I do not understand, and I do not envy,
the state of mind of the thinker who is not prepared
to make a similar confession.
Proceeding, then, to "rationalise," to "unify," or
"co-ordinate," as far as may be, our various beliefs,
Mr Balfour begins by setting the Naturalistic theory
aside as inherently irrational. Naturalism had been
condemned, in the first part of the volume, because it
did not satisfy the demands of our ethical nature.
He here pronounces more generally that, inasmuch
as the Whole of which we desire a reasoned knowledge
includes human consciousness as an element, we must
s
274 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
refuse to " regard any system which, like Naturalism,
leaves large tracts and aspects of that consciousness
unaccounted for and derelict as other than, to that
extent at least, irrational" (p. 250). Moreover, it was
shown in Part II. that the body of beliefs about the
material world which we take for granted in ordinary
experience, and which science presents us with in an
elaborated form, cannot themselves be exhibited as
a series of logical conclusions for which the particulars
of sense furnish the premisses. It had to be regarded
rather as an assumption which we found it necessary to
make in practical life ; as Mr Balf our here expresses him-
self, it is essentially the satisfaction of a need. Doubt-
less the belief in question possesses an " inevitable " and
" coercive " character not shared by other beliefs ; but
that constitutes no logical justification for erecting the
judgments of sense-perception into a norm or standard,
by which all other beliefs must be judged. To do so
would be to substitute "psychological compulsion for
rational necessity." Universality and necessity, as
here exemplified, may be "marks of the elementary
and primitive character of the beliefs," but hardly
"badges of pre-eminence." It is the plain dictate of
reason that our scheme, " though it be founded on the
last resort upon our needs, shall at least take account
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 275
of other needs than those we share with our brute
progenitors." And on this point Mr Balfour appeals
to the example of the great masters of speculation.
Though they have not, it may be, succeeded in supplying
us with a satisfactory explanation of the Universe, at least
the Universe which they have sought to explain has been
something more than a mere collection of hypostatised
sense-perceptions, packed side by side in space, and follow-
ing each other with blind uniformity in time (p. 243).
The argument from needs to their satisfaction, here
generalised, is the constructive principle on which
Mr Balfour depends, and furnishes, I think, the key
to a true understanding of the book. The author
himself recognises that the argument is one which
requires to be applied with great caution, if the wish
is not to be father to the thought ; and he apparently
lays no stress on this particular way of formulating it.
Whether this correspondence is best described as that
which obtains between a "need" and its "satisfaction,"
may be open to question. But, at all events, let it be
understood that if the relation described is, on the one
side, something different from that between a premiss and
its conclusion, so, on the other, it is intended to be equally
remote from that between a desire and its fulfilment. That
it has not the logical validity of the first, I have already
admitted, or rather asserted. That it has not the casual,
wavering, and purely " subjective " character of the second,
276 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
is not less true. For the correspondence postulated is not
between the fleeting fancies of the individual and the
immutable verities of an unseen world, but between these
characteristics of our nature which we recognise as that in
us which, though not necessarily the strongest, is the highest;
which, though not always the most universal, is neverthe-
less the best (pp. 247, 248).
Instead of further abstract debate as to the scope and
legitimacy of the argument, let us see how Mr Balfour
applies it. Its true nature will be best shown by the
concrete examples of its use, and we shall then be
better able to form a judgment as to its legitimacy.
It is first applied, in the intellectual sphere, to demon-
strate the implications or presuppositions of the scientific
view itself, or of the mere fact that we know. Mr
Balfour had already pointed out, in dealing with our
belief in the uniformity of nature, that this belief can-
not be proved by the facts, seeing that it is a postulate
implied in the very idea of investigating facts. In
these constructive chapters, he amplifies this thought
in a remarkably fresh and striking way. After
dealing instructively with some of the usual arguments
for Theism, he proceeds to push the question a stage
further back. But "something may also be inferred
from the mere fact that we know, a fact which, like
every other, has to be accounted for." And after some
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 277
luminous pages, in which he presses home the funda-
mental inconsequence of Naturalism, in requiring us
" to accept a system as rational, one of whose doctrines
is that the system itself is the product of causes which
have no tendency to truth rather than falsehood, or to
falsehood rather than truth," l he concludes : " I do
not believe that any escape from these perplexities
is possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the
study of the world the presupposition that it was the
work of a rational Being, who made it intelligible, and
at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion,
able to understand it" (p. 301). Theism is thus a
"presupposition," "not only tolerated but actually
required by Science " (p. 321). It is " forced upon us
by the single assumption that Science is not an
illusion." As he put it before, we are "driven in
mere self-defence " to the belief in a Supreme Eeason
directing the apparently non-rational forces of nature ;
we "must" believe in Supreme Reason, "if we are
to believe in anything." But this admission, if once
made, cannot stand alone. If we " postulate a rational
God in the interests of Science, we can scarcely de-
1 One might say, indeed, that the very notion of truth is an inex-
plicable excrescence or inconsequence in a world where everything
simply is or happens.
278 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
cline to postulate a moral God in the interests of
Morality." And, in th'e light of this presupposition,
the whole process by which the ethical code and the
moral sentiments have been slowly developed appears
in a different setting, as "an instrument for carrying
out a divine purpose/' as a divine education of the
human race.
Such, without following them into details, are the
important conclusions which Mr Balfour reaches by
the method of argument he follows. When they are
thus stated summarily, and detached from some of
the discussions which accompany them, the philoso-
phical student can hardly fail to remark the striking-
resemblance of Mr Balfour's mode of argument to the
transcendental method of Kant, and the affinity of his
conclusions to those of Kant's idealistic successors.
In saying this, it is far from my intention to depre-
ciate the freshness and independence of Mr Balfour's
treatment; on the contrary, he has, I think, accom-
plished a remarkable feat in working his way from
a different starting-point, and to a large extent by a
different route, to this fundamental argument. And
he has made it doubly his own by clothing it in pel-
lucid English, which he who runs may read. It is the
transcendental argument stated with a luminous sim-
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 279
plicity, as it might have been stated by Hume, had
he returned in maturer life to the metaphysical medi-
tations of his youth. But the argument itself is in
substance identical with that which Kant patiently
dug from the d&yris of rationalism, and built into a
system, so palpably artificial in its details and so
cumbrously pedantic in its terminology, that the
philosophical world has been engaged ever since in
quarrelling over its interpretation. When we pene-
trate beneath the portentous phrases to the compara-
tively humble truth which they labour to express,
Kant's "objective unity of apperception," as the
supreme condition of the possibility of experience,
is simply the assertion that the idea of "a nature"
or a rational system is not a conclusion from particular
facts, but is involved, as a postulate or presupposition,
in there being any experience of facts at all. And
when, at the close of his investigation, he emphasises
the adaptation of phenomena to our faculty of cognition,
as proof of a harmony between sense and understanding,
that is to say, ultimately, a harmony between the world
and the mind; when he argues that this adaptation
justifies us in treating reality as everywhere rational-
isable, and therefore as if it were the product of a
supreme reason ; this, in more scholastic form, and
280 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
with Kant's well-known reservation as to the merely
regulative character of -the Ideas of Eeason, is neither
more nor less than the argument from the mere fact
that we know. But to colligate Kant's different state-
ments, and to disengage what is central and vital in
his argument from its perplexing and useless integu-
ments, is a task which demands both philosophical and
exegetical skill. The English world has as yet failed,
for the most part, to grasp Kant's way of putting this
argument ; we shall be curious to see whether it proves
more accessible to Mr Balfour's presentation of it.
Mr Balfour himself does not seem to be aware how
closely the general attitude of mind he recommends in
Part IV. corresponds to the transcendental proof from
the possibility of experience. In the earlier part of
his work, he emphasises the impossibility of reaching
a satisfactory foundation by means of "inferences of
the ordinary pattern" (p. 186). He recognises that,
in his own argument, the relation between needs and
their satisfaction is "something different from that
between a premiss and a conclusion " (p. 248) ; and at
the close of the theistic argument which we have just
examined (from the mere fact that we know), he seems to
hesitate whether the term proof can be properly applied
to it. " Theism," he says, " whether or not it can in the
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
strict meaning of the word be described as proved by
Science, is a principle which Science . . . requires
for its own completion. . . . Our knowledge of that
system is inexplicable unless we assume for it a rational
Author " (p. 302). In such passages, it seems almost as
if the writer were feeling his way to a new point of
view, and were hardly aware of the strength of his own
method. It is unduly to disparage the nature of his
argument to contrast it with logical procedure, or to
hesitate to call it a proof. It implies, certainly, the
abandonment of the old ideal of a philosophical system,
" as a series of premisses and conclusions, starting from
those which are axiomatic i.e., for which proof can
neither be given nor required, and running on through
a continuous series of binding inferences, until the
whole of knowledge is caught up and ordered in the
meshes of this all-inclusive dialectic network" (p. 105).
If by premisses, in other words, we understand either
isolated intuitions or the particulars of sense, then it
may be said that the transcendental argument neither
starts from premisses nor arrives at a conclusion. Yet,
in a more vital sense, experience itself, as a concrete
fact demanding explanation, constitutes the premiss
from which we advance (or rather regress) to its im-
plied condition or explaining cause. The postulate or
282 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
presupposition thus reached is, from one point of view,
a conclusion ; from another, it is the ultimate premiss
on which all our conclusions in a certain department
or, in this case, all conclusions whatever depend. If
we can speak, as Mr Balfour himself does, of the pre-
supposition as "actually required by science," as
" forced upon us by the mere assumption that Science
is not an illusion " as a necessary assumption, " if we
are to believe in anything" then it seems to me a
merely technical question, whether we agree to call the
process of reaching it an inference or not. We have, at
all events, the element of logical necessity in its most
unequivocal form.
The Kantian terms, postulates, presuppositions (im-
plications also, I think) are used from time to time by
Mr Balfour, either as nouns or verbs. As a general
term, postulate seems to me much the best. Need
and satisfaction are probably words of too every-
day a character to express a fundamental speculative
position ; they are too coloured by the associations of
life to express a philosophical meaning with precision.
No doubt the word " need " often appeals to us, just
by its breadth and simplicity, and in some connections
no word would seem so appropriate. But to many it
seems little more than a glorified wish ; and although
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 283
this is unjust, it cannot be denied that the associations
of the word are too predominantly emotional. Now
when we speak even of ethical or religious needs, it is
not only the emotional disappointment, the collapse of
hope and joy, that is referred to, but the fact that
the denial of the postulated reality inverts the whole
proportions of our life, irrationalises the whole scheme
of things presupposed by our ordinary experience.
The word postulate seems to express admirably both
this element of intellectual necessity in the argument,
and, at the same time, the subjective element, which
is undoubtedly also present. For universal scepticism
admits of no refutation ; a man must admit certain
aspects of experience before any argument can be
founded upon them.
But no nice question of terminology need affect our
sense of the importance and fundamental truth of the
argument itself. The acknowledgment of rational
necessity which it involves rather, I should say,
the insistence on rational necessity constitutes the
advance in Mr Balfour's thought on which I have
desired to lay stress. Although at times his phrase-
ology may waver, and we may catch the echo of
passages in ' Philosophic Doubt ' which identify
"needs" with " non - rational impulses," yet, on the
284 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
whole, the difference of tone is marked. The needs
are here presented as the needs of reason itself. In
the case of the intellectual argument, this may perhaps
be allowed to be obvious. But it is no less so in
the case of the ethical. Whereas he had formerly
said "I and an indefinite number of other persons
feel a practical need for [ethical and religious beliefs],
but no legitimate argument can be founded on the
mere existence of this need or impulse. We are on
this matter, unfortunately, altogether outside the sphere
of Eeason," he now condemns the Naturalistic theory
as " irrational," and claims that his own is founded on
" the plain dictates of reason." From the former
standpoint, argument is impossible, and is admitted
to be so ; but in the present volume we are no longer
"outside the sphere of Eeason." The whole scheme
of construction implies that we have passed from
" psychological compulsion " to " rational necessity."
Mr Balfour may be said to be trying, throughout the
volume, to establish a definition of truth or of Keason
which shall be at once more comprehensive and more
self-consistent than that which limits it to the facts
and laws of physical Science. The truth, if fully
known, must include, he argues, a satisfactory ex-
planation of our ethical, sesthetical, and religious ideas
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 285
and sentiments. The self-styled truth that fails to
do this is a fragment which men have mistaken for
the whole a fragment, moreover, which cannot even
supply its own foundation. Such a system arrogates
to itself unjustly the august name of truth, for truth
cannot land us in an open contradiction between
equally fundamental constituents of our nature. But
if this is so, the appeal of the volume is not from
truth to authority but from a partial to a fuller truth,
from man conceived as mere abstract intellect to
human nature as a whole.
In his method, as I have said, Mr Balfour resembles
Kant, and, like Kant, he passes from the intellectual
to the ethical domain. But, in his conclusions, he
approaches more nearly the general position of Hegel.
In the metaphysical application of his thought, he
enforces the dependence of the subjective reason of
the individual on the objective reason of the historic
process, and recognises a cosmic or Absolute Reason as
the ground of the whole development. What dis-
tinguishes all three alike is (in one way of putting it)
the unwavering humanism of their point of view, as
opposed to the naturalism of those who would crush
the spirit of man by thrusting upon it the immensities
of physical nature, of infinite space and endless time.
286 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
Mr Balfour, in some searching pages, has exposed the
fallacy of such a mode of argument : material grandeur
and moral excellences, as he well says, are incom-
mensurable quantities. And in the age-long debate
which has divided thinkers since the time of Democ-
ritus and Plato, this has been the essential import of
all the great idealistic systems Travrwv xprujudrtov
/jierpov avOpwTTos. This thesis, first formulated by
scepticism, is in point of fact, when properly inter-
preted, profoundly true. Our own nature is, from
the very circumstances of the case, the only measuring-
rod which we can apply to the universe. " A harmony
of some sort between our inner selves and the universe
of which we form a part is a tacit postulate," as Mr
Balfour says, "of every belief we entertain about
phenomena." Our intellect is, after all, as much ours
as any other part of our being, and in accepting the
account of science as true, the Naturalist is involun-
tarily postulating harmony, to that extent, between
himself and the universe. But why should this
harmony be limited to the intellectual activities of
sense-perception ? It is impossible to show that this
limitation is other than arbitrary, and that we have
not as good a right to use as our touchstone of reality
those inspirations of goodness which are the spur of
MR BALFOUK AND HIS CRITICS. 287
all our endeavour, and those visions of beauty and
of harmonious truth which are a master-light of all
our seeing. Man must be anthropomorphic. What
we ask is simply that his anthropomorphism shall be
deliberate, consistent, and critical, instead of being un-
conscious, partial, and arbitrary.
But if, in these latter remarks, I have emphasised
the affinity of Mr Balfour's thought to these systems
of the larger Keason of which Hegel's is the most
convenient example, the affinity is obviously not to
be understood in any narrow or rigid sense. His
whole intellectual temper is different ; some might
say it is more sceptical, others might say it is more
human, by which I mean more cognisant of the limita-
tions of humanity. There is one important Hegelian
doctrine at least with which Mr Balfour is strenuously
at one the doctrine of " degrees of truth," the insight
that all truth is a matter of approximation, that no
error is wholly false and no finite truth is wholly true.
This doctrine, recently re-expounded by Mr Bradley
with so much force, is an integral part of Hegelian
thought, but a part strangely forgotten in the claim
of the system to represent absolute truth, to be indeed
the insight of the Absolute Being into his own essence
and history. The temper of Mr Balfour's book is
288 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.
well exhibited by contrast in a characteristic passage,
with which this long review may fitly close :
I like to think of the human race, from whatever stock
its members may have sprung, in whatever age they may be
born, whatever creed they may profess, together in the
presence of the One Reality, engaged not wholly in vain, in
spelling out some fragments of its message. All share its
being ; to none are its oracles wholly dumb. And if, both
in the natural world and in the spiritual, the advancement
we have made 011 our forefathers be so great that our in-
terpretation seems indefinitely removed from that which
primitive man could alone apprehend, and wherewith he
had to be content, it may be, indeed I think it is, the case
that our approximate guesses are closer to his than they
are to their common Object, and that, far as we seem to
have travelled, yet, measured on the celestial scale, our
intellectual progress is scarcely to be discerned, so minute is
the parallax of Infinite Truth.
NOTE A.
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM.'
ONE of the results of Mr Balfour's ' Foundations of
Belief has been to bring to light some serious, and
even remarkable, divergences of view as to the meaning
and precise application of current philosophical terms.
This was particularly the case in regard to the term
Naturalism, which is so prominent in Mr Balfour's
argument. Much of the criticism of the book took, in
fact, the form of an indignant repudiation of the
author's use of names. It may perhaps, therefore,
contribute to the fixing of philosophical usage in this
case, and in the case of some other terms frequently
conjoined with it, if, starting from Mr Balfour's defini-
tions, we examine his usage in the light of some of the
chief objections taken to it.
In his introductory chapter, Mr Balfour thus indi-
T
290 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM."
cates the system of thought against which his book is
directed :
Whatever the name selected, the thing itself is suffi-
ciently easy to describe. For its leading doctrines are that
we may know phenomena and the laws by which they
are connected but nothing more. " More " there may or
may not be, but if it exists we can never apprehend it;
and whatever the World may be " in its reality " (suppos-
ing such an expression to be otherwise than meaningless),
the World for us, the World with which alone we are con-
cerned, or of which we alone can have any cognisance, is that
World which is revealed to us through perception, and which
is the subject-matter of the Natural Sciences. Here, and
here only, are we on firm ground. Here, and here only,
can we discover anything which deserves to be described
as Knowledge. Here, and here only, may we profitably
exercise our reason or gather the fruits of Wisdom (p. 7).
In another passage he speaks of " the two elements
composing the naturalistic creed : the one positive, con-
sisting, broadly speaking, of the teaching contained in
the general body of the natural sciences; the other
negative, expressed in the doctrine that beyond these
limits, wherever they may happen to lie, nothing is,
and nothing can be, known " (p. 92) ; and again of " the
assumption that the kind of ' experience ' which gave
us natural science was the sole basis of knowledge,"
and " the further inference that nothing deserved to be
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 291
called Knowledge which did not come within the circle
of the natural sciences " (p. 171). " After all," he says
in another place, "Naturalism is nothing more than
the assertion that empirical methods are valid and that
no others are so " (p. 134). In these passages the
theory is defined by reference to its presuppositions or
method; when we look at the resulting body of doc-
trine, we find that the theory attempts " the impossible
task of extracting reason from unreason " (p. 301). It
involves the
deposition of Reason from its ancient position as the ground
of all existence to that of an expedient among other ex-
pedients for the maintenance of organic life ; an expedient,
moreover, which is temporary in its character and insig-
nificant in its effects. An irrational Universe which acci-
dentally turns out a few reasoning animals at one corner
of it, as a rich man may experiment at one end of his
park with some curious " sport " accidentally produced
among his flocks and herds, is a Universe which we might
well despise, if we did not ourselves share its degradation
(p. 75).
And, finally, the naturalistic catechism which he
elaborates at the conclusion of the first part of the
volume clearly identifies Naturalism with consistent
Materialism (pp. 83-85).
To the system whose substantive doctrines he thus
292 THE USE OF THE TEEM "NATURALISM."
indicates, Mr Balfour applies throughout his volume
the term Naturalism. "" Agnosticism, Positivism, Em-
piricism," he says, "have all been used more or less
correctly to describe this scheme of thought, though
in the following pages, for reasons with which it is
not necessary to trouble the reader, the term which
I shall commonly employ is Naturalism." This pas-
sage and the usage it indicates have called forth em-
phatic disclaimers from the patrons or representatives
of the views which are here practically identified.
Each objects to be identified with any of the others,
and they all disclaim responsibility for the system of
doctrines attributed to them in common. Professor
Huxley, not unnaturally jealous for the honour of the
term which he invented, objected " to making Agnosti-
cism the scapegoat, on whose head the philosophic
sins of the companions with whom it is improperly
associated may be conveniently piled up " ; while Mr
Erederic Harrison, as a Positivist, is still more wroth
to find himself identified with the Agnostics, against
whom he has so often gone forth to war in the Ke-
views. "The passage just quoted," he says, "is a
coagulated clot of confusion and misstatement " from
which it is easy to see that Mr Harrison is very
angry indeed. Professor Wallace, on the other hand,
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 293
though himself accepting in the main an Idealism of
the Hegelian type, puts a lance in rest for Naturalism,
which he seems to think has been hardly treated in
being identified with its own extreme consequences.
" Its faults," he says, " spring from a creditable motive.
It is the desire to be honest, to say only what you
can prove, to require thorough continuity and con-
sistency in the whole realm of accepted truths. 1
Naturalism was a reaction from the follies of Super-
naturalism."
Naturalism [he says again] was at the outset and in es-
sence a negation, not of the supernatural in general, but of a
supernatural conceived as incoherent, arbitrary, and chaotic ;
a protest against a conception which separated God from
the world, as a potter from his clay, against the ignava
ratio which took customary sequences of events as needing
1 I cannot help remarking the striking similarity between this ac-
count of Naturalism and Professor Huxley's truly extraordinary
definition of Agnosticism as consisting essentially " in the application
of a single principle, which is the fundamental axiom of modern
science. Positively, this principle may be thus expressed : in matters
of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without
regard to any other consideration. And negatively : in matters of
the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are
not demonstrated or demonstrable." On this showing, we should all
desire with one accord to take service under the Agnostic flag, for
Agnosticism, so defined, is another name for intellectual honesty.
Similarly, on Professor Wallace's showing, no self-respecting person
would permit himself to be called anything but a Naturalist.
294 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM."
no explanation, and looked for special revelation from por-
tents and wonders. 1
Understanding Supernaturalism in this sense, Professor
Wallace regrets "that some recognition of the inner
aims of Eationalism and Naturalism is not vouchsafed,"
and he would evidently prefer to rehabilitate the term
Naturalism and follow that banner, rather than be
suspected of any complicity with a discredited Super-
naturalism. To this Mr Balfour might easily retort
that his purpose was not an historical review of the
progress of opinion, but an attempt to deal directly
with current ways of looking at the universe, using
terms as nearly as possible in the sense which is most
general in philosophic usage, and which they tend to
bear in the vocabulary of educated people. And al-
though Naturalism, as a matter of etymology and his-
tory, may take its rise as merely the denial of an
external and arbitrary Supernaturalism, I think there
can be no reasonable doubt that the name has acquired
within the present century the signification which Mr
Balfour gives it, and that it has, indeed, of late been
gradually supplanting other terms as the most fitting
designation for the system of beliefs in question.
1 These quotations are from an article by Professor Wallace in the
' Fortnightly Keview ' for April 1895.
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 295
Naturalism, in accepted phraseology, is a name appli-
cable to any system which, as Mr Balfour expresses
it, finds the metaphysical or permanent reality of the
universe in " the world which is revealed to us through
perception and which is the subject-matter of the
Natural Sciences." Naturalism is, therefore, practi-
cally identical with Materialism, though it may not
pretend to explain the origin of the phenomena of
consciousness from matter in motion, but may content
itself, in that regard, with a doctrine of concomitance.
In any case, the fundamental explanation the central
fact of the universe is to be found, according to the
theory, not in the phenomena of consciousness with
their rational and ethical implications, but in the
mechanical system of causes and effects of which con-
sciousness seems to be the outcome or accompaniment.
If that is so, any attempt to re-define Naturalism in
such a way that absolute Idealism might reasonably
be included under it, could only result in still further
confusing the issues. The " New Naturalism," of which
Professor Wallace constitutes himself the champion,
would have, as he says, " to repair the defects of the
Old." But when repairs are so extensive as to alter
the whole structure and outlook of the building, the
question as to the identity of the edifice becomes a point
296 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM."
of casuistry. Naturalism, in ordinary usage, is the anti-
thesis not merely of the Supernaturalism which finds
its support in supposed divine " interference," but also
of every spiritual or idealistic theory of the universe.
The wide influence of Mr Balfour's book must have
largely contributed to stereotype this use of the term ;
and, from the point of view of philosophical terminology,
I cannot regard this as other than a fortunate result.
As a standing designation, it is distinctly preferable
in point of accuracy to any of the terms which Mr
Balfour mentions as currently, but somewhat loosely,
in use as synonyms. The absence of God and im-
mortality from the Positivist scheme may well seem
to the ordinary man to leave no practical difference
between that doctrine and the theory of Naturalism.
Yet, from a philosophical point of view, the difference
is not unimportant. Though, in its denials, Positivism
makes common cause with Naturalism, its constructive
doctrine is borrowed from Idealism, or, if you like,
from Christianity. In the stress which Positivism lays
upon man, even to the extent of calling itself the
religion of Humanity, Positivism echoes the thought
of Pascal, that man the dying reed is greater than
the universe by which he dies, that there is no com-
mon measure for the immensities of the physical uni-
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 297
verse and the spring of love, of thought, of reverence
that wells in a human heart. To this Positivism owes
its vitality, for the germ of the higher religions is this
sense of the truly infinite, the truly adorable, as re-
vealed in man alone. " Comtianism," Dr Hutchison
Stirling has aptly said, "bears to Hegelianism a re-
lation very similar to that of Mahometanism to Chris-
tianity" (Schwegler, p. 464). If we generalise the
statement, we may, I think, recognise in Positivism
an idealism manqutf an idealism with strange defects
and inconsistencies but still a doctrine in spirit and
intention widely removed from mere Materialism. It
is well, therefore, not to ignore this difference, but to
continue to use the term in a narrower and specific
sense, as applicable to the different sects which appeal
to Comte as their founder and claim to represent the
Eeligion of Humanity.
Naturalism seems also more accurately descriptive
than Agnosticism ; for the theory in question is essen-
tially a negative dogmatism, whereas Agnosticism, ac-
cording to its etymology and according to the intention
of the inventor of the term, is meant to convey only
an expression of ignorance, a balance of the intellect,
a refusal to pronounce upon ultimate problems either
in one sense or in another. "A plague o' both your
298 THE USE OF THE TEEM "NATURALISM."
houses" is, in effect, the language held by Professor
Huxley to the partisans of Idealism and Materialism
alike, in his well-known essay " On the Physical Basis
of Life," in the essay " On Descartes," and in many
other places.
The materialistic position that there is nothing in the
world hut matter, force, and necessity is as utterly devoid
of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas.
The fundamental doctrines of Materialism, like those of
Spiritualism and most other "isms," lie outside the limits
of philosophical inquiry, and David Hume's great service
to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these
limits are. (Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 162.)
No doubt it is difficult constantly to keep oneself cor-
rectly balanced upon the razor-edge of agnostic ortho-
doxy. Professor Huxley tells us that, "the further
Science advances, the more extensively and consistently
will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by
materialistic formulae and symbols " ; and though he
enters his protest against the error of mistaking the
symbols for real entities, he admits, in doing so, that
it is a mistake only too easy to fall into. The Agnostic,
like David Hume, who is here invoked as patron of
the creed, is apt to reserve his denials for " divinity or
school metaphysics," while he views with something
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 299
like equanimity the materialistic conclusions drawn
from the advance of science. He is certain that he
knows nothing of spiritual realities or agents; theo-
retically, he should be equally certain of his ignorance
of reality or agency in the case of natural phenomena.
But, as he is constantly occupied with the latter, his
hand becomes subdued to what it works in. As man,
moreover, is not a creature of pure reason alone, the
senses assert their imperious sway over his practical
beliefs, and his position becomes indistinguishable from
Materialism pure and simple. Still, in spite of the
fatal facility with which the one may glide into the
other, we have in strictness no more right to identify
the two, than a naturalist would have to deny the
difference between two species because of the existence
of intermediate forms in which they continuously ap-
proach one another. Definition in such cases must be
by type. The typical Agnostic, like Huxley, is clearly
distinguished from the typical Materialist. It would
be an unjustifiable and quite unnecessary removal of
landmarks, therefore, to use the two terms indiscrimin-
ately. No one in these days will allow that he is a
Materialist ; but Naturalism supplies exactly the term
needed to enable us to surmount this verbal difficulty,
while Agnosticism may be conveniently retained to
300 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM."
designate the quasi-sceptical position which it etymo-
logically suggests. 1
The only legitimate objection to this use of the
term Naturalism is that urged by Professor Wallace.
Naturalism, in a certain context, appears as the an-
tithesis of Supernaturalism ; and he who attacks Natur-
alism may accordingly be supposed to do so in the
interest of "miracles" and other "supernatural" adjuncts
of theology. Some parts of the discussion in Mr
Balfour's concluding chapters certainly seem to favour
this view of his argument. But there are others which
suggest a larger interpretation, as where he expressly
discards what he calls " the common division between
' natural ' and ' supernatural.' "
We cannot consent [he proceeds], to see the " preferential
working of Divine Power " only in those religious manifesta-
tions which refuse to accommodate themselves to our con-
ception (whatever that may be) of the strictly " natural "
order of the world ; nor can we deny a Divine origin to
those aspects of religious development which natural laws
seem competent to explain. The familiar distinction, in-
deed, between " natural " and " supernatural " coincides
neither with that between natural and spiritual, nor with
1 Empiricism may be disregarded in this connection, as a term which
is no longer much in popular use. It tends to become restricted to
the bloodless controversies of the schools, and even there it suggests,
perhaps, a more or less obsolete formulation of the issues.
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 301
that between " preferential action " and " non-preferential,"
nor with that between phenomenal and noumenal. It is
perhaps less important than is sometimes supposed."
Quite in keeping with this is the fine passage which
follows on Inspiration, as " limited to no age, to no
country, no people" (pp. 330, 331).
But whatever Mr Balfour's personal attitude may be
towards the supernatural in the ordinary theological
sense of that word (and that is a matter which does
not concern us here), it is sufficiently plain that this
is not the kernel of the argument. Even when he
comes to deal with the central article of the Christian
faith, it is not on the extra-naturalness of certain
facts that the emphasis is laid, but upon the adapta-
tion of the doctrine to the needs of man upon what
might be called, therefore, in the highest sense, its
"naturalness." The antithesis which runs through
the volume, and which must impress itself upon any
candid reader, is not that between the natural and
a so-called supernatural, but between the natural and
the spiritual, between nature, as "revealed to us
through perception," and that higher nature in nature
which makes us men and gives us an earnest of the
Divine. This antithesis also has the sanction of usage
on its side. Both in theological and in philosophical
302 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM."
writing, the natural and the spiritual are as currently
and intelligibly opposed lo one another as the natural
and the supernatural. The moral world of persons
is constantly contrasted with the natural world of
things. What other interpretation is to be put upon
Leibniz's " Kingdom of Nature and Kingdom of Grace,"
upon Kant's opposition of the Sensible and the In-
telligible World ? " Nature," says Jacobi, " conceals
God. Man reveals God." "Man Supernatural" is
the title chosen by Professor Campbell Eraser for one
of his recent Gifford Lectures. " As a merely sentient
being man is wholly, or almost wholly, an event in
the orderly natural system. In his moral acts man
appears to exemplify that final principle on which
natural order ultimately depends." "Nature," says
Green, concluding his long argument for a spiritual
principle, "implies a principle which is non-natural"
(Proleg., p. 56). I quote these prominent expressions
of widely different thinkers, not because I regard
them all as equally sound, or any of them perhaps
as beyond criticism, but simply to prove how widely
current is the narrower sense of " Nature " which is
embodied in Mr Balfour's use of Naturalism. In not
one of the passages quoted is there the least sugges-
tion of the supernatural in the mechanical and external
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 303
sense of popular theology. The contrast is substanti-
ally between the material and the ideal, the natural
and the spiritual. If we turn to the histories of
philosophy and their classifications of philosophical
doctrine, we find also that the usage is no innovation.
When Schwegler applies the term Naturalism to the
doctrine of Democritus, when Ueberweg uses it as an
equivalent to Materialism in his account of the French
Encyclopaedists, and describes in the same way the
transformation which the Hegelian system underwent
at the hands of Feuerbach, both apparently appeal to
accepted usage. No apology is offered for the intro-
duction of the term, nor does the reader feel that any
explanation is required of a terminology so appropriate.
The conjecture is permissible that Mr Balfour's usage
would also have been accepted without cavil but for
the sub-title of the volume, which seems to make the
whole discussion ancillary to the study of theology.
The air of England is charged with ecclesiasticism, and
this was sufficient to create an inveterate prejudice
in many minds, and to rouse in many more the sus-
picion of an arri&re pensfo. For there are many, un-
fortunately, who are more jealous of the encroachments
of the supernatural than alive to the conservation of
the spiritual truths of which it has been the vehicle.
NOTE B.
THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM
CONSEQUENCES.
MR BALFOUR'S general mode of procedure has been
unsparingly condemned in many quarters, on the
ground that his inquiry is avowedly undertaken in
the interest of certain beliefs as to the course of the
world and man's place in it. The motive of the in-
vestigation, it is said, discredits its results in advance.
It is not a disinterested quest of truth, but a piece of
special pleading in support of beliefs whose truth is
assumed without investigation, on the strength of
certain supposed "needs" of the individual and the
race. But the needs of the race, still more of the
individual, have no relevance, when the question is
one of the facts of existence. Proud man has long
enough indulged himself in this comforting but fatuous
course of reasoning, and imposed his own image upon
THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSEQUENCES. 305
the world. Man's needs must bend before nature's
necessities. It is time for him to accept his true
place in the cosmic scheme. If science teaches us
our insignificance and evanescence, we have no option
but to accept that teaching, however wounding to our
pride or lacerating to our emotions it may be.
Thus, in familiar accents, with a measure of right
on their side, and a still greater measure of plausi-
bility, we can hear the devotees of "truth" exclaim.
And their indignation is naturally redoubled when Mr
Balfour, in the first part of his book, deliberately
proceeds to test the doctrines of "Naturalism" by
their consequences that is to say, by the consequences,
or supposed consequences, to morality and life of their
general adoption as a working creed. Here at least,
we can hear them say, is a method of polemic, which
it might have been supposed was obsolete. Mr Bal-
four himself admits that his procedure is not the
most logical, but he blandly adds that he has adopted
it in order to arrest the attention of "the general
reader." Could there be a more unblushing admission
or a more demoralising mode of argument ?
This line of objection, which rests upon the same
notion of truth, has even more show of reason than
the first; and it may be freely admitted that the
u
306 THE LEGITIMACY OF THE
argument in terrorem, from the supposed consequences
of a doctrine, is peculiarly liable to abuse, and also
that it has frequently been idly invoked in the past.
Beliefs which were held to be essential to the religious
life or the stability of the social fabric have been
abandoned without any signs of injury to either, and
doctrines which were declared to strike at the roots
of both religion and society have become part of our
common teaching; and yet the heavens have not
fallen, as it was confidently prophesied they would.
Nothing, in short, is more wonderful than the power
of adaptation which experience shows man to possess
in the matter of belief. Yet while this is both true
and reassuring, we must remember that experience
only proves its truth within certain limits. Profound
as the changes of belief have been in the past, the
doctrines that have been from time to time abandoned
or embraced must still be pronounced to be concerned
with details, as compared with the fundamental issue
between Materialism or Naturalism and a spiritual or
idealistic view of man's place in the universe. This,
it may be fairly argued, is not an issue between
different forms of an ethical or social creed, but be-
tween belief and no-belief ; inasmuch as the material-
istic scheme affords no legitimate basis for ethical
AKGUMENT FKOM CONSEQUENCES. 307
endeavour or ethical precept. No human society has
ever been based upon the conclusions of materialism,
and wherever this negative creed has become widely
spread among individuals (in cultivated society under
the Eoman empire, for example, or in the same circles
in France before the Eevolution) the result has been
visible in moral deterioration and social disintegration.
The teaching of experience, therefore, does not dis-
courage the application of the argument from conse-
quences in an ultimate resort, however much it may
cast ridicule upon misguided attempts to invoke this
ultima ratio for any of the changing forms in which
mankind have embodied their spiritual experience.
For the ultima ratio of every creed, the ultima ratio of
truth itself, is that it works ; and no greater condem-
nation can be passed upon a doctrine or system than
that, if it were true, human life, as it has been lived
by the best of the race, would cease to be reasonable,
or rather, would become a phenomenon whose emer-
gence it was impossible to explain.
This consideration tends also to rob the previous
objection of a good deal of its plausibility. " Truth "
has become in these days a kind of Juggernaut, whose
car is periodically dragged abroad in triumph by its
self-immolating worshippers. There is much question-
308 THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSEQUENCES.
begging done under cover of devotion to " truth." The
ethical life has also its- certainties and its postulates ;
and a man is not necessarily evading truth, when he
rejects a creed, because it has no place within it for
those postulates of the ethical or spiritual life which to
him are the most fundamental certainties of all. Nor
is he convicted of prejudice, because he avows that the
defence of these postulates is the motive of his specu-
lative inquiry. Mr Balfour, as has been argued in the
preceding essay, may be said to be trying throughout
his volume to establish a definition of truth or of
Eeason, which shall be at once more comprehensive
and more self -consistent than that which limits it to
the facts and laws of physical science. But if this is
so, then the appeal of the volume is not from truth
to authority, or from truth to subjective cravings, but
from a partial and fragmentary truth to a fuller truth ;
and the argument may fairly claim to be judged on its
merits, without any importation of the odium anti-
theologicum.
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