'nia
UNIVERSITY
r'XTf
LJ A, 1 L
ELEMENTS ()/'
GENERAL PHILOSOPHY
Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION MANUALS
EDITED BY PROFESSOR KNIGHT
ELEMENTS
GENERAL PHILOSOPHY
GENERAL PLAN OF THE SERIES.
This Series is primarily designed to aid the University Extension
Movement throughout Great Britain and America, and to supply the
need so -widely felt by students, of Text-looks for study and reference, in
connexion ivith the atithorized Courses of Lectures.
Volumes dealing with separate sections of Literature, Science, Philo-
sophy, History, and Art have been assigned to representative literary
men, to University Professors, or to Extension Lecturers connected
ivith Oxford, Cambridge, London, and the Universities of Scotland and
Ireland.
The Manuals are not intended for purposes of Elementary Education,
but for students who have made some advance in the subjects dealt -with.
The statement of details is meant to illustrate the working of general
laws, and the development of principles ; while the historical evolution
of the subject dealt with is kept in view, along with its philosophical
significance.
The remarkable success which has attended University Extension in
Britain has been partly due to the combination of scientific treatment
with popularity, and to the union of simplicity with thoroughness. This
movement, however, can only reach those resident in the larger centres
of population, while all over the country there are thoughtful persons
who desire the same kind of teaching. It is for them also that this
Series is designed. Its aim is to supply the general reader with the same
kind of teaching as is given in the Lectures, and to reflect the spirit
which has characterized the movement, viz. the combination of principles
with facts, and of methods with results.
The Manuals are also intended to be contributions to the Literature of
the Subjects with which they respectively deal, quite apart from University
Extension ; and some of them will be found to meet a general rather than
a special want.
Elements
of
General Philosophy
BY GEORGE CROOM ROBERTSON
LATE GROTK PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
EDITED FROM NOTES OF LECTURES DELIVERED
AT THE COLLEGE, 1870-1892
BY C. A. FOLEY RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1896
jforfc
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
Zl
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
THAT I have been able to compile a second volume of
lectures delivered by the late George Croom Robertson is
again due, in the first place, to the kindness of Mr. Charles
Robertson in placing at my disposal the MS. notes left by
the professor, and, in the second place, to the ready help
afforded me, through the loan of their note-books, by those
students to whom I acknowledged my debt of gratitude in
the Elements of Psychology, and to whom I here once more
express my grateful obligation \ Once more, too, I wish to
record my sense of the benefit derived from the corrections
and suggestions made by Mr. Charles Robertson and
1 I append the names of those who contributed materials that I was
able to use for this manual : George A. Aitken, Esq. ; Rev. Martin
Anstey, M.A. ; Mrs. Archer Hind (Miss Laura Pocock) ; Mrs. Sophie
Bryant, D.Sc. : Herman J. Cohen, Esq. ; Professor W. Hall Griffin,
B.A. ; Rev. Isidore Harris, M.A. ; H. Frank Heath, Esq., B.A.,
Ph.D. ; Rev. Alfred Hills, B.A. ; Principal J. Viriamu Jones, M.A.,
F.R.S. (University College S. Wales and Monmouthshire) ; J. Neville
Keynes, Esq., M.A., LL.D. ; Benjamin Leverson, Esq., B.A. ; Rev. S.
Levy, B.A. ; J. W. Manning, Esq., M.A. ; Miss Dorothy Marshall,
B.Sc. ; Andrew Ogilvie, Esq., B.A. ; Miss Mary Robertson, M.A. ;
Ernest C. Robinson, Esq., M.A. ; G. Armitage Smith, Esq., M.A. ;
President J. G. Schurman, M.A., D.Sc. (Cornell University); Rev.
E. H. Titchmarsh, M.A.; H. J. Tozer, Esq., M.A.
viii Introductory Note.
Mr. Thomas Whittaker when going through the proofs.
I am also indebted for kind advice and cordial help to
Professor Knight.
Excepting the full draft of an Introductory Lecture on
the History of Philosophy, \vhich has been collated with
students' note-books to form Lectures III- VI, the author's
own materials have been wrought up almost wholly in
Part II. For instance, in the concluding three lectures
on Kant they practically superseded my having recourse to
reports of college lectures. It so happened that, although
the professor had more than once had occasion to give
college lectures on this subject, only one set of notes on
Kant had come into my hands.
The first seventeen lectures, presenting a definitely con-
secutive treatment an outline-history of Western philosophy
(I-VII) and a somewhat closer consideration of the three
main problems of that philosophy (VIII-XVII) constituted
the annual elementary course on General Philosophy, or
Epistemology, delivered in alternation with a course on
Ethics during May and June. I do not mean that the
number was always precisely seventeen ; it was usually less.
The historic outline had sometimes to be dropped or
transferred to the special courses, while the consideration
of particular problems was prolonged. I have combined
lx)th the one and the other in a slightly enlarged course.
Finally, in the two lectures on Logic and Ethics, I have
borrowed from the annual courses on those subjects, in
order that the manual might be enriched by an outline,
however brief, of the author's practical philosophy.
Introductory Note. ix
The special lectures are intended to form a course of
somewhat more advanced reading, to succeed the study of
Part I. They were delivered to an inner circle of students,
small in number, candidates for the most part qualifying
for the higher London University examinations, assembled
during the years of the lecturer's declining health at a round
table in his own house at Netting Hill. The special work
or works under discussion lay open before each person.
The professor's utterances took therefore the form rather of
a running commentary, with here and there a more general
disquisition, than of a lecture systematically developed. (This
remark does not, of course, apply to the last three ' special '
lectures.) Of these running commentaries I have given
the substance in a more or less condensed form. Thus the
lecture on Plato's epistemology is a condensation of a course
of eight conversational discourses on the Thcaetdus, Timaeus,
and part of the Republic (delivered a few months before the
professor's death). The lecture on Aristotle's Psychology
is condensed from a like number ; those on Descartes from
fifteen. There were many such advanced courses given during
Professor Robertson's long occupancy of the Grote chair.
They would have been even more varied had it not been
for the limits in the cycle of philosophical works prescribed
by the University of London, to which the curriculum
of University College adapts itself 1 . Limits of space made
1 No post-Kantian work was prescribed during Robertson's pro-
fessoriate for the examinations in history of philosophy with one
exception the Melapfiysic of Lotze. At that time (1887-88) the pro-
fessor was, alas ! too ill to lecture.
x Introductory Note.
it imperative that I should select, and the choice was
determined less by the nature of my materials than by what
seems to me to have been a salient standpoint in my master's
critical philosophy. Holding by an enlightened Experien-
tialism, he was repelled by the Individualism prevailing
in experiential doctrine from Locke till the present century.
Advance in biology has rendered in philosophy, as he says *,
for ever impossible the older Experientialist position, that
knowledge, with its objectivity, its universality, its necessity,
can be acquired by every individual for himself, in the
course of his own experience, from the beginning. Close
and sympathetic study of the great Rationalist thinkers, from
Plato to Kant, enabled him to discern what they, burdened
by faulty method and the then scanty store of the fruits of
scientific research, were groping after in their insistence on
the innate furniture of the mind, namely, the predetermina-
tion, the collective endowment of the individual by the
race, as a prhis to whatever his own experience can teach
him. Adjusting his own philosophy, on the one hand, to
take account of every advance in scientific theory, he was
careful, on the other, to bring out the continuous evolution
of philosophic thought, history of human error though it
might be 2 . And he held that the Experientialism even of
to-day needed to be widened and deepened, not only by
frankly adopting the evolutionary standpoint, but also by
being brought face to face at all points with the best teaching
of Rationalist thought, including especially the critical stand-
points of Kant. Hence it is that I have selected the
1 See below, p. 152. 2 See below, p. 19.
Introductory Note. xi
Cartesian school and the Kritik rather than lectures on
Bacon, Locke, Hume, and others.
I need not here repeat what is written in the Elements of
Psychology by way of apology to the memory of the dead
philosopher for undertaking a task so heavily fraught with
responsibility as the editing of these lectures. That re-
sponsibility is but slightly alleviated in the present volume
by my having had access, in the lectures where it is indicated,
to more complete MSS. by the author's own hand. The
task was undertaken in the hope of suggesting to the
philosophic thought of the generation that has witnessed
the untimely close of a life just come to philosophic maturity,
with what generous ardour and constructive thought on
behalf of the minds he was guiding, that life for a quarter
of a century had spent itself, and more than spent itself,
in the ungrateful if noble work of the class-room. At the
same time, by presenting a part of that work in practically
its original form, and in availing myself of the opportunity
afforded me of incorporating it in an educational series, I
hope no less to serve the interests of the student, standing
on the threshold of the precincts of philosophy, by making
him partaker in benefits that the living source so richly
dispensed.
If such a student should take up this volume without
having previously read and re-read the companion manual,
Elements of Psychology, or some equivalent text-book of
modern date on the same subject, he is earnestly recom-
mended to lose no time in making good that omission.
Thus only will he be able to read this volume with the
xii Introductory Note.
maximum of profit. It was a fundamental principle with
Professor Robertson true to the tradition of the British
School that philosophic considerations, from whatever other
groundwork they might spring, should not precede, but be
complementary to, the study of psychology that, in his
own words, the consideration of how we come to know
anything should precede that of what it is as known. The
reader, on the other hand, who has mastered the essential
data of psychology, and naturally he most of all who
has acquainted himself therewith as they are ordered by
the same mind that planned the philosophic arguments
in the present volume, will have his reward. Especially
will he see how rich in philosophic import becomes
that central point in George Croom Robertson's psycho-
logical analysis the theory of objective perception, with
its vertebral idea of the coefficient, in sense, of conscious-
ness of activity put forth. He will see this point applied,
again and again, in the explanation of such ultimate notions
as necessity in knowledge, the conception of substance, the
idea of causation, and the belief in an external world. And
he will find effective in suggestiveness, not to say guidance,
a philosophy thus psychologically based. In that philosophy
the tradition handed down in this country the school of
British psychological philosophy attains a distinct develop-
ment. More than its well-known modern exponents, Robert-
son had, in his own phrase, ' gone to school under ' Leibniz
and Kant. And it is with a philosophic grasp and insight
worthy of these two, while carrying on the direct line of
succession in the psychological tradition, that he seeks to
Introductory Note. xiii
show how it is no mere metaphor to say that the world
as we know it is as we mentally construct it : that we know
it not with, as it were, a quasi-detachable intellect only, but
with our whole living energy ; that we know in so far as
we act, nay, that ultimately, only as we will, as we put forth
activity, as we act, can we claim fully to be \
CAROLINE A. F. RHYS DAVIDS 2 .
June, 1896.
1 See below, Lecture XVII.
- All footnotes in the lectures, unless the contrary is stated, are
parenthetical remarks made by the professor himself. The works, or
passages in works, prescribed for the student's special reading were,
in nearly every case, those prescribed by the lecturer himself. In
a few lectures I have given references to books or subjects discussed,
and also to the lecturer's own published writings.
CONTENTS
PART I.
LECTURE PAGE
I. THE BOND AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PSYCHO-
LOGY AND PHILOSOPHY i
II. PHILOSOPHY AS EPISTEMOLOGY 10
III. THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY AND OF
SCIENCE 17
IV. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY . . 24
V. MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 37
VI. SCHOLASTICISM AND THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE
AND PHILOSOPHY 47
VII. MODERN PHILOSOPHY 56
VIII. UNIVERSALS 68
IX. UNIVERSALS (continued'). NOMINALISM AND CON-
CEPTUALISM 77
X. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE AND
BELIEF 85
XL THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. BEFORE LOCKE . 97
XII. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. AFTER LOCKE. . 112
XIII. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 124
XIV. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. CAUSATION . .135
XV. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. EVOLUTION . . 147
XVI. THE PERCEPTION OF AN EXTERNAL (OR MATERIAL)
WORLD . . 154
XVII. THE PERCEPTION OF AN EXTERNAL (OR MATERIAL)
WORLD (continued} 168
XVIII. REGULATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE . . .181
XIX. THE BASIS AND THE END OF ETHICS . . .191
xvi Contents.
PART II.
SPECIAL LECTURES.
LECTURE TAGK
XX. ON THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PLATO . . . .201
XXI. ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE . . .214
XXTI. ON THE METHOD OF DESCARTES . . . .231
XXIII. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES . . . 244
XXIV. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES (continued) . 258
XXV. ON CARTESIANISM 270
XXVI. ON CARTESIANISM (continued) 287
XXVII. ON KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY .... 304
I. Kanfs importance in the present state of English
thought.
XXVIII. ON KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY (continued') . 317
II. General view of the Kritik and the Prolegomena.
III. Mathematical Necessity and Muscular Sense.
IV. On the Nature and Conditions of Intellectual
Synthesis.
XXIX. ON KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY (continued) . 339
V. The Ideas of Pure Reason.
ELEMENTS
OF
GENERAL PHILOSOPHY.
PART I.
LECTURE I.
THE BOND AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND
PHILOSOPHY.
General Philosophy as based upon and supplementing Psychology.
IN these lectures I wish to supplement the preceding
psychological course in two ways. We found that in the
process of psychological discussion certain philosophical
questions were more or less involved. Into these, which
we then passed by, we will now inquire. Again, our former
course touched on many purely psychological questions, which
from our wider philosophic standpoint we may review,
fill in, and add to. We saw that ' Philosophy of Mind '
meant Science of Mind, whatever else it might mean. But
we have also seen that science of mind or psychology does
not contain all that is meant by philosophy of mind. And
psychological treatment needs to be supplemented, before
we can be fully satisfied, by a philosophical consideration of
the problems of mind. I do not go so far as to say that
philosophy is nothing more than a review of the problems
of psychology from another point of view, but it is from this
B
2 Elements of General Philosophy. [LF.CT.
side that I introduce students to philosophy, and it is this
that I mean by ' General Philosophy.' We are going to take
up philosophical questions on a psychological basis. Not that
we can settle such questions so determinately as those of
psychology. We can dogmatise in psychology, for we are
there treating of phenomena ; but we cannot do so in philo-
sophy, where we can no longer distinguish, as we can in
psychology, between thinker and thought. But it is most
important for the student to separate from psychology proper
the philosophical considerations which arise out of that
science, all the more so that in this country psychology has
been generally mixed up with philosophy. Mill, Hamilton,
Professor Bain, Mr. Spencer are apt to confuse both kinds of
inquiry, so that I am the more concerned that students
should be fully aware when the aspect is shifted.
General Philosophy as Theory of Knowledge.
Ethics, associated with ' General Philosophy/ is itself a
department of philosophy. It would be impossible to treat
of philosophy in general without treating at the same time
of ethics in particular. And ethics is no part of psychology
at all. Equally is this true with regard to aesthetics. But
my intention, during at least the greater part of this course,
is not to refer to any philosophical questions arising out of
the psychology of conation or of feeling, but to such as have
all more or less bearing on knowledge. We see, therefore,
what part of our psychology it is mainly that we shall
rehearse, review, and supplement, viz. the psychology of
intellection. In practical philosophy, i. e. in Logic, Ethics,
and ^Esthetics, we need to know what functions of the mind it
is that these doctrines regulate. And if General Philosophy
is best faced from the point of view of Theory of Knowledge,
I.] Elements of General Philosophy. 3
then does philosophy follow rightly from psychology as
leading from that which appears to that which is, from the
consideration of how we come to know anything to that of
what it is as known.
Kant's followers, including Green, condemn this method
as involving the use of fundamental assumptions before these
have been sifted. Then must we indeed begin our sifting
early, for all use these assumptions with the use of their
mother tongue, every two-year old as well as every coster-
monger, though they do not come to the ultimate expression
thereof. Those writers end by never getting on to psychology
at all ! It is true, on the other hand, that some English philo-
sophers have been so content with their psychology that they
have never passed on to philosophy. I see the force of the
Kantian position ; no scientific basis is ultimate. But
a scientific basis is the only sound starting-point, and I will
maintain my view till I get new light. Touching intellect,
then, we have to make sure of our psychological ground
and see if we may draw philosophical conclusions.
Theory of Knowledge distinguishable from Logic.
Logic, no less than ethics and aesthetics, is a depart-
ment of philosophy and intimately concerned with the
psychology of intellection. Nevertheless, I propose to mark
off logic also from our philosophical inquiry, at least for
the present, and to confine our inquiry to Philosophy as
Theory of Knowledge in relation to science in general
and Science of Mind in particular. Logic, like ethics and
esthetics, may be called science from a certain point of view ;
but that is not the point of view I adopt. For me, as I shall
show later on, they are regulative doctrines or disciplines, or
Nomology. Logic is regulative discipline of thought. Has
B 2
4 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT,
science in itself anything to do with regulation ? No ; the
business of science is explanation, or phenomenology.
Psychology deals with phenomenology of mind, with in-
tellection as it naturally proceeds, with the explanation
according to natural laws of the intellectual function called
thinking. That function logic sets itself to regulate. This
notion of regulation is something which science in no wise
expresses. It is one of the ways in which we can define the
function of philosophy. And because thought is a means
of knowledge, logic in its widest sense is already a part of the
philosophical Theory of Knowledge. But logic is concerned
with true thinking or truth. Now, by truth of thought we
mean that our thought has a certain import, that it is valid.
Such considerations, namely, as to whether a given intellectual
act has any real validity or not, are altogether outside
psychology, though not outside logic. Now, if logic be
concerned with the validity of thought, let us generalise this,
and we get a definition of philosophy as theory, not merely
of the validity of thought, but of the validity of all knowing.
We ,can know otherwise than by thought, viz. by perception.
Ultimate Inquiry its Nature and its Names.
' How .am I intellective of that pillar ? ' We resolved my
act of intellection into certain sensations plus mental activity
of a definite kind a complex function termed Perception.
And this was a psychological answer to a psychological inquiry
an inquiry which may be thus otherwise worded : ' How
comes it to pass in my consciousness that I perceive that
pillar ? ' But if I ask, ' Is there a pillar a real one ?
a real pillar there apart from my perceptive mind ? ' this is
a philosophical question, and whatever answer is made
is a philosophical statement, though it may be determined
I.] Elements of General Philosophy. 5
by psychological insight. For we are here asking a question
relating to the import of knowledge; I am concerned to
know whether my subjective perception implies a corre-
sponding reality or no.
Such questions may be raised concerning any intellectual
function ; they belong to the ultimate questions which the
human mind is able to raise, and for them is still reserved
the ancient term Philosophy. If they are raised, as here and
now, in connexion with intellection or knowing, the more
specific terms are Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology, or
Metaphysic. If emphasis is thrown, as it used to be, rather
on the question of ' Being ' than of ' Being in as far as
known,' they are, or rather were, expressed by the term
Ontology. Thus we have got four names which are all
more or less related to one another, all being the same in
respect of extension but differing in intension; all denoting
the same, but having different connotation. Let us enter more
fully into their meaning and history, and then more clearly
differentiate what they collectively amount to from modern
science and psychology.
Philosophy.
Philosophy is the oldest term of them all ; first to be
started, it will probably survive longest. We meet with
' philosophy ' and ' philosopher ' in Greek history earlier
than with the other three. Plato, e. g., uses only these two.
Philosophy originally stood for reasoned knowledge in
general; it was not differentiated from science. Human
knowledge was supposed to be a kind of organic whole,
and Philosophy was the word for it. But from the time
of Plato, and still more in that of Aristotle, another word
began to grow up, viz. Epistemology. And Plato was already
6 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
commencing to speak of ' the sciences,' though the only
science which then underwent development was mathematics.
It is not till the modern period that an antithesis or opposi-
tion is set up between sciences and philosophy. The sciences
were at first rather departments of philosophy, but from the
beginning of the seventeenth century mathematics and other
sciences were pursued in a certain method of their own, and
regarded apart from anything that may still be called
philosophy. An ancient philosopher had a complete view
of the whole field of knowledge. Now, thinkers are mainly
specialists, knowing little, or but vaguely, of any department
except their own. The opposition since then has so far
widened that some modern thinkers have said there is
nothing beyond science. Comte, e.g. called philosophy
a co-ordination of the sciences J . There is a good deal
called philosophy beyond that ; at all events, whereas
philosophy originally meant all reasoned knowledge, it has
now come to mean reasoned knowledge no less, but of
a kind that stands apart from certain limited bodies of
doctrine pursued according to a strictly definite method
called lhat of the sciences, and apart from psychology too,
because in respect of method psychology is as much science
as chemistry is.
Philosophy as Wisdom.
Again, all ancient knowledge was bent to a practical issue.
This is the specific mark of what was originally called
philosophy. Philosophy is ' love of wisdom/ and wisdom
is a term of practical import, is knowledge with a practical
reference ; is not mere insight, but conduct guided by
insight. And still our concern in ultimate questions has
1 V. Positive Philosophy, Bk. VI, ch. xiii.
I.] Elements of General Philosophy. 7
a more or less practical object an object which we call
the wise conduct of life. But this aspect of philosophy
is not found in modern science. Science as such leaves
aside practical considerations. It has reached its present
development during the last three centuries by such elimina-
tion and specialisation. As long as men could and would
think about everything they made little advance.
Metaphysic.
The term Metaphysic in this country and in Germany
has been loosely used. It is often used as indistinguishable
from psychology itself; e. g. in Hamilton's Lectures on Meta-
physics, five-sixths of which are psychological, the remainder
philosophical, and in which he passes without warning from
psychology into pure philosophy. Professor Bain speaks of
' mental science ' and sometimes of psychology, but there is
a goodly amount of philosophy too in his Manual, certain
chapters and much in the historical notes being as philo-
sophical as can be.
Metaphysic also, as a name, has an accidental origin.
Aristotle did not use the term, and yet the term has grown
out of Aristotle's works. He left, in addition to his treatises
on life, mind or soul, and the treatise called Physica,
another work dealing with what he sometimes calls First
Philosophy, with the notion of ' fundamental/ and at other
times 'being as being' (TO bv $ ov), in fact, Ontology. The
precise word ontologia is not found there, yet all is there but
the word. His editors and commentators placed this treatise
after the Physica, and called it so (ra pera TO. <vcriKa), although
the author had called it ' first philosophy/ No sooner had the
name arisen than it underwent a change of meaning, and
stood, not for what followed ' after ' the Physica, but for
8 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
a consideration of things ^ifra, 'beyond,' the physical con-
sideration of them. There was little that was scientific in
Aristotle's physical consideration of things, but in time
physics came to be handled from a purely scientific stand-
point, while metaphysics represented a standpoint reaching
beyond this, and thus we get the notion of metaphysic as
opposed to science and equal to philosophy. And by
those who were impressed by the characteristic difference
between Mind and ' Nature,' metaphysic was supposed to
be specially concerned with Mind, as physic was with
Nature.
Ontology.
Ontology, then, though not used by Aristotle, is at the
point of his pen to be written down. We may, as I have
said, look upon it as another name for philosophy, when
concerned with things ' as being.' Is science concerned
with things 'that are'? In one sense, yes. The difference
is this, that in opposing ontology to science as concerned
with ' being,' the antithesis (which has become perfectly
clear to the modern mind) lies in science dealing with
things, not so much as they are, but as they appear or
seem to be with things qua 'phenomena.' Psychology,
e. g. deals with mind only as phenomenal. In this century
some who have pursued the study of mind scientifically
have tried to prove that there is no ulterior consideration ;
e.g. the Mills and Professor Bain. They discount ontology
as a doctrine that has only led men astray and has been
superseded. Ontological questions may be difficult or im-
possible to solve, but no human mind that works fairly can
exclude ontological any more than phenomenal questions.
Some opponents of ontology try to escape the difficulty by
making phenomena into realities.
I.] Elements of General Philosophy. 9
Epistemology.
Epistemology, a term which has come into use within the
last few years, expresses what in Germany is called theory
or doctrine of knowledge, philosophical theory being under-
stood. The notion was put forward by Kant and his
followers in opposition to ontology, and to maintain that the
right way to deal with ultimate questions of being is to make
a prior philosophical inquiry into the import of knowledge.
How is this, in respect of extension, commensurate with
ontology or metaphysic ? How can the doctrine which
deals with things as they are, be also expressed as episte-
mology? Anything that is, can be, for us, only as it is
known. If we do not know of any being, it does not exist
for us. Therefore he who provides an ultimate theory of
knowledge, in that very fact provides an ultimate theory of
being. I am not now speaking of a consideration of how
knowledge arises and comes to pass, for that is psychology,
but of a certain ultimate consideration of knowledge as such,
and which cannot but be a consideration of things as known,
and therefore of things as being, or real. And this is the
point of view from which philosophy has more and more
come to be presented in modern times. Implicitly already
in Locke, but explicitly, with full consciousness, in Kant,
modern philosophy has come to be epistemology, as in
Aristotle it was ontology.
Passages for reading :
N.B. The lecturer used to urge students not to omit to supplement
LECTURE I by reading his essay ' Psychology and Philosophy,' Mind,
January, 1883 (or Philosophical Remains, pp. 250-273). ED.
LECTURE II.
PHILOSOPHY AS EPISTEMOLOGY.
Aspects of Philosophy and their Opposites.
LAST day I sought to give a first notion of the distinction
between science and philosophy, and more especially between
psychology and philosophy. But it was only a first distinc-
tion, and one that I shall fill up in the ensuing lectures. When
we turned to consider philosophy as such, we encountered
a series of terms, each having a special connotation, but all
pointing to the same, all denoting the same kind of doctrine,
but in different ways. And these we have to a certain
extent discussed by, in some degree, denoting the opposite
in each case. Everything may to a certain extent be defined
by denoting what it excludes. In the way of knowing, every-
thing illustrates the principle of relativity (v. infra, Lecture
XV r I). When we know anything we know something that
it is and something that it is not. I have not said all that
philosophy is when I say what it is not, but I have said
something very important when I say, for instance, that
philosophy is not science. Philosophy has its meaning in
relation to the sciences, but it excludes every science. Meta-
physics is not physics, understanding physics in the widest
sense as science of nature, or of natural phenomena generally.
Elements of General Philosophy. n
Ontology excludes phenomenology. We may tabulate these
opposites thus :
Metaphysics Physics.
Philosophy Science.
Ontology Phenomenology.
Distinction between Epistemology and Psychology.
Now I cannot give an equally sharp antithesis in the
case of Epistemology. But we may oppose it to ontology
on the one side, and to psychology on the other. Psychology
is not theory of knowledge, but theory of mental phenomena,
that is, of knowing or intellection, as well as of feeling and
conation. Again, ontology is not theory of knowledge, but
of being. Epistemology brings forward what ontology does
not bring forward, viz. the subjective reference which is
always implied in philosophy as opposed to science. There
is no subjective reference in science. One ball, e. g. strikes
another, and they move. With this and the like physics is
concerned, but there is neither overt nor covert, patent nor
latent, subjective reference. Even in psychology there is
not the subjective reference there is in philosophy. Psy-
chology is subjective, not because you make reference to
the mind knowing, but because it is concerned with the
subjective phenomena themselves. It investigates the knowing
mind not otherwise than as physics investigates the colliding
of the balls ; it leaves out of account the knowing mind as
such, although it is true that psychology, as concerned with
subjective phenomena, stands, as we have seen, opposed to
all other sciences. As subjective science, we saw that it
faces all the other sciences as objective, and even faces itself
as objective. But the subjective consideration which philo-
sophy invariably involves is not in the way of psychological
12 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
science, but is a view of things in relation to, or from the
point of view of, mind. Psychology is a scientific con-
sideration of mental phenomena taken as subjectively, and
to a certain extent also as objectively, manifested. Philo-
sophy is not a scientific consideration, but is a consideration
of anything and everything in relation to mind. And the
name which best expresses philosophy in the fact of its
mental or subjective reference is Epistemology. Epistemo-
logy is just philosophy, deals with things, deals with being,
deals with things going beyond bare experience ; but it
treats of them in relation to the fact of knowing. Thus the
epistemologist cannot help being an ontologist, because his
theory of knowledge must be about things also as being ;
he must also be a metaphysician, because he is concerned
with a whole range of things beyond the physical ; and he
must be a philosopher in being other and more than a man
of science, or concerned with things in a way in which science
is not. Epistemology as theory of knowing is as wide as
philosophy, since for us nothing can be that we cannot know.
And while it is philosophy and not science, the special science
to which it stands in closest relation is psychology, and, within
psychology, the psychological theory of intellection. It
does not do that work over again which was done in the
theory of intellection. It is not concerned, as that is, with
the rise, growth, and development of intellectual consciousness.
What Epistemology does apart from this is to inquire
into the value, import, validity, of knowledge. These notions
have no meaning in psychology. We distinguish between
desires as good and bad, but not as psychologists. As
such we are merely concerned with the fact of desire. To
determine between desires as good or bad is a matter for
the philosophical doctrine of ethics.
II. ] Elements of General Philosophy. 13
Distinction between Logic and Epistemology 1 .
There is indeed, as we saw last day, another philosophical
doctrine concerned with the import or validity of our in-
tellectual consciousness, namely, Logic. Some writers use
the term Logic as equivalent to Theory of Knowledge, but
such a practice is confusing. Hegel, e. g., in his Logic, sets
out a theory of the validity of knowing of any kind.
Professor Adamson's article on ' Logic ' in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica includes the whole field of the validity of know-
ledge. Mill's chapter ' On the Things denoted by Names '
(Logic, Bk. I, ch. iii.) has nothing to do with logic, but is
a discourse on theory of knowledge. But, as I pointed out,
epistemology is the wider consideration, and may be viewed
as including logic. And the special line of consideration
in each is different. Logic is the doctrine regulative of
thought. Epistemology is concerned with the validity of
any cognition whatever, e. g., with percept, which is not
thought. Again, logic is concerned with the import of
thought as general, whether the form of thought be inductive
(from particular to general) or deductive (from the more to
the less general). And logic is concerned with the import
of thought only in so far as it is general. I do not know
a single part of logical doctrine which is not concerned with
generality, with leading up to it by induction, or clown from
it by deduction. But the generality of thought does not
exhaust the import of thought. Thought, though it is
general, is thought about something. What is this some-
thing that is thought about? So there is plenty left for
epistemology in regard to thought. And in putting logic
under epistemology, I have not said that logic exhausts
the consideration of thought.
1 This is a point not clearly answered in the books.
14 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Suppose I ask, in regard, e. g. to that pillar, Does my per-
ception of that pillar mean, or not mean, a pillar really apart
from me ? This is a real question, but, as we have already
seen *, it is not a psychological question. It is a philo-
sophical question that I have asked, a metaphysical, an
ontological, and an epistemological question. As with
percepts, so with images and concepts. Does my con-
cept ' man ' stand for a reality ? What, if any, real thing
corresponds to my thought ' man '? Such a question is
neither psychological nor logical. Logically we can ask, Is
' man ' a general name or not ? What is the definition of it ?
Logic, with regard to concepts, culminates in the doctrine
of definition. But when I have defined a notion, have
I proved anything of its reality ? Does my thought of
' centaur ' portend or imply a reality as my thought of ' man '
does ? In this way, then, we can distinguish between what
is called logical, and what epistemological, consideration.
And thus if logic in one sense falls within epistemology,
it is not the epistemology of thought, inasmuch as there
are epistemological considerations of thought apart from
the logical consideration of thought in its generality.
Knowledge.
We have now committed ourselves to the use of the
word ' knowledge/ a term I refrained from bringing forward
in psychology. It is used, no doubt, in psychological works ;
Hamilton, among others, uses it systematically, and so does
Professor Bain, ' cognition ' being an equivalent term. Both
terms, if used in psychology at all, should be used systemati-
cally and apart from any consideration of import, or else be
1 Elements of Psychology , Lecture XIV.
II.] Elements of General Philosophy. 15
abstained from. The latter plan to me seems better, and
I substitute the term 'intellection.' Intellection is a purely
psychological word, meaning merely a kind of conscious
experience, just as feeling means another such kind, and
conation another. Knowledge, on the other hand, is essen-
tially a word of philosophical, rather than psychological,
import. Both it and cognition, as I have already pointed
out (op. cit., p. 25), drag in at once the 'known' or cogni/um,
with its implication of import, validity, or reality. Knowledge
is always of something, and of something as being, as real
or not real, as the case may be. At once the philosophical
question arises Does my knowledge really represent such
and such an object? Is the object real? And this is not
a psychological consideration. In psychology we consider
cognition apart from the notion of import ; we ask, How
does cognition come to pass? not Does it mean this?
Does it import that? It is true that when we are dealing
with perception in psychology, perceiving implies something
perceived; but we are then only concerned with the function
of perceiving. But now we are concerned with the work of
the mind in relation to the thing known. The moment we
look beyond subjective function to the reality with which
the function is concerned, we are no longer psychologising,
we are not even concerned with the question of import in
the narrow sense of logic, but we are concerned with import
of knowledge altogether. Knowledge in relation to the thing
known, or the thing known in relation to knowledge, belongs
to philosophy. In philosophy it is precisely with the object
of thought and its validity or import that we have to deal
' object ' and ' valid ' understood as that which holds for all
minds alike and determines action.
16 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Belief.
While knowledge is thus properly to be limited to philo-
sophical use, there is another word, of essentially subjective
import, which psychology has to take into account if it is to
be complete, but which has also a prominently philosophical
bearing. As when I use the word know there is always an
object of knowledge, so when I believe there is an object of
belief. Knowledge is subjective function in relation to an
object. Belief is subjective function in relation to an object.
I can raise the question of reality in belief as much as in
knowledge. No alternative term for belief being available
according as we are psychologising or philosophising, its
difference of signification must in either case be carefully
distinguished. Generally it is well to use separate terms
for either aspect, as this will tend to break the habit of
mixing up the different considerations. The scope of (sub-
jective) psychology is as wide as that of philosophy, but
its function is different. The former deals with everything
that is as subjective experience. The latter deals with
everything that is in terms of ultimate consideration. Philo-
sophy, again, is always interpretable as Philosophy of Mind.
Whether it is contemplated as a consideration of things as
known (facts), or desired and sought after (aims, ends, ideals),
or as science of 'Bzmg-as-thought-of, there is, we see, always
ultimately a reference to the human mind. It can only deal
with things as we are conscious of them. This is the ex-
planation of their being so much confused together, and why
psychology was so late in being separated from philosophy.
LECTURE III.
THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY AND OF SCIENCE.
Resume of the Function of Philosophy as compared with Science.
WE have seen that out of psychology arise certain further
questions or more ultimate considerations called philosophical.
Psychology suggests them more than any other science.
They do not admit of objective verification, but have a
subjective value, and the historical study of them is important
as giving insight into the development of the human mind.
In as far as they may be settled at all, they may be settled
by psychology, hence the importance of the latter as a basis
to precede and introduce the study of philosophy. If
philosophy, e. g. seeks to show what the external world is,
psychology explains how we get to know what we call
' external world.' Science deals not with what is, but only with
what appears, with those phenomenal aspects of nature which
inevitably suggest I do not commit myself some ultimate
Reality. Theory of Knowledge (to which metaphysic and
ontology are now subordinated), or philosophy in its
speculative or theoretical aspect, has to afford insight, while
philosophy in its practical aspect makes for guidance.
Philosophical questionings, I repeat, are not of a nature
to lead to definitely verifiable results. Nevertheless, philoso-
c
1 8 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
phising is natural to the human mind, and, as of old, so now,
such questions are asked, and will for ever be asked. And
there must be a doctrine to cover and deal with these
questions questions concerning notions which science is
obliged to assume. Philosophy in modern times, as we have
seen, is supplementary to, and in no sense another name
for, the sciences. Comte indeed said that the business of
philosophy is to make out the relation between the sciences.
The sciences are occupied each with certain aspects or
departments of nature, or of things as they appear x . ' Co-
ordinate each science,' said Comte, and give it a practical
bearing, a reference to human action, and that is all that
you can know or philosophy can do. Comte here brings
insight to bear upon action, and so far returns to the original
meaning of philosophy. But his opinion of the scope of
philosophy is very unsatisfactory in view of the incapacity
of the sciences to deal with questions respecting their ultimate
data and the ends of conduct. What is the difference
between appearance and reality? What is space (does it
exist apart from the human mind) ? What is motion ? What
is a cause ? What is a quality ? and what is a thing ? None
of the sciences pretends to answer these questions, and yet
they are implied in the language both of science and of
common life. Philosophy in past ages dealt largely with these
questions before the sciences were, and still concerns itself
with them. Aristotle saw the necessity for a deeper inquiry
just as much as we do. It is the word ' deeper/ ' ultimate,'
that gives the special aspect of metaphysic as the name for
philosophy in its relation, not to psychology, but to the
objective sciences.
1 Or, we might say, with aspects of nature and with mathematics,
for mathematics is not a science of nature.
IIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 19
And the deeper inquiry is not antagonistic to the scientific.
It is often brought against philosophy that it presents motion
without progress, but this is not correct ; there has been
progress. History is for the most part the story of the errors
through which men have passed in trying to get at the truth,
and the history of philosophy, if good for nothing else,
would yet be valuable for what it reveals of the growth of the
human mind in its deepest thought respecting itself confronted
by the universe. For all their many, errors the best minds
of antiquity struck out philosophical suggestions of great
value, arrived at philosophical results of permanent value,
even though their positive science was often purely fanciful.
On many points we understand more than the ancients, and
many of their errors have been exploded beyond chance
of revival. There is, and always will be, room for advance
in philosophy. In as far as philosophy has the function
of co-ordinating the results of the special sciences and it
has become more and more the object of philosophy to do so
there must of course be advance in the former as the latter
advance, as Comte held. But if we also take philosophy as
theory of human knowledge, we still understand more than
the earlier thinkers, although our progress be not of the
nature of that in the positive sciences. Philosophy in one
sense encircles, extends beyond, comes after the sciences,
varying as they vary, but in another sense it comes before
them. It was not necessary to know that the sun stands
and the earth moves in order to understand the relation of
substance and attribute, whole and parts, &c. True, the
discovery of those facts had a most important philosophical
bearing, as all great discoveries will ever have ; namely, with
respect to the evidence of sense and man's position in the
universe. But there was a region of philosophy not directly
c 2
20 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
touched by scientific discoveries, and we may find a profit
in surveying these philosophies, even though Aristotle and
Plato had a defective astronomy. It is one function of
philosophy to wait on the special sciences, and to be ever
ready to pluck up its stakes and widen its boundaries. For
philosophical and scientific definitions are always changing ;
they are a progress towards the expression of what is. But
it is also apparent that to a certain extent philosophy has
an independent course to pursue, and has often to make
advances, and did often arrive at truths about the whole
frame of things before men developed those aptitudes and
powers from which has sprung all modern science.
History in Philosophy and in Science.
The history of philosophy has an importance in relation
to philosophy which the history of science has not to science.
However interesting it may be to compare present with past
conceptions of geology, ancient with modern physics, these
and all the sciences are adequately taught as bodies
of established doctrine without necessarily involving any
reference to past theories ; at any rate, their teaching does
not at all depend upon knowledge of their history. False
scientific teachings have to be forgotten ; inadequate
scientific teachings, while leading to better, need not be
remembered. Interest in them is mainly antiquarian. Or
if it is not felt for the teachings as such, but for them as
illustrative of scientific method, this is to have taken them
out of the special sciences and to have brought them into
the domain of philosophy, which has a property in the older
forms, the cast-off garments of the sciences which these no
longer possess for themselves. On the other hand, philo-
sophers of all schools are for ever throwing backward glances
in.] Elements of General Philosophy. 21
at past thinkers and the results they elicited. The history
of philosophy is a recognised part of philosophic discipline.
The reason for this difference from what we find in science
lies in the nature of philosophy, in its being always concerned
with ultimate, not with immediate, explanation, not with ways
of re-expressing the facts of nature, or giving an explanation
of them relative to other and more general facts or concep-
tions resolving sound, e.g. into a mode of motion but
with the explanation that is demanded with reference to the
mental nature of man, to man, i.e. as a thinking being.
In chemistry, e.g. we analyse water into its elements,
study their properties, and re-combine. We have thereby
given a scientific account of water in so far as it falls under
chemistry. The mechanical properties of water would be
the subject of investigation under another science, and so
on for every conceivable relation of water as an object
among other natural objects. But our intellectual concern
in it as thinking beings is not even then exhausted. It is
an object, we say, a substance, a property what are these ?
What is analysis, and what composition ? Empirical science
does not settle these questions, and does not even tell us
when they cannot be settled. I should say the decision is
given by philosophy as the ultimate interpretation of experi-
ence, even in cases where the decision is nothing more
satisfactory than a non liquet.
The answer, whatever it be, should hold good universally.
The question of substance and attribute, e.g. was raised in
regard to water : the settlement, such as it is, applies to the
whole of nature. In one aspect, however, this peculiarity
of philosophy is merely a difference in degree. All science,
worthy of the name, is also general in its character. To
make good, therefore, the opposition between philosophy and
22 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the special sciences, the extraordinary universality of philo-
sophic dicta must rest on a special ground, and that is that,
whereas in the special sciences we consider relations among
facts and data known, in philosophy we consider facts, data
and relations as known or knowable. Now whatever be the
objects known, though they be taken from sciences the most
widely removed, anything that we settle about the knowing
of them must stand good for all alike. The principles of
knowledge are of constant and universal application ; and
philosophy is pre-eminently the science of them and all that
they involve.
But if such be the character of philosophy, we may now
begin to see why it is natural and right that the philosopher
should keep strict account of older speculation, and would
err if he neglected it.
Procedure.
Now, seeing the importance of the historical method in
philosophy, and how greatly the thoughts of men have
varied with regard to ultimate questions, it is better that
I should glance over the history of such thoughts, and set
out the views of the best minds throughout time, than give
only my own individual conclusions.
For our practical purposes we discount Eastern thought,
and also that of the earliest civilisations generally, confining
ourselves to the Western philosophy which began among
Greek thinkers on the coast of Asia Minor B.C. 600, but
dealing more at length with those philosophical conceptions
of the seventeenth century which appeal more deeply to us
than those of Plato and Aristotle, as being more akin to our
own. When we take a view of the history of philosophy, we
find that philosophical thinkers have been occupied in the
main with three questions :
in.] Elements of General Philosophy. 23
1. The question of Universals i.e. of the relation of the
Universal to the Particular known also as the doctrine
of the One and the Many. This is predominant in the
Scholastic period, and was also prominent in the Ancient
period.
2. The Relation of Reason to Experience, in explaining
the Nature or Import of Knowledge. This dominates all
modern philosophy.
3. The Reality of a Material World, or Perception of an
External World, and the Nature of Mind in relation to it.
This has been raised especially by British philosophers.
Every philosophy deals with each, but with a different
degree of emphasis. Hamilton divides philosophers according
to their answer to the third question ; hence his view of the
earlier philosophers is distorted, since they were really
concerned with the larger question of the nature, or origin,
or, more correctly, import of knowledge, in which the more
special third question is involved. This shows that he is so
engrossed in that particular question that he thinks every
one else must have been so. He derived this standpoint
from his master, Reid ; and Reid's standpoint was a protest
against that of Berkeley. The answer to any one of the
questions will determine a man's answer to either of the others.
But we must first take a survey in outline of the growth
of Western philosophy during the last 2,500 years.
For LECTURE IV read :
G. C. Robertson, Philosophical Remains, ' Philosophy as a Subject
of Study.'
Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. i, 'The Philosophy of
Antiquity ' (large text).
Or the same epoch in Erdmann's or Schwegler's History of
Philosophy.
LECTURE IV.
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
Main Epochs of Philosophy and Culminating Periods.
WESTERN philosophy may be said to have begun with Thales,
B.C. 600. Thus we have to take account of 2,500 years of
constant reflective thinking. These are grouped in three
main periods (i) Ancient; (2) Mediaeval, Scholastic, or
Ecclesiastic ; (3) Modern. The first period terminates in
the sixth century A.D., and the second in the fourteenth
century. Of all these centuries only about seven or eight
are really important. The times in which the human race
was really effectively thinking were not long, and all the
effective thought in Western philosophy, all that has yielded
permanent results of any value, falls within three epochs,
included by those three main periods and comprising some
seven hundred years out of the 2,500, to wit, B.C. 450-250,
A.D. 1150-1350, and from 1600 onwards. The rest is all of
quite subordinate importance. It might be even more accurate
to end the first period of florescence at B.C. 300, but I extend
it by preference so as to include Stoics and Epicureans.
The accompanying diagram shows at once the three main
periods and their respective culminating epochs. It will be
seen that the former overlap considerably ; no sharp divisions
in time would accurately represent the different developments
of thought. There is the more or less positive break entitled
JS 5 .5
4=^
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Sfc
i O
! oj
o ^,
o o
-g
<u
a,
26 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the Dark Ages ; there is the transition period of the fifteenth
century ; again, there are the two subsidiary movements of
the rise of Arabian philosophy (A.D. 800-1100) and, under its
influence, of Jewish philosophy. These, however, did not
affect modern Europe in general.
First, 'Ancient,' or Greek Piriod.
Western philosophy did not absolutely begin with Thales.
There was a tendency to philosophy among all the early
civilisations bordering on the East of which we have remains.
But it is principally in Thales and the inquisitive, quick-witted
Ionian Greeks, dating from about B. c. 600, that there began
in Asia Minor that conscious and disinterested search for an
explanation of the All which philosophy implies. For five
hundred years this movement, continuous though not always
progressive, was Greek. Then into the philosophy of practice
Roman legal conceptions, the spiritual fruit of centuries of
sturdy Roman action, began to be introduced ; Hebrew and
Eastern ideas of the universal order and of human destiny
also entered ; but Greek acuteness and mental restlessness re-
mained always the truly active forces till another five hundred
years and more had elapsed. Finally, in A.D. 529, Justinian,
a Christian emperor, closed the pagan Greek schools and
cast out the professors and commentators with whom re-
mained the tradition of Aristotle and Plato. Within these
centuries Greek thinkers had put forward solutions of nearly
all the chief questions of philosophy, some necessarily
relative to the positive knowledge of the time, which now
appeal only to our curiosity, others of enduring value to the
end of time. In the history of humanity there is nothing
more astounding than the influence exerted by the thought
of Plato and Aristotle. Justinian and his advisers fancied
iv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 27
they had cast out the evil spirits ; but the spirits came back
from wandering up and down on the earth and entered with
sevenfold power into the Church and the schools, and it was
and is vain to think any more of a new exorcism.
Tu'O Stages in Greek Philosophy.
Greek thought was strictly philosophy a serious attempt
to think out a connected view of the All. In those Ionian
cities on the shores of Asia Minor arose men who, looking
out on nature, i.e. the external world, tried to find a general
expression for it. Their philosophy was not properly reli-
gion. Some of the chief among them had religious natures,
but the central idea of Greek philosophy, as represented by
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicureans, which
is one of morality and conduct, is not found in that Pre-
Socratic period. After it all reasoned knowledge came to be
viewed by the best Greek philosophers as bearing on the
Perfect Life. Philosophy became divorced completely from
inquiries into what are now considered the ultimate assump-
tions of physical science. But prior to the fifth century B.C.
there is no explicit reference to the subjective life ; till
towards the age of Socrates tbere is no systematic practice
of introspection now held fundamental in philosophy.
Greek Philosophy and Positive Science.
In the theories of Democritus, however, a contemporary of
Socrates, but whom we know only at second hand through
Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius, there are expressions
with regard to nature of which modern science has made
use. He started the theory of Atomism, i.e. that the
material world consists of a multiplicity of atoms or inde-
structible particles. The mechanical philosophy of the
28 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
seventeenth century has, in some respects, a close affinity to
the Atomism of Democritus. It is a great pity that Socrates
treated this definite scientific theory with scorn. Democritus
and Archimedes (B.C. 287-213) come nearest to modern
science of all the ancients. But they had no immediate
successors.
The Sophists and Socrates.
At the time of Socrates, Greek civilisation was at its
height. The Sophists were then teaching the art of rhetoric
and the conduct of public business, as well as professing to
teach men conduct in general on a rather superficial basis.
They have been much decried, but have found a modern
defender in Grote, and the older conception of them as mere
charlatans has now passed away.
Contemporary with them lived a man, himself called a
Sophist, a citizen of Athens all his life, who there tried to
expose them and turn away his fellow-citizens from following
their teaching I mean, of course, Socrates (469-399).
Socrates distinctly discountenanced the investigation of the
physical universe. He first, in the West, put himself at the
subjective point of view, and taught that the proper study
of mankind was Man.
Plato and Aristotle.
His pupil Plato (427-347) took up his standpoint, putting
himself at the subjective point of view without regard for
knowledge of external nature or science. He carried farther
than any one after him the method of thinking by way of
rational or reasoned speculation, and has ever stood, in con-
sequence, as the typical representative of (Platonic) IDEALISM.
His system might be called a depreciation of sense and a
glorification of reason.
iv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 29
Aristotle (384-322), pupil of Plato, distinctly philosophises
from a subjective point of view, is a mental philosopher.
As with Socrates and Plato, his philosophy leads up to
conduct of life. But with regard to nature, he is of a
different disposition from Plato, being interested just in
that matter which Plato despised. Hence his system in-
cludes not only a physical philosophy of nature, but also
a descriptive, if not explanatory, science of nature; e.g. he
wrote long treatises on the animal world. Nevertheless, his
views of nature are mainly superficial, and his so-called
science of nature is mainly speculative, and takes no account
of the necessity for verification. His interest in man and
nature is ultimately only with a view to human conduct.
Epicurus and Zeno.
This is also the predominant idea with the Stoics and
the Epicureans. In the moral character of their philosophy
they are at one with the Socratics, as well as in that they
seek to determine human conduct from a view of conformity
to (human) ' nature.' They differ from Plato and Aristotle in
flying less high in rational speculation. There are begin-
nings in their works of sober psychological inquiry. They
are Materialists of a very extreme type. Yet neither school
did anything to advance positive science. Down to B.C. 250,
which covers Epicurus and the more important Greek
Stoics, there are no new philosophic ideas introduced, but
we find an overpowering interest in human conduct. Both
the Platonic school (the Academics) and the Aristotelian (the
Peripatetics) were for a time overshadowed by them, greatly
though the influence of both Plato and Aristotle had worked
in Stoicism as in Epicureanism. Zeno and Epicurus both
were influenced by Aristotle ; Epicurus in his ethical philo-
Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
sophy was largely connected with Plato. By his natural
philosophy, Epicurus is also connected with Democritus.
The Cynics and Cyrenaics connect Zeno and Epicurus respec-
tively with Socrates. They began their work at a time when
the energy of Greek thought had in a manner spent itself,
and when, in consequence of political disintegration, men's
thoughts began to be turned to individual conduct and quiet
life. Hence the relatively greater importance of their ethical
theories.
All the effective thinking of Greek philosophy was the
work of these few men, and they are the founders of all the
Greek schools of thought. We may see this more clearly in
diagram.
SOCRATES
(B.C. 469-399)
DEMOCRITUS
(b. 460)
i
PLATO
"-,(437^347)
ARISTOTLE
(384-322)
Plotinus
(A.D. 205-269)
Porphyry
(333 304) 4*
->EPICURUS
(341-270)
I
Lucretius
(95-52)
V
ZENO
Epictetus
(fl. A.D. 90-118'
M. Aurelius
(120-180)
iv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 31
Pre-Socratic and Platonic Thought.
Let us now, before coming to the Christian era, retrace our
steps and bring the Pre-Socratic philosophy into some sort of
relation with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.
We see it during those two centuries preceding Socrates
active, acute, but slow in development, a movement of great
comprehensiveness and variety, and of remarkable philosophic
depth. Yet some of what are to us the simplest conceptions
were then not attained, and it is only with Socrates and
Plato that philosophy begins to be to some extent ' modern.'
Scantiness of surviving materials and a general lack of
philosophic development justify a somewhat summary treat-
ment. Yet some of their thinking was important for Plato
and even for us. There were six Pre-Socratics who most
strongly influenced Plato
HERACLEITUS, the Ionian, fl. about B.C. 504.
PARMENIDES, of Elea, Magna Graecia,yf. about B.C. 504. :
ANAXAGORAS, of Clazomenae, B.C. 500-428.
PYTHAGORAS, of Samos and Magna Gra;cia, B.C. 575-500.
DEMOCRITUS, of Abdera, b. B.C. 460.
PROTAGORAS, chief of the Sophists, B.C. 480-411.
The problem of knowledge as it presented itself to Plato
was an effort to transcend and get over the antithesis between
the views of the first two. The other thinkers as well as
Socrates gave him suggestions towards overcoming this
opposition. Of these, the Pythagoreans are of the least
importance. Their influence only became prominent, as
expressed by one of them, Philolaus, at the time when
Plato's theory of ideas was undergoing its later development.
1 According to Mr. Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, 70) this date
is too early by at least thirty years. ED.
32 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
The Pythagorean was the most enduring of the Pre-Socratic
schools.
Plato never mentions Democritus by name, but it is
probably to this great contemporary he refers as representing
Materialism, when setting out in conscious antithesis his own
Immaterialism. Democritus, living at Abdera, never came
under the influence of Socrates. Anticipated by Leucippus
early in the fifth century, he worked out his system from the
basis of the earlier thinkers. He is the proper antithesis
to Plato. Plato's philosophy is Ideological founded on final
causes, the ethical element being uppermost. Democritus'
philosophy is mechanical, and was the first to be developed
as such. His importance by the side of Plato was first
recognised by Lange (in his History of Materialism], who
holds him to be the more important thinker of the two, in
so far that modern scientific theory joins on to him more
than on to Plato, whose views are largely discredited. His
very prolific works are mostly lost.
The antithesis between Heracleitus and Parmenides was
metaphysical rather than epistemological. Their philosophy,
as with all Pre-Socratics, was cosmological, nevertheless it is
epistemological also. All tried to find some simpler expres-
sion of the complex experience of daily life, but Heracleitus
and Parmenides had a novel and deeper insight. Though
Heracleitus adduced fire as a fundamental principle, it is
the fact of ceaseless Change or Motion in nature that strikes
him iravra pet. Parmenides was struck by Permanence and
Fixity in nature. The latter emphasised the One, the
former saw chiefly the Many. Thus Heracleitus had to
reconcile with his theory the apparent fixity of things ;
Parmenides had to make the apparent change in things
square with his. Heracleitus accounted better for fixity
iv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 33
than Parmenides did for change. Both views were of interest
to Plato.
Anaxagoras introduced a new principle as determining
universal being, viz. vovs, or reason. This, as compared with
others brought forward by Pre-Socratics, e.g. water, air, fire,
was apparently subjective ; actually however for him vovs is
a purely objective moving principle, and he is as cosmological
as the rest.
With all of these there is latent the beginning of an
epistemological theory. The distinction between experience,
as we actually find it, and reflexion on our experience is
implicit in all ; but no one marked out clearly the difference
between experience and reflexion, between sense and thought.
They did not ask what the relation is between the two,
nor how knowledge arises from both ; they all thought of
knowing in terms of sense.
But the Sophists and Socrates, with the doctrine of ' Know
thyself/ brought the question to the front, causing the theory
of knowledge to enter on a new phase. Philosophy, from
being cosmological, became anthropological. With Anaxa-
goras, man is part of the universe. But Protagoras and
Socrates view the universe through man. Man is put before
the universe man as knower (theoretical aspect of philo-
sophy) and as doer (practical aspect). The Pre-Socratics,
with their definite theories of being, were ontologists rather
than epistemologists, making no definite reference to the
subject as such. So far as they are epistemologists they
agree, however much they differ metaphysically. They all,
namely, are Sensationalists. They take account of sensation
only, and of this as something proceeding in us in a material
way.
Protagoras, on the other hand, treated the problem of
34 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
knowledge so much from the subjective point of view that he
never got beyond that standpoint. With him knowledge is im-
possible. There could of course be no knowledge apart from
individual experience, but beyond that individual experience
it was impossible to get. Knowledge is sense-perception,
infinitely varied and changing ; man, the individual per-
cipient, is, through his particular sensations, the ' measure of
all things' for himself. Thus he despaired of physical
science, nor did he attempt any other kind of science, but
devoted himself to practical life. Thus, in their consideration
of the conduct of life, the Sophists employed moral persua-
sion instead of laying down any principles of moral science.
Socrates also despaired of a knowledge of external things,
holding that our experience of such is so completely relative
to the individual that knowledge proper, i. e. having ob-
jective validity, is impossible. Nevertheless he was not
content to drop epistemological considerations and go into
practical life, but, resigning physical science as a worthy
or possible object of search, he declared that a knowledge
of man as a moral agent was possible. Though unable
to get a knowledge of things, man can attain a knowledge
of virtue. Accordingly Socrates set himself to formulate
a science of moral conceptions, even to the identification
of virtue and knowledge. He attempted to get at a definition
of ethical notions by the generalisation of particulars, and
thus to form concepts scientifically true. Scientific know-
ledge for Socrates is generalisation of particulars in the
moral sphere, but not outside it. Science for him was
general knowledge to know particulars through the concept.
This view of the general notion as embodying science first
found expression in the teaching of Socrates. It is Socratic
conceptualism.
iv.J Elements of General Philosophy. 35
Plato's ' Theory of Ideas ' is a development of the Socratic
conceptualism. He inherited both the concept of Socrates
and also his high moral purpose. But Plato did not drop
the general problem of knowledge; he asks, 'What is
knowledge ? ' and, ' How is knowledge possible ? ' questions
which he puts into the mouth of Socrates (Thecetetus, &c.),
but which the latter never really asked, since he never
conceived the problem of conduct as one to be solved by
the problem of knowledge put universally.
End of the First Period.
We shall inquire into Plato's theories and those of Aristotle
when dealing more specifically with those main questions
referred to at the end of my third lecture. Here we need
only briefly notice the conclusion of the period of ' ancient '
philosophy.
The Aristotelian and Platonic schools went on, but in the
later Greek and Roman period fell, as we have seen, into
abeyance before Epicureanism and Stoicism. There was no
advance in pure philosophy in Greece beyond Aristotle's
time. The strong ethical bent inaugurated by Socrates, but
tempered by the universal genius of Plato and Aristotle, pre-
vailed fully by the third century. The full weight of Aristotle's
influence did not really tell until the Scholastic period and after
that ; in the early Medieval period it was overshadowed by
Platonism. The two or three names of importance in Roman
philosophy fall under Epicureans, e.g. Lucretius, or Stoics,
e.g. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Cicero
(B.C. 44) was an Eclectic thinker, interesting chiefly for the
information he gives of the various movements.
If by the side of these we take thinkers who were not
metaphysicians but scientific investigators, we see here and
D 2
36 Elements of General Philosophy.
there one working with such success as to influence posterity,
and, notably in astronomy, making correct conclusions on
false grounds e.g. predicting eclipses on fallacious concep-
tions of the relations of sun and earth. When we say the
ancients had no science, we make exception of Hippocrates
(medicine, B.C. 460-357), Euclid the geometer of Alexandria
(fl. B.C. 323-283), Archimedes the physicist, the founder of
genuine Positive Science, Hipparchus (fl. B.C. 160-145) and
Ptolemy (fl. A. D. 139-161), the astronomers.
An offshoot from Platonic idealism and the so-called
Academic philosophy in the Christian era was Neo-Platonism.
I have said that Greek philosophy was not religious. Its
latest growth however, Neo-Platonism, sought to meet a
religious want born of the social conditions of the time, and
entered into direct competition with the young Christian
faith for mastery over all the thoughts and actions of men,
the most important Neo-Platonist being Plotinus. But
Greek philosophers had no kind of scruple as to the ques-
tions they raised. Socrates had indeed scruples regarding
physical inquiry, but these were curiously unlike later and
modern scruples, and are to be explained from the state of
contemporary knowledge in regard to the subjects more than
from anything else. They bore on the limitations of what
could be settled and how to settle it, and not at all of what
ought, or ought not, to be discussed. Hence Greek philo-
sophy is the prototype of all earnest and unfettered thought.
For LECTURES V and VI read :
Ueberweg, op. cit. I, pp. 356, 357, 367, 368 (for the way in which
the Scholastic thinkers got Greek thought); pp. 410, 411 (for the
way in which Greek works went to the Arabs, and were translated
into Syriac and then into Arabic) ; pp. 417-419 (for the influence
of both on Jewish philosophy). Also pp. 430-432.
LECTURE V
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY.
Divisions.
OUR second or Mediaeval period of Christian or Ecclesias-
tical Philosophy is divisible into two sections: (i) Patristic
Philosophy, (2) Scholastic Philosophy. The former, beginning
in the second century, culminated in Augustin (A.D. 354-
430), then languished on through the virtually positive break
of the Dark Ages, while the break-up of the older Western
civilisation was proceeding. The latter (2) dates from the
eleventh century, when philosophy was reviving in the mon-
astic schools founded largely by Charlemagne about A.D. 800,
when society had assumed somewhat of the form of modern
nationalities, and when universities had just been, or were
about to be, founded. The doctors of the Church were
called scholasiici viri, and their exposition of Christian
dogma according to Greek principles is known as Scho-
lastic Philosophy, still taught to-day in Catholic schools.
After William of Ockham (d. 1347) it began to break up,
and there intervenes the transitional period of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries ushering in Modern Philosophy.
Authority and Philosophy.
When Simplicius and his Neo-Platonist companions, the
last representatives of Hellenic philosophy, were driven
38 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
eastwards by the action of Justinian, in A.D. 529, and
the Athenian schools, for the first time since the age of
Socrates and Plato, were deserted and dumb, there was
left the Christian Church, which had grown for five centuries
till it was so strong that emperors' edicts stood at its
command, and so little unconscious of its future glory and
its power, so little indisposed to dominate the thoughts of
men, that the crushing out of the philosophical schools was
but the last of a long series of blows levelled by it at the
authority of human thinking. Unless we form a true con-
ception of the historical relation of the Church to philosophic
thought, we cannot comprehend the modern philosophy
begun by Descartes.
Greek speculation, though it often had to pick its steps
among established faiths (remember the fate of Socrates!)
was, as we said, pre-eminently disinterested in its search after
reasoned truth. Now too since the last three hundred years
it is fully conceded that the human mind may search out
anything and everything up to the limit of its powers, in the
bare interest of truth and intelligent insight. But between
this recurring phase of opinion there was an intervaj when
liberty of thought was not the watchword of most, nor
even of the most enlightened, minds. This interval, coin-
cident with the period of supremacy of the Church in all
departments of life, dates back to the beginnings of the
Christian movement, and covers an interval whose magnitude
it takes an effort, not often made, fully to conceive. Even
pagan philosophy, viz. in its Neo-Platonist phase, was much
affected by the principles and professions of the growing
Church. Let us remember that the best Greek thought
was excogitated in some four hundred years and less,
and that modern philosophy only dates back three centuries.
v.] Elements of General Philosophy. 39
We have thus 1600 years to account for as against those
seven or eight hundred. Reduce this term as we may
by the fringes of the dwindling of the first and the
earliest growth of the latest periods, still there remains
a clear thousand of years during which it was not open
to men to think as they liked and this is a huge slice
out of the history of humanity. What the Church did, or
permitted to be done for the enlightenment of the race took
three times as long as the great deeds that are crowded
into the something more than three centuries from Bacon
and Descartes till the present. Those of course were very
different times from ours, and there was plenty of other
work, hard and grim, for the Church to do, and the Church
did much of it bravely. But we must not forget that
the seventh and eighth centuries were as long as the seven-
teenth and eighteenth. And not to forget this, but to
remember and ponder it, in connexion with the intellectual
history of mankind, is one of the first things the student
of philosophical history is called upon to do.
Greek Philosophy in Harness.
At the beginning of the sixth century the Church finally
stamped out the very feeble remnant representing Greek
thought. That date is also critical in another way. Not
only was it then that the Church grasped the reins, but
a turning-point was also reached in her internal develop-
ment. As in after-ages the Church did not so much repress
thought as compress it within her own limits, so it is not
to be supposed that she at this date had stood altogether
outside of the philosophical current. The Christian religion,
viewed philosophically, rivalled the Stoic and Epicurean
schools as a way of thinking towards an ideal of human
40 Elements of General Philosophy. [LKCT.
conduct. The rules of life were given not as rational, but
as a revelation from on high. But in time, as the Church
grew and brought into her fold more and more men of
higher culture, the developed conceptions of pagan philo-
sophy came into contact with the Christian philosophy.
Epictetus the Stoic, Marcus Aurelius the Stoic emperor,
Plotinus and Proclus, are not the only names of philoso-
phical note in the early centuries of the new era. Origen
(185-254), Athanasius (296-373), Tertullian (160-220),
and, above all, Augustin (354-430), are not less worthy
of notice, for the historian of philosophy as well as for the
Churchman. Augustin, a man of developed pagan culture,
appearing at the time when Christianity had gained the mastery,
first put forth those conceptions, which came to be the
accepted philosophy of the Christian Church, with a breadth
of thought hitherto unrivalled. He derived his conception
of the soul as real and yet as opposed to matter from the
Platonists. Metaphysically he was a Dualist, and fixed
philosophy from his time onward as a system of Dualism.
In fact the first generation of Christian converts had
hardly passed away before philosophic thought began, while
three or four centuries of ardent philosophic thinking and
dialectical discussion, carried on with Greek subtlety upon
principles of Greek philosophy, had been needed before the
many-headed dogma of the Church had been settled and
the function of the Fathers fulfilled, there being nothing
more to create. What one section of Christendom has
often bewailed, and another has rejoiced over, may be
accepted with some confidence for a fact, viz. that the
ecclesiastical doctrine was the result of an incorporation
of a few simple tenets with the wisdom of the world, or
at. least of the interpretation of a small number of practical
v.] Elements of General Philosophy. 41
truths by the refined intelligence of thinkers who had been
trained in Greek schools. The fact belongs to the history
of philosophy as much as to religion, although the Fathers
would for the most part have thrown from them the
imputation, so ready as they were to denounce philosophy
and all profane wisdom in the interest of faith.
Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
But after a while all the main dogmas were formed by
which the Church was henceforth to stand, the edifice
being crowned in the fifth century by Augustin, last and
greatest of the Fathers. After him philosophising was bent
into other than creative channels. This is what happened.
Pagan philosophy having been reduced to silence, and the
Fathers of the Church East and West having passed away,
their dogmatic work accomplished, when next, under the
auspices of the consolidated and all-powerful Church, some-
thing of the old inquiring and reasoning spirit appeared, it
was given the task of interpreting and unfolding, of sup-
porting and upholding, what was there already. To the
Fathers of the Church succeeded her Doctors, who in
monastic schools and, as time went on, in universities made
philosophy conform to dogma, expounding in logical form
and sustaining by rational argument the doctrines which no
one might any more presume to touch in their substance.
This was the second phase or true Scholastic Philosophy.
The Dark Ages.
The transition was not swiftly made. With the final
triumph of the Church in the Roman world, about A.D. 600,
when the historian comes upon the time of darkness and
chaos, when the great world-empire, falling of itself into
42 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
pieces or broken into fragments by the northern races, was
hewn into the rough shapes of modern states and nation-
alities, the Church held on its way ; but it was no longer
the Church of Augustin, and not yet the Church of Aquinas.
Only perhaps a single obscure name in a century stands
out from the time of Augustin to the age of Charlemagne.
The grandiose attempt of the latter, at the close of the
eighth century, to organise European society on the basis of
a twofold imperium of Emperor and Pope gave room for
some serious beginnings to be made of provision for intel-
lectual culture in the monastic schools. Half a century later
there appeared one of mark John Scotus Erigena (800-
877), a native of either Ireland or Ayrshire, where the
darkness had never been so complete as on the continent.
He struck the keynote of all that followed in enunciating
the perfect unity of religion and philosophy, of faith and
reason.
But Charlemagne's construction could not endure, and
two centuries more of confusion and anarchy were added
to the dismal roll before there arose any prospect of an
intellectual succession in Christendom. Erigena was de-
nounced as a heretic for his pains ; hence we may not place
the beginnings of Scholasticism earlier than the middle of the
eleventh century. Thus there was for about five hundred
years next to no philosophy among the European races ;
during that time philosophic activity was confined to Arabians
in Bagdad and Moors in Spain. They in the time of greatest
darkness carried on disinterested thinking.
Effective Thinking in Christendom confined to the West.
In inquiring into the growth of Scholasticism, let it first
be borne in mind, that of the two divisions of the Church
v.l Elements of General Philosophy. 43
it is practically only the Western or Roman Church with
which we have to do. The aim of the Fathers was perhaps
not less actively promoted in the East than in the West ; the
development of dogma really took place more at Constanti-
nople and at Alexandria than at Rome. But at the end of
the first period, the great consolidation of doctrine made by
Augustin for the West, possessed as it was by a force that
could survive five centuries, was paralleled by nothing of its
kind in the East. And it was for want of this, as much as
for any other reasons, that the Eastern Church in the final
division of Christendom, although not assaulted by the storms
that for centuries beset the West, never to the last did
anything for enlightenment to compare with the remark-
able if tardy achievements of the Western Schoolmen. The
thinkers of Constantinople were men of third or fourth rate
power. The authority of Augustin had been the saving of
the West. We consider therefore only the Western Church
with its Augustinian code.
Philosophic Instruments applied by the Schoolmen.
As to the instruments of the Scholastics for the interpreta-
tion of the doctrine handed on to them, the Doctors had
some philosophical works of the Greeks which had come
across the gulf of centuries. Of course they had, besides,
Augustin, but his knowledge of Greek philosophy was gained
at second hand only. Of Aristotle they had some minor
logical works ; they possessed Porphyry's Introduction to the
Categories (all in the Latin translation of Boethius), and (also
in translation) a small piece of Plato's Timceus. This was
all, excepting one or two inferior works by commentators.
Plato's speculations were unknown save as transmitted by
Augustin and some of the Neo-Platonists. Even the merelv
44 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
logical doctrines of Aristotle were incompletely apprehended
before the middle of the twelfth century, while the full
scope of his encyclopaedic work remained unknown till the
thirteenth century, when the Schoolmen had in a round-
about way obtained translations of his works. When in
A.D. 529 the Greek professors were dispersed, they fled to
Bagdad and the East, bearing with them the records of
Greek philosophy the original works of Aristotle, &c.
There they were in course of time translated into Syriac
and thence into Arabic. The Arabian conquests having
established the Mohammedan empire from the East across
North Africa into Spain, Greek learning found its way
thither in Arabic, and was there again translated by
Jews into Hebrew and borne back into Christendom.
Then both from Arabic and from Hebrew Latin transla-
tions were finally made, and these were received by the
Schoolmen as a kind of revelation. But this did not take
place till the twelfth century. As it took place, as they
became acquainted with Greek philosophy, their view
perceptibly widened. And by the time the Schoolmen
had learnt their Aristotle as fully as might be in this in-
direct way, i. e. at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
this knowledge began to be supplemented by acquain-
tance with the original Greek, or by direct translations
from the same, the originals being sent or brought by the
Greeks of Constantinople.
Limitations of Scholasticism.
Scholasticism was philosophising in support of a limited
and foregone conclusion. This is the difference between it
and the free movement of Hellenic thought. But still it was
philosophising. The Doctors did make a step towards the
v.] Elements of General Philosophy. 45
light, in working from blind devotion to more or less
rational belief. We can thus distinguish between their great-
ness and their limitations. If we dwell on the latter, the
case against them can be strongly put and maintained. It
is easy to abuse Scholasticism. No new or striking con-
ception, like those we find in ancient or in modern philo-
sophy, penetrating to the heart of things, sprang from any
one of the Schoolmen. From want of ability or lack of
liberty they never carried thought farther than the Greek
leaders, and for the most part not so far. Their utter
dependence upon Aristotle appears in that, as their know-
ledge of him widened, their views of philosophy widened
and they became able to conceive the full scope of philo-
sophic inquiry. Till the thirteenth century they had no
conception of philosophy but as a vague science of dialectic
or logic, nor had they made any division of its departments
as Aristotle had done. And at the last they incurred
discredit through comparison with the Greek philosophy,
when the fall of Constantinople revealed this in the original
form more fully to the West. They were found to have
established no alternative claim to modern respect by taking
up any branch of thought which the Greeks had neglected,
or in which they had failed. And their very acuteness,
through being turned on to a fatally narrow circle of
subjects, had led to subtleties that were doomed to be the
occasion of some of the bitterest reproaches since heaped
upon them.
The Case for Scholasticism.
On the other side it should be noted that the Schoolmen
were not responsible for their circumstances, determined
by a great and uncontrollable course of events. It was
46 Elements of General Philosophy.
something that, after so great a dissolution, there should
have been so considerable an attempt at reconstruction.
It was not a little wonderful that they should have applied
all the enlightenment handed down to them to rationalise
faith, and that they struggled as they did against the con-
servatism of ecclesiastical authority until official recognition
of one newly rationalised doctrine after another was extorted.
Theirs became entitled Church philosophy, yet the Church
did nothing but accept, did nothing to encourage, their
philosophising, witness the case of Scotus Erigena. Often
and often was Aristotle solemnly banned before he came
to be considered (in the thirteenth century) as 'the fore-
runner of Christ in the things of Nature as John Baptist
was in the things of Grace.' No, we must not speak
only of the servility of the Schoolmen : they showed not
only wisdom but also courage in their appeal to heathen
Aristotle. And it is more becoming at this time of day, and
more important besides, that their wisdom and their courage
should not remain unacknowledged.
For LECTURE VI :
The student should not fail to follow up the lecture by reading
Croom Robertson's account of British Schoolmen in the essay, 'The
English Mind,' Philosophical Remains, pp. 34-38. ED.
LECTURE VI.
SCHOLASTICISM AND THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE AND
PHILOSOPHY.
Realism in Scholasticism.
INTO the question which chiefly occupied the Schoolmen
in their attempt to interpret and rationalise Christian dogma
in the light of Greek philosophy the question of the nature
of ' Universals ' or General Ideas we shall enter more
fully in a separate lecture. It was not new then any
more than it is obsolete now. Before Plato and Aristotle
the Greeks had seen its significance ; with those two it was
a matter of the deepest concern. Plato, with his archetypal
ideas as the only Realities, is the great representative of
the one extreme view to which the Schoolmen first gave
the name of Realism. Aristotle held a modified Realism.
The other extreme view, viz. that only particulars are
realities, the universal being but subjective, also had its
representatives in Greek thought, Epicurus, e.g. approximating
to a modern Nominalist, although on different grounds.
Of how the question had been discussed by the Greeks
the Schoolmen knew nothing. Nevertheless, Porphyry
and the fragments in their hands were enough to suggest
the problem, and in fact Erigena in the ninth century, in the
fervour of his Neo-Platonism, had raised it, and come to
a conclusion in the spirit of a thorough Realist. Moreover,
as soon as the philosophic interest was aroused within the
48 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Church, the Schoolmen were quick to see the full bearing
of the issues. Their philosophy consisting in the intellectual
consideration of the mystery of the faith, they discerned
at the foundation of how many articles of that faith the
problem lay the Trinity, the Real Presence, the Redemption
of the race, the status of the Church as the divinely illumined
witness of the Truth. In these and other beliefs they saw
how the relation of the Many to the One, the old question
of Parmenides and Heracleitus, identical with the later
question as to Universals, is implicated.
Now whichever view the Schoolmen took, they made an
advance in taking any view at all, and the view held by
some from the first, and by the majority at the last, showed
more intellect and betokened more independence than is
ordinarily ascribed to them. Its promulgation heralded the
approach of modern thought.
Divisions of the Scholastic Period.
The whole period falls into three parts :
Part I. From the eleventh to the end of the twelfth century.
Part II. covers the thirteenth century.
Part III. From the fourteenth century till whenever
Scholasticism may be supposed to end ; that is, one might
say, with the sixteenth century for the active and leading
spirits in Europe, with the seventeenth for the universities
in the advanced countries, but not even to the present
day in the seminaries of the Catholic Church, where Aquinas
is still the great philosophical authority.
The first period is the Platonic age of Scholasticism.
Aristotle, as we have seen, was at this date known chiefly
through the medium of the Arabian scholars, while Plato was
known directly by a fragment only, but indirectly through
VL] Elements of General Philosophy. 49
Neo-Platonic media and Augustin's works. But a Realism
as strong as Plato's was supported by Anselm (1033-1109)
and others, and this view was tolerated or approved and
accepted by the Church. Reason and faith were in process
of coming together, but it was an innovation. Scholasticism
was struggling to gain its footing. Roscellin (fl. 1092), on
the other hand, dared to avow an extreme Nominalism and
drove it to an extravagant conclusion.
The second period is the Aristotelian age of Scholasticism,
when Aristotle, better known at length in Latin, though not
in Greek, came to have more influence over the human mind
than at any previous period in history. Way had been made
for this evolution by Abelard (1079-1142), that restless,
critical, but not constructive spirit, antagonistic to Anselm.
Independent and unchecked by rules, he is the first and
best representative of freedom of thought in the Middle
Ages. A multitude of other circumstances concurred to
induce the change of attitude. The beginnings of Scholas-
ticism coincide with the beginnings of the Papal supre-
macy in Europe the period from Hildebrand to Innocent
III and the maturity of Scholasticism was attained when
the Papacy was putting forth its strongest claims against
the civil power in the days, i.e. of Innocent III (1198-
1216) and when the Church was endeavouring as far as
possible to widen the organised ecclesiastical teaching. Now
the encyclopaedic genius of Aristotle was exactly fitted
to satisfy the largest requirements on these lines, and hence
Scholasticism, with its ground-principle of reason in the
service of faith, flourished at length under Aristotelian
influence.
In Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) the junction was com-
pleted. He retained all of Plato that he needed for dogma
50 Elements of General Philosophy [LECT.
where Aristotle fell short. But now reason, unlike the first
period when she was struggling to enter, not only had
entered into the penetralia of faith, but was fully recognised,
on the condition of yielding aid and reverence to the Church,
as the legitimate occupant of the realm of nature. The
interest in the natural world felt by Roger Bacon was
undoubtedly due to Aristotle's observation of natural phe-
nomena. The watchword of the thought of the day was
the Reasonableness of the Faith, and this, Aquinas maintained,
was perfectly intelligible even to the smallest particular.
But hardly had the generation of Aquinas passed away
than this union was seen to be hollow.
The third period is one of rupture and divorce between
reason and faith. It is very curious to note how from the
two sides equally the fatal change of attitude was effected.
John Duns Scotus (1274-1308), who had refined and dis-
tinguished beyond all human belief to the extent of twelve
folio volumes before he died at the age of 34, was an
ardent devoted son of the Church, but he aimed the first
blow at Scholasticism by disturbing the concordat of the
thirteenth century. He denied that Aquinas had demon-
strated the reasonableness of the faith. Christian doctrine
transcended reason and had to be believed. Another Briton,
William of Ockham, took two strides backward (or forward)
for one of Scotus, in reviving the Nominalism of Roscellin,
and declaring, like him, that the rational expression of the
leading Christian dogmas was impossible. That Roscellin
should have beforehand by implication proclaimed the nullity
of the Scholastic attempt was as little grateful to the Church
as to Anselm, and accordingly Roscellin, who had even
exceeded the intellectual licence of Abelard, was condemned
and his doctrine banned for two centuries. But the times
vi. ] Elements of General Philosophy. 51
had changed, and Ockham, milder than Roscellin, could
better gain access to men's minds. Professing implicit
belief in all the articles of the faith, he proceeded to show,
as Kant did later, how impotent was Reason to establish
any one of them. Highly gifted, possessing great force of
character, and a Franciscan, Ockham gave the Church little
cause to love him, and his doctrines did not at once find
favour. Nevertheless the times were ready for it, and the
Church had gradually to bring herself to support those who
declared that the faith could not be explained because it
was too high.
But this theory was adopted by independent thinkers as
giving, in the mere shadow of restraint it imposed, a chance
to get virtually free ; and the Church and the world, having
agreed to differ, went farther and farther asunder till they
turned their backs on each other. The Church might go
on believing and exacting what belief it could; but while
far from indisposed to believe, men insisted that they would
also freely inquire. The influence of the Church was
extinguished in different degrees at different places. Events
had happened which would have broken Scholasticism even
had it been less shaken from within. Human vision and
human power were being extended on all sides, in every
sphere of human interest. The East had become known
through the crusades, and now explorers had unveiled
a world and an ancient civilisation in the far West. The
reign of darkness, dimly lit hitherto by a circumscribed
stock of ideas, once broken, many of those ideas had to be
changed or surrendered. Most revolutionising of all were the
results of Copernicus's flash of thought. The earth was not
fixed and flat, nor the centre of things, but only a revolving
satellite, one of many specks in the starry sky, and away
E 2
52 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
on every side, down as well as up, space ran out into
the illimitable. Europe was dwarfed in the world ; the
world was dwarfed in the universe. The heavens existed
for other beings than the human race. The right of private
judgment was claimed for every separate individuality till, at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe was rent in
twain. The revival of letters dates from the fall of Constan-
tinople in 1453, when Greek scholars were driven West.
The next 150 years witnessed a great revulsion. When
through those refugees the true Plato became known, there
was a wild wave of Platonic revival. Then attempts were
made to understand the true Aristotle, but generally he was
decried as the instrument of the Scholastics and, in the
heat of reaction, reviled for the artificial supremacy to
which they had exalted him. Every Greek school had its
adherents who fancied they had lit upon ideas that were all
the emancipated world could want. Most remarkable of all
were the premature attempts at constructive philosophy by the
Italian Nature-philosophers, of whom Telesius was perhaps
the most earnest and Giordano Bruno the best known and
most imposing. These were endeavours, on a purely
secular basis of objective consideration, to bring into order
and explain the universe in its new vastness. Bruno was
burnt at Rome in 1600. Four years previous had seen the
birth of Descartes.
Period of Transition.
The Church philosophy, while it ceased to advance in the
fifteenth century, lingered on until the modern movement
in philosophy took definite shape. After the fourteenth
century the best minds were no longer content to be church-
philosophers, even if they were friendly to the established
vi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 53
religion. A time of intellectual transition supervened, coin-
ciding with the Renaissance, Renascence, or Revival of
Letters. But the movement was very gradual. Many among
the Schoolmen had been preparing the way for the Renais-
sance. This transition may be considered as having lasted
from 1450 till 1600. It was a time of great intellectual
activity, chiefly of a destructive and disintegrating nature,
although there were many bold constructive attempts. These,
however, were only in revival of past points of view. The
destroyers, in this epoch of fermentation, left little of per-
manent value.
The Modern Period.
With 1600 begins the modern period, properly speaking.
Since that time there has been a continuous intellectual flow
till now, and there is reason to expect it may continue.
The movement has not only been rich in event, it has been
European to an extent to which the Church philosophy
was not, much less the Greek. The great Scholastic thinkers,
it is true, were of different nationalities, chiefly Italian,
French, and British, and of these more especially British.
The greatest of all, Aquinas, was an Italian, but nearly
all the great steps were taken by men of these islands.
But whatever nationality they belonged to, they abjured it
and became Churchmen. It is only below the surface that we
discern the national characteristics. In the modern period,
on the other hand, not only do all the cultured races of
Europe take part, but the national differences, especially
in the British contributors, are far more marked. There
is consequently far greater complexity. And whatever else
the period has included, there has been a continuous British
philosophy.
54 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
The Modern Scientific Movement.
Side by side with modern philosophy there has been, to
a degree unparalleled before, a properly scientific movement.
There is but one name to represent positive science in
the preceding period the name of the Franciscan monk,
Roger Bacon (1214-1294). He alone, while the Scholastic
mind was turned away from nature and wholly occupied
with general philosophy, was profoundly interested in the
investigation of natural phenomena. For his pains he was
imprisoned twenty or thirty years. Like Archimedes, he
stands without known forerunners or successors. It was
not till Galileo arose that physical science entered on its
modern course.
It is in the modern period that the work of special
scientific inquiry begins, with ever-increasing subdivision.
Some of the leading modern philosophers rank among the
scientific discoverers, e.g., Descartes and Leibniz ; but modern
science commenced its career before modern philosophy.
Galileo figures in the first decades of the seventeenth century
(1564-1642). Following him there was a continual scientific
advance. He was mainly occupied with physics ; Harvey,
(1578-1657) with physiology. Pascal (1623-1662) devoted
himself to physics and mathematics as well as to philosophy.
Boyle (1627-1691) is the type of the modern scientific man,
of no speculative power, content with eliciting positive results
without troubling himself about their relations to other
results. Newton (1642-1727) is the supreme representative
of special scientific inquiry, though of so wide a range that
he is quite above the common rank of inquirers. He laid
out what has been accepted as the true physical system of
the universe, but becomes confused (in comparison, e.g.
vi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 55
with Locke) when dealing with its speculative aspect. After
Newton science branched out and developed gradually into
its present high specialisation. At the present time a man
must specialise or do nothing. But it was Copernicus (1473-
1543) who, in setting the minds of men at the proper point
of view for contemplating the universe, prepared the way for
Galileo and for Newton, and enabled those that came after to
engage in their special inquiries.
By the philosophic movement, as distinct from the scientific,
we mean the thinking of men who put themselves essentially
at the subjective point of view. They do not exclude the
practice of, or the having regard to, a scientific investigation
of nature, but they aim at bringing together the results
obtained in science, and hold that the study of things must
be supplemented by a study of thoughts, the study of nature
by a study of things in relation to man.
LECTURE VII.
MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
Divisions.
THE whole movement of Modern Philosophy has been
described as an attempt to come at a knowledge of things
from a consideration of the conditions and powers of human
reason. It starts from the subjective point of view, from
that of the knowing mind. Herein it is distinguished from
ancient philosophy, which took an objective point of view,
as well as from Scholasticism, which was fettered by a system
of belief held to be revealed.
Within this movement we meet early with an opposition
in thought that admits of greatly varied expression. The
German classifications, e. g. Schwegler's and others, are
somewhat unsatisfactory. Schwegler, Kuno Fischer, and
most of the German historians, divide all schools into Realists
and Idealists those who explain thoughts from things, and
those who explain things from thoughts. But this is a bad
use of ambiguous, much abused terms. Realist, e. g. has
been used both in the question of the perception of an
external world and also in that of the reality of ' universals.'
It was proposed by Kant to use the term Metaphysical Dog-
matists or Dogmatic Metaphysicians, and the usage has
become common in Germany ; but this does not apply
Elements of General Philosophy. 57
farther than Wolff. Kant, coming after Wolff, it is often
said, inaugurated a period of Critical Philosophy, appearing
as a critical thinker in relation to two movements pre-
ceding him Metaphysical Dogmatism and Empiricism,
the latter, he found, having been carried by Hume into
Scepticism. Were we at the Kantian point of view this
division of modern thought might do; as it is, we must
find a place for such as Kant.
Descartes and Bacon.
Modern philosophy, as distinct from the pursuit of modern
science, begins as late as the second generation of the
seventeenth century with Descartes, and not before. It is in
relation to him that we have to understand all who follow.
Bacon, who flourished a generation earlier than Descartes,
has more relation to the scientific than to the philosophic
movement, and had no intellectual succession till long after
Descartes. Hobbes caught none of Bacon's enthusiasm
for laborious inductive research (though he came into per-
sonal contact with him), and showed only a very general
agreement with him as to the ultimate springs of human
knowledge in sense. Bacon's system fructified later on,
mainly in physical science. Whatever philosophy there was
in England in the middle of the seventeenth century was not
truly Baconian. Modern Empirical Philosophy, or Empiri-
cism, took its proper beginning in Locke's Essay concerning
Human Understanding (1690) a work which was partly
Baconian and regarded experience as the key of knowledge.
All the other leaders in the modern movement grow out
from Descartes in a continuous philosophic line. Never-
theless, though in Bacon the strictly philosophical ideas and
results are a small part of his writings compared with
58 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Descartes', he is without question to be numbered among
(mental) philosophers. To proclaim that the human mind
must begin, in everything, with simple particular experiences,
and that all other knowledge is pretence or error, is a philo-
sophical idea. The study of nature on Baconian principles
may be only positive physical science, but in him it was
philosophy to call men back from a vain manipulation of
words and abstractions to the methodic observation and
interpretation of the real phenomena of nature. Moreover,
Bacon's idea has its application to mind as well as nature,
and therein leads and has led to philosophical results of
a sufficiently far-reaching cast.
Rationalism and Experitntialistn,
There are thus two main lines to be distinguished those
who say that knowledge is explicable from reason 1 , and
those who hold it is explicable from experience and these
hold good up to Kant, when we begin to get approximations
from one line to another : Kant, e. g. approximates to the
Experientialists from the Rationalist side ; nor is Reid a pure
Experientialist. We cannot label the varieties of human
thought as exclusively of one kind or the other. Descartes
undoubtedly heads the former, and Bacon may be allowed
to head the latter, but nowhere must we strain the con-
nexions. We must look only for general similarity in habits
of thought. All schools allow the distinction between reason
and experience as being, either or both, the ultimate con-
stituents of human knowledge, but in modern times thinkers
1 The student must distinguish between the narrower peculiarly
German connotation of Rationalism used here, and its wider meaning 1 ,
common in this country, of the revolt of individual reason or judgment
against authority in all ultimate questions. ED.
VIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 59
differ in the prominence they assign to one or the other.
English philosophers have always put forward experience
as that, in which to seek an explanation of knowledge.
Thinkers of other countries, have, on the whole, been dis-
posed to give pre-eminence to reason ; but Rationalists differ
much in the relative weight they allow to experience as
an additional factor to reason, just as Experientialists differ
with respect to reason as an additional factor to experience.
Let us survey both lines of thought.
Rationalists.
Descartes began, both in matter and method, a distinct
movement during two generations. This was carried on
by his (the Cartesian) school Geulincx, Arnauld, Male-
branche, and especially Spinoza. Geulincx, Arnauld and
Malebranche sought to be thorough-going Cartesians.
Spinoza, while following Descartes, had, besides, distinctly
independent views ; the most characteristic aspect of him
came from the Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages.
Before and after Spinoza's death Leibniz, though bitterly
opposed to the former and appealing from Descartes back to
the Schoolmen, kept up modern metaphysical Rationalism
or a priori speculation for yet another generation. Like
Spinoza, he was a markedly original thinker, although he
thought with reference to the results of Descartes and
Spinoza. He was followed by Wolff, who, of less impor-
tance, joins Kant to Leibniz, of whom he is a disciple.
Wolff had hardly completed his encyclopaedic labour of
putting form and system into Leibniz's disjointed labours
when Kant began his academical career in a state of
' dogmatic slumber,' from which it needed the scepticism
of Hume to wake him. Kant called these, his predecessors,
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VIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 61
' dogmatic ' in opposition to himself as critical, and to the
sceptical philosophy of Hume. They are also called Sub-
stantialists because each starts with a conception of substance,
the variations in which constitute the chief differences between
them.
The Rationalist Succession.
Without derogating from individual thinkers, we may say
that the three great Rationalists, Descartes, Spinoza and
Leibniz, form stages of one movement in the progressive
development of philosophy in an orderly sequence of thought,
although Spinoza protested against Descartes, and Leibniz
protested against both. Spinoza takes up the problems that
Descartes had left, and solves them to all intents and
purposes in Cartesian terms, as he would not have done
unless Descartes' results and methods had been there.
Leibniz also takes those results, and from them tries to get
to others, arriving however at such as require him to make
a fresh start from a different position. And although he
began to arrive at his results without Spinoza, they were
emphasised and worked out in conscious antagonism to
Spinoza.
Cartesianism.
Now Descartes gave to modern philosophy its subjective
character. Seeking some immediate, irrefutable certainty as
a starting-point or fulcrum for all knowledge, he put aside
the testimony of authority, of tradition, of opinion, of the
sphere of sense, saying of these dubitandum est de omnibus.
He only found standing ground in his own reflective self-
consciousness. Cogito ergo sum, or rather dubito ergo sum,
for it was in the fact of his thought as doubting that he found
the immediate certainty he sought. But he soon abandoned
this epistemological position for one of dogmatism Ego
62 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
sum res cogitans and then for the dogmatic Dualism of ' I am
a thinking substance, thinking of a substance that does not
think' Thus he assumed both mind and matter, the key-
note of dogmatic metaphysic being that whatever we clearly
and distinctly conceive z'j, or represents, Reality that thought
is the measure of Reality. And the truth of this dual as-
sumption was guaranteed for him, he held, by the existence
of a perfect and veracious Deity.
The Development of Cartesianism,
Now this dualism of Descartes is really double, being a
dualism as between God and the world, and also as between
mind and body. And the problem of the co-existence
of substances in either case was carried on by Spinoza and
the Occasionalists, Malebranche, Geulincx and Arnauld.
The latter concluded that the apparent interaction between
mind and body was illusory, the actions of the mind being
only so many occasions for the intervention of divine power
resulting in the corresponding bodily action. But the
creature was not only robbed of the power of initiating
action, he was also deprived of the ability to know. Know-
ledge, according to Malebranche, takes place by ' the vision
of all things in God/ i. e. it is not we but God that knows
through us.
Here we have the consistent development of what was
implicit in Descartes. It is the ' death of philosophy.'
Spinoza's central conception was that of substance. He
started with it, whereas Descartes worked up to it. But
he could not allow more than one substance, all process and
all change in the universe being necessarily determined by the
nature of that one. ' Besides God,' he wrote, ' no substance
can be given or conceived.'
vii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 63
Critical Philosophy.
Kant, on the other hand, raised the question as to whether
we can know substance at all, substance being a notion
which, while it underlies experience, is not given in expe-
rience. He critically examined reason and not experience,
yet he approaches nearer to Experientialism than the other
Rationalists.
Kant's movement of thought has had a profound influence
over all Europe. So much has grown from his philosophy
that we cannot here deal with it. Many thinkers have been
his disciples, but the great movement in German philosophy
of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel was as relatively independent
as the departures of Spinoza and Leibniz with reference to
Descartes. They philosophise with reference to Kant's critical
inquiry, but are not themselves Kantians.
Common Sense Philosophy.
The Scottish school of ' Common Sense ' philosophy of
Reid and his followers was first of all a protest against the
offensive, negative conclusions of Hume, but consisted in
a partial departure only from Locke, for it sheltered itself
under Bacon as the defender of Experience. Reid sought
to make out that, in addition to the senses, there are
principles of a common ' sense ' inherent in the human mind
from the beginning and transcending experience. Dugald
Stewart followed Reid, not contributing much original matter,
and was followed by Hamilton, who, although he glories
in being a disciple of Reid, was influenced in his thought by
Kant. Without being a thorough Kantian or well trained
in Kantian philosophy, he became through his Kantian
studies heir to a larger insight than Reid possessed.
64 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
The Experientialists.
There is nothing on the Experientialist side like the definite
succession there is upon the side of the Rationalists, although
the books are apt to declare the reverse. Bacon was not
carried on by Hobbes, nor Hobbes by Locke. Each went
on his own way after his own manner. They all start from
a consideration of Sense, but do not constitute definite
milestones upon a certain track. All are more or less
Nominalist. Bacon preached with unsurpassed fervour the
necessity of turning to external nature, and it is mainly
scientific men who have felt his influence. His general
position (v. p. 58) is that knowledge begins with particular
experience that general knowledge must be got from
particulars and tested by experience. But he can scarcely
rank as the father of Experiential philosophy. Hobbes' s
philosophy, again, was markedly provocative to succeeding
thinkers, but exercised no regular, systematic influence
such as we find on the other side. But when we come to
Locke, we encounter a philosophic initiator who may be
called so in the same sense as Descartes. He began
a new movement which amounted to a definite system
of Experientialism. He set himself to prove the problem
of human knowledge, and his watchword is Experience
as much as Descartes' was Reason. It was the latter who
set him thinking, although it was the latter he opposed.
Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais were written against the Essay
concerning Human Understanding. Locke stirred up Leibniz
to investigate the origin of knowledge from a different stand-
point from that taken in the essay.
Locke's essay was present to the mind of Berkeley, who
took up human knowledge in the spirit of an Experientialist.
Later on he came to be occupied with the question of our
vii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 65
knowledge of matter, and solved it in general correspondence
with the principles of Locke's philosophy, yet without being
more of a Lockian than Spinoza and Leibniz were Cartesians.
He took up the question of knowledge as he did because
Locke left it where he did. Twenty-eight years after the
appearance of Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge
Hume wrote his Treatise of Human Nature, carrying for-
ward Experientialism as far in some respects as it could
be carried, so that in those particular lines there was
nothing left for followers to do. He excited more opposi-
tion than adherence not only in his own country, but notably
in Kant. Hereby English philosophy, as in the case of
Locke and Leibniz, came into contact with European
thought.
Psychological Philosophy. Associationism.
While his general philosophy was thus carried out by
Berkeley and Hume so as to provoke a reaction, Locke set on
foot another movement. Although he was a general philo-
sopher and not a psychologist, he nevertheless worked
out his philosophy in a psychological spirit. He started
from the psychologist's point of view, with the notion of
investigating mind in the same scientific way as Newton
was investigating nature. This departure had an effect in
the very next generation through Berkeley, who carried out
special psychological investigation with surprising acuteness
in his New Theory of Vision. Hume also, without putting
forward any system of psychology, worked in a psychological
spirit, and discussed particular psychological questions in
a notable way, especially the laws of association as con-
taining an explanation of knowledge. Again, Hartley's
work on Man is of the utmost importance for the so-called
F
66 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Associationist school, which in psychology tries to get a
scientific doctrine of mind as such, and in philosophy tries
to solve the general problem of knowledge in connexion
with that scientific doctrine.
Now it is usually said that Hume gave a great impulse to
the English Associationist movement. My belief, on the con-
trary, is that James Mill had no special impulse from Hume.
If he at all resembled the latter, it was because he started from
a similar basis tending to similar conclusions. The origin
of the later Associationists is in Hartley and not in Hume.
Or, to put it more adequately, the origin of the present
English school of the Mills is to be found in the trio, Locke,
Berkeley, and Hartley, rather than in Hume 1 . Hartley
expressly connected himself with Locke, as Berkeley did.
Hume expressly connected himself with Berkeley. We may
tabulate them thus :
Locke
Hartley Berkeley
James Mill Hume
Hartley needs to be connected with Berkeley, though he
did not expressly borrow from him.
James Mill's direct descendant is Professor Bain, not
John Stuart Mill, who follows somewhat more in the
philosophical wake of Hume. Hartley had a philosophy,
but not an effective one ; he shone as a psychologist.
J. S. Mill is, nevertheless, connected with Hartley through
his father.
Locke's central idea, viz. that the limits of our knowing
1 Vide J. S. Mill's introduction to J. Mill's Analysis of the Human
Mind.
VIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 67
faculty, in regard to the nature and the validity of our
knowledge, are only to be understood in reference to a
psychological analysis, was introduced into France, together
with the Newtonian philosophy of nature, by Voltaire about
1730, supplanting the Cartesian philosophy in both meta-
physic and science. Condillac (1715-1780) and Destutt de
Tracy (1754-1836), chief among French Sensationalists,
greatly affected the Scottish thinker, Thomas Brown. Brown
contributed the most important discussion prior to Professor
Bain of the part played by muscular sense in objective
perception, and still holds the second place.
Of present-day Associationists, Mr. Herbert Spencer is
chiefly concerned with a philosophy of evolution on a basis
of biological principles. An Experientialist, he approximates
as closely to the Rationalist border by allowing non-
experiential elements in knowledge as Kant did from the
Rationalist side in the other direction. Mr. Spencer himself
claims to be just on the border. Many think he unites the
two sides. Kant, however, laid claim to a similar position,
and yet was very distinct from Mr. Spencer.
For LECTURE VIII read Bain, Mental Science, App. A. to p. 26.
F 2
LECTURE VIII.
UNIVERSALS.
Why Scholasticism was mainly occupied with ' Universalia?
WE are now in a position to inquire more closely into
those great special questions raised by philosophic thought
which I enumerated at the close of Lecture III.
From Descartes onward the great question of philosophy
has been as to the relation of reason and experience in
knowledge. Now, Plato and Aristotle (who practically
represent ancient epistemology in the West) were interested
both in this problem and in that of the universality of
knowledge, while during the whole of the middle period the
central question of philosophy was not so much the former
as that of the relation between the universal and the particular
in knowledge. The more modern question is, after all, the
same as the latter, but in another form and with a difference
of emphasis ; experience is experience of particulars, while
reason is concerned with universals.
Why, then, does only one of the two questions occupy
the thought of the Middle Period? The fact is that both
the middle and modern periods were occupied witli both
questions, or with these two aspects of the more general
question, viz. as to the import of human knowledge; but the
Elements of General Philosophy. 69
thought of men in the Middle Ages had been directed to the
aspect of the universality of knowledge by an accidental
circumstance. This circumstance (v. Bain, App. pp. 23, 24 ;
and supra, Lect. V) was that one portion of Porphyry's
Isagoge, containing an introduction to the Categories of
Aristotle, was preserved in translation during the early
Middle Ages, whereas it was not till the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries that the Schoolmen had a complete translation of
Aristotle's works. Now this fragment suggested the question
of the relation of different general notions to one another, and
hence it came about that this aspect of knowledge occupied
philosophers predominantly down to the end of the Scholastic
period, till every side of the question had been touched upon
and they had come to practical agreement. Modern philo-
sophy also agrees in the main upon the subject, although it
was bound in its turn to reconsider it. The difference
in modern times is regarding the psychological question.
Concept Psychologically and Philosophically regarded.
We have distinguished knowledge psychologically regarded
from knowledge philosophically regarded. Let us now mark
off the psychological bearing of knowledge as universal or
general from the philosophical aspect. General intellection,
knowing, or cognition we dealt with under thought or con-
ception (in the wider sense), and for the product of conception
we used the term concept. And the psychological question
of the concept became for us, How do we come to know
generally? How do we arrive, i.e. under what laws of
mental action do we arrive, at that kind of knowledge which
we call conceptual ? Conceiving (Elements of Psychology,
Lect. XXV, XXVI) arises under certain psychological
laws out of historically prior intellectual products. Now of
70 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
these the percept has corresponding to it an objective thing
at least, we assume that it has and some images also have
a corresponding reality in the realm of being, in so far as
they are literal re-percepts, while some again have not. But
our question now is, Has the concept a corresponding reality?
Is there, for instance, a real being to correspond to the concept
' man ' ? Mill calls ' man ' concrete ; is it as concrete as 'this
man ' ? No, we cannot generalise save by abstracting, and
' man ' is abstract as involving generalisation. What then
does this abstract generalisation or ' Universal ' portend in the
sphere of being? Is it a mere subjective construction, or
does the concept represent reality ? What is the relation of
'man' the 'universal' to 'this man 'or 'that man,' of the
General to the Particular, of the One to the Many, of in-
dividual changing things to the whole universe ? Which has
reality ? If only
' The One remains, the many change and pass ' ;
as Shelley sang ', the question arises, Do the Many exist
at all ?
Platonic Realism.
Now this question, applied by Schoolmen to religious tenets,
had been rationally discussed by Plato, who probed the matter
deeper than any before him. By Platonic Realism is meant
Plato's doctrine of the relation of the One to the Many, of the
Universal to the Particular. His standpoint was a develop-
ment of the question as faced by Socrates. Socrates saw
that human knowledge is mainly knowing by way of con-
cepts, and his philosophy was summed up in efforts at
getting clear general notions. We arrive at knowledge on
a large scale only through the conceptual form ; only thus
1 Elegy to Keats.
viii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 71
can we bring together experience as knowledge. If we know
for the most part by way of concepts, if all that we can call
scientific knowledge is conceptual, i.e. is knowledge of classes
or kinds, then the question arises whether that which we
know in the form of concepts or ideas does not represent
reality, or that which truly is. Thus Plato, following his
master's line and holding that knowledge properly so called
is of ideas only, declared that therefore ideas and nought else
are what really exist, and that, by comparison with the ideas,
known and really existing, anything that we commonly speak
of as particular things things of sense have, in the full
sense of the word, no reality, and are only pale shadows of
real existence. So far from asking, as might in these times
of a developed psychology be asked, whether anything corre-
sponded to the concept objectively in the same sense as is
assumed in the case of the percept, Plato maintained that
it was the concepts, general notions or ideas, that are the
only real beings, and not so-called individuals. ' Table,' for
example, exists ; individual tables are mere passing shows,
while the idea ' table ' exists really and eternally. If any
one gets a true knowledge of ' table ' it is not by way of sense,
but by a reminiscence of a former mental life. Tables this
table, that table did not exist yesterday, will not exist to-
morrow. But ' table ' was before all tables, and will be after
all tables. In other words, the particulars of sense, whether
considered separately or brought together in an aggregate or
class, do not really, fully exist. That only can be said really
and fully to exist which is THOUGHT.
Platonic Idealism.
This theory viz. to repeat, that if it is the idea (universal or
general notion) which we are dealing with when we really know,
72 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
then it is the idea only that really exists is logically possible
on the ground it assumes, and marks a special type of mind.
In the Middle Ages it came to be called by the Schoolmen,
who were great masters of nomenclature, the doctrine of
Realism. Plato's expression of this view has never been
surpassed, and never will be. But if he is the greatest of
Realists in this the original sense of the term, he none the
less remains the typical Idealist in any sense and for all time.
For Platonic Realism and Platonic Idealism are one and the
same doctrine, Plato being a Realist because of the reality he
ascribed to ideas, and an Idealist because it is ideas to which
he ascribed reality. He is not the one to the exclusion of
the other, unless indeed we attach to Realism and Idealism
the meaning they have come to bear in modern times as
opposite theories of our perception of an external world J .
In that case Plato ceases to be a Realist, and is a pure
Idealist. In the question of universals, Realism is only
another aspect of the more general Idealism.
Aristotelian Realism.
What, then, is the antithesis to Realism in its original sense?
The theory which in Aristotle took shape as a doctrine of
essence, and which became divided against itself as the con-
trasted theories of Conceptualism and Nominalism (names
which are also derived from the nomenclature of Scholasticism),
scarcely constitutes an antithesis. Aristotle broke away from
the Realism of his master by declaring that particular things
have a real existence, but neither they nor universals exist
independently of each other ; the universal exists in the
1 The student must not confound the philosophical connotations
of these terms with their modern usage in artistic and literary
criticism. ED.
VIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 73
particular as its essence. He may thus be considered as
a modified Realist. He began by saying that all things
which can be thought of or predicated can be brought to ten
classes or categories of concepts. But only the first, Sub-
stance (ova-ia), can be the subject of predication. Quantity,
Quality, and the other seven attributes do not exist in the
same sense as Substance. Now we can only predicate exist-
ence of a coricrete thing, not of an idea. Here he seems to
deny reality to the concept. But he further distinguishes
between a first and a second substance, the first applicable to
a concrete thing of sense which, informed by its universal
essence, really and fully exists, and is the subject of a pro-
position ; the second, indicating the general concrete, may be
subject or predicate. E. g.
Socrates is a man.
(ist Substance) (2nd Substance)
Man is mortal.
In this way existence can be predicated of concept. In-
dividual things are substance in the full sense ; in essence
they are universals. But abstractions have no real existence.
Universalia post rem.
Plato's position of extreme Realism being summed up in
the scholastic formula, Universalia ante rem (res = thing of
sense), and Aristotle's modified Realism being described as
Um'rersah'a in re, the antithesis to Realism for which there is
no inclusive name is best brought out in the corresponding
formula, Universalia post rem ; i. e. it is only from a know-
ledge of things in particular that we come to know universals.
in other words, to form the merely subjective constructions
termed concepts, abstract ideas or general notions. Only
74 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
particular things exist ; the universal is a mere instrument of
thought for getting at a knowledge of particulars. This was
the theory of Epicureans and Stoics.
But, as I have indicated, the formula was interpreted in
two ways. When, in the first age of the Schoolmen, Platonic
Realism was rampant, an extreme form of Nominalism,
viz. that the general thought or universal is a name and
nothing else (vox el praeterea nihil\ was contended for by
Roscellin. We cannot think generally without the help of
names ; what, then, is the universal but a name (nomen) ? This
in fact was the anti-Realism of the Stoics and Epicureans.
Later, in the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism was at its
height, the predominant Aristotelian Realism shaded off into
Conceptualism, viz. that the universal was not a mere word
(flatus vocis] but a mode of human cognition, though formed
from and after the perception of particulars. This was
coupled with the doctrine of essences, of ' universalia in re.'
Some indeed tried to reconcile Platonic Realism with it
also by the theory of the real existence of universals in the
divine mind. When, however, Scholasticism was dying,
William of Ockham (a village in Surrey) gave a very decided
expression to Nominalism as opposed to Conceptualism,
maintaining that the mind arrives at universals through the
use of words. And at the end of the Scholastic period the
chief thinkers were declared Nominalists.
Harmony between Science and Philosophy.
After two centuries of transition the foremost minds of the
seventeenth century, Descartes, for example, turned their at-
tention to physical nature and helped to create modern science.
Now r the modern science of nature is based on a philosophical
view that is antithetic to the Platonic theory. Realism has
VIIL ] Elements of General Philosophy. 75
never regained its importance in the modern period ; it was
practically overthrown by the growth of positive science. Or
we may say that modern science has sprung up because the
philosophical problem of Realism was fought out. The
Realist despises the things of sense as vain shows with no
reality. The man of science says they do exist and are worth
investigating. With Conceptualism and Nominalism, on the
other hand, modern science can get on ; they in fact attuned
men's minds for scientific research, which goes on the
assumption that it is the particular things which really exist,
works up from particulars to universals, and refuses to re-
cognise the truth of universals without verifying by particulars.
Any one may now be a Platonic Realist, but he must then
give up the modern science of nature. In fact there always
have been Realists and always will be. It was a mistake for
Mill to speak of Realism as exploded (in his Examination of
Hamilton's Philosophy}. Carlyle was a Realist ; so also is
Ruskin great men, though not philosophers. And the
standpoint, consistently developed, leads to an ascetic doctrine
of morals. Carlyle and Ruskin recognise the hostility
between modern science and Platonism, and this is why they
decry the former. Carlyle hated science, but he excepted
mathematics, as did Plato, who said that if a man could not
geometrise he could not philosophise. From their point of
view science cannot but be absurd. No Realist thinks it
worth while to treat of physics and chemistry. If a man
prefers to live in the contemplation of Eternal Ideas, this
in its way is very good. Theologically such a one will be
a Pantheist. But if he would rise to something worth calling
knowledge of nature, the right way is that of positive science,
with its Inductive Method of working up to general expressions
from particulars. Positive science is not all-sufficient for the
76 Elements of General Philosophy.
inquiring mind, and should be supplemented by a philosophy
not inconsistent with it. But Realism is inconsistent with
science. No person who is at heart a Realist can have that
kind of interest in particular things upon which thorough-
going science rests. In external nature we must start from
the concrete particular ; hence we have in the modern period
an anti-Realistic philosophy, instead of an antagonism between
our philosophy and our science.
For LECTURE IX read Bain, loc. cit. pp. 26-33.
LECTURE IX.
UNIVERSALS. NOMINALISM AND CONCEPTUALISM.
' Res ' as real.
MODERN philosophy then, as being in the main concordant
with modern science, is anti-Realistic, or, in the wider sense
of the word, Nominalistic. Philosophy for the most part,
and especially English philosophy, has assumed that the
Platonic doctrine is untenable, and that some form of the
antithesis, that it is particular things which really exist,
must be accepted. Thus in modern times the conflict has
been narrowed to the opposition between Nominalism and
Conceptualism. The great question now became Under
what conditions does the human mind conceive ? What con-
stitutes thinking as opposed to other modes of intellection ?
The Ground of the Problem shifted.
Note that the problem has been shifted from metaphysical
to psychological ground. It is no longer a question of what
may be said really to exist. Conceptualists and Nominalists
agree in declaring that the universal has only a subjective
existence, that the concept has no objective existence like
the percept, but is only arrived at in the mind with a view
to the understanding of the particulars. This is the anti-
Realistic metaphysic of their position. But if we would
give any more positive assertion about them, we must do so
78 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
in psychological terms. The difference between them is
psychological only, and it has played an important part in
modern psychology. In England, where, from the time of
Locke, the psychological interest began to prevail and where
psychology first assumed a scientific form, that difference has
been much discussed. Not so abroad. Hamilton, it is true,
made light of the difference, but then his psychology is
decidedly weak.
Nominalism in England.
The general train of English thought has been in the
direction of Nominalism. Now the thorough-going Nomina-
list says two things: (i) that it is impossible to think
generally without language; (2) that the mind can only
represent the concrete particular as such. Hobbes makes
both these statements ; Berkeley, only the second ; neverthe-
less he as well as Hume and the Mills are distinctly
Nominalists, though in different senses. Hobbes seems to
say that thought is expression in words and nothing else.
Still he is not far wrong. It is since his time that the
importance of language in the function of conceiving has
been emphasised. Locke, in the immortal third Book of
his Essay, is strongly Nominalistic and impressed with the
necessity of language. In Book IV, however, he shows a
strong Conceptualistic vein, maintaining that we can think
of ' triangle ' which is not isosceles, nor equilateral, nor
scalene. (This Berkeley denies.) But this Conceptualism
of Locke's is probably only a bad way of distinguishing the
intension from the extension of the concept. Because
' triangle ' o;tends to all three, no one of the three particulars
therefore enters into the /'//tension of ' triangle.' He con-
fuses the abstract with the general.
The Scottish school, on the other hand, is more Con-
ix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 79
ceptualistic than the English, Dugald Stewart less so than
others. Reid is Conceptualistic. Hamilton's logic is dis-
tinctly Conceptualistic, yet in the lectures on metaphysic he
adopts Berkeley's view. Hamilton, however, does not so
much give his own thinking as get it from certain German
authorities.
The Mills, I have said, are Nominalists ; so is Professor
Bain. Taine's chapter on the Concept is the best state-
ment of good Nominalistic doctrine (see his Intelligence].
The Ground of Difference.
The Conceptualists say that the concept is as truly
a definite fact of mental construction, an actual subjective
somewhat that can be called a representation, as is the
percept. Whereas, according to all Nominalists, conceiving
is either bringing up a number of particulars one after
another, i. e. having a series of percepts, or else we are,
when conceiving, only imaging a particular percept, while
leaving out of sight the individual particulars.
There are Concepts and Concepts.
But Conceptualists and Nominalists both err in trying to
find one uniform expression for a very graduated aggregate.
Concepts vary so much in the scale of abstractness (cf. 'tiger/
' iron/ ' father/ ' nation ') that it is hopeless to attempt any
uniform representation to suit all. The concept is not
a collection, nor a series, of particular images. The concept
'sheep' is not a flock of sheep. Just as we distinguish
between the collective and the general, so we must distin-
guish between the concept and a series of percepts. The
former is a means of bringing together a multitude otherwise
than as a series, and will vary in definiteness according to
the degree of abstractness. In the case of exactly similar
8o Elements of General Philosophy, [LECT.
objects the concept abstracts from the differences in time
and space only. Generic images represent the truth about
those concepts where the similarity is very overpowering.
Sometimes, finally, conceiving proceeds by way of symbols ;
i. e. there are concepts of which we have no image unless
it be of particulars in succession, and between which the
likeness is fixed by a word. We use names of course for
individuals as well as for concepts ; indeed, we do not know
a thing fully till we know its name. But it is remarkable
that when a name is a mere adjunct it is apt to be forgotten;
but where a conception, e. g. of justice, depends, for any
coherence and definiteness it may possess, upon having
a name, we do not forget it.
A case of pathology throws light here. Some forms of
organic decay are connected with a disturbance of the faculty
of speech, or aphasia. And instances of this occur where
the intellectual powers are very little affected. The patient,
e.g. is able to speak in general language, but forgets the
names of particular kinds of things. Emerson in his last
years was subject to this. Words like ' table ' and ' hat ' he
could not recollect, but he was quite able to substitute more
general expressions, e. g. ' Put the kind of thing that covers
head on to the surface that has legs/ Names of definite
concretes were forgotten where abstract terms were still
within his power. Why? Because for his knowledge of the
former he was not dependent upon language. To express
the relation he did need language ; he had not lost speech
where it was indispensable.
The two Types of Nominalism.
Now there are Nominalists and Nominalists. Berkeley,
for example, is merely anti-Conceptualistic, and owes his
ix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 81
reputation for Nominalism solely to the opinion of Hume.
He only takes up the negative attitude, that there is no
definite representation of anything but either as perceived
or as definitely imaged. He says nothing about the necessity
for names. On the contrary, he declares that we can think
without language, and that we should think better than we
do, could we keep the names of our ideas out of our thoughts
so strangely has knowledge ' been perplexed and darkened
by the . . . general ways of speech V Whereas extreme
Nominalists like Roscellin declare that concepts are nothing
more than names.
With regard to the former type of Nominalists, there is
this to be said: So far from it being true that the idea
is always of a particular concrete, it might be maintained
that our imagining and perceiving are always a kind of
abstraction. Do I, in looking at that pillar, perceive all the
attributes? No; I fill it in by repeated perceptions. My
percept of it at any moment is a perception of it under
some one aspect only. Perception of a particular involves
abstraction. The generic image, to which I have already
alluded, was Mr. Gallon's term for that resultant to which,
he affirmed, a number of like images give rise a resultant
which is not like any one of them, nor is the whole
together, but is yet representative of all (El. of Psy. p. 168).
This position was supported by the now widely practised
composite photography, by which Mr. Galton obtained
not a blur of many faces, but an actual portrait, yet not
of any one individual. This does not prove anything in
relation to our conscious experience, but it may well be
that the process of conceiving is analogous. But in so far
as the Conceptualists maintain that we have always a clear
1 Berkeley, Principles, Introduction.
G
82 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
consciousness of a body of concepts as such, they go too far.
No Conceptualist has ever given a sufficient and satisfactory
analysis of general knowledge.
The Truth in Nominalism.
With regard, on the other hand, to the latter type of
Nominalists, whereas their identifying the concept with
a name and nothing more is nonsensical and goes too far
in the opposite direction, they are right to the extent of
maintaining that all the more purely abstract ideas are had
through and by, and not without, the help of signs, viz.
language. Here ' no speech, no thought.' In proportion
as thought becomes more general and more abstract, it needs
some kind of instrument to work with. All thinking that is
more than rudimentary necessitates language. Savages with
poor language have poor thoughts. We must be careful to
distinguish. Can we know without speech ? Unquestionably.
Can we think (know generally, generalise) without speech ?
Only to an elementary extent. The proper position then
to take is that our power of bringing percepts together into
concepts depends upon our power of using signs. Science,
which is general knowledge, is found to progress according
as it becomes embodied in a definite system of symbols.
Condillac the Sensationalist had so strong an opinion of the
importance of language that he defined a science as une
langue bien faile. Indeed, Nominalism is often supposed to
be connected with Sensationalism, because the two theories
are associated in Condillac's philosophy. But it is just
sensation that is independent of names and symbols. The
error of the Sensationalist school consisted, as Mansel pointed
out, in confounding the indispensable instrument of thought
with thought itself. Philosophy is so backward because it
ix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 83
has not a set of symbols for itself, but has to work with
popular names. Nothing can be called an element of
knowledge till it is taken up by others and thrown back
on the speaker. People who are cut off from the use of
language are found to have imperfect powers of generalisa-
tion. Even with their manual system the dumb cannot
develop any great ability for generalising. The signs no doubt
are less pliable, but the chief reason is that they are still cut
off from communication wilh the majority of their fellows.
Speech is, as we saw in our psychology, a social, not an
individual, product. It is with the need of communicating
that speech arises. ' Sheep ' may be imaged in general
without language, but a variety which we cannot image
' squeezes out,' i. e. expresses, some general sign from us.
But this squeezing out would not have taken place but for
the requirements of the common life. A man does not con-
ceive for himself but in relation to others. Thus the true
psychology of conception throws us back on the origin of
speech. And hence what a man shall think will depend less
on what he is in himself than on his social circumstances.
If left to himself, his mental powers would be comparatively
undeveloped. If knowledge were a mere aggregate of sensa-
tions, the savage might be better off than other people. The
superiority of civilised people consists in the fact that there
are expressions in force for the new-born individual to avail
himself of. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance
of this factor, and of late years this idea of the great part
played by language in helping us to arrive at knowledge, to
which by ourselves we could not have attained, has been
gaining ground 1 .
1 Cf. e. g. Professor Sayce's Introduction to the Science of Language.
See also Mind, i. 263, and iv. 149, on the education of Laura Bridgman.
G 2
84 Elements of General Philosophy.
Conclusion.
I do not, then, profess to solve the philosophic question at
issue. Any man's philosophy is the expression of his whole
being ; in every man's thinking there must be a personal
subjective element. For me the true doctrine lies partly
with Conceptualism and partly with Nominalism. It is
a case of the shield with two sides : each theory says it has
only one, and therein lies the error as well as the truth of
each. Each side makes statements that are too absolute:
they are true in what they affirm and false in what they deny.
Conception varies too much for any universal statement as
to concepts to hold good. But the statement that there may
be a representation that is definite without being particular
is true.
For LECTURE X read :
Bain, op. cit. Book IV, ch. viii.
The student may also refer to Professor James's article : ' The
Psychology of Belief,' Mind, xiv. p. 321.
LECTURE X.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF.
Transition to the Second Question.
Some concepts, then, at least are explicable from sense-
perception, i. e. are formed by way of abstraction from
particular experiences. Are all concepts formed thus, or
are some obtained otherwhence? What, in other words,
does sense contribute to knowledge ? Granted that sense
is of account for knowledge, it does not follow that know-
ledge is mere sense or sense transformed. Thus we connect
the question of universals with the controversy on the Nature,
or, as it is also called, the Origin of Knowledge, which is
the great central problem in dispute among the philosophers
of the modern period.
The Origin of Knowledge is not a good name for this
question ; it is too psychological, and the philosophical
question is not answered together with the psychological
question. What we have to consider is the Nature of
Knowledge how knowledge is constituted. Whereas in
psychology we do not exhaust the consideration of know-
ledge properly so called.
86 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Knowledge and Belief.
Now the term ' knowledge ' is necessary for philo-
sophy, especially modern philosophy, the central thought
of which, from its beginning with Descartes, is that we
cannot determine the nature of being before we have
determined the nature of knowing, and that in any ultimate
question we are strictly considering not so much what we
are as what we know that we are. Hence we see the
advantage of getting a word that is purely psychological,
like intellection.
We have also asserted that the term 'belief is of import
for philosophy. Belief has both a psychological explanation
and a philosophical import very much implicated in the
question of the nature or origin of knowledge, and therefore
it is that a short consideration of belief under both aspects
will serve to show the bond and the distinction between
psychology and philosophy, and also to introduce our
special subject.
The Psychology of Belief.
Belief is a kind of conscious experience. Our psycho-
logical question is to determine which kind. Professor Bain
appears to treat it as a kind of volition by putting it under
the head of Will. This is not so bad as it looks, for by
Will he means, as we know, Conation ; wherefore he does
not mean that when a man is believing he is necessarily
willing, or making a voluntary determination. What then
does he mean ? He places the consideration of belief where
he does because he finds it has a certain reference to action.
In believing we are ready to act ; unless we can show some
kind of reference to action we are not believing. Under
Will he deals with all activities as set on by feeling, and
x.] Elements of General Philosophy. 87
generally with all motives to action, Belief being taken as
one such motive. I excuse the arrangement but do not
justify it. Whatever else Belief is, this is not the most funda-
mental aspect. In willing we are doing something else than
believing : in believing we are doing something else than will-
ing. We all believe that life must come to an end, but
this is different from willing to die.
Yet, while there is an obvious difference between willing
and believing, there is a subtle underlying connexion
between the two. How often do we not say, a man believes
a thing because he wants it so ? How much is not our
belief an expression of our wishes ? It is quite possible to
go on willing so intently that we end by believing. And
I think that is at the bottom of Professor Bain's mind in
his choice of treatment here. There is something in believ-
ing which has a special kind of relation to willing.
But is the fact that what we believe we are prepared
to act on a real differential attribute of Belief, marking it
off from other conscious experience? Is there any other
state of mind where we are prepared to act ? Yes ; if I am
prepared to act on belief, I am still more prepared to act
on knowledge ; e. g. if I believed there were a tiger in the
next room, I might venture to peep in ; but if I were ' sure,'
if I knew there was, I should at once proceed either to lock
myself in here or to run downstairs. This reference to action
therefore, which unquestionably belongs to belief, is not its
distinctive attribute since it is at least equally characteristic
of another state.
What else has Professor Bain said ? That our beliefs
always contain an element of feeling. When we are believing
we are always at the same time emotionally affected. Is this
the differentia of belief as compared with knowledge ? Yes,
88 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
belief distinctly varies with feeling. Is our tiger heard
scratching, the bold one says, Nonsense ! the timorous one
says, Yes, it is there ! But knowledge is intellectual expres-
sion apart from feeling. 2 + 2 = 4, however you may feel.
It is a valuable point in Professor Bain's exposition to have
thus connected belief with original spontaneity of feeling,
with difference of temperament.
We see then the difference between I imagine, I believe,
I know, a tiger is in class-room No. 3. Belief is something
like knowledge, but falling short of it. We may know that
9x7 = 63, but a child who does not yet understand the
multiplication table may say, I feel sure that 9x7 = 63.
' Sure ' shows the connexion with intellection, ' feel ' the
emotional aspect. Again, the phrase morally certain, another
equivalent for ' believe/ brings out the conational aspect :
' certain ' is intellective, ' morally ' means ' certain so as to
act upon it,' but not absolutely certain. Not full knowledge,
but probability, and that is after all the guide of life.
This distinctly emotional character of belief may help us
to understand the relation of belief to conation. Conation
is action under an impulse of feeling, action that is feeling-
guided or determined by feeling ; it is action for an ' end,'
and ' end ' always involves feeling. Belief is not action for an
end, in order to feeling, but is something that goes on under
feeling. Thus we see how easily the one could pass into the
other, how action for feeling may result in action under
feeling, so that what we will in starting, we end by believing.
Well then, whatever emotional elements there may be
in belief, there is something in it non-emotional. Here again
we shall find the relation of belief to conation brought out
markedly. In the instance of volition employed in our course
of Psychology, namely, ' I will to open the door,' can I will
x.] Elements of General Philosophy. 89
to open it without either knowing it can be opened, or
believing it can be opened ? No, and hence whatever we
call volition involves intellection. Believing the door can
be opened and willing to open it are not the same, but the
difference in my confidence lies between my believing that
the door opens in a certain way and my knowing that it
does. What then is there common to the belief and the
knowledge as such ? A fact of intellectual representation.
Belief is essentially a representative state of mind, and repre-
sentation, as we know, enters into all intellection. But
willing, or the disposition to act, is as such not representation,
is not intellection with its discriminating and assimilating.
In believing we are intellective, as in knowing. I believe the
moon is round, i. e. I represent the back of it. Were
the moon to turn round, I should know at least more than
I do now. Belief, then, is fundamentally a mode of intel-
lection. But whereas knowledge is, from the psychological
point of view, adequately and exhaustively expressed as
intellectual representation, belief, from the same point of
view, is not adequately and exhaustively expressed as intel-
lectual representation, because of the feeling involved in it.
The Essential Complexity of Belief.
Since belief is fundamentally a mode of intellection, and to
a certain extent a mode of feeling also, it cannot be treated
as merely a mode of conation. Professor Bain indeed only
seems to do this ; his exposition really comes to this, that
belief is a kind of intellectual representation, accompanied
with, and liable to be modified by, feeling and involving
essentially readiness to act. The result for us is, that we
cannot refer belief to any one phase of mind. It is an
essentially complex mental state, describable in every one
90 Elements of General PJiilosophy. [LECT.
of the three phases a mode of representative intellection,
tinged with feeling, having relation to the native tendency to
act. I wish not to divorce belief from action. I would
assert their connexion more decisively and explicitly even
than Professor Bain. We allow in life that a man's belief
is justified by his actions. Popular consent and psychological
inquiry converge on this point. Where we are not prepared
to act we don't believe. Many beliefs, it is true, like many
cognitions, seem to have no relation to action, e. g. my belief
that the moon is round. But this belief implies that if
I were projected thither, I should in exploring be able to
make the tour of it. There is no belief and no cognition
that cannot, may not, have a reference to action, but cog-
nitions rather than beliefs. Judgment, memory, expectation,
all imply a relation to action, while other modes of intellection
reflexion, reverie, imagining (in the narrower sense) are
as such accompanied by a more receptive attitude of mind.
It is true that all developed volition also involves feeling and
intellection, but that does not prove that the bare fact of
volition or conation is anything beyond impulse to act.
Therefore we hold by our three phases, and say that volition
(will) is complex and belief is complex.
Disbelief and Doubt.
Two other topics connected with belief should be con-
sidered, viz. disbelief and doubt. Disbelief is itself belief,
namely, in the truth of the opposite ; there is nothing to
be said of it which has not already been said of belief.
Doubt, on the other hand, is the opposite, the contradictory
of belief. It is not present when we are believing, or at
least in as far as we are believing, but it is only really
excluded by knowledge. In proportion as belief is remote
x.] Elements of General Philosophy. 91
from knowledge, doubt tends to be the more present. Doubt
is also complex, having its three aspects it paralyses
action, involves wavering representation, is of marked
emotional character. We want to know (i. e. to represent
clearly, if we cannot attain to presentative consciousness),
and we cannot. Consequently representation follows repre-
sentation, one chasing another and being itself chased away
a wavering intellectual condition which in its emotional
aspect is essentially distressing.
The Philosophy of Belief.
Belief and knowledge, then, have each a practical aspect.
They are not simply subjective states or mental facts, but
are related to a something believed or known, which cannot
be adequately expressed in terms of bare subjective experi-
ence, i. e. of psychology. Conceiving and thinking may
be said to have an object in the concept or thought, but
there is nothing in either, nor in the image, that is not fully
accounted for by psychology alone. But the object of belief
or of knowledge is expressed in terms of fact, objective fact,
real existence, reality, which cannot be exhausted by psycho-
logical inquiry. Now a real belief is one we are prepared to
act on. Mere imagining is representing what is out of
relation to our actions. We may also conceive what is out
of such relation, whereas my readiness to act on what
I believe determines the reality of that belief. Every cogni-
tion and every belief has or may have relation to action
and I can find no other meaning of Reality.
We distinguish in ourselves a mental constitution con-
cerned with the functioning of a bodily organism. Let us
put ourselves on physiological ground : the organism is
liable to be affected and to send forth impulse ; when stimu-
92 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
lated, we act ; this is the most fundamental fact. Of course
we can act apart from external stimuli, and we can be
stimulated without ensuing overt action. But, broadly
speaking, action follows from stimulus. Now therefore
reflex action is the type of action ; any act may be expressed
in terms of reflex action. The efficacy of the act depends,
in the last resort, on the stimulus received. And it is the
stimulus received that suggests what we call Real in giving
us occasion for acting. There is no mark of unreality
more fundamental than the absence of any tendency to
produce activity. Here then are philosophical implications :
it is the deepest meaning of Reality that it gives occasion for
action, that it is that to which action has relation.
So far belief and knowledge are parallel ; so far we can
only distinguish them both from imagination, &c. We must
go further than this. There are two philosophical aspects
of the relation of belief to knowledge : (i) of belief as some-
thing less than knowledge; (2) of knowledge as based on
belief, i. e. as explained by certain principles underlying
knowledge which themselves we cannot know, but can only
hold as beliefs. We must face both.
Belief as Inadequate Knowledge.
The first is the common usage. Of two intellective acts
(to keep to psychological terms) to which we ascribe reality,
it is to knowledge that we ascribe it more confidently, inas-
much as knowledge involves less representation and more
presentation than belief. As the presentative element pre-
ponderates, so does belief merge into knowledge; the
attention we give is then called knowledge. Taking my
treatment of Seeing and Touch we can generalise therefrom.
Sight gives knowledge in regard to some cognitions, but belief
X.] Elements of General Philosophy. 93
relatively to Touch. The difference between belief and
knowledge depends on the possibility of verification. In Logic
a hypothesis is the best representation we can make under
given circumstances. Theory, as opposed to hypothesis,
is knowledge as distinct from belief. What is now belief
may, at another point of view or time, amount to knowledge.
' Seeing is believing, but touch is the real thing.' Till I touch
that pillar, I, strictly speaking, believe it is one ; much more if
I am out of the room. I am then thrown on to representa-
tive consciousness. I believe in default of knowing. Not
that there is such a thing as pure presentation, or that there
is no presentation in belief. Belief is relative predominance
of representative consciousness. Touch is relatively pre-
sentative to Sight. Perception involves belief, yet it is more
knowledge than other intellective functions are.
Knowledge as based on Belief.
But if intellection, in so far as it has presentative elements,
is knowledge and, in so far as it has representative ele-
ments, is belief, how is it that we can speak of knowing
anything by re-representative intellection, e.g. when we
are reasoning about facts in general terms ? Take the
argument, ' Kings are mortal because they are men.' This
is an act of intellection that would be admitted as a clear
case of knowledge, not belief of reasoned, though not presen-
tative, knowledge. Hence we may have knowledge away
from a presentative base when dealing with concepts. This
is deductive reasoning, or knowledge of the why. If I say
' I know kings are mortal,' and am asked how I know, my
answer is, ' Because they are men ' ; and this is accepted
because I know not only the fact but the wJiy.
Does this give rise to any further question about the
94 Elements of General Philosophy, [LECT.
relation between knowledge and belief? We may say
' Kings are mortal, for kings are men ' ; but then arises the
question, ' Do you know men are mortal, or do you only
believe it ? ' One assertion given as the basis of another
may be regarded as a ground for knowledge, but it only
throws back the difficulty. As to the ground of that funda-
mental assertion, How do we know men are mortal? We
say, ' Because men are animals.' Now if anybody is prepared
to say he accepts the mortality of animals on inductive
experience, the question is whether this is to be called belief
or knowledge. Certainly whatever we inductively infer (if
it be material induction) is belief rather than knowledge. If
a material induction goes beyond the experience on which
it is based and to be a real induction it must then it is
a case of belief rather than knowledge. Whatever we have
direct expeiience of we may be said to know; hence an
inductive inference is always more or less hypothetical or
probable only.
We see, then, that what is confessedly mere belief, viewed
with reference to the experience from which it was inferred,
becomes the ground of knowledge both in induction and
deduction. Our statement is belief or knowledge according
to the point of view from which we make our major premise.
Thus : ' All men are mortal ' is knowledge, if got by deduc-
tion from ' All animals are mortal,' but belief, if got as
inductive inference from experience. Our knowledge that
is got by reasoning may always be looked at in relation to
two sources: first, as experience or generalisation beyond
experience, i. e. as belief. But, in the second place, are
there not other sources of knowledge ? Beside the particular
facts of experience we need to assume certain general
principles to account for knowledge, allowed even by those
x.] Elements of General Philosophy. 95
who emphasise the sufficiency of experience. It is impossible
for me to perform a careful induction from experience without
such an assumption as the ' Uniformity of Nature.' Mill,
striving here to preserve consistency, maintains that this is
itself an induction from particulars ; and we must grant that
much that is taken by us as generality for controlling individual
experience may be seen gradually developing in force as
induction based on experience, according as it is in con-
formity with that experience. But I hold that we should
not in the least hesitate to allow, in addition to experience
as a source of knowledge, the assumption of some general
principles, before or apart from experience, though never
to be held independent of verification. In whatever way
I have hold of them, e.g. of the uniformity of Nature,
whether I believe or know, I believe rather than I know.
If the uniformity of Nature is an induction from experience,
we can but say we believe it ; if it be an assumption made
by way of pure postulate or hypothesis, we believe still more.
To know Nature in detail is found to be impossible except
on the ground of the uniformity of Nature ; and is not this
belief which is what we assume by way of a postulate for
action postulated because we cannot get on without it ?
Hence belief much better expresses the uniformity of Nature
because of its highly representative character. And so, from
our point of view, we come round to the conclusions of
Hamilton and Augustin. Knowledge is more than belief,
yet involves certain principles held as belief.
It seems strange that belief should thus be something less
than knowledge and yet the basis of knowledge, but if we
remember the relation to action which is common to both,
and which is the ultimate meaning of their reality, then we
see how it is that the foundations of knowledge are held
96 Elements of General Philosophy.
rather as belief than as knowledge. Particular facts got by
an approximately presentative experience are knowledge,
but not general knowledge. For that is of the nature of a
coherent system with a foundation expressed as general
principles ; and these are believed in rather than known.
For LECTURE XI read :
Bain, op. cit. App. B, for an able and useful historical exposition
of Experience and Intuition.
Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book I.
LECTURE XI.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. BEFORE LOCKE.
The Objectivity of Knowledge.
BELIEF and knowledge then are conceptions that are
closely intertwined, and the difference between them is one
of degree, or lies in the way of looking at the same fact.
Let us now see how the whole question has been faced by
philosophers ; what it is that the problem of knowledge
involves. It is a subject that appeals most generally to our
interest, and it is suggested by our previous psychology.
Knowledge, as involving more than mere intellection, is
a coherent system which we call real, fact, objectively valid.
I want to bring prominently forward this Objectivity of
Knowledge. The word ' objective ' in philosophy is taken
in a wider sense than in psychology, where it is the adjective
of the perceived object ; here it applies to all real, valid
knowledge, whether of sense-objects or no. All objects
indeed can be shown to be ultimately objects perceived by
sense, but we are now concerned with 'objective' as applied
to that knowledge which is valid for the consciousness of all,
not only for mine but also for that of every one. I know
that 2 x 2 = 4, that the earth attracts stones, that every effect
has a cause : these are cognitions and objectively valid, yet
H
98 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
not sense-objects ; I do not say, without relation to sense at
all, but not involving sense as such. Something may be
a fact about a particular object or not a fact, but as fact it
must hold for all. Do I know objectively ? Then I must so
think that you can think it too. I know nothing really unless
I can show that you are capable of knowing it as well as I.
We must not imagine there is any objectivity without a
subject ; knowledge always involves a knower ; still it is
possible for me to put together in my mind a synthesis which
will not hold good for any but myself; but then I cannot give
grounds for it to other people, so that it has no objective
validity. Suppose I said, ' The effect always goes before its
cause' this would be an example of a cognition lacking
objective validity \ No account which fails to bring forward
this aspect of knowledge grapples with the question of the
nature of knowledge ; it may contain good psychology, but
it must fall short in philosophy.
How the Problem has been met.
We see, however, that if we have to find subjective repre-
sentations which can be set forth in such a way as to appeal
to all consciousnesses, it is not an easy task. All earnest
philosophers have faced it, and I want now to give a notion
of how, from different points of view, this definition of the
conditions of knowledge has been met. This fact constitutes
the central problem that knowledge is so held that other
minds are viewed as participating in it, and that it is com-
municable to others. Distinctively intellectual philosophy
has always been concerned with the problem, meeting it for
1 Cf. Bain, p. 201, sec. 7. That which he here gives as the
distinctive feature of perception of a sense-object applies equally well
to all objective knowledge.
XL] Elements of General Philosophy. 99
the most part from the side of the chief factor or factors in
knowledge.
Here we are at once confronted by our antithesis of
Rationalism and Experientialism, or Sensationalism as, in
its first form, the latter doctrine may be called. According
to the former, knowledge is wholly explicable from Intellect
or Reason (vovs) ; according to the latter, knowledge is
wholly explicable from Sense or Sense-experience. And
according to a third position knowledge is explicable from
both.
The antithesis to the word Rationalism in the fullest sense
is given by the word Sensationalism. If Rationalism is the
doctrine of reason, which is one kind of mental function,
Sensationalism is the doctrine of sensation, another kind
of mental function. Again, experience may mean bare
sense-experience, or sense ordered by reason or intellect to
form knowledge. Nevertheless Experientialism is on the
whole the more accurate term, since no theory of knowledge
was ever pure Sensationalism.
Plato's Rationalism.
Plato naturally took the extreme doctrine of Intellectualism,
or Rationalism. Sense, he said, is only a hindrance to
knowledge ; knowledge involves an ignoring of sense. Know-
ledge is the grasping of ideas with the intellect which never
were in sense, were never got from sense, and which therefore
the mind must have brought with it ; it consists in the mind's
possession of innate ideas originally. (He does not use the
word 'innate,' but he teaches the doctrine.) Plato was
a poet as well as a philosopher, and clothed his philosophical
ideas in poetical form. Mythically sometimes and mystically
always he expresses the doctrine of knowledge as reminiscence
H 2
ioo Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
of ideas not formed from sense, but brought from a state of
prior existence. In a previous existence men had converse
with Ideas. Now they see through a glass darkly, but there
was a time, and again will be, when, freed from matter or
sense, man will see face to face. Plato's theory of knowledge,
then, is a general negation of the import of sense is a
denial that sense can be sublimated into knowledge.
This tendency has been reproduced throughout the history
of thought, especially at the beginning of the modern period.
Descartes, though he takes sense as a factor of human being,
seeks to explain knowledge out of relation to sense, and
considers it apart from sense. With Rationalists first and
last the burden of the story has been that in knowledge there
is obviously something that sense can give no account of
that there are in it notions out of all relation to sense, as for
instance ' Cause.' Here is a notion necessary to our know-
ledge, yet do any of our senses give us an idea of cause as
cause ? Obviously not, yet we know what cause is. ' Sub-
stance ' is another such notion. We come to know by sense
this, that, or the other affection which objects are said to
cause in us; but how do we come to know substance as
something seemingly apart from us ?
Hence it was that Plato looked for some other source to
explain knowledge, and found one so fruitful that he denied
the value of sense. This source was Reason. Reason knows
by way of ideas, and as there was no possible account he
could give of how these ideas arose in us, he did not hesitate
to imagine that we are carrying on in this life a life that has
been begun before, and in a previous stage of which we got
our ideas. How much of this was philosophy, how much
only poetry, it is hard to say ; but we get out of the Dialogues
a positive doctrine of Innate Ideas, viz. that the mind comes
XL] Elements of General Philosophy. 101
into the world with a certain means of knowing in its original
constitution. /, according to this view, supply for myself the
idea of cause by the constitution of my mind.
Aristotle as Conciliator.
In Plato's time the opposite doctrine had already sprung
up, viz. that knowledge is only sense transformed. Later on
this found pronounced upholders in the Epicureans, the
Stoics and some of the Sceptics. To a certain extent this
antithesis was represented and headed by Aristotle, yet not in
extreme opposition. He occupied a middle ground, acting as
a kind of conciliator between the Platonic doctrine and
Experientialism. Never one-sided, he saw the truth in both
aspects ; hence his great influence on succeeding ages. Those
have judged him superficially who, with Coleridge, have said
that every man is a Platonist or an Aristotelian. The
expression that mind is a smooth tablet or tabula rasa occurs
in Aristotle l , but he is no Sensationalist. He does not say
that knowledge can be explained from sense, but he does
say that it cannot be explained without reference to sense.
Neither is it possible to make him out to be an Experientialist
of the modern type, as Grote does. There are passages in
Aristotle which must be interpreted as implying independence
in the intellect as a factor of knowledge. By likening the
mind to a tablet written on by experience he meant only that
the Nous was not a fixed body of innate principles, but
something potential which can be developed by way of
experiential realisation. We are provided with such con-
ditions of thought as will enable us to frame ideas in
1 De Anima, Bk. Ill, ch. iv : 'We must suppose, in short, that the
process of thought is like that of writing on a writing-tablet on which
nothing is yet actually written.' (E. Wallace's transl.) Infra, p. 230.
102 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
connexion with the gradual growth of our experience 1 . It
is surprising how Aristotle had begun to conceive how sense
becomes worked up by certain definite laws into those cogni-
tions which seem furthest removed from sense.
Scholastic Rationalism.
Most of the Schoolmen, as we have seen, followed Aristotle,
but assigned perhaps greater predominance than he did
to the intellectual factor, and were apt to bring in ' innate
ideas.' Some were pure Intellectualists, declaring sense to
be of no account for knowledge. The greatest of them,
Aquinas, contended for the importance of sense, but he too
admitted innate ideas as co-factors in knowledge.
Bacon outside the Controversy.
Bacon is of no importance for this question. He is a
methodologist. He sought for a ' method of discovery,' but
prefaced it by no psychological or critical investigation (I use
' critical ' here in the Kantian sense), nor did he view the
question from the subjective point of view as Descartes did.
Had he gone into the question, he must have been a
Sensationalist. He speaks of sense as a source of knowledge,
but he was no metaphysician.
Cartesian Rationalism.
Descartes was more of a metaphysician than a theorist of
knowledge. He made no attempt to give a detailed theory
of knowledge, nevertheless the philosophical position he took
up has influenced thought till the present day. To him as
to Plato sense is the antithesis of knowledge, and is to be
discounted and banned as an illusion and a show. He fell
back upon the doctrine that we have innate ideas of God,
1 DC An. Bk. Ill, ch. iii.
XL] Elements of General Philosophy. 103
substance, cause, &c., and interpreted it in a definite way.
As a discoverer in mathematics and physics, Descartes came
to terms with sense. As a metaphysician he revived and
maintained the pre-existing doctrine of Innate Ideas, though
in later life he modified it. He distinguished in all mental
states three classes of ideas : (i) Innate, (2) Adventitious, and
(3) Factitious or Imaginary Ideas. The last involve a definite
mental construction that can be traced. Adventitious
ideas come by way of sense. But he insists that there
are certain definite concepts or notions which are in no
respect adventitious, but are imprinted on the mind from
the first as part of its original constitution. Chief among
these is the idea of God. On this idea he lays great stress ;
it plays an important part in his whole philosophy. We
know what we mean when we use such a term, yet the idea
involves no element of sense.
Intuition and Idea in Descartes.
Another word which Descartes is more especially inclined
to use is ' Intuition.' Whenever the knowledge which he
cannot conceive to come by way of sense assumes the form
of propositions, of the truth of which we are absolutely sure,
he uses this term. Through his initiative it has come to be
more and more opposed to sense-experience, and thus
diverted from its original meaning of inspection, vision, direct
apprehension, such as we have in sense. Some philosophers
distinguish between ' pure ' and ' empirical ' intuition, the
latter expressing the original meaning. We shall revert to
this in dealing with Kant. The student, by the way, should
avoid confounding intuition with instinct the primitive
power of conceiving and judging with the primitive tendency
or ability to perform certain acts, unlearned action, or action
104 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
prompted by knowledge that is not got by experience. There
is a relation between the two ; intuitions may involve activities ;
instincts may be used with reference to the unlearned know-
ledge rather than the actions ; but there is an approach to
a philosophic Malapropism in an indiscriminate use of the
terms.
Descartes' use of the term 'idea' is wider than that of
Plato; he applies it to any kind of conscious experience.
(His use of ' thought ' (pensee) is similar.) He even uses
' idea ' for the nervous process accompanying sense-expe-
rience. It is only since Hume, who contrasts ' impressions '
and 'ideas,' that the latter much-abused term has been
restricted to a synonym for representative consciousness.
Cartesianism modified already in Descartes.
Descartes then admitted that sense was a mode of mental
experience which the philosopher must account for as entering
into some cognitions, viz. Adventitious Ideas ; but he had to
assume other elements, viz. Innate Ideas, or Intuitions,
according as he referred to their primitive character, or to
the immediate certitude characterising them. Extension.
Number, are for him innate ideas. ' I am a thinking being ' is
a fundamental intuition ; so is ' Out of nothing nothing can
come,' and 'A cause must contain at least as much reality
as its effect.' We have no sensation of extension, but we
interpret our sense-affections as coming from an extended
thing by means of our idea of extension. To the question,
' What guarantee have we that the idea has objective validity ? '
he answered, ' The existence of a veracious God, incapable
of deceiving us.' And to that of ' How is the mind cognisant
of these ideas ? ' he said, ' Mind is a being constantly con-
sciously thinking.' When pushed into a corner by the
XL] Elements of General Philosophy, 105
objection that, if such ideas are innate, children ought to be
more conscious of them than adults, he modified his position
by saying that the mind has predispositions to innate ideas.
His ' Innate ' theory is really a protest against the Sensa-
tionalist position a protest with which as such I agree and
will not bear direct setting out here.
Locke's Experientialism.
Locke, who really began the English philosophic move-
ment, thinks in relation to Descartes, though he generally
opposes him. The first book of his Essay is devoted to a
hostile criticism of the doctrine of Innate Ideas, all know-
ledge being traced from experience. Here then is a distinct
counter-assertion. Instead of the assertion that the nature
and community of knowledge are inexplicable save by way
of ideas implanted in the mind, and in all minds alike,
together with a theory as to the import of this innate knowing
with respect to all minds, a theory in short of the objectivity
of knowledge, we have the opposite view, that the mind
comes into the world devoid of ideas or of any original
means of interpreting experience, analogous in fact to a wax
tablet ready for the stylus that is to say, with a capacity for
receiving impressions and with nothing more. Knowledge
is that which arises in the mind as the result of the im-
pressions imparted by experience.
It was Locke who objected that if there were innate ideas
and principles (intuitions in the form of propositions), then,
according to Descartes' axiom, that mind does not exist to
the extent that it does not think, every one, but especially
children, would be always conscious of them ; whereas such
is not the case ; indeed it would seem that none but
Cartesian philosophers were conscious of some of Descartes'
106 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
innate ideas ! Locke probably did not know, when he wrote,
how Descartes had (in a letter) modified his theory by
admitting predispositions. But Locke used the figure of the
tabula rasa J in a much more dogmatic sense than Aristotle.
The notion, on Locke's own line, has long been abandoned.
It must not, however, be supposed that Locke by the
metaphor meant to exclude ' natural faculties ' 2 or ' natural
tendencies imprinted in the minds of men ' 3 . It is merely his
strong way of saying that without actual experience (either
that which comes by way of the senses or 'that which he
calls ' Reflection ') there comes to pass nothing of what we
call knowledge. In this point of view he need not be
supposed to exclude anything that later inquirers contend
for under the head of Inherited Predisposition. He does
not assert that all tablets alike may be indifferently written
upon, or, on the other hand, deny that all human minds are
fitted to receive impressions in certain like ways. He may
however be charged, by his way of putting the case, with
throwing out of view this important element of a complete
theory of knowledge, viz. that there is a certain common
limit of knowing for the race and a certain personal range
for the individual, both predetermined in a manner that
admits of investigation (whether by Kant's way of analysis
or by the evolutionist historic procedure).
Locke's whole case against innate knowledge has reference
to the supposed ' universal consent ' respecting it in all men
and its express manifestation in the consciousness of each.
He seeks to show that no principle, speculative or practical,
that has ever been held innate, is as a matter of fact
expressly recognised and allowed for by all mankind, as
1 Essay, Bk. II, ch. i. 2.
2 Ibid. I, ii. i. 3 Ibid. I, iii. 3.
XL] Elements of General PhilosopJiy. 107
it must be if innate. The uniformity of knowledge in
different men, so far as it exists, he explains by their being
exposed to the same experience, by their having the same
' natural faculties/ and by their communication with one
another 1 . Thus he does not wholly overlook the influence
of the social relation.
Whatever may be said of Locke's polemic against innate
knowledge however he fails to see what really was contended
for under that shibboleth (viz. that the fabric of knowledge,
for any mind, is never explicable from incidental experience
simply) it must be pronounced good and possible against
the doctrine as it had till then been maintained; and this
is shown by the necessity laid upon Leibniz to shift ground
and maintain the position in quite a new way. Thus a real
advance in philosophy was rendered necessary.
Subsequent Mutual Convergence.
While Descartes maintained the extreme position of
Rationalism, and while we appear to find an extreme counter-
assertion of Sensationalism by Locke, what we discover
on tracing the course of subsequent philosophy is mainly in
the way of reconciliation and mutual approximation. The
Rationalists recognise sense as an indispensable factor of
what we call knowledge, the Sensationalists meanwhile pro-
gressively deepen and broaden their conception of what
enters into or is experience. The dogmatic assertion of
innate ideas died slain by Locke's Essay, or at least it only
lingered on here and there down to our own times. Leibniz,
who was most distinctly a Rationalist, finding knowledge in-
explicable from anything we can call external experience,
never asserted that the mind comes into the world with innate
1 See especially Essay I, iii. 22 ff.
io8 Elements of General Philosophy. [LKCT.
ideas, but declared it has only predispositions, aptitudes, as
means of interpreting what comes to it by way of sense a
notion which shows a distinct advance towards an appreciation
of the other side. Ideas were only implicit in the infant mind
as a statue of Hercules might be said to be implicit in a
block of marble. Leibniz's theory of what really enters into
knowledge was based on his theory of substance. Descartes
had expressed the distinction between mind and matter as
between substances the whole character of which can be
expressed in thinking, and substances the whole character of
which can be expressed in extension. Leibniz gave up this
dualism, and allowed the existence of one substance only, the
reality of which lay neither in thinking nor in extension.
Trying to get a word deeper than either, he called the ground
of its reality active force, and the one substance a system of
monads, or mental unitary beings. Not all have a self-con-
scious existence, and those which have do not have it at every
moment of their existence. Mind appears at different grades
throughout the universe, from the Deity down to inanimate
objects appears, that is to say, as capable of all degrees of
subjective apprehension, from full self-conscious apperception
to semi- or sub- consciousness and down to unconsciousness.
Hence arose the theory of latent mental modifications,
springing originally from Locke's objection to Descartes'
definition of mind as something constantly self-conscious.
Leibniz and Locke,
In defining his own theory of knowledge, Leibniz took up
the formula of the Sensationalists : Nihil cst in intellectu quod
non prius fuerit in sensu, and gave it a turn noteworthy and
original by adding nisi ipse intellectus. 'Except the intellect
itself.' By this alone, he claimed, do we possess necessary
xi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 109
knowledge, necessary truth. Some truths are merely truths of
fact ; others are necessary truths. We know sometimes that
' S is P/ but sometimes we know that ' S must be P.' And
he said, as against Locke, that, while we can account for
any mere assertion of fact from experience, to say that
anything ' must be ' is not explicable from any kind of
experience. Locke, on the other hand, with never so blank
a tablet, found it necessary to assume beyond sense much
else, which he called faculties of analysing, compounding,
and the like. Experience for him was either external or
internal, i.e. either Sense or Reflexion, meaning by Sense
only the five passive senses, or modes of passive affection.
What then is Reflexion ? Consciousness of the fact of
perceiving, imagining, &c. To use modern phraseology
there is an order of objective experience and an order of
subjective experience : this expresses Locke's meaning.
Knowledge, he found, was altogether made up by experience
of Sense and Reflexion. But he has no definite idea how
these come together and combine. Compared with Leibniz's
profound psychological insight, Locke must be charged with
superficiality, with inability to apprehend the complexity of
the subject he sets himself to deal with.
Leibniz, however, by reason of his metaphysical start, is
in constant danger of diverting real psychological facts
into supports for questionable metaphysical positions. The
psychological fact that conscious life is composed of elements
multitudinous in number and of every degree of intensity
may be, should be, recognised quite apart from the meta-
physical hypothesis of monads.
Leibniz, while he does not deny that, not only truths of
fact, but even necessary truths come into conscious view
only upon the occasions supplied by sense, is disposed to
no Elements of General Philosophy, [LECT.
lay greater stress, for the explanation of knowledge, upon
that which the mind must be in itself in order to be affected
so. And as even the most occasional cognition may be
viewed in relation to the mind's inherent capacity, he con-
tends for innate knowledge in a sense which, if it departs
from the older view against which Locke contends, is not in
the least excluded by anything that Locke advances.
The Question advanced by a Step.
Locke thus appears after all as a masked Rationalist. He
merely opened up the Experientialist side of the question,
and it might well be said that Leibniz was only giving a
definite expression to Locke's implicit admission, when he
insisted on ' intellectus ipse ' as that which had not its origin
in sense. It was impossible that the question could remain
as Locke left it. Advance was necessary, or else a falling
back on Descartes.
When we come to Berkeley we shall see (infra, Lect. XVI)
that his Principles are directed against Locke's dogmatising
on matter. Still Locke it was who first began to transform
Philosophy into Theory of Knowledge. Philosophy with
Descartes was Theory of Being ; with Locke it was so only
secondarily. And more : his philosophy, if not psychologically
based, is at least penetrated through and through with the
psychological spirit. In Descartes' science we get some
good physics, but of any psychological understanding we
get next to no trace. Between his work on vision and that
of Berkeley there is all the difference between fancy and
science. What then enabled Berkeley in 1709 to do that
which Descartes of far greater scientific and philosophical
ability had been unable to do in 1637 ? I can assign no other
reason than the appearance in 1690 of Locke's Essay. For
XL] Elements of General Philosophy. in
whatever Spinoza's influence on the time may have been, he
had no influence upon Berkeley.
Locke's ideas of Sense are crude, but he compelled all
subsequent philosophy to admit that into the fabric of know-
ledge Sense enters as a distinct constituent, and that there is
no explanation of knowledge possible which does not take
account of Sense as a factor. What else there is in knowledge
beside Sense philosophers have since sought to make out.
The three chief verdicts are those of the Common Sense or
Scottish School, the Critical School, and the Associationist
School. These we will proceed to consider.
For LECTURE XII read :
Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, XX and XXXVIII.
Hamilton, Works of Reid, with Dissertations by Hamilton
Note A, ' On the Philosophy of Common Sense.'
LECTURE XII.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. AFTER LOCKE.
A ssocialion ism .
THE Associationist doctrine has developed along two lines
of thought, both of which may be said to have arisen in
Locke one through Berkeley to Hume, the other through
Hartley to the Mills. Its theory of knowledge is that know-
ledge is explicable from the elements of sense-experience
united through the bonds (laws) of association, such con-
nexions being made within the life-experience of the
individual. Knowledge is thus an individual construction,
and is a compound resulting from the fusion, under certain
laws, of sense-elements. It is the product of sense and
association. An Associationist must maintain that there
is nothing in the mind that could not be developed by the
individual for himself. He may be helped to his special
associations by others, but he could do it all for himself.
This is the purest form of Experientialism. Locke himself
was an Associationist, not explicitly but by implication.
Associationists have not worked out a consistent Theory of
Knowledge, but they do make a real attempt to begin at the
beginning.
xii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 113
Locke and Berkeley.
Locke's ideas of sense and of the construction of knowledge
are, as we have seen, very crude ; nevertheless he first opened
the question of ^.^.psychological origin of knowledge. Berkeley,
Locke's immediate successor, marks a distinct advance along
this line. He began a definite psychological inquiry, while
he also took a philosophical position in regard to the know-
ledge of matter, which is at least more circumspect than that
of Locke. He based his philosophy on his psychology ; yet
he was not set philosophising because he was a psychologist,
but because, as a theologian, he wished to get rid of the,
to him, pernicious effects of Materialism. Thenceforward
philosophy and psychology really began to have a separate
history. Berkeley got away from Locke's notion of the
five senses as barely passive ; and further, he began that
definite reference to a principle or principles of intellectual
synthesis without which it is hopeless to explain knowledge.
Associationism is traced to him though he does not use
the word. His theory of knowledge bears more especially
on our third problem the perception of an external world.
Hume.
Hume not only carried out further Locke's theory of
knowledge, but put the question into such a shape as to
rouse the strongest opposition and so bring about a great
advance in thought. In regard to the cognition of extension,
Hume is behind Berkeley and not superior to Locke. But
he was beyond both in his statement of the formal principles
of knowledge. He proceeds wholly upon Locke's individual-
istic view that there is nothing in the developed knowledge
of any mind which is not explicable from the (incidental)
ii4 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
experience of that mind ; and expresses this (by a modi-
fication of Locke's language) in the oft-repeated formula,
that whenever we ' really ' have any idea there is some
assignable impression from which it is derived of which
it is the copy. By thus distinguishing idea from impression,
he gives greater precision to the psychological data which
he assumes in common with Locke. But further, when
Locke, in order to account for the developed complex of
knowledge, is content to assume faculties of 'abstracting,'
'compounding' and the like, Hume formulates definite
principles of association under which the synthesis takes
place : (i) Contiguity, (2) Similarity, (3) Association of
Cause and Effect. He does not work out the last principle
at all, nor the two others at all fully. But not in regard to
these can we gauge the importance of Hume. There are
two facts in cognition that he set himself to account for
knowledge of substance and knowledge of causation. He
was led to the question of cause from the prominence in
modern science of the inquiry, ' What is the cause of what ? '
Berkeley already and the Cartesians before him (e. g. Male-
branche) had seen that what science was concerned with was
the establishment of uniformity in phenomena. But Hume
went so far as to say, that if any phenomenon is by us con-
nected with any other phenomenon in Nature, it is because
of the customary sequence of experience. A subjective bond is
thereby established and that is all, although through 'custom'
one phenomenon comes to be considered as the objective
' cause ' of the other. Thus he decries knowledge, at least
from the Rationalist point of view. While his Treatise of
Human Nature contains an almost complete theory of know-
ledge, while he vaguely but distinctly recognises intellectual
elaboration of sense-data arranged by 'Abstraction/ he
XIL] Elements of General Philosophy, 115
stunned the philosophic mind of the century by showing
that all previous investigation had, so to speak, led up to
a dead wall that Locke's Experientialism, logically carried
out, landed philosophy in scepticism. Besides his Individual-
ism, his Particularism (i.e. that everything complex or
general has to be made out of particular elements) is very
pronounced as put in the formula which he is constantly
referring to : ' All ideas which are different are separable '
(i.e. have somehow to be brought together if they appear in
one mature consciousness as conjoined).
Hartley.
Hume's contemporary, Hartley, was independent of him,
but a follower of Locke. He was the first to formulate the
law of Contiguous Association as accounting sufficiently,
without other laws of association, for intellectual synthesis.
Berkeley did not formulate any such laws ; Hume did, as
we have seen, but he did not apply them. When later
Associationists (the Mills and Professor Bain) faced the
problem of knowledge, they worked with reference to Hartley
and not to Hume's laws of association. Hartley was the
first who distinctly asked how a multitude of sensations,
which for us are discretes, come to be fused, or to coalesce
into that coherent appearance of an object with a variety
of qualities which expresses what our experience really is.
It is, he said, by this one associative principle. Thinkers
before him, from Aristotle onwards, had used association
only in accounting for the imaginative life or representative
experience. Hartley was the first to employ it in explaining
the synthesis of sensations. He did not give a complete
exposition of this theory, or analyse sufficiently the elements
of sense, but he first started the Associationist method.
I 2
u6 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Brown.
Thomas Brown was a strong Associationist, thinking with
ultimate relation to Locke, but with modifications due to
the influence of the French Sensationalists, Destutt de Tracy
and others. They first laid hold decisively on ' muscular
sense,' a discovery of great importance in philosophic theories
of extension. To this subject Brown's lectures were largely
devoted, and to it we shall return. Brown used Hartley's
theory of association most earnestly, but was repelled by the
latter's introduction of the physiological theory of vibrations.
J. S. Mill.
It is John Stuart Mill and Professor Bain who, as inheritors
of the Sensationalist tradition of the eighteenth century, have
set up the formulated theory of knowledge, both psychological
and philosophical, known as Associationism. The latter
gives better data for a true theory, especially in regard to
external perception ; the former is the better systematiser.
In my judgment their Associationism, while it is an approxi-
mation to a theory of knowledge, comes evidently short.
However important are the factors brought out by Mill, he
just fails to solve the problem. He declares that a number
of the subjective experiences, had by an individual human
being, become for him aggregated according to certain laws
(of association), and that these aggregated appearances can
come to assume the form of knowledge for the individual
and since it is knowledge to be objective or valid for all.
But it is just this last point that he does not account for.
Our knowledge, as I have said, is a coherent system of fact
and relation held in common by me and equally by others.
This objectivity is the distinctive constituent of knowledge,
yet Mill never satisfactorily accounts for it never gets out
XIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 117
of the charmed circle, the sphere of the subjective. No
doubt this is the right way to begin, but it is the wrong way
to end if we want to give an account of knowledge as the
common property of all men. Mill never gets off psycho-
logical ground. Now I am in sympathy with Associationism
as psychology only. Mill's psychology is rather defective.
He borrows from Professor Bain without comprehending
him properly. However, Mill's shortcomings in framing
a philosophical theory of knowledge do not detract from his
great philosophical merit in his theory of general knowledge,
viz. his logic. It is as a logician that he is effective, rather
than as an epistemologist not that I always go with him in
his logic. In this he gives an account of knowledge in a
constructive spirit that is very different from the destructive
spirit of Hume. Living in a scientific age, Mill attempted
to set up a fundamental theory of positive science involved
in all the special sciences. But he does not explain how we
come to know the world as consisting of a number of things,
of bodies and minds. He works from the phenomenal point
of view and from that of individual experience. He' tries
to show how the individual experiences of the mind can
become associated so as to enable one man to ask another
to accept them as valid.
Even as an inquiry of positive science Mill's work is
defective. From one point of view his positive theory may
be called no less sceptical than that of Hume. Jevons's
Principles of Science is more complete though still less
philosophical.
Professor Bain has been the most important contributor
to psychology in England in this century. His pre-eminence
extends over the whole field of psychology as distinct from
u8 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
philosophy. Towards the general theory of knowledge he
does not contribute any advance on Mill and the Associationists
generally. He works from the individual point of view. He
makes but little attempt to apply the laws of association to
cognition as such. He does not ask, e. g. how we can
explain the concreteness of an object on the principles of
association, although he gives a careful statement of those
laws. Yet he posits an element of personal initiative for the
explanation of developed consciousness; he tacitly denies
the tabula rasa hypothesis. In the mature consciousness he
finds an element not derived from the sense-experience of
the individual because he considers mental life in connexion
with the nervous system. It is recognised that the individual
comes into the world organised up to a certain point ; and
this fact, taken into account on the bodily side, has correspond-
ing to it a certain pre- determination of conscious life.
The ' Common Sense ' School.
Reid, Stewart and Hamilton put forth their epistemological
view in antithesis to Hume's theory of knowledge. The
first declared that, while sense was of account for knowledge,
knowledge could not be explained out of the elements
assumed by the Associationist doctrines. So he fell back
on other assumptions. What struck him in the general
theory of knowledge, as distinct from the special problem
of the cognition of an external world, was the community
of knowledge was the fact that while there is more than
sense in knowledge, this ' more ' is had by all, cultivated or
uncultivated, young or old. This he attributed to the sub-
jective factor of common sense. Now common sense in
psychology is a name for organic or general sensation 1 .
1 V. Elements of Psychology, p. 62. ED.
xii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 119
In popular parlance it is the faculty of ready judgment,
mother wit. Reid employed it thus : We are so con-
stituted that we interpret our experience alike. When we
are affected through our senses, we refer those sensible
impressions to a thing or substance of which they are
qualities, by a fundamental principle of judgment or
common sense. If we interrogate consciousness we reach
this ultimate and objectively valid principle, beyond which
we cannot reason.
This was a valuable idea, but Reid's method was hap-
hazard, his assertions too readily made, his elementary
principles too easily found. His ' common sense ' expresses
rather the result, than the means, of the determination of our
impressions. It was a kind of revival of the old doctrine of
innate ideas, although accompanied by a much more elabo-
rate analysis of knowledge than any preceding Rationalists
had given. We may not agree with him, nevertheless his
system was an advance on Locke and Hume, if only because
it made other thinkers more circumspect.
Dugald Stewart carried on the doctrine on the same lines.
Knowledge could not be explained without the assumption
of certain fundamental principles of belief which determine
the objective validity of knowledge.
Hamilton.
Reid, Stewart and Hamilton are the three typical ex-
ponents of faculty-psychology. The term 'faculty' is very
crudely used by the first two, but definitely by the last.
Hamilton, while he justifies his own use of the word by saying
that it is merely a way of massing together a number of mental
phenomena, points out, as against his predecessors, that the
discrepancies in their use of it show a want of principle
120 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
and are essentially indeterminate. Reid, e.g. is redundant in
making two distinct powers of Conception and Abstraction.
He and Stewart pretend to fulfil the whole function of psycho-
logy, viz. explanation, whereas they only describe. For the
only scientific mode of explanation is the bringing phenomena
under laws. Explaining facts by faculties is essentially un-
scientific, for we must ascribe a quasi-independence to these
faculties. Even Hamilton, in spite of his having guarded
himself, falls into using the word as if for so many mutually
independent powers, as though as some one has said he
were dealing with European Powers. Psychology, as a rule,
begins where Reid and Stewart leave off. Still for Hamilton
I claim a certain amount of exemption from blame. He
is guided, moreover, as to much of his scheme by a
scientific principle : he goes from simple to complex. The
most salient feature in his classification is that each faculty is
explicable from the preceding. His scheme is better than
a mere string of beads. But in it psychology and philosophy
become hopelessly confused.
His scheme divides intellect into six faculties, in which we
find a close correspondence with our own arrangement :
(1) Presentative (a) External . . . Perception.
,, (6) Internal . . \
(2) Conservative Representative
(3) Reproductive Imagination.
(4) Representative j
(5) Elaborative or Discursive . . . Conception, Thought.
(6) Regulative 1 .
1 I am not disposed to reject the prominence given to (2) apart
from (3) and (4). Decidedly some retain well, but cannot at
will reproduce equally well. I could rather object to separating (3)
and (4). The fifth is the most instructive to study. I commend his
emphatic use of the word ' thought ' as meaning re-representative
xii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 121
Hamilton confuses Psychology and Philosophy.
Now here in faculties (2) to (5) Hamilton is on psycho-
logical ground ; in (i) and (6) he trespasses on philosophy.
For instance, his first faculty he defines as that by which we
have (a) consciousness of objects, (3) consciousness of self.
This is more than we undertook to find in intellection ; it is
cognition in the fullest sense. Under the guise of psychology he
is already dealing with the problem of knowledge. Now it is
hardly fair to speak as though Hamilton professed to give us
a work on psychology, when for his title he has Metaphysics.
But we must charge him with not making the necessary
distinction, any more than Professor Bain does in another
direction, between psychology and philosophy. Here he
certainly does not pass gradually from simple to complex.
And the matter is made worse by the use of the apparently
very simple term Presentative. He over-simplifies in one
way, over-complicates in another. He himself, when in a
psychological mood, sees that Presentation is but a starting-
point. I deny ( i ) that we can start from perception of object
and self, (2) that there is purely presentative intellection.
The profit to the reader in those lectures on the first faculty
lies in the historical information; otherwise there is much
that is confusing and inconsistent. It was not a fortunate
start.
Then as to the sixth. Till this is exercised, till the results
of the other five have been operated upon, regulated, by it,
intellection only, and have sought to establish in the traditions of
English psychology this usage, brought in first by Hamilton from
Kant. ' Discursive ' too is a valuable old term, first showing the
function of thought as a 'ranging over' in order to bring together.
He calls this faculty also ' understanding,' as opposed to reason or
ratio, his sixth faculty.
i22 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
you have not, according to Hamilton, got knowledge. Not
professedly does he here pass again over to philosophy ; he
thinks it is all psychology. Yet he himself denies that this
is a faculty in the same sense as the others. He calls it by
a Latin name, as though English were not good enough for
it the locus principiorum nest or aggregate of principles
which have to be made manifest as involved in knowledge.
Hamilton s 'Reason?
What does he mean by this Regulative Faculty, or the
Reason ? ' Regulative ' is a term he borrowed from Kant,
though not exactly the Kantian usage along with it. He
did not use it as I do to describe the function of such
philosophical doctrines as Logic or Ethics, his generic
term for such functioning being Nomology (as distinct from
Phenomenology). By ' Regulative ' he meant ordering or
interpreting or conditioning. Certain principles constitute
so many forms or conditions under which what we perceive,
remember, think, &c. comes to be held as knowledge. For
instance, by the action of the principle of Substance we
interpret what is presented in consciousness as qualities
cohering in a substance. And again, the flow of our
representations does not give us cognition till they are
ordered by the principle of Causality as effects of certain
causes. Not content herewith, he endeavours to reduce all
principles to one the principle of the Conditioned.
Note how he had already begged the sixth faculty to
expound the first.
We have now seen what the Common Sense school found
wanting in the Associationist doctrine, and how they sought
to supply it. In connexion herewith they tend to use belief
as being the ( foundation of knowledge, those fundamental
XIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 123
principles of Common Sense or Reason being held in the
mind in the form of belief.
No student will lose his time if he study Hamilton. What-
ever his faults, his work is unsurpassed for instructive,
stimulative value. He really and consciously exhausted
intellect no less than is done in Mr. Spencer's scheme and
my own. Whereas with the classifications of Reid and
Stewart we might ask why they stop where they do.
For LECTURE XIII read :
Mill, Logic, Bk. II, ch. v. vi ' Of Demonstration and Necessary
Truths.'
LECTURE XIII.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Kant.
KANT was struck and even oppressed by the negative result
of Hume's analyses. It seemed to him that, if Hume was
right, no explanation of even the plain facts of science
was possible. He was prepared to accept Hume against the
older doctrines of metaphysics Platonic realism, innate
ideas, and so forth but he felt that there was that in know-
ledge which Hume had not touched that his negation of
knowledge was wrong, in that he had not faced the whole
problem. So he sought in the Kritik of Pure Reason to
work out a positive theory of knowledge and to destroy
scepticism, not by mere dogmatism like Descartes and Leibniz,
but by putting the whole of knowledge on a new footing,
and so to find a via media between the Experientialism of
Locke run out into the scepticism of Hume, and the
Rationalism of Descartes and Leibniz.
Kanfs Inquiry into the Constituents of Knowledge.
He said that we must first settle what enters into know-
ledge. That sense is of account for knowledge he takes for
granted. Our knowledge is of sensible things. Not that we
have not moral convictions of something beyond, but know-
Elements of General Philosophy. 125
ledge proper always contains sense-elements. Sense itself
does not explain knowledge. Knowledge is not simply sense
transformed, but a resultant of certain elements a posteriori
(empirically given) wrought up with certain other a priori
elements.
A priori and a posteriori.
To these terms, which are to be found in Logic since the
time of Aristotle, Kant gave an epistemological significance.
The logical a priori is cognition of anything on the side of
its conditions, of what it can be shown by the laws of thought
to depend upon ; it is knowledge in deductive form. And it
is so called because it can be shown to be dependent, through
the laws of thought or consistency, on what has been already
known or assumed, i. e. on premises. This is the only kind
of conclusion that is absolutely certain. But we can make
other inferences, for which we can never claim absolute
certainty, and yet which are the most important, viz. induc-
tions, or general assertions about facts. Here, except in
Jevons's trivial case of Perfect Induction, the certainty of our
inference is technically open to dispute ; it is only probable.
Such an inference is termed knowledge a posteriori.
Kant uses the terms for the two kinds of factors present in
knowledge. That which comes from sense, without which
no exercise of ' pure ' reason has any validity, is knowledge
a posteriori. But without the a priori factor of ' pure reason '
(reason not derived from experience) working on experience
we cannot get knowledge. For Kant, a priori is a general
name for ' rational ' as opposed to ' empirical ; ' it is what
Leibniz, in correcting Locke, meant by intellecttis, or that
which is furnished by the mind's original constitution.
Kant, be it noted, was very vague in his use of ' experience.'
Sometimes it means with him the contribution of sense to
i26 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
knowledge ; at other times it stands, not for bare sense-
material, but for sense as ordered and interpreted by a priori
principles in fact for knowledge.
A priori Forms.
Again, just as in Logic a distinction is drawn between
matter and form of thought, so Kant distinguished episte-
mologically between matter and form of cognition generally.
The matter of knowledge is the data of sense; these are
taken up into, or perceived under, ' pure forms.' The ' forms '
of sense are space and time. When I get external sensations
I am so constituted that I order them in space. And I order
all my sensations in time. Space and time are pure forms
of intuition a term which Kant was careful to connect with
sense-perception only, and not with Reason, seeing how
related the words are.
Next, sense-perception, so explained from the conjunction
of matter and pure forms, becomes ready for conceptual know-
ing, i.e. for an orderly scheme or fabric of knowing common
to man and man in other words, objective knowledge.
Objective knowledge does not necessarily refer to objects in
space. Is it a fact that every event has a cause ? If it be
agreed that this is so, here is objective knowledge, although
it does not refer to objects in space. Such knowledge con-
sists of sense-phenomena subsumed or brought under pure
concepts of the understanding or fundamental principles of
judgment, by which Kant did not understand so many 'innate
ideas,' but postulated certain necessary forms of thought.
Universality and Necessity in Knowledge.
For there is a part of our knowledge, there are some of
our cognitions, which are not only universal or objective, but
also necessary. Some judgments assume the form ' S is P,'
XIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 127
but some that of ' S must be P.' Now no experience can
explain so philosophers said why a ' must be ' is used any
more than it can warrant universal validity. Experience deals
with particulars only. It cannot tell us that all are so, or that
all must be so ; we only know by it that this, that, and the
other are so. We do not hesitate to say ' All men are mortal,'
but we only know that certain men of whom we have had
experience have died. Knowledge may, on the warrant of
experience, assume a general form from particulars, but then
it is only probable ; it is of the nature of belief; it is practical,
not theoretical necessity. So for universality. Kant paid
most attention to necessity, defining more exactly than
had ever been done before the nature of the problem and
distinguishing between kinds of necessity. Necessity in know-
ledge first found explicit statement (as we have seen) in
Leibniz. Locke gave an account of necessary truth, and
Hume tried to account for the aspect of necessity by the
merely subjective explanation that it is habit or custom that
determines us to think thus. Mill argued for inseparable
association.
Now Kant distinguished between Analytic and Synthetic
propositions: these do but correspond to the Essential and
Non-essential judgments of the Schoolmen and to Mill's
Verbal and Real predication. An analytic proposition is one
where P (predicate) is involved in the thought of S (subject).
Locke miscalled such propositions ' trivial.' ' Man is rational '
is an analytic proposition, because by ' man ' we mean rational
animal. Man must be rational or he is not man. Kant saw
that all such judgments have the character of logical necessity
necessity under the laws of thought (of Identity, Contradiction,
Excluded Middle, or generally, of Consistency). Every step
in thought that proceeds under the laws of thought may be
128 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
expressed in terms of necessity. Deny and, as Aristotle
would say, you are a vegetable. This is a kind of necessity
experience may give distinct occasion for, e. g. ' Body is
extended ; ' ' Crows are black.' We can put this kind aside.
But, said Kant, we often have judgments which are not
analytic and yet are necessary, e.g. ' Two straight lines cannot
enclose a space.' This is a synthetic proposition ; Professor
Bain (in his Logic) tried to show it, on no ground whatever, to
be analytic. It is also necessary. We may say merely ' do not
enclose,' but the necessity, even if excluded from the form of
the proposition, lies in its matter. Now Kant found necessities
of thought of this kind, not only in mathematics but throughout
the whole fabric of knowledge, e. g. ' Every event must have
a cause.' And he called such judgments synthetic propositions
a priori, i. e. necessary because of an a priori synthesis formed
in the very nature of human reason, and not a posteriori or
constructed by the light of experience. It was thus that he
answered the question, ' How are synthetic propositions a
priori possible ?' ' How is real predication also necessary?'
The human mind brings to the results of bare sense-experi-
ence certain subjective factors, viz. (i) pure intuitions, in
order to perception; (2) pure categories of concepts, in order
to understanding ; (3) pure ideas, in order to reason.
Of these (i), i.e. space and time, are not general notions,
but pure forms for the reception of the bare matter of sensa-
tion that arises in us. They are the conditions under which
sense-impressions are consciously experienced by us as having
the character of definite phenomena mutually related in the
way of succession or co-existence. There is nothing in sense
to explain sensations as apart from each other in space and
time. This represents the first stage of cognition as we
have it.
XIII.] Elements of General Philosophy. 129
The phenomena thus found to be the transformed data of
sense now become matter for further elaboration, and get into
definite relations with each other, as causes and effects, &c.;
and by these new kinds of ' form ' applicable to phenomena
as their ' matter/ just as space and time are applicable to
sense-impressions as their matter, the order of nature becomes
explicable. If I simply say ' The earth draws a stone/ there
is involved this double elaboration of the bare facts of sense
as originally given. They are first ordered as phenomena,
then ordered into relations. And the forms into which
phenomena are thus taken up are twelve ' categories of the
understanding 1 .' All are involved in physical experience, for
these ' forms ' of the mind are not cognitions in and for
themselves, but apply to phenomena only, and have no
meaning out of relation to them. Even what we call experi-
ence is saturated with ' reason/ with those highest elabora-
tions or syntheses the ideas of the self or soul, the cosmos,
God which completed the Kantian account of the subjective
factor in knowledge.
Kanfs Theory of Space.
So much for general exposition. I will now confine myself
to space and those propositions about it which are both neces-
sary and synthetic. Kant maintained that we cannot account
1 ' Discoverable from the common analysis of judgments in logic,
(a) Three categories of QUANTITY : Unity, Plurality, Universality (as
involved in Singular, Particular, Universal judgments respectively).
(6) Three of QUALITY. Reality, Negation, Limitation (in Positive,
Negative, Infinite judgments), (c) Three of RELATION : Substantiality,
Causality, Community or Reciprocal action (in Categorical, Hypothetical,
Disjunctive judgments), (rf) Three of MODALITY: Possibility, Existence,
Necessity (in Problematic, Assertory, Apodeictic judgments).' Bain,
op. cit. App. B, p. 60. ED.
K.
130 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
for our knowledge of space by reference to experience, for if
we could, we could never form necessary synthetic propositions
about it. We have a pure intuition of space ; it is a pure
form, and we put our experiences into it. In support of this
position he adduced psychological evidence both negative and
positive negative, in that he asks us to produce those sources
of experience, whence we have notions of space ; positive, in
that space in relation to sensation stands in a quite peculiar
position, thus : we experience our sensations as in space, and
while we can think of any of those sensations as eliminated,
we cannot think away space. We can think of a pillar as
having colour, as emitting sound when struck, but we cannot
think away its extension. We may colour our space as we
like, but it must always remain extended. Space, then, is
one of the two ' forms ' of sensibility, a form to which sense
supplies the matter; it is there before experience, and there-
fore we can utter synthetic propositions not built up by
experience.
Associationist Explanation of Necessity in Knowledge.
Kant's insight into this question surpassed that of his pre-
decessors both Rationalist and Experientialist. I think that
we may yield him this pre-eminence and yet, in the light of
our more advanced psychology, be able to explain those
aspects of our cognition of space which led him to deny its
experiential origin. Let us face him with the developed
position of his Associationist opponents as best seen in Mill
and Professor Bain. The latter in his Psychology gives the
very data which we shall use to show where Kant was wrong,
yet he does not make use of them as he might have done.
Had he seen the full import of what he makes out, he would
have had a better argument against the Kantian position. Take
XIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 13:
Mill : For him there is nothing in our knowledge of space
which may not be accounted for by the amount and constancy
of our experience going to form the cognition. If we find
that we cannot think of colour except as in space, it is because
we find that they always do go together. Associations, though
formed within experience, may become inseparable. ' Space
a form in which we receive colour as matter ? ' No, said "Mill ;
we have always apprehended colour as extended, extension
as coloured. Necessity depends upon the amount of experi-
ence, which is here of a peculiarly simple kind. Experience
that is frequent and constant enough can give rise to a ' must
be,' a 'cannot be.'
Criticism of both Positions.
Now I have thrown doubt on how Associationism can ever
account for the necessity of synthetic propositions. I take
a middle position, neither Kantian nor Associationist, finding
neither view perfectly valid. Is Space a form for all external
sensations ? (I omit Time for lack of it.) Yes, said Kant,
sensations are by us ordered in space. Well, I have shown,
in dealing with perception \ that every sensation does
come to have some kind of spatial reference more or less.
But there is all the difference in the world, of DEGREE. For
that difference of degree we must account in detail, and this
puts a check on our agreeing with Kant's superficial assertion,
that space is form for all sensations alike. Do the notes in
the scale of an octave or in a chord appear to us spread out
in space like the colour-spectrum ? It is true that we should
hear them as ' in space,' yet the spatial order is very different.
On the other hand, I protest against ranking our experience
of space on a level with that of colour or sound, as the
Associationists do. How can we have experience of colour?
1 V. Elements of Psychology, p. 96. ED.
K 2
132 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
By way of sensations passively received. How of space ?
There is no such simple source of space-experience. In-
separable association exists, it is true, as a psychological fact,
and explains much that looks like necessity. Mill uses it to
account for mathematical necessity. The ideas, e. g., of ' two
straight lines ' and ' what cannot enclose a space ' have come,
through personal experience, to be so closely associated as to
be practically inseparable. But however that may be, colour
and extension do not constitute a case of inseparable associa-
tion. We must find one where the associates were first known
in separation, e. g. the name ' hat ' and the thing ' hat.' In-
separable association refers to what is practically inseparable,
not to what is theoretically inseparable. And if we look at
how the human organism is constituted, we see that the
relation of colour and extension cannot be a case of two more
or less indifferent elements being brought together by chance-
experience and fused. It lies in the constitution of our per-
ceptive faculty that we cannot but have the experience of
extended colour if we have eyes. I am so constituted that
when I am affected by colour I move my eyes. This is a
necessity of the constitution, and not of acquired experi-
ence. Inseparable association can never explain necessity in
knowledge.
But have we not seen, it may be asked, how extension is
explicable by ' muscular sense'? This is really important,
though more is required. It is by reference to ' active sense,'
the resultant of muscular sense in conjunction with passive
sense, that we do get an actual experiential origin of our
perception of space. Space, as we have seen, is no simple
experience, but a complex product of data given by colours
and touch. Thus space is a ' form ' I have no objection to
the term as expressing the relation of space to simple sensa-
XIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 133
tions but it is not therefore a ' pure intuition,' since we can
psychologically explain it. Nor is it the universal form of
external sensation.
Organic Necessity.
Now if, constituted as we are, some sense-organs only are
muscular, and if it is the fact of muscularity whereby we have
apprehension of extension, it becomes a necessity for us to
have those sensations ' in ' space. We are so ordered, through
the mobility of our hands, eyes, &c., as to have those sensa-
tions so. Here is the explanation of this necessity because
of our organic constitution. And this is not to explain mind
from matter; I use 'eyes,' 'muscles,' &c., to designate the
factors, not to explain them. The material differences in the
brains of different men suggest differences of mental ability.
Kant, then, was right in maintaining that our reference of
colours to space was of our original constitution, though what
he called pure intuition I term bodily organs. Whether the
tendency be innate I know not, not knowing the consciousness
of myself as an infant or that of other infants. Even were it
not so, the psychological facts we have mentioned can account
for the development of the cognition within the lifetime of the
individual. And if it were so, the tendency would still be not
a pure intuition, but the result of the principle of heredity.
Pure intuition cannot satisfy ; we must inquire further. I am
far from dogmatically asserting that the idea of space is got
in the life of the individual ; it may, or may not, be so. It
were possible to go deeper than Mill or Bain, and yet give
a psychologically based explanation. Enough here to say
that the line is fruitful, and that more may be done therein
by English psychologists than Kant ever achieved. I am not
hostile to Mill's exposition on demonstrative science in the
second book of the Logic. It is good as far as it goes, and
134 Elements of General Philosophy.
is the best explanation yet made from the point of view of
individual experience. Professor Bain gives his adhesion to
Mill's mathematical theory, but extraordinary is the way in
which in his Logic ! he throws away the advantages got from
his position in psychology as to our unique apprehension of
extension, and never refers to it. For if extension is not had
merely by experience from without, but by activity of ours put
forth, springing from within, it is absurd to say that we are
reduced to the same conditions for our knowledge of space
as for that of the qualities of things. It is always possible
for us to perform movement of some sort, and this movement
is involved in our apprehension of extension. My knowledge
of space depends upon my acting when I like ; other per-
ception depends upon whenever, in a broken, limited way,
I happen to be sensibly affected. We make, we determine
space ; we come to know it by way of construction not of
r? priori construction, not of spontaneity of thought, as Kant
said, but by conscious bodily exertion, not limited by occasions
of passive sense-impressions. And this is because we are
what we are. We are thrown back on our original constitution.
Hence it is that the science of space is different from the
inductive sciences of nature ; hence it is that mathematics is
a demonstrative science. The explanation applies to all
sciences in so far as they are demonstrative to Arithmetic
and Physics, e. g. as well as to Geometry for all are to that
extent concerned with matter as apprehended by activity, by
construction ; and herein lies their ' necessity.' Other sciences
we form piecemeal from experience 2 .
1 'Deduction.' Bk. II. ch. v.
The lecturer referred students, for a fuller explanation, to his
article 'Axiom' in the Encyclopaedia Bnianuica. (Reprinted in
Philosophi' al Remains, pp. 119- 132. N ED.
LECTURE XIV.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. CAUSATION.
The Category of Causality.
WE will now proceed to Kant's Categories of the Under-
standing, and single out for examination and comparison
that one which the growth of modern science has brought
most prominently under discussion. When things are
sensibly perceived they are ordered in space or in time ;
but when thought or generally known, i. e. when in the form
of concept, we say they must have a cause. Now according
to Kant this is a synthetic assertion a priori. Cause, or
cause and effect, is a pure concept not got by experience.
We are naturally determined to look for something before
and after an action. W T ith cause, as with space, a necessity
is laid upon us in the act of knowing. This was an immense
step beyond earlier views ; it is perfectly intelligible and
satisfactory also as far as it goes. Before Kant's time no
one took the trouble fully to analyse knowing as we find it.
The Growth of the Notion of Cause.
The question of causation is as old as Plato, but the
epistemological aspect of it ' How do we, in our knowledge,
come to relate phenomena to one another as cause and
136 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
effect ? ' has (in addition to the consideration of space) only
come to the front since the time of Hume and Kant in
connexion with the establishment and progress of modern
science. Through that, Nature has come to be regarded as
a realm within which law reigns universally. Nature has
always, it is true, been considered as a realm in which there
are things having a fixed occurrence, and a law of universal
causation is no new thing in philosophy. Without the
acceptance of the law there could be no science as science is
now constituted. Yet it is only lately that Nature has been
scientifically investigated in a thorough-going manner, and
the law applied to every kind of phenomena. People have
not always referred every thing and every happening to cause
and effect. Even Aristotle expressly distinguished a region
of cause from a region of chance. And there are some who
still deny that mental phenomena are regulated by it. For
example, it is a question still raised whether human action,
the action of beings having a conscious volition, is a fixed
and orderly action which can be investigated and forecast like
other facts in nature. This is the famous free-will con-
troversy (v. infra, Lecture XIX). The difference of opinion
which we see yet prevailing with regard to this sphere of
occurrence formerly prevailed with regard to all nature. It
was held that things would happen otherwise than under the
condition of strict uniformity.
Causation as Universal.
Generally speaking, however, the causal connexion may
now be considered as established. In regard practically to
anything that happens, we are prepared to make one pre-
supposition if none other, namely, that it is caused, or
determined to happen, and that it does not happen except as it
xiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 137
is caused. When anything happens, I say, we also assume
that it follows on something else, not as on a bare antecedent
in time, but as on a cause or determinant. We assume
that Nature is an aggregate of events all determined to
happen as they do happen, i. e. that Nature is uniform in
respect to cause and effect. When an event happens we
seek to conjoin it with some other event as cause. On this
assumption is based all scientific generalisation, all inductive
inference, every real and complete induction. For a complete
induction is one where the nature of the instances is such
that any other result than the universal assertion we commit
ourselves to would run contrary to the universality of the
law of causation ] . The causal connexion then being at this
time of day established, we have to account for it.
Rationalist and Experientialist Explanations of Cause.
Now Hume was the first to account for the causal con-
nexion on the ground of experience, there being nothing
beyond experience that he can find to explain it from.
Locke was too far back in time to touch the subject.
Science was then too little established as a system of know-
ledge to draw the attention of philosophers. But Kant, who
professed to account for science as we find it, had specially
to occupy himself with this question. And since his time
Rationalists have held cause to be a ' pure concept.'
Hamilton indeed thought to advance beyond Kant in saying
that the judgment of causality is a work not of the Elabora-
tive, but of the Regulative Faculty an act of reason as
opposed to the understanding. We are, according to him,
to account for universal causation, not by a pure concept
brought by the mind, i.e. by the mind's ability \ but as due
1 Cf. J. S. Mill, Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 402, note.
138 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
rather to its impotence. It is owing to the limitation of the
mind that we bring everything in relation to something
else. Every event must have a cause ; we cannot help it.
This is in connexion with his fundamental ' Law of the
Conditioned.' Hamilton's turn to the argument should be
studied, but his doctrine of causation is not good. Kant's
position is preferable. He best represents the Rationalist
position, Hume and Mill that of Experientialism.
I throw up a stone, and it falls to the ground. I say, ' The
earth attracts the stone.' Now the Experientialist explains
this judgment, as made on the strength of the individual's
countless experiences of this sequence of phenomena. He
asserts causation as a generalisation from experience. Whereas
Kant maintained that, unless he could first pass an a priori
judgment of causality, he could never have the experience at
all that we bring our category of causality to bear on, and
elaborate the judgment out of, the bare experience of the
stone falling to earth. (Notice that Kant and he is not
alone in this usage employs experience ambiguously as
meaning either raw sense-material, or phenomena ordered
in certain ways, i.e. according to the categories.) According
to Kant, I repeat, unless we knew a priori that every event
must have a cause, we should never have got so far as to
say ' The earth attracts the stone.' According to Mill the
phenomenon is a simple particular by which we rise to
the universal assertion.
Criticism of both Positions.
Now I am wholly dissatisfied with this common-place
Experientialism of Mill and others. Not thus can we account
for knowledge. On the other hand, we are not driven to
Kant's alternative, to assert cause as a pure concept of the
xiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 139
understanding. For as we found that his pure form of
intuition was not pure since space has a development so
we find that cause is not a pure concept. It comes by way
of sense, although not given by experience already developed.
Nevertheless, as against crude Experientialism, I side with
Kant, who gives a much profounder analysis of knowledge.
Cause in Science and in Popular Usage.
Before suggesting a solution of the question, it is necessary
to make a distinction. There is a real difference between
cause as understood in science and cause as used in every- '
day speech. The cause of anything that science seeks to
account for is the set of conditions of a phenomenon ; it
tries, in assigning cause and effect, to establish a certain
fixed relation among phenomena a certain kind of unifor-
mity. Science has nothing to say of the reason why one
phenomenon should be followed by another, and in no way
professes to account for the relation except as a mere
uniformity of occurrence. Thus when oxygen and hydrogen
in combination are exploded by a spark there results water.
For the purposes of science the cause of this is explained
by proving the presence of oxygen and hydrogen, and the
application of the spark. But no one can say what ultimately
brings about the result. Science has only words to denote
a certain fixed succession.
Popular speech is, however, much more definite in assigning
a cause. Where a stone falls to the earth it says at once,
' The earth draws, attracts the stone/ i.e. has power to produce
this effect. Science only points to the fixed relation or
succession of phenomena. Any succession is not causal, but
causation is only succession of a certain kind. Now what
else is there besides succession when the principle of causality
140 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
is assumed ? There seems an implication in the philosophical
principle resembling that in common speech, namely of,
power in one thing to bring about another thing. Our
language certainly commits us to more than the bare
scientific notion.
The scientific conception of cause has grown up lately,
because it is only of late that nature has been regarded
phenomenally. Before positive science grew up nature was
regarded as an aggregate, not of inter-related phenomena,
but of active beings. No science came to pass until men
looked away from this view and established definite relations
among facts as they found them.
As this aspect of phenomenal relation, of co-existences
and successions, developed, the popular notion of cause and
effect, with its implied assumption of power, became
attenuated to indicate merely a special kind of phenomenal
succession, and theorists began to dispute the propriety of
using the word ' cause ' in this connexion as misleading.
Hume's philosophy centres entirely round this part of the
subject, namely, the great question : Can this relation among
phenomena that science takes account of be properly called
causall Mill answered this affirmatively, and tried to show
that the notion of power (in cause to produce effect) ought
to be excluded from the notion of causation. This is
equivalent to asserting that a causal relation, as it is made
out in science, is purely phenomenal. Both Hume and
Kant agree with him here. Berkeley regarded cause not as
a phenomenal antecedent, but as a spiritual reality, as the
connexion between the real being (mind) and what appears.
He spoke of the scientific cause as a ' phenomenal sign ' of
the true cause, science dealing with ideas (phenomena) that
are significant of other ideas. Comte was the most thorough
xiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 141
phenomenalist of them all ; he would not even raise the
question as to any reality beyond phenomena. And just
because he was a phenomenalist, he wanted to get rid of the
notion of cause altogether, and asserted that the utmost object
of science was to determine uniformities of phenomena or
laws. According to Mill, scientific relations, though all
phenomenal, may yet be called causal. According to Comte,
because they are phenomenal they must not be called
causal. Comte agrees in expression, though not in thought,
with Berkeley and also with Dr. Martineau. These two
concur in saying that science is concerned only with the
signification of phenomena by phenomena, in order to show
that, beyond all considerations of phenomenal relation, there
is a deeper consideration of cause, viz. as to how any
phenomenon is related as effect to a cause in the sphere
of metaphysical reality or ultimate being. They hold that
when we have got science we are only at the beginning
of our investigation and not, as Comte believed, at the end
of all possible inquiry.
Cause in Cartesianism.
The attenuated notion of cause that we find in science had
already been anticipated in philosophic thought by Occasion-
alism, although based on different premises from those of Hume
and Mill. Occasionalism explained all change in Nature as
mere sequence, the full working of cause being only between
God and every creature. The creature was robbed of causal
efficiency \ this being placed to the credit of the account of
the Deity. Geulincx especially came near to scientific Pheno-
1 In Aristotle 'efficient cause' includes the notion of power, but,
as opposed to 'final,' ' formal, 'and 'material' causes, is equivalent to
the modern idea of causation.
142 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
menalism in seeking to account for the apparent interaction
of two such opposed substances as mind and body. Male-
branche also explained every event as due to direct divine
intervention, finding in the world only phenomenal conjunction.
Descartes himself went nearly as far as this in controversy.
They tended to the Pantheism, with its notion of immanent
causation, which was fully developed by Spinoza.
The Logical Weakness of Miffs Theory.
What account do we give of this problem ? Can we say with
Mill that every human mind, from seeing things happen,
develops the conviction that every event must have a cause ?
If we study what Mill says in his Logic for this position, we
find it gives strength to Kant's view. Data that he assumes
to account for causation are already co-ordinated by the
application of the pre-existent principle, for we are naturally
determined to interpret our experiences by way of causation.
The difficulties in the way of accepting Mill's view are
insuperable.
Universal Causation a Postulate in Science.
For purposes of science, I think that at present it is a
sufficient explanation of the universality of causation when it
is set out as a postulate, without which it is impossible to have
science at all. If things happened now in one way and now
in another we could make no general assertion about them.
We must postulate a fixity in the occurrence of phenomena.
This will be sufficient to account for the universality of
causation in science. If with .some we doubt whether it be
universal there is so much of science blotted out for us. We
may use the word ' cause ' for the mere phenomenal relation,
but it must be without misunderstanding it. The question
xiv.] Elements of General PJiilosopliy. 143
whether cause has poiver to produce an effect has no meaning
in science. But this is not accounting philosophically for the
notion.
The Truth in MilTs Theory.
Having excluded the notion of ' efficient cause ' from
science, Mill seeks the origin of our notion of cause and effect
in generalisation from the phenomenal relation. He argues
that the principle of causation on which induction is based
is itself an induction. This is to beg the question. And he
reckons this generalisation from experience of cause and
effect as, according to Bacon's term, an induction ' by simple
enumeration of instances,' i.e. by the weakest, the least
scientific method of induction, Mill himself allowing, as we
have seen, that he cannot make a good induction until he
has got the principle of causation. Hence he gets the
principle by a bad induction. This is not worked out as
well as it might have been. Nevertheless there is reason in
his position. He arrives at his primary assertion tentatively,
and it is strengthened by every fresh induction. We may
trust simple enumeration in regard to the general fact of
causation in Nature, but not in regard to cause in a special
case ; in the latter we need to base our inquiry on the law of
causation itself.
In point of fact it must have been from experience that
people arrived at the idea of universal causation, because it
is only lately that universal causation has become recognised.
Whereas if it were a pure concept, why was it not recognised
before ? Kant does not face this evolution in thought. An
experiential origin of the notion of cause may be defended as
against his view.
Yet I do not put the case like Mill. The notion of cause
is not derived from a consideration of the phenomenal
144 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
relation, because this is not a natural but an artificial view of
the question, whereas the notion of cause has grown up with
men from the beginning. It is from the popular idea,
whence the scientific sense of causation has been derived by
attenuation, that the philosophical notion of cause was first
got, and it is in reference to thai, that the question of ground
should be raised. For we do ultimately think of cause as
something with power to produce an effect. Whence then
does this arise ? Through external experience or apart
from it ?
The Psychological Basis of the Notion of Cause.
Exactly that which Mill protests against Reid's adducing
to account for the notion of cause may be maintained in
explanation of the popular idea. The notion of power
in the conception of cause is got from our consciousness
of being able to put forth activity, from our consciousness of
volition. Both Hume and Mill argue that actual experience
of cause and effect shows only a relation between phenomena
either from the objective or the subjective point of view. I
demur. However necessary it may be for scientific purposes
to regard our subjective states as phenomena, no man regards
himself simply as a phenomenon or series of phenomena.
We know ourselves as beings that may or may not exert
a definite energy, and this quite takes our actions out of the
category of phenomenal successions. Now just as, in regard
to movements of my body, I come to consider them as
depending on my will, so I come to conceive there is a
similar 'causal' power determining other movements in
nature.
Mansel thought this not enough, and that to find the root
of the notion it was necessary to go down to the power of
xiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 145
man to determine the successive states of his mind. This
is of course one case of the exercise of our volition, but it is
better to take the more general and the older view. So when
we say that the earth draws a stone we ascribe a personality
to the earth just as we are conscious of our own personality,
in the same way as I ascribe to another personality the
power of moving the arm. If I credit you and the earth with
being reservoirs of power, it is because I have read my own
consciousness into everything that I say acts. I have read
into my experience what is not directly in it. Not that we
really think that the earth is endowed with a personality like
ourselves, but we have a tendency to read it into the earth,
despite our real convictions.
The Larger Experientialism.
Thus there is a good ground for urging that we do not
get the notion of cause from strictly phenomenal experience.
The Rationalist position is so far good. Yet if we consider
the circumstances fully, we shall come to see that this mode
of interpretation is not fixed and fast, but has gradually grown
up, and, like the constitution of the human mind, has been
developed with the human race, or anterior to it in the
succession of animal life. This mode of interpreting our
experience as a world of active causes, however natural for
all of us now, even for the uninstructed more perhaps for
them has only, as there is every reason to believe, come to
be developed gradually, as men have awaked to full con-
sciousness. Man came to interpret the world in this way
after the experience of ages, and not within the experience
of the individual. In this way only may the Experientialist
position be justified. It does seem to me that, despite the
position taken up by the English Associationists, we can
L
146 Elements of General Philosophy.
find no sufficient explanation of our view of the world, as an
aggregate of active agents in relation to one another, in
terms of their principles only. My view of the world as
known is not explained by my simple sense-experiences
becoming aggregated under principles of association. There
is more in my knowledge than my experience can
account for.
For LECTURE XV read :
G. C. Robertson, Philosophical Remains, pp. 63-74: 'How we
come by our Knowledge' (or Nineteenth Century, March, 1877). ED.
LECTURE XV.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. EVOLUTION.
The Principle of Heredity applied to the Problem of Knowledge.
THE problem of knowledge, then, cannot be solved without
reference not only to our consciousness but to our organic
structure and functions, either according to Kant's view of
the constitution of the mind, or according to the scientific
point of view which takes into account our nervous
system. Now here we see how entirely the philosophical
question of knowledge has changed in consequence of our
wider scientific view. Evolution has given the problem
quite a new expression. I do not say that the evolution
of our physical organisation explains consciousness, but it
yields us a statement of external conditions. Our experience
is determined from the first, and definitely combined in certain
ways. Anything more inappropriate, more ludicrous than
the tabula rasa theory, with its implication that all minds are
at starting alike and, if exposed to the same conditions, would
all develop alike, is not to be found. Allowance must be made
for the predetermining of primitive endowment : aptitudes
must be recognised, as Leibniz saw better than Locke.
No child's knowledge is explicable from its own experience.
This no doubt involves a starting-point somewhere, but
L 2
148 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
scientific explanation does not pretend to give absolute
beginnings. We need not assume the primitive endowment
of a child as something inexplicable. Heredity is a real factor,
and accounts for facts in knowledge which Associationists
cannot explain. Breed was always allowed to count for some-
thing, but prior to Darwin and Mr. Spencer there was no
formulated theory of it. The organism, more especially the
nervous system, becomes modified by a change of environment.
What one generation acquires in the way of adaptation to
environment another gets the benefit of. An accommodation
takes place in the individual and modifies the character of the
progeny. The individual inherits the experience, or the
effects of the experience, of the race. Mr. Spencer, it is true,
is not so effective in applying it as he makes out : he should
have gone to school under Kant, whose is the insight if not
the power of explaining : his theory of knowledge halts,
because he fails to see the problem of knowledge in its fullness.
The principle of heredity, if applied intelligently, would
account for more than he has made it do. By it we can not
only explain the difference between your constitution and
mine, but we can partly account for the community of know-
ledge by the fact of common ancestry, a common inheritance
of mental and nervous constitution. This fact, properly
understood, is of the greatest importance in explaining. It
is a dim fore-feeling of this that we get in Plato's ideas
had in a prior existence, and in the theory of innate ideas
generally, Experience has gone before us. It is quite
evident that our own experience does not determine us to
perform acts we do perform before experience can teach
us. The mere study of the individual organism will give no
explanation of knowledge as we find it. There are factors
to be sought outside of the experience of the individual.
xv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 149
This does not cut us off from Experientialism, but it does
cut us off from Individualism. Heredity explains both the
individual element in the conscious living organism and also
its element of relation to the conscious life of others.
The Social Factor.
When we have made every allowance for heredity in the
Evolutionist sense, and for experience in the Associationist
sense, we have accounted for but a very small part of our
knowledge. What the knowledge of an individual comes to
be is not to be accounted for by accidental experience alone,
nor by heredity, nor by the original constitution of the mind.
There is something, principally speech, passed on from
generation to generation, which has gone on increasing as it
has passed. This the individual finds ready for him to take
hold of; it takes hold of him, and through this we have
our knowledge. The child comes into the world in a social
relation ; when it begins to act for itself, then it is that it
comes under the influence of the Social Factor.
No ; the question of knowledge is not to be resolved in
terms of individualistic experience. The eighteenth century
theorists of knowledge Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant
none of them take into account the social conditions of the
individual. Hegel, the great Rationalist, recognised that
man has his being determined and moulded by social circum-
stances. But it was Comte who first clearly apprehended
the ' solidarity ' of the individual in society, and the debt
we owe to our fellows and especially to past generations,
not by way of organic inheritance, but by way of intercourse,
and chiefly by the social engine of thought expressed in
language. Lewes's thought too was impregnated with this
doctrine. It was he who brought it to the front in this
150 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
country. Man is no mere unit with independent development,
but depends for that development on his environment and
the overpowering influence of social tradition. It is when
he has passed through the training imposed by society that
he first begins to assert himself.
Speech and Knowledge.
Now this social influence, I say, is exerted chiefly by the
medium of language. The Nominalists, e.g. Hobbes, Locke
and Hume, denying that we have any, or any save very
imperfect, powers of general thinking except by means
of verbal signs, have always recognised the importance
of language. But they were mainly concerned with the
special psychological question, ' how we think generally.'
They did not discern the far more widely pervading function
of language. Whatever the individual develops into can be
shown to be a product of his relations with others through
the moulding medium of language. For language is a
natural social product of the mind, which is not come at
or elaborated by any one person, but consists of expressions
caught up between man and man and become current.
No child coming into being is allowed to follow his own
bent, save in a limited degree. For awhile a spontaneous
language is allowed free course, but very soon progress in
language consists not in his own creations, but in what he
shows aptitude in getting from others. Imitation is natural.
Through it he is laid hold of by society and moulded after its
kind. For the language that is its chief instrument has been
developed by accumulated deposits of the countless experiences
of the society of the past. The more he works into that
language the more he adopts what transforms his whole
being, involving as it does an entire theory of the universe.
xv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 151
The simple fact of an active verb implying, involving, a sub-
ject and object, cause and effect, and the like, embodies such
a theory, and becomes a way of interpreting his experience
which that experience itself does not adequately provide.
Experience is interpreted for him, in spite of him, so as to
compel his explanations into the course they take.
Here is, for the individual, a non-empirical factor within
sense ; not a mere system of sounds, but also an a priori
factor of knowledge. But not on Kantian lines. There
is no need to fall back on pure intuitions and concepts
that cannot be accounted for. The child thinks with con-
cepts formed prior to its own experience, concepts which
have been developed and which were in past times different
from what they are.
We have seen that the notion of the world as a realm
of cause and effect has developed with the human race.
That language has moulded and dictated its development
is no justification of Mill's theory, that invariable sequence
teaches us to distinguish causal action. Relatively to the
individual the concept is pure : it is not developed by him ;
others have done this and handed it on ready made. Well
then, is the concept absolutely pure from the first ? Was it
intuitive ? Or has it been developed in the history of the
race ? The question is unanswerable : and yet does there
not lie a pretty strong suggestion in the development of
languages themselves, with systems of metaphysic variously
developed in each? Kant said that effect and cause can
never have been developed in the individual or in the race ;
such a necessity of thought as that never ! / say, the
gradual development of the conviction that nature is a realm
of law, that everything is caused, is a historical fact. Even
Aristotle's mind, as I pointed out, had no full notion of
152 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
universal causation; some things, he held, happened by
chance, causelessly. Necessities of thought can be explained
in terms of experience, z/"we let experience include accreted
racial experience. This is an extension of Experientialism.
Mr. Spencer's Heredity or ' organised experience,' on the one
hand, and the fact of growing language on the other, as
an impersonal factor, seem to go much further to explain
knowledge than unbelievers think. Scientific psychological
data, if sound and wide, will answer philosophical questions.
In Conclusion,
One word more. Kant's importance in the history of
philosophy can never be overrated, and, in his own line, no
one can go beyond him. No serious study of him is ever lost,
for through no thinker can the student be so well led into
the heart of the philosophical questions of the day. He
is the first philosopher who fully understood the complexity of
the problem of knowledge, however mystical his ultimate as-
sumptions may appear in the light of the advance of science.
Working on independent lines, although a Rationalist, he went
as far in the direction of reconciliation between the two
opposed standpoints as was possible a century ago.
On the other hand, it is the great merit of the English
school that, with its feet firmly planted on psychological
ground, it has answered as to the nature of knowledge in
conformity with this ground. It is true that biological advance
has rendered for ever impossible the older Experientialist
position, that knowledge with its objectivity, its universality,
its necessity, has to be acquired by every individual for
himself, in the course of his own experience, from the begin-
ning. But the Experientialism of to-day is far in advance
of that of the last century. We have advanced all round,
xv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 153
e. g. psychologically, by the distinction drawn between active
sense and passive sense a discovery which has completely
altered the state of the question. Thus the means are now
present for working out a systematic theory of knowledge
from the point of view of modern Experientialism. Philosophy
is not science, but its problems should be solved as far as
possible from a scientific point of view.
For LECTURE XVI read :
Bain, op. cit. 'Theories of a Material World ' (p. 202"!.
Mill, Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, ch. xi. 'The Psycho-
logical Theory of the Belief in an External World.'
Hamilton, Works of Reid, Notes C and D.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge.
LECTURE XVI.
THE PERCEPTION OF AN EXTERNAL (OR MATERIAL) WORLD.
Berkeley's Influence.
WITH this our third problem we have been dealing more
or less by implication. In considering how we come by
our knowledge, what are the psychological factors in our
cognition, it only remained to add the special emphasis know-
ledge, cognition, of oljects. Objectivity as applied to percepts
is only a case of the objectivity of knowledge. What account
can we give of the existence, in our system of knowledge,
of an external, extended, material world? Is there a real
pillar corresponding to my individual percept of it? The
question is specially an English one, and it was Berkeley
who first gave this direction to English thought. The
same Berkeley who denied the existence of things of
sense, as a philosopher and Immaterialist, was the first
man to begin a perfectly scientific doctrine of sense-per-
ception as a psychologist. He approached the philosophical
question through his psychology. Yet although he was
foremost in the psychology of his century and made great
positive additions to science, he is almost the only first-
rate modern thinker who set to work with a definite
Elements of General Philosophy. 155
religious and even theological purpose ; for the note of
modern philosophy is that it leaves out religion as such in
its explanations. I said 'first-rate/ for some second-rate
thinkers, e. g. Butler, did have a religious purpose ; whereas
Berkeley psychologised for philosophy, and philosophised
for theology.
Before Berkeley.
Descartes' position was that mind and matter are utterly
differentiated, the former by thought, the latter by extension.
Mind exists and thinks and is not extended. Matter exists
and is extended and does not think. The resultant problem
was, How, in the human constitution, can mind be conjoined
with a body ? Further : if matter exists in so far as it is ex-
tended, is there or is there not much in material things that
can be proved not to exist in the same sense, e. g. colour,
sound, &c ?
Locke was not, like Descartes, a dogmatic metaphysician
at least, not to the same extent. Philosophy with Des-
cartes was theory of being, and his fundamental assumption
was substance either extended or thinking. With Locke
it tended to become theory of knowledge, constructed if not
on a psychological basis, at least in a psychological spirit.
Nevertheless Locke's psychological view of external things
is largely coloured by Cartesian metaphysical dogmatism.
He asserted at times the existence of matter in a manner
as absolute as that of the growing materialistic science of
his day. Locke's doctrine of matter as known was that,
of our ideas of external things, some correspond to qualities
really existing in external bodies, while some are of qualities
wrongly imputed by us to those bodies, and which have no
objective existence. The former are ' extension, figure,
motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number;' the
156 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
latter are ' all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds,
tastes, and so forth V Those he calls primary, these,
secondary qualities. The latter are not in things, but
are sensations of ours interpreted as absolute qualities of
things. Primary qualities exist absolutely, but of them
too we have sensible apprehension. These primary and
secondary qualities were the equivalents of Aristotle's Com-
mon and Special Sensibles. The special sensibles were
the impressions conveyed each by a special sense to con-
sciousness, but the common sensibles, e. g. extension,
were the result of a number of senses being affected
together, or rather of what Aristotle called common sense,
a sense over and above the special senses. Now Locke
thought of extension only as something apprehensible by
different senses at the same time, and so he translated
common sensibles into primary qualities, holding that all
those aspects thus apprehended are fundamental or primary,
as representing qualities of objects as they really are. Locke
was bound to assume an absolute matter in which these
qualities cohered. But if primary qualities are such as we
have sensible apprehension of, they are not so different from
secondary qualities.
Berkeley on Locke.
It was here that Berkeley stepped in and broke up this
absolute distinction between primary and secondary qualities
of matter. He contended that the former are as much
explainable in terms of ideas as the latter. All are agreed
that colour, sound, heat, &c., are things we impute to matter
on the strength of our sensible experience. Berkeley main-
tained that this was equally and in the same way true of
1 Locke, Essay, Bk. II, ch. viii ; Berkeley, Principles of Human
Knowledge, Pt. I, 9.
xvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 157
the former. They also are ideas, and just as little repre-
sentative of any reality in matter as colour, sound, &c., are.
If colour is something we impute to external things, there
is a sense in which we impute extension to them also. All
qualities of things, primary as well as secondary, are for
philosophy phenomenal.
Berkeley's Theory of Matter.
Now this was Berkeley's reason for denying that material
things exist at all apart from mind. He regards them as
mere aggregates of sensations. All that we mean by matter
is uniformity of sense-experience. All that absolutely exists
is mind. External things only exist for mind. Esse est
percipi. Nothing can be except as perceived. Being, apart
from being perceived, is ' a direct repugnancy and altogether
inconceivable.' ' The absolute existence of unthinking things
are words without a meaning, or which include a contradic-
tion 1 .' As we know everything through our senses, and
cannot know in any other way, it follows that nothing
perceived is absolute, and that matter can only exist if
the sense is there. Berkeley does not get rid of the reality
to each perceiving mind of the external world, but he does
claim to have got rid of its absolute reality, i. e. of its existence
apart from perceiving minds. Granted the existence of
mind, there is nothing that we cannot express as orderly
experience of mind.
Such was Berkeley's doctrine of Immaterialism a less
ambiguous term than Idealism by which he thought,
1 Principles of Human Knowledge, Pt. I, 17, 24. ' A " contradic-
tion " if it means that sensible objects are at once . . . phenomenal
and yet not phenomenal.' Fraser's Selections from Berkeley, 3rd ed.
pp. 48, 53 note. ED.
158 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
in a community of pure Materialists, to get rid of the
matter which was their one fundamental assumption, and
at the same time to confute the half-hearted dogmatism
of Locke. Berkeley was born in the century which saw
the beginning of modern science, and at the end of it, when
that science was tending to be very materialistic. Matter
was not only assumed, for science as for the practical
purposes of life, as an absolute, as something extended
and consisting of minute invisible parts having motion in
relation to each other a fact which accounted for colour,
sound, heat, &c. but was posited as the one thing that
really did exist. Locke, on the other hand, as we have seen,
allowed only a partial accounting for matter as mental
construction. Berkeley contended that, if it can be shown
that object is a psychological construction in regard to its
secondary qualities, it is equally a psychological construction
in regard to its primary qualities. We are not to regard our
senses as giving absolute copies, as Locke did, of objects ; we
must explain how objects come to appear extended, figured,
and moved just as much as how they appear coloured, heated,
and so forth. This it was Berkeley's great merit to be the
first to put forward.
Berkeley fails in legitimate Psychological Explanation.
The psychologist has no right to assume object, viz. the
object he is going to explain. By this I do not mean that
the psychologist, beginning his scientific procedure with an
account of the senses, has no right to assume an external
world affecting his body and senses. He is bound, for
instance, to assume the sun and his own eye before he can
give any account of sense-experience in regard to vision.
Thinkers of the Hegelian, or, as it is sometimes called, the
XVL] Elements of General Philosophy. 159
neo-Kantian, school of Green are constantly insisting that
the psychologist assumes what he afterwards professes to
explain, and that it is only thus that he contrives to explain.
Green made out very cleverly that this was the case with
Locke, but though the charge is here well founded, it is not
so when made against philosophers who seek to reason on
a psychological basis. It is one thing to assume sun and eye
in order to get language to explain sensation ; it is another
to assume that we have explained what the sun ultimately is.
We go on afterwards as philosophers to explain in subjective
terms the very things which as psychologists we were bound
to assume, and I say that Berkeley's great merit was to see
that nothing was present in primary qualities of object which
we cannot explain. But then he did not go on to give this
explanation : he did not see that primary qualities are dif-
ferent from secondary, and why they are so. Why are some
forms of our experience of more account for making up our
knowledge of that pillar than others ?
Berkeley's Fundamental Assumption.
So far Berkeley's statements have appeared as negative
criticism, but he had constructive aims. He felt it necessary
to give a consistent theory of things, a theory which would
sufficiently explain the facts of science and also satisfy all the
demands of religious conceptions and of every-day experi-
ence. Now the fundamental necessary assumption on which
he grounds his theory is the existence of one infinite spirit
and other finite spirits. What we call Nature is only a mere
orderly sequence of ' ideas,' and these are brought to pass
by the real causation of the infinite spirit in the minds of
finite spirits, these being so far like the infinite spirit that
they too can have ideas.
160 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
After Berkeley. Hume.
Berkeley's argument against the validity of the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities was completely
accepted by Hume. He did not dwell on this side of the
problem, regarding it as finally made out that, from the
point of view of psychology, or, as he would have expressed
it, of philosophical consideration, there was no ultimate
ground for Locke's division. But he went on to assert that,
on the same grounds on which Berkeley had declared that
beyond ideas aggregated in certain ways we could get no
knowledge of matter, it would be no less incontestably
established that it was impossible to get below ideas, or
subjective states in general, or subjective phenomenal experi-
ence, to the existence of mind. Just as matter was resolved
by Berkeley into ideas expressed in certain ways, so by the
same kind of resolution was mind reduced by Hume to what
we may call a phenomenal expression.
Hume worked this out as a part of his general dialectic,
in which he was really concerned not to set up any positive
theory of knowledge, but rather to follow the bent of his
mind and show that when philosophers attempted from their
reasoning to make out the ultimate nature of things and
dogmatically to determine all that is, they were going a great
deal beyond the legitimate sphere of knowledge. His theory
of Substance is the first serious and anything like sufficient
attempt to give a psychological explanation. He dwells
especially upon the amount of representation (work of
imagination) involved in objective perception, but fails in
not distinguishing either the psychological factor of muscular
activity, as lying at the basis of all objective synthesis, or
the 'social factor.' As a positive theory it is to be described
as an inadequately filled-in Phenomenalism. I am not
xvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 161
concerned here to defend Hume's argument, which to me
is imperfect in the last degree. But it is irrefutably true in
maintaining that all our knowledge, whether of matter or of
mind, is confined to phenomenal aspects. Of either, save
in their phenomenal aspects, we know nothing.
Kant's Idealism.
Now Hume argued sceptically, so as to imply that human
knowledge was next to nothing. Kant, on the other hand,
while he accepted Hume's general position in this matter,
was of those who hold that human knowledge is of a very
positive nature. Kant distinctly declared that all our know-
ledge was of phenomena. He declared indeed that for our
knowledge of physical phenomena we are not wholly depen-
dent upon experience, inasmuch as we can make a priori
determinations about nature; nevertheless these determina-
tions are always about nature as phenomenal. But in regard
to our knowledge of mind, we are positively confined to
experience. However much we ascribe our subjective states
to an Ego, we commit a 'paralogism' if we claim to know
mind otherwise than in its manifestations.
Kant takes up the question in quite a different way from
the English thinkers. He is concerned mainly with the
general theory of knowledge, within which theory he has
of course a view about the material world as such. And
that view I bring into relation not only with Hume, but also
with Berkeley. Kant agrees with the latter in refusing to
allow the distinction between primary and secondary qualities,
declaring that the former are to use his own terms just
as subjective or phenomenal as the latter. And though he
has by no means the same explanation of extension as
Berkeley, though he does not declare, as Berkeley does,
M
1 62 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
that for our apprehension of extension we are dependent
entirely upon experience, and that it is developed by associa-
tion of touches and sights, yet he, even more expressly
than Berkeley, declares that the extension of things is no
real objective quality of them. For, as we saw, he declares
that space is a mere subjective form of sensibility. According
to Kant there is positively nothing in our perception of this
table which is not subjective. Kant in this respect is an
Idealist not an empirical Idealist, since he does not suppose
that all the (subjective) elements into which we could analyse
this table are such as come to us by way of experience.
And he even accuses Berkeley's Idealism of making matter
out to be illusory because it is phenomenal, showing herein
a very imperfect apprehension of the latter's theory.
Kant's Realism.
But Kant does not rest in this Idealism. Beyond pheno-
mena knowledge, for him, cannot go; nevertheless he declared
that phenomena imply an underlying reality which he called
the thing in itself, or noiimenoru The former is the less
misleading term, since noiimenon suggests a knowing
subject no less than phenomenon. Thing-in-itself, then,
for him underlay the double stream of experience, subjective
and objective, constituting probably a single existence or
entity, if that might be called existence or entity which he
admitted was an unknown quantity. Self as a particular
entity with a possibly immortal future we could hold only
as a moral conviction.
The Ding an sich an inconsistent Theory.
Now Kant declared that all things in themselves are in
relation to, or ideas of, ' pure reason ; ' it is on the ground
xvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 163
of this pure reason that we hold them to exist ; in other
words, it is a necessity of reason that gives a foundation for
noiimena. But then he is placed under this difficulty :
if it is upon the ground of reason that we assert these things
to exist, have we any rational knowledge of them ? This
he was forward to deny, saying that through reason as such
no knowledge proper is possible. In the same breath, then,
in which he posits, as beyond phenomena, the thing in itself
as what cannot be theoretically known, he assumes it as the
cause of sensations in us, which we group and interpret
in various ways as knowledge. He supposed therefore that
when we have a sensation, say, of colour, received according
to the law of our being in time and space, and worked
up into knowledge according to the categories or laws of
the understanding, this phenomenon of colour was really
explicable from a thing in itself, the character of which
he did not pretend further to define, which he most con-
fidently asserted was not in space or time, nor subject to
the categories, and yet to which he applied the category
of cause. This seems to me the fundamental inconsistency
in his philosophy.
Reids and Hamilton's Eclecticism.
I now come to the English stream of thought to show
what followed upon Hume's scepticism. Reid, while he
contested Hume's philosophy altogether and, like Kant,
set up a general theory of knowledge, was more especially
moved to criticise both Berkeley and Hume in their theories
of the external world. His whole philosophy was accom-
modated to his own theory of this problem. And his theory
is that, however philosophers may give a subjective expres-
sion to the qualities of matter, yet at the last the philosophical
M 2
164 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
position should be that of common sense, namely, that
underneath qualities there is a real entity existing apart from
the mind. You do not want, he said, a theory of the
external world. Open your eyes and see it ! In the very
fact of perception there is a present apprehension both of
subject and of object, opposed entities, real existences. This
view is also called Natural Realism and Natural Dualism,
because it agrees with the common view. It may be said
that this after all is only Kantianism, with its assertion
of our conviction that things exist in themselves. But Reid
went further and declared, as against Berkeley and Hume,
that, however it might be with secondary qualities and
these he gave up this real entity outside of us had as
inherent qualities of its own those called primary. Thus
he directly took up the position declared by Berkeley to be
untenable.
But the champion of common sense was, as Hamilton
pointed out (v. p. 820 of his edition of Reid), by no means
always consistent with himself. At times he declared that
on the ground of common sense real things exist outside
of us, with qualities of extension and so forth ; at other times
he falls back upon the position which Hamilton called
Representationism, namely, that our sensible apprehension
of things, our mental experience, is a mere substitute or
representative for a reality beyond, for which we cannot
find an expression that both primary and secondary qualities,
instead of being at once subjective and objective facts, or
in other words mental experience and real qualities, merely
represent that ultimate undefinable reality.
And while I bring here no charge against Reid that is not
brought against him by his follower Hamilton, I bring this
further charge against both, that they depart from the
XVL] Elements of General Philosophy. 165
position of common sense to the extent of depriving matter
of all secondary qualities. Now it is unquestionable that,
in the apprehension of every-day life, we ascribe colour as
confidently to external things as we ascribe form. If in
philosophising we are to go by common sense at all, we
must go by it altogether. This reserve then is objectionable
and opens their whole theory to doubt. Hamilton often
says that if the testimony of consciousness is false in one
thing it is false in everything. But my consciousness gives
me the same evidence for the secondary as for the primary
qualities. His eclecticism shows that the views of ' the man
in the street' are not necessarily correct. And his theory
of the immediateness and intuitiveness of our knowledge of
an external world involve an absolute element that is at
variance with the philosophical doctrine of the Relativity of
Knowledge J ' Everything known is only known in relation
to a knowing mind' which he assents to and asserts.
We cannot take either common sense or consciousness as
our ultimate referendum, and then accept or reject this or
that in its testimony as we please. My opinion is that what-
ever common sense may say, it is common sense that says
it, and common sense is one thing and philosophic insight
another.
Ferrier in this generation has with very great force done
over again the work accomplished by Berkeley in the last
century. He has done it, if not in the full light of modern
psychology, and rather in a metaphysical than a psychological
way, yet with a force of thought and expression not to be
surpassed. He may be studied either in his Institutes of
Metaphysic or his Posthumous Works.
1 Distinguish from the psychological theory of Relativity, viz. in
knowing a thing we know it as distinct from something else.
i66 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Spencerian ' Transfigured Realism.'
Mr. Herbert Spencer's Transfigured Realism (as he him-
self classes it) is really nothing more than what, in Hamilton'^
classification of theories of External Perception, is called
Cosmothetic Idealism. Mr. Spencer himself, it is true, says.
Realist I am, only not a crude Realist, i. e. with the Realism
of popular opinion which imputes all my special sensations
to things outside of me. But he goes further and, like Kant,
denies that even primary qualities are inherent in real sub-
stances, noiimena, or things in themselves. And he ends by
saying, not professedly in the language of common sense,
which he rather scouts, and yet in language which practically
comes to that, that we have a fundamental certainty, the
deepest certainty of our being, that object exists as opposed
to subject, and subject exists as opposed to object. He does
not, like Hamilton, insist on the essence of object being
extension, but he declares that in any act of perception
there is involved the ultimate certainty that there is an object
outside of and apart from the percipient.
Now if a thinker like, e. g. Hamilton or Reid asserts this
opposition of object and subject with the view of establishing
a duality of substances, I can understand the position and
see the force of it. This is what we certainly do assume in
daily life, and it is open for any philosopher to say that his
object is to give a philosophical expression to that assump-
tion. But in the case of Mr. Spencer, who scouts the notion
of a human being consisting of two entities, mind and body,
mutually opposed, all the pother that he makes on this
point (in ch. xviii of Vol. II of his Psychology} seems to
me, I must confess, to come to no more than much ado
about nothing. Why he should be so anxious to make out
an opposition of object and subject outside of conscious-
XVL] Elements of General Philosophy. 167
ness to explain what is in consciousness I cannot, from his
point of view, for a moment understand. Take the passage :
' Realism, then, would be positively justified even were the
genesis of this consciousness of existence beyond conscious-
ness inexplicable ' (ch. xix). I say that this is a contradiction
in terms, and so much so, that when he comes afterwards to
give an explanation of this consciousness of existence out of
consciousness, it turns out to be after all altogether in terms
of consciousness and he has not got to it at all ! He has
only got consciousness of existence that is in consciousness.
For LECTURE XVII read:
Bain, op. cit. ' Perception of a Material World,' pp. 197 et seq.
The student may with profit consult also Leibniz's essay s,LaMonado-
logie and Prindpes de la Nature et de la Grace fondes en Raison
(CEnvres, ed. Paul Janet, vol. ii. pp. 594-617). ED.
LECTURE XVII.
THE PERCEPTION OF AN EXTERNAL (OR MATERIAL)
WORLD (continued}.
The Circle of Consciousness.
FOR my own part I agree in this matter essentially with
Professor Bain and also with Mill. I hold with them, with
Berkeley, Ferrier and others, that outside of the circle of our
consciousness it is perfectly impossible to get. Mr. Spencer
aims at doing so, at getting a consciousness of object outside
of consciousness, claiming this as a more certain, funda-
mental testimony of consciousness than anything else. I
cannot understand the words. I do not see how we can
work with a conception like that. I go further. In daily life
we do work with such a conception, we do really suppose
things to be outside of us with qualities that demonstrably
can not be outside of us. But however we may 'in the
street' get on with this, from the point of view of philo-
sophical consideration I cannot but call it with Berkeley
a self-contradiction, and I frankly confess that I do not
pretend to give any account of an object not in conscious-
ness, nor of a subject not in consciousness. I cannot help
it. I would if I could ; but I do not think it can be done.
The whole of this discussion can take place only from the
point of view of consciousness, and we can never get away
from that point of view. What is the good of trying to get
away from it and pretending by mere words that we do so ?
Elements of General Philosophy. 169
That we do so in daily life does not alter the philosophical
truth of the matter. Any object that I can make out in the
universe, I cannot pretend to make out except with regard
to my mind. So Professor Bain (p. 197): 'There is no
such thing known as a tree wholly detached from perception/
&c. But within that circle I am anxious to make out and
more anxious than either he or Mill, for I think the treatment
in both writers is incomplete that there is an opposition
of what cannot better be expressed than by 'subject' and
'object.' And I think that this is an opposition which
should find expression in such terms as psychological inquiry
can justify, and such as, in respect of philosophical import,
may be admitted to contain the ultimate rationale of what
undoubtedly is the fact in our common every-day experience,
the fact that we do posit mind and matter as independent
existences apart from consciousness, out of consciousness, or
even without the slightest reference thereto. In common life
when we see anything we usually leave ourselves entirely out
of account. It never for a moment occurs to us that we
have anything to do with it.
Berkeley claimed that his Idealism really expressed the
thought of people in common : that to the popular mind
external object is really whatever can be felt, seen, &c., of
it ', and that the kind of abstract substance supposed by
metaphysicians to underlie the qualities of matter is really
made no account of in the popular conception. There is
some foundation for his view. If we abstract from our table
1 Cf. op. cit. I, 6: 'Some truths there are so near and obvious to
the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such
. . . that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth . . . have
not any subsistence without a mind that their being is to be perceived
or known,' &c. ED.
170 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
all its qualities and yet retain for it a metaphysical entity, this
is clearly what the popular mind cannot or does not take
account of. Still I do not think what Berkeley said is correct.
However true it may be that the popular mind expresses in
terms of sensation the character of external things, I think
it is unquestionable that, in the popular apprehension of us
all, we do ascribe a perfectly independent existence to these
aggregates. Berkeley said, to be is to be perceived. This
cannot be said to be the popular apprehension. Perception
is an accident in the popular mind. Commonly we conceive
the qualities as real objective qualities of a real existing thing.
And I think that this popular apprehension must find its
explanation. If psychology leads us to take up another
position from that of common sense, it is bound to give
some kind of explanation of this. If it holds that there is
an unwarrantable assumption in these things, it must yet
give some explanation of how it came to be made. I am
not saying that we are bound to do this for perceptions of
daily life. If we did, we should not get on as well as we
do. Human action, human life, is one thing, philosophical
insight, I repeat, is another. I have no disposition to hide
the difficulties of the case, but I think that psychology should
be able not only to give a scientific explanation of subject
in relation to object circumspectly expressed, but also to
explain how it is that this opposition of subject and object
within consciousness becomes aggrandised into an opposition
of mind and matter apart from each other, and which,
generally speaking, rather leaves mind out of account and
ascribes to matter, erroneously as I think, an absolute exist-
ence. For this is the way of the, to me, utterly unphilo-
sophical doctrine of Materialism : it assumes matter to be
a real existence apart from mind, and then pretends from
XVIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 171
this to explain mind. The most monstrous inversion of the
rational course that can possibly be conceived ! First through
mind to get a notion of matter, then to objectify it and give
it absolute existence, and then from this to explain mind !
The very term ' phenomenon ' used in science implies that
the assumptions it makes are not ultimate.
Object developed by way of Active Sense.
Now I think that Professor Bain, better than many thinkers,
lays hold of that element of difference, that means of
differentiation within the circle of consciousness through
which the opposition of object and subject is developed.
He lays his finger on this when he brings out, first, as the
fundamental element in the object-consciousness, the differ-
ence in our experience between passive sensations and
consciousness of energy put forth, and next that all passive
sensations, which in themselves fall to subject as opposed to
object, like colour or sound, since they are found to vary
definitely with our consciousness of activity put forth, come
to be transferred from the subject to the object side of the
account. We come to project them, and so absolutely, that
we cannot now have them otherwise than as qualities outside
of us. So that when we have made this transfer, we have
left for subject all those sensations that do not vary with our
movements as well as the whole of our representative and
emotional life (using emotional to correspond with emotion
only and not with sense-feeling as well).
Explanation of the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities.
It is this consciousness that we have in connexion with
muscular activity, or rather, active sense, which gives the
real psychological explanation of the difference between
172 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
so-called primary and secondary qualities of matter. The latter
are the result of our passive sense ; all the former, except the
dubious case of ' number/ being the result of complex active
sense. So Locke was only exaggerating a distinction of real
importance, while Berkeley, in trying to break down all
distinction, was not doing well. He never gave prominence
to the fact that we cannot apprehend primary qualities of
matter without activity of ours put forth. He approximates
towards an analysis of touch in his Theory of Vision ( 45),
but does not clearly distinguish between active and passive
touch.
Mill's Contribution.
While Professor Bain takes good account of the material
elements in explaining the development of this opposition of
subject and object, he scarcely brings forward sufficiently the
intellectual laws that are involved. Mill, on the other hand,
in his Psychological Theory of the External World, while he
gives a much less careful statement of the material factors,
gives a careful and relatively correct statement of the laws
under which this development takes place. The two taken
together, read with discernment, will afford the kind of
explanation that can be given from the psychological point
of view of the development of the opposition.
Object and Subject in the Genii.
I say development, implying that originally this opposition
was not present in consciousness that, even in the lifetime
of the individual, there is a time when in the growing
experience of the child this opposition begins to develop.
I hold that the vague, discrete consciousness of the infant,
while it may be called consciousness, is not to be distinguished
as subjective or as objective consciousness in the sense
xvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 173
afterwards meant by these words. It is discrete, else there
would not be the fundamental condition of consciousness,
i.e. discrimination, but it is too vague to admit of that
opposition being present. Probably this comes to be at
different times in different minds. At some moment in
the history of every mind the confused, vague consciousness
centres itself, or a beginning of separation is made, and
thenceforth to one term or the other all experiences begin to
be referred. I do not say that it is not possible for us, and
possible with a certain scientific ground, to interpret our
experiences, before the separation takes place, as having
a subjective meaning. Unless what afterwards comes to be
object had arisen within our individual experience and in
that sense been subjective, we never could have got to the
separation at all. And I accept the relativity of knowledge
in the fullest sense that we can have an experience of
object only in relation to subject. But I assert also that
there is no subject-experience until there is object-experience.
Each implies the other.
Now philosophers who have laid stress upon this and
made object and subject, or matter and mind, two separate
entities, have in one way aggrandised this opposition
developed within our psychological experience, but not so
aggrandised it as to have overlooked the mutual implication.
In popular apprehension this is overlooked. And the
scientific excuse for maintaining this exaggerated separation
is that it affords an excellent working hypothesis for the
purposes of objective science.
Projected Personality fills up the Import of Object.
And there is this important element still : When we talk
about an object outside of us we give but an inadequate
i74 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
account of it if we express it psychologically in terms of
movements of ours and so forth. To each such object \ve
ascribe more or less a subjective existence for itself. Every-
thing to me is object primarily, and my subject is as it were
to me alone. But I come to see, in the first place, that of
all my objective experience there is a certain part more
constantly in connexion with my special subjective states
than any other; and that is my body. I come to think of
myself as a composite entity, and not only as two kinds
of experience, but as a prominent subject in relation to
a relatively prominent object.
Next, I find amongst other outside objects various objective
experiences resembling those I have from my own body, but
not quite similar, else I should mistake them for my own body,
and for that matter rendered distinct by the absence of the
double touches afforded by my own body. To the sources
of these, on the ground of the similar experiences they
afford me, I ascribe conscious states resembling my own
a subjective and also an objective experience.
Finally, even when there is no such similarity, I ascribe
an adumbration of subjective life. I do not ascribe to this
table the power of putting forth activity, or the feelings that
I ascribe to my hearers or claim for myself. But in as far as
I talk about the table as a thing able to enter into relation
with other things, and in particular with myself, I do give it
a kind of quasi-personality ; and I believe that this element
can never be absent from object entirely. In primitive
minds we have the tendency to ascribe full life to everything,
as we see happen in fetish-worship. Children too have this
anthropomorphic interpretation of experience, e.g. when
they kick the chair they have hurt their shins against. It is
a natural tendency that we have this interpreting what we
xvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 175
experience as analogous to our own subject. And I believe
that this is only an exaggeration of what each of us does,
and needs to do, in order fully to body out any object.
Unless I give the table as it were a highly attenuated
personality, I do not think I get full objective experience,
I do not think I get at that in my consciousness of object
which is metaphysically expressed as substance.
The Psychological Explanation of Substance.
For we may insist that all qualities have their psychological
expression in terms of sensible experience, we may insist,
with respect to qualities, on the historically fundamental
character of resistance how that object is first obstacle, or
impediment in the way of activity, and that object so got is
interpreted through experience as extended, so that space
is body attenuated rather than body is space filled in and
yet, when we have finished this analysis of the psychological
conception of perception, it may be urged that from the
point of view of the metaphysical conception of perception
the question may still be asked, Is the object 'there' reaU
Is it anything for itself 1 This is a question not to be
answered apart from psychology, but it should not therefore
be evaded. Popularly judged, there is in our pillar some-
thing more than resistance, extension, colour, and any
number of qualities. It is said, there is a substance there.
Psychology then has to explain substance as well as attribute.
Now, as we have seen, my consciousness presents me to
myself under a subjective as well as under an objective
aspect. I am an extended object and I have a subjective
life, a consciousness, a personal identity. And I attribute to
you both body and consciousness. But it is your conscious-
ness that is to me the reality of you. You are not so much
176 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
a bundle of qualities which give me impressions as the
conscious being who has these sensible aspects. Turning
to animals, we find ourselves attributing subjective life to
them also. And, going lower still, what we ascribe to the
pillar as reality or substance is something analogous to that
which in us is personality. Its substantiality, as opposed
to its qualities, is a pale reflexion of our own subjective
experience. Substance is at bottom subjectivity. This is
the psychological explanation of the popular notion of differ-
ence of substance and quality, which was overlooked by
Berkeley, Hume, Mill, and Professor Bain.
The Weakness in Berkeley's Theory.
Berkeley said that supposing it were the case, that the
qualities of matter were to occur to us in a certain orderly
and definite manner, and yet suppose that there was no
substance there, would you miss this ' substratum or support ' ?
His answer is No, we should not, even as we do not in
dreams (op. cit. I, 18). Then, he says, we have no right to
assume it; and he claims that all he has to account for in
perception is the orderliness of experience, which he does by
assuming an Infinite Spirit. And he works round to his
original position by the argument : If the only account
which scientific men can give of substance is a confused
idea of something supporting sensible qualities, what shadow
of right have they to say that matter is the only real thing
in the universe, and that where there is no matter there
is nothing at all ? His demonstration then is that there
is nothing whatsoever in the notion of substance which is
not accountable for as sensible quality, or if there is, it
is nothing at all.
Has Berkeley got rid of substance altogether in overturning
xvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 177
either the crude materialism of scientific men or Locke's
unsatisfactory account? Have we come to this, that there
is in the world only an Infinite Spirit and a certain number
of other spirits, and can we not ascribe a real existence to
anything but God, Berkeley and other spirits like himself?
To me his theory comes as short here as it does in the
explanation of primary and secondary qualities. There is
no doubt that the notion of substance is reasonable, and that
while the common sense, which has found Berkeleianism
repugnant, is no final criterion, it is yet a fact that philosophy
must take into account, and that too when it says, ' A pillar
is there.' Berkeley can get a coherent universe only by
supposing a number of other minds plus the Deity. Here is
rank assumption ! Where are all these minds ? He may be
conscious of his own mind, but how then can he be sure of
other minds ? He ought to be able, from the point of view
of his psychological experience, to account for this conviction.
He would have given another answer had he faced the
question, How can a mind allow other minds as existing ?
Through Mind to Bodies; through Bodies to other Minds.
My own conviction, as I have already shown, is that
I infer consciousness in others through my sense-perception of
them as bodies. Let me be mind only, and I could never get
out of myself. If I assume that minds like mine are, so to
say, present, it is because I perceive bodies like mine. If
your bodies do not exist, why, mine does not. My con-
viction of the double phase of my existence is strengthened
by finding that I have objective experience of other bodies,
which suggests the existence of other minds. And this
conviction, by way of inference that material bodies like
mine exist, is extended to animals, to which mind is ascribed
N
178 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
because of external manifestations. It is only an extension
of the same notion to posit the existence of all living things.
Then where may we draw the line ? There is no material
object perceived by me which is not for me something
more than an aggregate of (Berkeleian) ideas. By what
way I become sure of you, I become sure of all objects,
because I interpret my experience upon the distinction
I make between body and mind. In a sense my body is
real enough, just as animals, trees, pillars, &c., have all in
a very real sense a substantial existence, which is not
adequately accounted for by merely assuming the Deity and
a few human subjects. But bodily processes are explainable
as mental facts, and not vice versa : these are for us ultimate ;
these explain. Though I am body as well as mind, the
reality of me lies in the continuity of my conscious being.
/ am because I am subjectively conscious there is my
reality. And where I can infer subjective consciousness
I say ''you too are real.' This, extended further, is for me
the explanation of the metaphysical notion of substance.
We may express substance in terms of quality, viz. as
Resistance, but quality in terms of substance needs Sub-
ject. Let no one say that because that pillar is perceived
as substance by analogy of my consciousness of myself as
subject, it is therefore taken up into my own being. If
I fritter away the reality of substance, what remains of my
own reality and that of others ? There- is just the same
reason for accepting the reality of external objects apart
from the thinker as there is for accepting other conscious-
nesses. The world of sense is just as real to Berkeley as
it is to the man in the street. The truth in his teaching
suggests to fresh students a distressful sense of a desolate
universe with the ground cut away from under their feet.
XVIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 179
Any philosophic satisfaction that they win will, it may be,
come slowly through struggle, wrestling and trial. The
transition, however won through, is a necessary process, but
it leaves us with quite as real a world, nay, a world more
real than we had before. If I say, I am and none other
is the motto of Solipsism this is a position from which
I cannot be dislodged, and it is the only logical position
for Berkeley. But once I allow other minds, then by the
same argument I allow other things, since it is through per-
ception of bodies that I get at minds. Mind, then, is that
which is absolutely existing ; mind is the ultimate expression.
Ago ergo sum.
Let us pursue the analogy between subject and substance
one step further and deeper. If we resolve the material
thing into its physical constituents and stop at molecules, we
are still at the stage of qualities. But if we go beyond sense
to inference and come to the theoretic atom, we no longer
apprehend matter by way of qualities, yet we are compelled
to consider the atom as endowed with a certain inherent
activity, with force or energy. Matter is not dead when
thus considered ; it is only in mass that it deports itself as
relatively dead. Now here, in this energy, we get a mean
term relating to- matter in its ultimate being and our own
personality as we subjectively know it. For the reality of
our being consists most fully in putting forth activity, in
willing. I am, in another and fuller sense, as I will or put
forth activity. So too as far as atoms exert energy they
really are. Force then in the atom and force in the individual
constitutes real existence, and is the fullest expression of
mind. Mind exists everywhere, and must be carried down
to explain any true reality.
N 2
180 Elements of General Philosophy.
Thus we may take advantage of all material phenomena
in order to help in the consideration of mind. This is in no
sense a materialistic position. Atoms when in combination
appear so extended, yet the atom is not extended. Exten-
sion is only the ultimate phenomenal appearance of matter.
I assume that the universe consists of elements which are
not extended, which appear when in conjunction as extended,
and which are ultimately expressible in terms of mind.
This is the Leibnizian conception of monads, which in
conjunction appear to a conscious mind as extended, but
taken alone are not extended, and whose ultimate expression
is in terms of activity. Monadology is the ultimate philo-
sophical analysis of the universe, with its fundamental
postulate of real beings, immaterial, unextended, having
power to act, of which conscious activity is a higher phase.
Here is the platform of philosophical agreement.
LECTURE XVIII.
REGULATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE.
The Regulation of the Three Phases of Mind.
1 HAVE made allusion in the first lecture of this course to
philosophy as connoting, under the aspect of 'love of wisdom,'
a reference to practice ; I also claimed in the psycho-
logical course that philosophy included logic as well as
ethics : and I spoke later on of a ' regulative doctrine ' of
feeling. Not only feeling, but also intellection and conation
admit of being regulated in order to an end or ideal. We
may think, for instance, amiss or well. Now logic deals
with the conditions of good and bad, i. e. true and false,
thinking with thought so as to make it true. Again, action
can be made good and feeling beautiful. Ethics, accordingly.
is regulative doctrine with a view to making action good.
And aesthetics considers feelings, sees which of them
admit of development towards a certain end, namely, beauty
or refinement.
The fact that we can distinguish these three regulative
bodies of doctrine, mutually independent, mutually unre-
solvable, exhaustive, is to be regarded as one of the strongest
arguments for the tripartite division of mind. In psychology
1 82 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
it is often hard to isolate them and secure their independence.
But we can distinguish well enough that intellection in the
end has to be made true, conation in the end has to be
made good, feeling has to be raised to the grade of the
beautiful. And we cannot add hereto ; the summary is
exhaustive.
Law as Generalisation and Law as Norm.
Whereas psychology explains mind, these doctrines are
occupied with the regulation of mental functions. In the
one case we explain what is (or rather appears], in the other
we regulate the phenomenon with a view to an end. Clearly
then in the latter case we are beyond psychology. We have
passed from Phenomenology to use Hamilton's terms to
Nomology ; we are dealing with norms, which, it is true, are
laws, but not laws in the scientific sense. Scientific law ex-
plains, i. e. expresses the complex in terms of the simple, the
particular in terms more general. Thus the function of
psychology is to explain by classing mental phenomena
together, or generalising with respect to them. For instance,
according to the law of similarity, whenever we form concepts
we are assimilating. But in the logical sense thinking is
being consistent. If you are not consistent, you are ' a
vegetable.' Here then is law as norm. Psychology has
nothing to do with action as good, any more than it has with
thought as true, but simply with any kind of action. It deals
with mental action as it naturally comes to pass.
The Connexion between Psychology and Practical Philosophy.
These three doctrines then come under philosophy, not as
a certain deeper kind of knowledge, but as involving that
certain practical bearing as implied by wisdom, which
XVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 183
philosophy had at first and will have again. They are de-
partments of philosophy in its practical reference, ethics being
the branch most closely identified with philosophy thus con-
sidered. Ethics is philosophy as regulative of conduct, logic
and aesthetics being philosophy as regulative of thought and
of feeling. Philosophy results, eventuates, is consummated
in ethics, inasmuch as philosophical consideration always in
the end must be regarded as having an ethical direction, as
having its outcome in guidance of conduct, whether the
Ethics be blended with religion or not. Wisdom has reference
to conduct ; good conduct is wise ; wise conduct is good ;
hence ethics is a philosophical discipline.
Logic regarded as a Science.
From a certain point of view these doctrines may be
regarded as science and treated advisedly from the scientific
point of view. Let us take logic first and classify the
sciences as once before (v. Appendix) into objective and sub-
jective sciences. Now though logic is not a science when
considered as in any way dependent upon psychology, yet,
considered by itself, it is a science, and moreover it must be
placed at the head of the objective sciences. For just as
chemistry is more special than physics, and physics more
special than mathematics, so is mathematics more special
than logic. Every one of the sciences, so far as it is a ' logy/
is a specialised logic ; and before logic there can be nothing.
But when it is thus considered, it must not be said to be
conversant with thought, since this is essentially a subjective
notion. It becomes the science of relation 1 , and relation is
as wide objectively as thought is subjectively. Things as
1 Not of quality, which, as it includes quantity, would include
mathematics as well.
184 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT
thinkable are, objectively considered, things as relateable.
Nevertheless logic is not so much a science as a condition
of science.
Ethics regarded as a Science.
Ethics again may be considered as the science investigating
the various ways in which men have been found to act in
relation to men, and on this basis of historical investigation
rules how to act in the best way may be framed. This
scientific view of ethics has followed from the evolution
theory and rather holds the field, Messrs. Spencer and Leslie
Stephen being the chief exponents. Ethics is concerned with
good conduct followed by not all individuals and nations.
To get a science we must examine the meanings of good and
bad, what good, and what bad, men do. Facts have to be
collected from all times and a progressive or regressive
development sought. This view is an extension of evolution
as first applied only to biological, and then to anthropological
conceptions ; man as considered in respect of his origin, as
evolved, and morality as a product of evolution, appearing
in time.
Unquestionably we may proceed thus. Ethics may be
regarded as the science dealing with moral conduct as mani-
festing itself throughout time, and the development of ethical
notions as the business of the ethical philosopher. Mr. Spencer
too, the great systematiser of evolution, says, with Comte,
that ethics is a science dependent upon sociology and not
upon psychology, although his work on psychology is put
first. Morality is regarded as a historical social fact an
affair between man and man. The theory of man's social
relations is sociology, and some only of those relations are
moral. Ethics is a more specialised sociology. As logic
XVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 185
may be regarded as the science of things as related, so ethics
may be considered as the science of action as practicable, of
such actions as men can get on with amongst themselves.
Indeed much ethical matter can and ought, much more than
it has been, to be treated scientifically, inductively, with
verification from history.
Scientific Treatment does not exhaust Ethics.
But no ultimate problems can be thus fairly gone into.
Unawares the scientific moralist is ever making philosophical
assumptions which he ought to justify there and then. For
instance, ' whatever is, is right ; ' ' if a moral custom is found
in use, it is because it is right/ Here is an assumption
which may not be justified by scientific consideration alone.
Again, ' the conditions of human welfare are those of human
being; why need men be dissatisfied with what they find?'
this is a philosophical consideration. The ideal morality,
the morality of the future, is an inevitable point in ethics, but
it cannot be prescribed without pronouncing some one goal
preferable. Now why any one in particular ? This is not a
question of matter of fact, but of what were better or worse, and
needing a criterion of the same. It may not be adequately
answered by direct facts of sociological experience, but needs
deeper consideration even philosophical. There is room, I
say, for plentiful investigation of manners, for inductive inquiry
into human relations down the course of history. Already
we see a development of ethical conceptions, an ethical
progress, a change of ideals. But what is an ideal ? What
is good ? And what, we ask at this time of day, as ask we
must what direction ought human action to take? The
problem of ethics is not soluble by purely scientific analysis ;
we cannot help being philosophical. Very much from
1 86 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
evolutionary science we can accept, but it just misses the
point in that it does not adequately treat of the ' consciously
aimed at,' the ideal.
Finally, let not this view (of ethics as a science) be made
light of; let the works of its exponents be read, but
critically, and it will be seen how Mr. Leslie Stephen,
scouting metaphysic as he does, is as much a metaphysician
as any one, and how Mr. Spencer really deals not only with
facts, but also with aims, ends, ideals.
Logic and Psychology the Bond and the Distinction.
Logic derives the materials it works upon from psychology;
it has to regulate that function of mind which, psychologically,
we distinguish as intellection. It does not however deal with
the whole of intellection, but only with that higher or more
complex mode which we have termed ' thought.' Now why
is thought the only part of intellection that can be logically
regulated ?
Let us first consider some of the definitions of logic :
(a) The science of reasoning ;
(U) The art of reasoning ;
(<r) The science of the operations of the understanding
which are subservient to the estimation of evidence, i. e. in
the pursuit of truth.
Of these (a) is not quite acceptable, for surely psychology
as the science of mind includes the science of reasoning ; and
the statement is now admitted to be insufficient. It confuses
logic with psychology. (])) avoids the error of (a); psychology
can under no circumstances be termed an art. An art has
a practical outcome, and logic tells us how we ought to
reason in order to reason correctly or effectively. An art
is a science definitely applied, and this sort of applied science
XVIIL ] Elements of General Philosophy. 187
is what logicians most probably wished to assert as the nature
of logical procedure. Any confusion between the two is
really only verbal. Nobody pretends that logic and psychology
deal with reasoning in the same way. But logic has to do
with much besides ' reasoning/ namely, with judgment, as
expressed in propositions, and with names or terms which
correspond to concepts. Hence Hamilton's definition, that
logic has to do with thought, as thought is a real advance
towards justice and accuracy. Logic, he also said, is the
science of the necessary laws of thought. Bare thought as
explained by psychology is all very well, but it is not as real
or effective thought that psychology can take account of it.
In order to be effective, valid, true, thought has to conform
to certain definite conditions, to ' necessary ' rather than to
natural laws. But it is in Mill's definition (c) that we may
best gather how logic differs from psychology. ' Under-
standing ' has of late become more popular than scientific,
but it once corresponded to thought (or to Hamilton's fifth
faculty the Discursive, Elaborative or Comparative). The
definition more tersely put is that ' logic deals with true
understanding.' Logic deals with thought as true, while
psychology deals with thought as it naturally proceeds within
us. With the question whether thought has any validity,
psychology has nothing whatever to do.
What is Truth ?
Now what is this truth of which logic seeks to give an
account ? This is about the deepest of philosophical questions
and cannot be thoroughly answered. But we do not need
to go to the bottom of it in this connexion. The full question
is thus to be stated : What is the relation between thought
and being? Is there a reality apart from thought which
i88 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
thinking represents ? And how does thinking represent it ?
These questions, as we have seen, fall within the province
of epistemology, which is really another face of ontology.
When however we consider truth in logic we do not need
to determine what ultimately is, and how that reality can be
known ; we do not need a theory of knowledge or an
ontology to start with. In logic we hold that to be true
which is valid not only for my consciousness, but for all
consciousnesses like mine. A thing is not true if it only
holds good for me. Psychology deals only with the fact
of intellection going on in my consciousness for me or in
yours for you ; it does not touch upon truth as such at all.
A thing may be psychologically explicable though not
logically grounded. Intellection regulated with a view to
truth is logically grounded knowledge. ' All men are mortal '
is logically grounded knowledge. When psychology has ex-
plained to me how I come to connect ' man ' and ' mortal.'
these notions are then further connected upon a basis of
logical ground which holds for others beside myself. Hence
we say ' Man is mortal ' is true ; it holds for all conscious-
nesses upon ground that can be assigned, i. e. evidence.
Self-consistency; Conformity to Fact.
Truth is, then, what holds intellectually for all minds alike.
But we distinguish two kinds of truth, viz. truth to self and
truth to fact. ' All men are mortal ' this holds for alj
consciousnesses in the sense that our thought in the case is
taken to represent fact. Any assertion that flows from this
will also be truth of fact, e.g. 'No immortal is a man/ Now
let us assume ' All men are cats.' Then if a man were to
enter this room, we must expect to see him furry and on all
fours. If you cannot accept this, you are untrue to your-
xviii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 189
self; but if in this case you are true to yourself, you cannot
be true to fact. We can have truth to self entirely apart
from fact ; and again, we can have truth to fact which is not
true to self. A really effective mind is both true to self and
true to fact.
Departments of Logic.
Now Pure or Formal Logic is the doctrine that determines
the conditions that regulate truth to self apart from fact, the
doctrine, in other words, of mere consistency ; whereas
Applied, Material or Modified Logic is a doctrine that lays
down the conditions that regulate truth of fact. Hamilton's
Logic, e. g. is chiefly Formal ; Mill's aims always at being
Real or Material. Jevons jumbles up the two quite hope-
lessly. Consistency really covers both kinds of logic. The
internal, intrinsic truth of thought is that it shall be consistent
with itself. The external, extrinsic truth of thought is that it
shall be consistent with fact ; that subject shall correspond to
object. The business of most of us in life is mainly to be
consistent with ourselves. For very few of us are destined
to widen the bounds of knowledge; we come into the world
' the heirs of time,' and have enough to do with truly applying
the knowledge we find. Herein logic tells us to do explicitly
what we have hitherto done implicitly.
Truth is a Question of Judgment.
Now to answer our question why thought is the only part
of intellection that can be logically regulated. Intellection
includes perception, imagination, and thought. Why can
we not logically regulate our perceiving and imagining?
Strictly speaking, we cannot speak of true perception or true
imagination, whereas thought can be true or false. Neither
our perception as such, nor our imagination (which is only
190 Elements of General Philosophy.
perceiving over again) is grounded ; we do not find reasons
in the case of either. It is only when knowledge is general
that we can speak of it as true. Perceiving and thinking
both proceed un reflectively and naturally, but thinking may
also proceed reflectively ; we can watch it as it comes to
pass, and regulate it; it can be modified and corrected as
perceiving cannot. Perception involves to some extent
thinking ; to the extent that there is explicit thinking per-
ception may be regulated. Scientific observation is perception
involving explicit thinking ; thought is brought to bear on
the sense-experience we are having, and so far this admits
of logical control and may be improved and corrected.
The Frobel system helps children to perceive in a definite
way more accurately and effectively. The help thus given
to perception may be compared to the logical regulation
of thought. But we cannot think logically before we can
perceive, any more than we can be taught to dance before
we have practically taught ourselves to walk. We come to
think, and think, it may be, in a regulated fashion, upon
a basis of perception.
For LECTURE XIX consult :
G. C. Robertson, Philosophical Remains, ' On the Action of so-
called Motives;' and Bain, Bk. IV, ch. xi. ED.
LECTURE XIX.
THE BASIS AND THE END OF ETHICS.
Conation, Ethics, and Conduct.
As I have already pointed out, the fact of logic, ethics, and
aesthetics being all on the same level with respect to their all
having distinct regulative work to do for the mind is really one
of the strongest indirect proofs that we have of the existence
of a third distinguishable phase of mind, namely, conation.
And of these three doctrines ethics, at any rate, has at no time
lacked full consideration. It has indeed tended to be identi-
fied with practical philosophy. In the end all practice ends
and culminates in acting rightly. For conduct involves others,
whereas thought and feeling directly concern the individual
only.
Ethics and Psychology.
Ethics is related to psychology not as a cognate science,
but in that it depends for its material upon the psychology
of conation. English writers are always confusing ethics
and psychology, e.g. Butler and Reid. Professor Sidgwick
seemed, in the earlier editions of his Methods of Ethics, to
be so anxious to separate ethics and psychology that he
almost said the former had nothing to do with the latter,
e.g. ' The investigation of the historical antecedents of moral
cognition and of its relations to other states of mind has no
192 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
more to do with ethics than the corresponding investigation
of the nature of space has to do with geometry * ' a view
he has since modified. It was a mistaken view, for the
psychological solution has a bearing on the ethical. Ethics
deals with that which has to be brought to pass as an end
consciously conceived, and thus we see the subjective aspect,
the relation to psychology, of ethics. The leading ethical
topics, viz. the springs of action and the moral faculty or
conscience, can only be understood in their relation to
psychology. Again the question of the freedom of the will,
which belongs to the metaphysics of ethics, is discussed
largely on a psychological basis.
The Question of the Freedom of the Will.
It has been asserted that we must posit a power of action
in the human mind wholly antecedent to and independent of
all psychological experience whatever. This has naturally
been connected with a metaphysical consideration of what
mind is in itself. There has been much discussion as to
whether the terms ' free will ' and ' necessity ' are good and
appropriate words to be used in regard to will at all, the per-
tinency of the former term especially being declared against
generally by those who deny the ' freedom ' of the will in the
sense in which others assert it. Let us put aside these words,
in which the question has commonly been treated in English
controversy, and give attention to other terms more in recent
use ' Determinism ' and ' Indeterminism.' The latter is a
strictly definable term and is synonymous with the doctrine of
1 Methods of Ethics, ist edition, Preface. In the 3rd edition
Professor Sidgwick has appended this note : ' This statement now
appears to me to require a slight modification.' Cf. also his art.
' Ethics,' Encyc. Britannica. ED.
xix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 193
free will, while what has commonly been called the doctrine
of philosophical necessity, or also. Necessitarianism, is more
scientifically expressed by the theory of Determinism. Both
views, while opposed in themselves, are opposed to another
view, the supporters of which have been confused by being
classed with either side. These are theorists who do not
consider the question from the point of view of psychology
at all, but from that of man's position in the universe. And
they assert, as related to and yet different from Determinism,
that there is fatalism or perfect fatality in human actions,
that everything in the world is as it cannot but be, that all
is predetermined by external causes. This fatalistic theory
may also assume the theological form of predestination, viz.
that the Creator has determined exactly what shall come
about in the world in general and in each human mind. By
opposition to fatalism or predestination we have the assertion
that the foreknowledge of the Deity determines nothing
absolutely or necessarily with regard to any particular event
or action of men. The necessity of fatalism may be said
to be a cosmical necessity. The necessity of predestination
is cosmical too, but more determined, not falling back upon
a mere abstraction like fate or cosmos, but connected
expressly with a personal Being or Providence. On the
other hand, there is the view asserting absolute freedom
from cosmical necessity of any sort, and of course from pro-
vidential determination. Theologians like John Calvin, or,
to a great extent, Augustin, were much more concerned
with the question as between fatalism and predestination and
the opposite than with the more scientific problem depending
on the nature of Will. Their views we exclude from present
discussion, the question for us lying between Determinism,
or philosophical necessity, and Indeterminism.
o
194 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
The Ground of each Position.
The Determinist declares that, as in nature generally so
among human actions, the same circumstances being present
the same effect will follow. Or, as it is often expressed, since
motives are productive of actions, the same motives being
present, the same action will always follow. The view of the
Indeterminist is that motives never wholly, or need not ever
wholly, determine human action ; that with the same motives
present at different times different actions may follow ; that in
motives we do not get the full expression of the conditions of
human action ; that beyond all motives there is the activity
of the ego itself; that there is a source of internal force,
a self-initiating power in the human mind itself, a power of
self-determination of the ego apart from the circumstances
in which the ego is placed, which may determine action
in the teeth of any quantity of motive. Hence it is called
Indeterminism, meaning that action is not, or need not ever
be, wholly determined by motives.
Now it is easy to see what sort of grounds the different
theories rely upon.
The Determinists say that it is a fact that human actions
proceed uniformly, and they point to statistics in proof of this.
All human actions, they declare, are determined wholly by
motives ; unless we knew that people would act, under parti-
cular circumstances, in definite ways we could never get
on at all. Unless there is this uniformity in human action
as in everything else, between volition and its antecedent,
it is impossible to have a science of the human mind
at all. I think this is the strongest thing the Determinist
can urge.
What the Indeterminists dwell on chiefly is the consciousness
xix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 195
of freedom that we have in volition ; we are conscious of a power
of acting against any motives. Not that we do so always or
often, but let the motives be never so strong or so weak, by
a pure act of will, as it is sometimes called, it is possible for
the man or ego to act for himself and of himself. So much
do they rely on this that one of them, Hamilton, declared
that, however much, on the ground of psychology, he was
bound to allow that any action ever put forth can be said
to follow from particular motives (of course widely extend-
ing the notion of motive to cover cases of action through
so-called sheer caprice), we must yet in the last resort rely
upon this simple and fundamental deliverance of conscious-
ness, viz. that we are free agents, that our actions proceed, or
may proceed, from a source within us wholly undetermined.
Choice as determined by the prevailing ' Motive.'
It is easy to see how a Determinist would answer this. I
might have a strong inducement to go out of that door and
yet say 'No, I will stay' and stay. Now here, he would point
out, I should only have yielded to a motive of a different kind,
which motive may be sheer caprice, or obstinacy, or laziness, or
the desire to show you that one need not act from particular
motives, and so forth, and which is just in this case the more
powerful motive, or motives. All this Hamilton allowed with
full force, and was angry with Reid, who did not see what
Determinists aim at in declaring that every action can be ex-
pressed in terms of motives of some sort or other. Yet he
would not therefore give up free will in the strict sense, and
indeed points to this case of apparent contradiction between
necessity to act under motives and consciousness of perfect
freedom as a clear case of contradiction within consciousness,
and as illustrating his Law of the Conditioned.
196 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
The Argument in terms of Motives is a Logomachy.
Now just one word about the controversy before I pass on
and close. I cannot help thinking that here, as elsewhere,
the difference between the two views is greatly affected by the
language in which the discussion has taken place. I am not
arguing in the sense in which Professor Bain argues, not ineffec-
tively, against the language that has been employed in this
question. He objects to the use of ' free and ' necessary ' as
applied to will, and there is much force in his remarks. But
I want to make a deeper charge against language than that,
and especially against all this talk of ' motives ' with regard to
the question of choice of action. Such language is not scientific
but merely metaphorical, and prejudices the issue. Both sides
are to blame herein. And I think that, if the question had
to be decided in terms of motives, the Determinists get into
a very bad position. ' Motive ' implies an ego or subject who
is ' moved.' If this terminology is used and regarded as an
ultimately satisfactory way of stating the case, then we must
fall back with the Indeterminists on the assumption of an
undetermined ego, in which case motives no longer amount
to a sufficient explanation of actions. On the other hand, and
granting still the language of motives, I must with the Deter-
minists, as well as with Hamilton, assert that the determining
causes or antecedents of every act can well be expressed in
terms of motive. And I certainly think that those cases
where we talk about the self-initiation of movements and
their proceeding from the ego and so forth are as much
acts determined by ' motives ' as any of the simplest are.
' Motive ' is a mere popular Metaphor.
How then shall we get out of this difficulty? We have proved
the Determinist theory and also the Indeterminist theory
xix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 197
under this language of ' motives.' We must lay the difficulty
on the language. If motives were something external to the
mind, as from the language used one might well conclude,
then indeed we must take account of a mind or ego. But
what sort of thing is a motive affecting the mind and yet
external to it ? What is motive after all ? It may be a feeling.
It may be an idea. It may be a resolution or vow, or a
great many other mental states. ' Motive ' is only a popular
or loose way of stating certain mental states involving action.
Well then, if motives are after all mental states, and not
something external to the mind, as is commonly implied,
then the question becomes altered at once. We cannot
say that a state of mind is anything apart from mind.
It is mind in that state. \Vhen I say, I have a conflict
of motives, it means that I have now one tendency to act
and now another. And when I say, I hold to a particular
motive, the truer expression for this is that, amid a variety of
conscious conditions succeeding one another, one becomes
prominent or predominant and has a particular action follow-
ing upon it.
The Determinist view I am constrained to accept ; its
ground of universal uniformity is sounder. But just as the
Sensationalists used to express experience in terms of sense in
such a way as to render any explanation of knowledge from
sense impossible, so does Determinism by the terms of its
statement render itself inadmissible and make a surrender
to the opposite side.
Altruistic Considerations.
In ethical problems, then, we are on a basis of psychology,
but not psychologising. If, e.g. we consider appetites and
desires, it is not to make out anything by way of psychological
198 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
explanation about them, but to account for what they are with
regard for self and for others. Ethical questions are wholly
concerned with the consideration of self and others, with
relations between man and man with liberty to develop the
subject in either direction, viz. of the relations between man
and higher minds (religion), and between man and lower
minds, of relations, i.e. either humanistic or to the universe.
For 'springs of action' it were better, in ethics, to substitute
' springs of conduct,' conduct being the actions of an in-
dividual considered in relation to anything which involves
himself and others as related to himself.
The Ethical Standard.
The properly ethical question is that of the standard of right
and wrong. A man's view of this is enough of itself to deter-
mine his whole ethical theory ; and there is no other question
that is sufficient in itself for this. Men may agree as to the
nature of the moral faculty, and yet admit different views as
to the standard or criterion of right and wrong. Whereas
a view of the standard will carry a man right through. It is
to ethics what truth of thought is to logic.
Ethics and Politics.
In modern times ethics has acquired a great independence
of politics, and has come more and more to rise supreme
above the latter. Plato and Aristotle made out ethics to be
a department of politics. This was because the Greeks, in a
highly developed political system within a small territory, were
politicians first and moralists afterwards. Only a few saw
that there was room for a further consideration of man's action
as man and not as citizen. When Greek political life became
extinct the ethical question in turn came uppermost, e. g. in
xix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 199
Stoicism and Epicureanism, in which ethics began to be
differentiated as a theory of individual action. At a time
when the traditional religious conceptions had lost their hold
on cultivated minds, it became of primary importance that
some Theory of Life and Conduct should be developed as
a substitute for a religious creed. With the progress of time
a more highly analytical study of human nature has arisen,
hence we distinguish more sharply between ethical and
poliiical principles.
Ethics and Christianity.
Again, the influence of Christianity on ethics is extremely
marked. Christianity inculcated the notion of the individual
life or soul as having infinite value. The man, in and for
himself, once swamped in the citizen, has become the fact of
greatest moment. What a man is and what a man ought to do
are questions that have become prominent in the Christian
era as they never did in Greek or Roman civilisation.
Ethics and Theology. Cogency of the Social Factor.
In so far as ethics has helped to develop ethical principles,
it has done so inevitably in relation to certain theological
considerations. Yet this does not make ethics necessarily
dependent upon theology. One ought to be able to determine
the rule of life merely from a consideration of human nature.
Morality proper depends upon the exclusion of theology. To
seek a constraining power in order to good conduct impeaches
the very notion of morality and trangresses the province of
ethics. Morality can only give intelligible reasons. Con-
science, the impulse to do right from a purely ethical point
of view, arises from the fact that man is no mere individual
but a member of the social organism. What a man becomes,
he becomes not of himself but through others. Therefore,
200 Elements of General Philosophy.
while it is natural that he should act out of regard to self
//^reflectively, when his actions begin to be done reflectively,
it is impossible for him not to allow that he is bound to
sacrifice himself in all cases where there is a conflict between
self-interests and the common good. There is a law upon
him not to be thrown off. Not to allow this is for a man
to claim to have created, by and for himself, life and know-
ledge and all that makes life worth having.
PART II.
SPECIAL LECTURES.
LECTURE XX.
ON THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PLATO IN THE
PHMDO, REPUBLIC, THEMTETUS AND T
READING Plato's Dialogues, Jowett's Translation ; Plato's Timceus,
edited by Archer-Hind.
THE stages in Plato's life are well marked. The date
of his birth being B.C. 427, we note (a) the Socratic stage
(407-399) his Lehrjahre as they have been called when he
was the pupil of Socrates till the latter was put to death.
(K] Twelve years of travel (399-387) his Wanderjahre when
he visited Magna Grsecia (S. Italy), Sicily, Egypt, with
occasional returns to Athens, when he began his relations
with Dionysius of Syracuse, and which include his first
period of productive activity (i. e. of the Socratic dialogues).
(c] The stage of supreme effective thinking and teaching,
as a philosopher, with his school in the grove of Academus
(387-367). (d) To Syracuse again, visiting the younger
' From a special course on the T/iea'fctus,&c., February, March, 1892.
202 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Dionysius (367-365). In 361 he visited Syracuse yet again.
(t j ) Third period of philosophising and teaching, during
which he gave the last development to his theory of ideas,
and his cosmology. The chief productions of this period
were the Laws, probably the Philcbus, the Parmenides, and
the Sophistes, leading up to the Timcciis.
We have already seen (supra, Lecture IV) what was the
heritage of thought to be entered into by Plato : first, the
physical philosophy of the Pre-Socratics ; then in Protagoras
a despair of physical and also of moral science, withal
a highly refined argumentation as to practical life ; next the
teaching of Socrates, also despairing of physical science,
but aiming at a science of moral conceptions and identifying
virtue with knowledge, or with the outcome of knowledge.
Into the mind of his predecessors and contemporaries Plato
entered generally, combining the high moral purpose of
Socrates, and, at first, the Socratic method with a wider and
bolder sweep of constructive thinking. He asked, in its
widest generality, as the great question for a philosopher,
What is knowlege? Though ethical purpose is always
present as his final aim, yet the problem of conduct was to
be solved by him through previous consideration of the
universal problem of knowledge, and not of knowledge in
a limited sphere as with Socrates.
The Thecetdus is a dialogue of research without the
positive results characterising the Republic. Many points
are raised, but not settled. The subject is of the greatest
difficulty, and one on which Plato's writings show a con-
tinuous development. It is occupied with epistemology
with knowledge as such here treated more independently
than elsewhere of his dogmatic theory of Ideas. It sums
up and destructively criticises all previous views on the
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 203
problem of knowledge, making reference, explicit or im-
plicit, to Plato's predecessors. His own theory it leaves
indeterminate. Had he thought out a reasoned solution, his
positive philosophy would have been complete. Some
suppose the dialogue was written before 367, but revised in
the third period, because of the view that philosophers
should stand aloof from practical life. This, it is said, will
have been in connexion with his unfortunate experiences
during his later visits to Syracuse and his own isolation from
practical life. On the other hand, the Laws, his latest work,
shows the philosopher in close relation with practical life.
The Republic is Plato's greatest achievement in its com-
bination of range of thinking with literary effect. Close
inspection, however, shows signs of aggregation at different
times. Books I and II on Justice are quite Socratic, and
may well have been written in his first period of pro-
duction. After Book I, which leads to no positive result,
we have two great divisions : (i) a complete political theory
(II-IV and most of V; Books VIII and IX are also
political) ; (ii) in relation to (i), a theory of knowledge (V VIII
and X). In this second division the Republic should be
taken in conjunction with the Thecetetus ; it takes a positive
dogmatic attitude with regard to those points which the
latter treats in form of search. It is probable that this
(excepting Book X) is the only part of the Republic written
in the third period, showing Plato's theory as it does, in the
more developed stage.
The German line of thought tends to regard Plato as
a connected and consistent thinker. Grote, on the other
hand, finds him inconsistent with himself at different stages
of his philosophy. It is for us to distinguish him in his nega-
tive attitude (Thecelelus) and his positive attitude (Republic).
204 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
It is in the philosophical part of the Republic that the latter,
viz. his dogmatic Idealism, is most fixed and characteristic,
though not yet in its final form. It undergoes further
development in the Parmenides, Sophisies, Philebus, and
Ttmaus, certain parts of the Republic theory being dropped,
others exclusively developed and emphasised, though nothing
is added.
Now the Thecctdus is obviously preparatory to a possible
solution of the question of the problem of knowledge
universally put, first in Phccdo and Republic, later in Par-
menides, Sophistes, Philebus, and Timccus, which four embody
the earlier solution in a modified form. It sweeps away
previous insufficient solutions as a preparation for one that
shall be complete, while itself containing no direct statement
of his ideas. Is then the Thecetdus preparatory to the Republic
and Phcedo (ante B.C. 367), or to the remaining four
(post 360)?
We must distinguish, in the dialogue, the essential from
the unessential. It has two episodes, very striking but not
related to the general argument, viz. an artistic description
of the Socratic method, and a comparison of the man of
the world with the philosopher. The brilliancy of these
episodes makes many call the dialogue an early work, the
later dialogues not containing writings of this kind, but this
does not prove much. However that may be, apart from these
episodes we get a consideration of three answers to the
question What is knowledge (eVrtor^iij) ? current in Plato's
day: (i) Knowledge is sense-perception; (2) Knowledge
is true opinion ; (3) Knowledge is true opinion, p,era Xoyov, i.e.
with a rational explanation or definition. All these views
had unquestionably found expression before Plato wrote,
though, except the first, not before Socrates lived. Plato
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 205
found them all insufficient. He first assigns (i) to Pro-
tagoras, then connects it with the Heracleitean doctrine of
perpetual flux. All the physicists, so far as they touched
on the problem of knowledge at all, gave the first answer.
It is doubtful whether it really coincided with all that
Protagoras meant when he put forward his doctrine of
homo mensura; it remains the obvious answer of practical
every-day men.
Note in passing the remarkable affinity of Protagoras
and Hume. Both were Individualists and Relativists ; and
Protagoras anticipated many of Hume's sceptical results.
His treatise on Truth, from which Plato quotes, was pro-
bably not a developed consideration of the subject, or we
should have more of it in the Theatetus. Plato himself
developed the view of Protagoras, imputing to him a more
thorough-going notion of the relativity of sense than even
the latter held, and thus makes way for his own position.
By exaggerating the relativity of sense he throws us back
on something opposed to sense ; whereas modern philosophy
has shown that, even though sense as such is not knowledge,
there is no real knowledge apart from sense.
The third view of knowledge belongs in a sense to
Socrates and Plato themselves, /*era Xo'you referring either
to the Socratic definition by enumeration of elements, or to
the earlier Platonic definition by characteristic difference.
The second view joins closely to the first and belongs to no
particular thinker. In explaining it Plato shows pyscho-
logically that opinion is sense intelligently interpreted, i.e.
is perception involving representation. (This he illustrates
by the metaphors of wax and the pigeons.) Here, while
he makes light of the view as answering his epistemo-
logical question, he shows great psychological insight, his
206 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
explanation of perception being worthy of ranking beside
Hume's account of imagination.
The argument that knowledge is sensation, is disposed
of by Plato through the fact that knowledge is the activity of
the soul itself. If we see, it is through the soul's instrument.
The cognition of the soul, i.e. its powers of comparison, are
not attainable through sense. Sense is not even an element
of knowledge.
This last assertion is Plato's characteristic exaggeration,
and leads up to his theory that knowledge consists in merely
thinking of our ideas. How this position was taken up and
modified by modern Rationalist thought, how Locke and his
school vindicated sense, how for Condillac knowledge was
sense transformed, how Kant developed Leibniz's conception
of knowledge as arising from intellectual predispositions
into ' forms,' while requiring sense to furnish ' matter,' we
have already seen. After all Plato may be said to have
adumbrated modern views, for he practically committed
himself to the doctrine that knowledge is an affair of mental
activity, the furnishing forth of certain ideas (KOIVO) on
occasion, and by comparison, of sensations.
Into his discussion of ' Knowledge is true opinion,' Plato
again insinuates much acute psychology, especially as to
the imagination that is present in perception (true opinion),
and distinguishes the latter from illusion (false opinion).
Opinion, for him, is intellectual representation of sense.
Note the grounds on which, namely, in the example of the
lawyer, he bases his rejection of this definition of knowledge :
the argument is another preparation for his theory of
ideas. True opinion rests on intelligent perception of sense
(answer 2 being resolved into answer i), and therefore, being
concerned with sense, is not knowledge. On his distinction
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 207
between opinion (So') and thinking (&a/oia) he bases his
whole theory of ideas.
The third view breaks down because Xo'yor, in any of
its three senses, viz. description, induction of particulars,
division (bringing species under genus), is shown to be
involved in the meaning of opinion is a working with
sense, i. e. with particular experience relative to the individual
and is therefore no adequate expression of knowledge.
Hence answer (3) is resolved into answers (i) and (2). The
dialogue ends abruptly.
Plato's theory of knowledge in the Republic is set forth
in connexion with the education of the Guardian or philo-
sopher. Thus this epistemology is linked with his doctrine
of the state and the notion of virtue. Here (end of Book V)
he recognises knowledge and opinion as opposed. But
afterwards we find him opposing knowledge (having being
for its object) to ignorance (as related to the non-existent),
opinion coming midway (having as its object multiplex
experience). Later on, however (end of Book VI), igno-
rance is dropped from consideration. None of the diffi-
culties discussed in the Thecetetns occur here ; they have either
vanished or not yet arisen, according to the date of the
latter. Plato dwells rather on multiplicity than on becoming,
distinguishing the Idea from its manifold manifestations. His
great positive doctrine grew up in him in relation to the view
of Socrates, that knowledge is of the universal. Socrates
cared only for general ethical conceptions ; and he sought
to get at our concepts or universal notions, for purposes of
regulation, by means of analysis or definition. Plato applied
the Socratic analysis (explication, definition) of the ethical
notion to metaphysic. The object of knowledge, he
maintained, is more real than the object of opinion or of
2o8 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
sense. The idea is what really is, though the object of
opinion is related to the idea. Nevertheless the ethical
conception is uppermost with Plato also. The idea of the
Good is the highest with which knowledge is conversant,
and is its ultimate end.
In the sixth book Plato works out the philosopher's
position in the world and the state. We may in this con-
nexion compare the first two-thirds of the book with the
episode of the philosopher and the man of the world in the
Thecctetus. The strain is the same, although in the Republic
there is the additional and apparently inconsistent conception
that the philosopher, even if unpractical, ought to be ruler.
After this episode Plato again reverts to epistemology in a
passage of great importance. Note how he dwells on the
idea of the Good as the highest with which knowledge is con-
versant, how it is related to other ideas, and finally the illus-
tration of the sun. Good is the ultimate end of knowledge,
the true aim of all real philosophy.
In the last pages of this book he advances beyond his
position, at the end of Book V, as to knowledge and opinion
(illustrated by the section of a line), in distinguishing between
the work of reason (vovs) and that of understanding (Siui/ota),
and between opinion as belief (TTIO-TIS:) and as conjecture
(eiVaerui), both belief and conjecture being concerned with
particulars, that is, with sense-experience. In both reason
and understanding we are occupied with ideas, with the
abstract, with knowledge, but in understanding we bring in
certain sensible manifestations, namely, in mathematics, the
highest of the special sciences, while in purely rational know-
ledge we are occupied with pure ideas (dialectic). Thus the
doctrine given in Book V is here expanded and developed.
But distinguish carefully the method of dialectic and the method
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 209
of dianoetic (special science). Plato is very modern here, and
it was he who originated the distinction between reason and
understanding. He practically marked out the whole sphere of
philosophy. In the seventh book he gives a most remarkable
classification of the sciences, which holds against some of the
present day \
Dialectic is rational conversance with ideas, is in fact philo-
sophy. As method Plato opposes it to that of the sciences,
taking mathematics as representing the latter. Mathematics,
he said, starts from hypotheses, working deductively by
synthetic combination, without going back to question the
fundamental data (axioms and definitions) whence it starts,
whereas the philosopher is concerned to inquire into these.
Philosophy is conversant with ideas as such; science, with
ideas as they may be sensibly represented.
Mathematics is often spoken of as the only differentiated
science in ancient time ; in Plato, however, a multiplicity
of sciences is mentioned. And note the order of study in
the sciences prescribed, after music and gymnastics, under the
system of training for a philosopher. The philosopher is to
be trained in the abstract consideration of sensible things, as
suggestive of reality beyond sense. Scientific considerations
should lead up to philosophy. Under the former the most
prominent is the numerical aspect of things. It was not till
Post-Platonic thought that arithmetic was subordinated to
geometry. Euclid, for example, gives his arithmetical theory
of proportions (Books VI-IX) after treating (in Books I-IV)
of notions of space. But arithmetic is more general, and
Comte followed Plato in giving it priority as an abstract
science of wider application than geometry. Plato, again,
1 The simile of the cave in Book VII is an application of the end
of Book VI.
210 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
saw that before we pass from the formal to the actual con-
sideration of things we must deal with solid geometry and
astronomy. Comte followed him here also, including physics.
Plato's statements show that physics was studied in his time,
but it was not till Galileo that its position was rightly
recognised.
In Book X of the Republic we have a statement of Plato's
theory of ideas (see ante, Lecture VIII). The meaning
attached by him to idea is not the more modern one of merely
' something before the mind,' but that of something objectively
real a meaning that comes out in the equivalent term ' form.'
Corresponding to any concept, which we form psychologically
by bringing together a multitude of particular experiences,
there is in the region of existence, of reality, a Form or Idea.
We get, for example, a concept of ' bad ' by comparison of
particular bad things, but there is a real Bad to which our
concept is related. Six different kinds of Ideas are put
forward in the Republic : (i) The supreme Idea, that of the
Good. Plato sought to establish a hierarchy of ideas, headed
by this one, but when he tries to fix the relation of the Good
to other ideas, he betrays uncertainty and incompleteness.
(2) Ideas of qualities akin to the Good, e.g. the just, the
honourable, &c. (3) Ideas of natural objects man, horse, &c.
(4) Ideas of artificial things, e. g. bed. (5) Ideas of relations,
such as equal, like, &c. (6) Ideas of qualities antagonistic
to the Good, e. g. unjust.
Such is the only way in which he could account for know-
ledge. In the Phcedo, where the epistemological position is
parallel to that in the Republic, he entered more closely into
the relation of the particular to the universal, of the particular
thing of sense to the pure form or idea. Things of sense
have a reality, he found, only to the extent that they have
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 211
participation in (/ue&r), or presence of (irapovo-ia), the idea,
or communion (KOIVUVLO) of the idea with the thing. And
because there are ultimate realities in which sensible things
participate, therefore knowledge is possible. From sense we
may mount up to the real, using especially mathematics as
an aid.
Aristotle, in his theorising concerning knowledge, which
occurs especially in the Metaphysica, criticises Plato's episte-
mology and sets up a counter-theory. Reality appeared to
him an ambiguous term, but lay rather in the concrete parti-
cular thing than in the universal or Platonic Idea, yet for him
too, although he allowed that the particular does really exist,
knowledge is of the universal only. Again, therefore, there
arises the question of the relation between universal and
particular, which he settled by his theory of essence.
Now Aristotle's criticisms referred to a later development of
Plato's theory than that given in the Republic, for according to
Aristotle the Ideas were of natural things, but not of artificial
things or relations. Already in this dialogue and the Phcedo,
Plato expresses dissatisfaction with his theory, and proceeds
in the Parmenides, as well as in the Sophtstes, Philebus, and
Timceiis, to criticise it, his criticism in the first-named being
more shrewd and trenchant than Aristotle's. We find him, for
instance, anticipating the latter's objection of the ' third man.'
But his treatment here is negative only ; the self-criticism is
not final, as Grote suggested ; yet he maintains that knowledge
is impossible without a theory of ideas as real existences. It
is in the Timizus that we find the ultimate expression of his
doctrine, propounded \vith more confidence and definiteness,
although in mythological form, than in any other dialogue, and
in a way intended to evade the objections raised in the
Parmenides. Here all Ideas are discarded save those of the
p 2
212 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Good and of Natural Kinds, and it is a question whether
from these he does not exclude all that are not living things
(including plants). Again in opposing things that are to
things that are merely becoming, i. e. things of sense, he no
longer looks askance at the latter as in the Republic, but
attempts to show how, by positing the Ideas of the Good and
of Natural Kinds, we can account for things as we find them
for the coming into existence of the natural world. He gives
us in fact a cosmogony. He is eager no longer to get from
the things of sense to reality, but from the region of reality to
come down to an explanation of our actual experience. The
crude position taken up in the Republic has been transformed
into an absolute Idealism. The only thing that really is,
is mind Mind the Universal, and finite minds in relation to,
being the outcome of, the Universal Mind. Experience is the
mode in which particular minds can take in the ultimate
reality that is concentrated in the Universal Mind. Thus the
form of doctrine in the Ttmccus is more mystical, more removed
from actual experience, and yet it is given to account for this
experience, and not as in the Republic to shun all explanation.
The Idea is no longer a reality apart ; ultimate reality is now
for him certain types of things in the universal mind, and
particular things are related to these types, not as participating
in them that theory has dropped out but as images or like-
nesses of a pattern, model or archetype (Trapd8fiyfj.a). They
are the way in which the finite mind of man represents to itself
the thought of the universal or divine mind. Only Hegel
reached a more extreme form of Idealism than this.
We see then that between the earlier position of the Republic
and the later one of the Tim&us, the The&letus is important
as indicating transition. The Parmenides is destructive ; the
Theatetus points the way to reconstruction. With the final
xx.] Elements of General Philosophy. 213
view given in the Timceus Plato never shows dissatisfaction.
His position is constant to this extent, that knowledge for
him from first to last is conversance of mind with ideas as such,
is an affair of the soul's activity : we know by something fur-
nished forth by the mind. The theory of knowledge being
attained by way of reminiscence derived from previous exist-
ence as held in the Phado, makes way for what is the relatively
sane doctrine of the Timceus.
Now the Theatetus is preparatory to a theory of ideas. The
question is, which theory ? The earlier or the later ? Its form
connects the dialogue with the Republic, but close inspection
reveals declarations inconsistent with this, viz. Mind knows
common notions (wivd) by comparison of particulars, and
knows them only through this process. Whereas in the Republic
we find relations (of likeness, &c.) existing already as ideas
side by side with ideas of things. In the Thecetetus Socrates
tests his own size by comparing himself with different people.
In the Phcedo Socrates is said to discover his own relative size
through participating in the Ideas of smallness and largeness.
In such ways the Thecstetus may be shown as inconsistent
with the Republic and Phcedo, but not with the Timceus.
Hence it is probable that the first draft of the Thecctetus was
a negative preparation for the Republic, written about the same
time, but recast later when Plato had otherwise or more fully
developed his theory of ideas. The suggestions in it that are
assignable to Plato himself are developed not in the Republic
but in later dialogues. Plato could not have committed him-
self to certain positions in the Republic after those he assumed
in the Thecetetus. Moreover the Sophist carries on the argu-
ment of the latter, and is again connected with the Politicus,
the three forming a trilogy. Thus the stage of thought in the
Thecetetus is later than that in the Republic.
LECTURE XXI.
ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE 1 .
READING. Aristotle's Psychology, Greek and English, with Introduc-
tion and Notes by Edwin Wallace, 1882. Aristotle, by George
Grote, edited by Alexander Bain and G. C. Robertson, 1883,
ch. xii. Mental Science, by Alexander Bain, 1884, Appendix B,
pp. 33-42, (written by Grote). Reid's Works, edited by Hamilton.
Note D, pp. 826-30. Also Ueberweg's, Erdmann's or Schwegler's
(latest German edition) histories of philosophy on Aristotle.
ARISTOTLE, truly named ' the master of those who know,'
the most encyclopaedic of thinkers, was a great pathfinder
in both science and philosophy. He is the creator of Logic,
and he knew it (v. Grote, pp. 419-20); he also laid the
foundations of scientific psychology. The condition of the
advancement of a science is that it shall be broken off from
its surroundings and worked at separately. The first to be
separated, Mathematics, is also the most highly perfected.
Psychology till the last generation had not been broken off;
to the circumstance that it has now been singled out for
separate treatment it owes its advance within recent years.
Aristotle had an overpowering sense of the relation of
psychology to philosophy, yet to a great extent he separates
psychology in a manner that is very modern ; unfortunately
his successors did not do so. There is hardly a suggestion
1 From a special course on the De Anima, Oct.-Dec., 1890.
Elements of General Philosophy. 215
made by modern psychologists as to the lines on which
psychology might have advanced that was not anticipated
by Aristotle. Psychology is a science apart, of a special
character, self-contained. It is science in respect of method,
philosophy in respect of scope. Philosophy depends on
psychological insight, but psychology itself is concerned with
mind as it appears, and does not deal with the question of
the ultimate nature of the soul. Aristotle however includes
this question in his psychology, treating the science both as
empirical and as rational (i.e. metaphysically).
He commences his analysis in the De Anima with a
metaphysical definition of ' soul/ his psychological notions
being overridden by his desire to fit soul into that ' First
Philosophy/ as he called it, which for him was not the crown
but the basis of his system of knowledge. It is possibly
a pity that he committed himself at the start, instead of
building up his metaphysic inductively, for his metaphysic is
the most developed part of his work. Herein successive
philosophers have been no wiser than he, with the exception
of the school of modern psychology, the impetus of which
was given by England and Scotland, but which, no longer as at
one time a national study, is now chiefly, though by no means
exclusively, carried on by Germans. Scholars of other nations
have broken up that national characteristic just because, and
in as far as, they have put aside metaphysical presuppositions.
On the other hand, all in this country who have come under
the Kantian influence have inverted the order of English
thought. Even Mr. Spencer, our most scientific philosopher,
has broken away from English tradition, and begins his
system with an attempted solution of the riddle of the universe.
Whereas psychology that is scientific in method, from the
outset takes mental facts as they are found, and treats them
216 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
as far as possible apart from a metaphysical basis. Agree-
ment is so much more likely in psychology though desirable
enough in philosophy that it is best to carry on psychological
research, and be patient in philosophical conclusions. For
example, how does Aristotle's definition of soul help us in
his psychology, however intelligible that definition by his
first philosophy may be ? It had been better had he limited
his psychological inquiry to the manifestations of mind or
soul in all living things.
As to the method of psychology, he asks, (i) Can we get
at the truths of psychology as with mathematics by demon-
stration (dnoSftgis) or the synthetic method ? Or (2) can we
by analysis (diaipea-is, to be taken in its evident meaning and
not, as Wallace says, as the Platonic division), i.e. take
consciousness as it is and break it up ? Or (3) may the two
be combined? His answer to (i) is, No; psychology is not
a pure deductive science, and cannot therefore be so treated.
But if we cannot start with what a thing is and work down
to the properties of it, we can start from the properties and
go up from them to the complete conception l .
Consider now Aristotle's account of the traditions of
thought he had inherited. Greek philosophy before Aristotle
culminates in Plato and Democritus. By these two philo-
sophers Aristotle thinks ; to both he is related : to Democritus,
whose chief theory is the ' moving ' power of soul, and to
1 I do not approve in this connexion (Bk. I, ch. i. n) of Wallace's
translating SiaXeKTiKos by transcendentalist. A dialectician is a logician
chiefly on the side on which the latter deals with ivords. He also
deals with probabilities ; he is a bare speculator as opposed to one
dealing with facts ; he is occupied with playing with words as opposed
to real science. He works deductively apart from facts. A (pvaiKos
on the other hand is one who buries himself in facts and works
inductively. Aristotle's business is with facts.
xxi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 217
Plato, whose chief stress is laid on soul as thinking. Plato
also supports the theory of the moving power of soul. And
though they are mutually antithetical, both together form an
antithesis to Aristotle. He puts forward Democritus as the
typical upholder of the theory of soul as moving, and Plato
as the emphasiser of soul as cognitive (as well as of soul as
moving). Thus, from Aristotle's opposition to both these
theories, the antithesis between the Idealism or Spiritualism
of the one and the Materialism or Atomism of the other does
not appear in his works. Aristotle allowed that all movement
in the organism has a mental basis, yet this power of motion
is not, he considered, the chief characteristic of soul. Nor,
again, does he deny that mind (or soul) is cognitive, but he
rejected the then prevalent doctrine of how mind moves and
knows. The prevalent doctrine of cognition, followed by
Democritus and Plato, and set forth by Empedocles (of
Agrigentum, fl. B.C. 444), lay in the supposed likeness or
homogeneity between the elements of mind and those of
which external things consist, in virtue of which, on occasion
of contact between effluent mental elements and effluent
external things, perception could and did come to pass. In
his opposition to these three thinkers Aristotle seems to have
been working towards the modern distinction between subjec-
tive and objective. Subjectivity as the characteristic of mind
is not stated by him, yet he implies it. The characteristic
of mind lay for him neither in power to move body, nor in
cognition, nor in knowing like through being like. Refusing
to consider mind as body, or yet apart from body, he op-
posed to the physical side what was in reality the subjective
side, although he termed it form (fldos) or entelechy, as
that which, in forming body, gives reality or actuality to it
(I, ii-II, i).
218 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
There was at first in the history of Greek philosophy no
thought of opposing mind to matter; that idea was of very
gradual development; in Pythagoras \ve get more away
from object; in the nous of Anaxagoras we get the first
suggestion of subject. And note how Socrates, the con-
temporary of Anaxagoras, gets on to concepts and away from
the external, though without any distinct theory. Here then
it is that Greek philosophy properly so called at least as
I understand philosophy may be said to begin. In his
pre-philosophic thinking however, proceeding as this does
by way of Animism, man does not refuse to consider mind,
nor does he wait to make the distinction between mind and
body, which again emerges when he has begun to philosophise.
And this distinction he makes not only in himself but in
everything. Not only has he a soul, but so also have all, even
inanimate, things stones, rivers, &c. What for him is soul ?
Another kind of body, ethereal, attenuated, but still a body
within the body. The idea will first have sprung from
the thought of dream -life, when the body is stationary, but
the spirit goes abroad, hunts, fights, &c., in the man's own
shape. The ghost-story is a survival of this.
Now how far are there traces of this in early Greek
philosophy ? We find all Aristotle's criticism of Democritus
(in the De Anima) directed against a kind of semi-scientific
animism. And we may suppose that Thales and his
successors, by occupying themselves with the object-world
alone, and dropping all reference to the soul, emerged from
the prevailing animism, till in this respect and to this extent
Democritus. with his atomistic theory, set forth what was an
unconsciously transformed animism. Plato, again, Im-
materialist as he was, making the soul's immateriality a
ground for its immortality, has remnants of primitive animism
xxi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 219
in him. He speaks, metaphorically if not literally, of the
soul being extended in the body, and so he too incurs
Aristotle's criticism. Both Aristotle, however, and in modern
times Grote, have taken Plato too literally to do justice to his
poetical mode of exposition. But wherever Plato stands
as to animism, Aristotle at least is absolutely free from it, as
is shown by his attacks on Plato and Democritus. Modern
science in speaking of mind as subjective is non-animistic,
but not more so than Aristotle was.
Not that animism died through Aristotle ! It reappears in
Epicurus, and in the early Christian Fathers in Tertullian,
e.g., who even ridiculed the non-animistic position and
in Jewish thought both before and in the Christian era. In
proportion as mediaeval thinkers follow Aristotle they are
rid of animism. But it was not till Descartes that for
philosophy at least the idea was destroyed, and the notion of
mind as non-extended finally accepted. To-day students
of physical science are in the position of the earliest Greek
thinkers, setting aside mind altogether in order to consider
external facts.
Yet Aristotle, Immaterialist as he was. would not take soul
apart from body, but held that we can only study mind in
relation to body, and as manifested in all sentient beings 1 .
See how, in default of the notion of subjective, he brings out
logos, in calling mental states Xo'yot eWXot a logical, as
opposed to a physical view 2 . It is true that in relating mind
to body he makes some reservation in the case of the vovs,
and almost commits himself to saying that thinking has no
relation to body. Yet his meaning is rather that thought is
1 Cf. e.g. his allusion to anger. De Anima, I, ch. i. 10, n.
2 ' ... it is clear that the feelings (iiaQr)} are materialised notions
(\6yot fvv\oi\' Ibid.
220 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
distinguishable, not x <a P l < TT v , or separable, from body. Never
does he say, like Plato, that mind is incorporeal, immaterial x .
Plato, for that matter, is inconsistent on this point. In the
Phccdo he says that mind or soul is absolutely incorporeal ;
in the Republic and Ttmccus he lodges it about the body and
holds that only thinking goes on in the brain. This was
owing to Plato's psychology being so far unscientific as to
serve a purpose, either political, ethical or theological. In the
TimcEus he is a speculative theologian, considering the self-
manifestation of God ; in the Republic he is philosophising,
ethically and politically. Hence his concepts and language
vary with his different standpoints. Whereas Aristotle, as
far as he went, was thoroughgoing and consistent.
As to Aristotle's definition of mind as entelechy, or ' first
entelechy/ no word perhaps better interprets this in its bearing
upon body than that generally adopted of realisation or
actualisation. Mind as form gives reality or actuality to body,
which without its in-working (fvepyeia) remains merely a
potentiality (8vvap.is} like unhewn stone. Mind is implicated
in body, but is distinguishable from, superior, prior to it.
Mind is not body, nor yet a harmony resulting from body,
but is necessary to give body a real existence (II, ch. i).
The force however in the term entelechy lay for Aristotle
in the telos end or purpose. What most struck him in the
universe was end or purpose everywhere inherent. A thing,
he held, was real in so far as it had an end or purpose
of its own, more or less, if animate ; if inanimate, not of its
own. And the higher animate beings are conscious of their
1 This is "said with reference to the individual human mind, and
not to the vovs \upioTiis or cosmic mind, which as an ontologically
prior reality Aristotle calls aira.0rjs teal a/Myris (De An. iii. 5). See
infra, p. 227, and p. 229. ED.
XXL] Elements of General Philosophy. 221
end ; they are self-realising. Now in proportion as there is
the getting an end to the individual existence and the working
towards it, there is mind manifested. Mind or soul is a kind
of life, and life as mentally endowed is self-realising. Aristotle
first introduced the idea of an organ, of something formed to
carry out a particular purpose or function. The notion of
organism as distinct from a mechanical aggregate was that
which subserves a purpose, and, in a mental organism, its
own purpose. Object subjectively realised, object realised
by a subject who knows this was what he was really groping
after and working towards. This comes out, for instance, in
his theory of sensation, and, by rendering it epistemological,
spoils it as psychology (II, ch. iv. 1-6).
Aristotle's division or scheme of soul nutritive, sentient,
cognitive (the last I have condensed, since the division is
practically threefold) is not a logical division under a genus,
but is in the order of increasing connotation. Its divisions
are rather to be described as stages in the development
of soul, constituting an evolutionary concept, as Grote might
have called it, or concept of the gradual differentiation or
progressive development of mind a wonderful stroke of
insight, and a striking advance on Plato's psychology '.
There is a verbal likeness to Plato's three-fold phase or
division of soul the appetitive, the passionate, the rational
but this distinction was intended to subserve an ethical
purpose, and is not fertile scientifically. Aristotle's scheme
is good psychology. His kinds of soul are stages of psychic
development, just as we call sense not a division in psychic
1 Note him. in I, i. 6 and elsewhere, 'worrying' over the choice
between a faculty-theory and an inquiry into facts and laws deter-
mining facts ; now keeping clear of the former and now getting
entangled.
222 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
life but a stage, inasmuch as children feel, will and know in
relation to sense alone (Elements of Psychology, Lect. VIII).
The chapters on Sense (Book III, i-ii) are very remarkable.
The first serious attempt to form a theory of sense in Greece
was that made by Democritus a theory so effectively
striking that we still use his terms. Things, he held, are
constantly throwing off images (u'SwAa), which pass into the
body through the peripheries of the sense-organs and are
stored up in the brain to be produced by memory. This he
connects with his general atomistic theory. He makes all
the organs of sense developments of Touch, a view that is
to a great extent borne out by modern biology with regard to
taste and smell, and perhaps to hearing and sight, although
with regard to sight embryology presents difficulties.
Plato had no proper doctrine of sense ; he considered the
subject rather from an ascetic point of view. The Sophists
however had anticipated some of the modern theories,
especially that of primary and secondary qualities, and
generally of qualities as subjective experiences of our own
which we project into objects. This was pre-eminently the
case with Protagoras in his sceptical conclusion as to reality
that ' truth is what each man troweth. ' Their doctrine, it is
true, was not based on any scientific theory of sense. Plato,
as we know, understood this doctrine of sense, but cared not
for it. Knowledge, as he conceived it, lay elsewhere.
Now Aristotle, while he is unanticipated in the account he
gives of the different kinds of sensation, is reactionary with
respect to the Sophistic theory of the relativity of sense. He
does not distinguish between primary and secondary qualities
of matter ; all qualities for him are primary, embedded in
things. He upholds the immanence, for example, of colour.
The deficiencies in his doctrine of sense arise from his total
xxi.J Elements of General Philosophy. 223
ignorance of the physiology of the nervous system as involved
in sensation. Of this Plato had gathered some notion from
Hippocrates and others.
Again he makes no distinction between sensation and
perception. But his account of sense is very good and in
earnest, complicated though it is by the philosophical question
of the relation of subject to object 1 . He insists on the
fundamental importance, psychological and philosophical, of
Touch, and opposes to it the other senses as not needing
a medium. Yet even in Touch there is a kind of medium,
namely, the skin.
He saw in sensation a process to be explained in terms
of motion, the transmission of a movement from object to
organ. Nevertheless he had no clear physical doctrines
of medium or movement ; his concepts are metaphysical.
Do not be beguiled into seeking parallels with modern
mechanical concepts : Aristotle had no notion of the part
played by nerve-centres, while we cannot define sensation out
of relation to these. On molecular transmission he has fallen
back from the position reached by Democritus, Hippocrates
and Plato, who discerned atomic motion continued inside.
He also has fallen behind them with respect to the subjectivity
of sensation, a theory, for that matter, not fully developed
till the days of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley. He got
instead into bad rnetaphysic as to the relation of object and
subject, finding colour, sound, &c., really in things ; he
expressly rejected Protagoreanism, and saved himself by
juggling more or less with Swa^eT, and ('vepyeia. In our day
it is said that colour, physically speaking, is the result of
1 E.g. Book II. ch. v. That Aristotle neglects to distinguish in
either case is overlooked by Wallace, whose psychology is not his
strongest point.
224 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
molecular motion in object, medium and brain, and that,
when these movements are propagated up to the brain, then,
psychologically speaking, a state of consciousness follows.
And we find that we ought not to pretend to get farther
towards bringing nerves and consciousness together; indeed
that we never shall. Aristotle's theory was that there is a
potency in the object and a potency in the organism, and
that by contact we get an actuality through both, a ratio
established between object and organism by way of a medium.
Grote will here be found helpful, but he is not justified in
identifying the visual medium with ether, nor with our
concept of mode of motion. Aristotle was only able to
invent the abstraction ' transparency.' Note too with caution
Grote's big words for the medium in hearing and in smell.
Aristotle gives good description but no scientific account ; he
gives no efficient explanation, metaphysical, scientific or any
other. We do not want a ' logos ' between sensation and
object.
Some of the questions raised in the third Book (chh. i, ii)
are of great psychological import ; some are trivial, e. g. the
first : why we can have only five senses, the answer con-
necting them with the ' four elements.' We actually have
more ; animals may have more ; we may be developing more.
But in Aristotle's day there was no fund of positive know-
ledge as a basis for further inquiry.
Part of his doctrine of sensation Aristotle only indicates
here ; it is to be sought in the De Sensu. Grote's references
to it should be attended to, especially the passages con-
cerning our apprehension of the ' common sensibles ' (rd
KOivd ala-dijTa) and our associations of two ' sensibles.' Aris-
totle there treats of the ' first sentient ' (n-paTov alvBrfnriv),
or ' sensorium commune,' the medium between soul and
xxi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 225
sense-organ. This, physically speaking, is for him the heart.
All the streams of movement contributed by the senses go
to the heart by way not of the blood but of the hot air in
the blood, and when the heart is reached by the disturbance
then there is consciousness. Thus he conceived sense as one,
fed by many currents, or as one stem with many branches.
Hence, he thought, we can have sensations common to
different senses, while we can also distinguish between
sensations of different senses. Here we have the herald of
the expression sensus commum's, or general sense (Cf. Elements
of Psychology, Lect. IX). In the De Sensu the term Koivfj
ma-Brjais is used with a purely psychological meaning.
Note how, though in a crude way, he raises the question
of self-consciousness : seeing, e. g., and ' perceiving ' that we
see (Book II, ch. ii).
Grote's very cursory notice of Aristotle's ' common sensibles'
is a defect. No doctrine has had a more remarkable develop-
ment than this. Hamilton (in his ' Note D ' on Reid) brings
out a complete coincidence between it and the doctrine of
Primary and Secondary Qualities. He goes so far as to
think that the Koina aistheta may be reconciled with Reid's
common sense. Perhaps so, yet Aristotle is never meta-
physical on this point. Democritus and Protagoras had
some such distinction, viz. between qualities that were really
in things, such as motion, and qualities imputed to things,
such as colour, which were derived from the former and are
thus really modes of motion. Aristotle called them (III,
chapter ii, 8) partly right, partly wrong. Not wholly
rejecting their Relativism he did not like it, and evaded it
by rendering all sensations in terms of matter and form.
This, though it was a large, coherent doctrine, was scien-
tifically retrograde. All progress since Descartes has been
Q
226 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
on Democritean lines. Aristotle's matter and form is no
real advance, is not his strong point.
But if this is so, if Aristotle denies subjectivity not only in
primary but also in secondary qualities, then Hamilton's
parallel is upset. For the latter there is a reason, if not an
excuse. Aristotle's Koitia happen to coincide in the main
with primary qualities. But the doctrine of the Qualities is
metaphysical with a psychological basis, whereas Aristotle's
distinction between common and particular 'sensibles' is
purely psychological. He has plenty of metaphysic, but this
special distinction was not made by him psychologically as
a basis for metaphysic as we make it, or rather as Reid and
Hamilton made it. But both these thinkers invariably
confused psychology with philosophy. Aristotle dimly sees
the force there is in the term Koina, but does not realise it
(as, e. g. in his allusion to touch and sight, Grote, p. 465 c).
Since Berkeley we have denied that the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities is valid ; Protagoras saw
this too. Knowing what we do as to the coefficient of
muscular sense in sight and touch we say, as against
Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Aristotle, that the senses do
not as such give us ' common sensibles.' Aristotle's followers
themselves soon grew dissatisfied and imputed our appre-
hension of the Koina to intellect, or rational apprehension.
Apart from muscular sense, they cannot be psychologically
explained, and it was through neglecting this that the
Scottish school fell back on common sense, belief, law of
the conditioned and so forth.
Next 5 we have Aristotle's doctrine of reason (i>oCy), with
the interpolated discussion of imagination or phantasy
1 Book III, chh. iii.-viii. These should not only be read but
worried at. Wallace's introduction is not very helpful.
xxi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 227
(<airao-t'a). This, like perception, may be viewed either
subjectively or on its physiological side. Aristotle considers
both aspects, giving in the germ what in this century has been
developed by Professor Bain, who uses ' idea ' for ' image.'
The subject is treated more fully in the treatise De Memoria,
where memory is distinguished as imagination with a definite
temporal reference (modern psychology can say little more),
and where there are suggestions of laws of association
contiguity, similarity and contrast. Now Aristotle only
notices association in connexion with reminiscence. This
is a defect. Under association we simply refer to certain
modes in the ' flow ' of our images, whereas reminiscence
is a complex intellectual function involving volition.
Why should there be so little here on imagination ?
Aristotle's whole doctrine of the psychology of representative
intellection is very undeveloped, inasmuch as his discussion
is rather epistemological than psychological, namely, on the
relation of thought to its object ; more, it is metaphysical or
ontological, involving reference to an outer sphere of real
being. And his metaphysic vitiates his psychology here
even more than in his doctrine of sense. He asks whether
images (^ai/roo-^ara) are true or false ; these are matters of
opinion (8o'o), and opinion may be either. But this is not
psychology. It is only in the De Memona that in this
connexion he is properly psychological.
Even there we find the assertion that nous comes into man
from without (QvpaBev). Aristotle could not in fact quite
overcome the Zeitgeist of his age and his environment Nor
had he Plato's poetic mantle to throw around himself; he is
nothing if not literal and prosaic. Grote's discursus at
this stage (p. 480 et seq.), connecting the #0fy-doctrine with
Aristotle's physics and cosmogony is quite justified by that
Q 2
228 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
phrase ' from without.' Aristotle saw that knowledge was
a philosophical question, yet he has not treated of it in the
Metaphysics, where his theme is of ' being as being,' always
excepting the first book, with its discussion of the principles
of knowledge and their relation to sense. Yet here Aristotle
had no idea of working out a theory of knowledge as
a necessary introduction to a theory of being. For us, as we
have seen (Lecture I),' problems of being have since Kant
come to be considered as subject to problems of knowledge.
It is through the doctrine of knowledge that we approach
ontological questions. Many a modern thinker has raised
philosophical questions in his psychology, but Aristotle
so rode off on them as to neglect the psychology of the
intellect. Yet he did not neglect to point out that reason
cannot work without images. Thought requires a basis
of representative imagination. This is all that he does for
the theory of thought as a mode of intellection.
Here note the remark in Grote (p. 484 and footnote f)
on Aristotle's ' Nominalism ' good in substance, though the
term is a misnomer, no reference having been made to
language in the De Anima. Aristotle only said that we
cannot conceive a general without a certain amount of
particulars. The Nominalist says that we cannot think
in general without the help of a name, that is, except by
means of language. This at least is Hobbes's Nominalism.
Berkeley's Nominalism holds that we cannot think without
a form, that is, without reference to the particular. Thus
Berkeley goes no farther than Aristotle. But there is no
Nominalism in the De Anima. To this extent it is defective,
that the relation of thought to language is passed over.
Yet Aristotle did see that the two are connected, are practi-
cally the same thing on different sides. This we see in
xxi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 229
his Logic, where he always deals with judgments on the side
of language, and with reasoning as expressed in arguments.
And suggestions that he saw this are to be found up and
down in the De Anima, yet they are barely to be so called.
All is quite implicit.
If Aristotle had carefully worked out the psychological
doctrine of thought, and considered the psychological func-
tion of language, he would have seen many of the difficul-
ties of his noils (so far as they were psychological) disappear
without the need of reference to celestial bodies. For the
question of thought suggests that of the community of know-
ledge, and it is this that troubles him How is it that we all
come to think alike ? How have we a common consciousness?
Imagination is of the individual consciousness, but that thought
is common consciousness (cf. Reid's 'Common Sense') is
inevitably begotten by a consideration of the psychology of
thought. It is to explain this that he goes out to the Kosmos,
to theories of the heavenly spheres, to an Eternal Nous, who
enters in and informs each of us, if not in full \ urity as with
God, yet so as, by acting on our imaginations, to emerge
in common consciousness. And all this to fill up the void
left by ignoring language as a social act, a bond holding
men together !
The relation of nous to mind or soul generally, and of nous
as active and passive, has formed the battle-ground of Aristo-
telian commentators all along, opportunity being given by
Aristotle's obscurities and deficiencies. For instance, while
Grote very decisively negatives the view that Aristotle pre-
dicated immortality of the individual intellect, the mediaeval
commentators argue with equal decision for the opposite con-
clusion. I think that he is too positive as to what Aristotle's
utterances may be held to warrant. Again, Grote speaks very
230 Elements of General Philosophy.
clearly on the contrast between reason as active and reason as
passive (vovs noirp-iKos, vovs TradrjTiKos, De. An. Ill, v). Wallace,
too, among the liberties he now and then takes in text and
translation, applies the former adjective to noils in his index.
Yet nowhere does Aristotle himself call noils active (TTO^TIKOS) ;
he only suggests the term.
I hold that Aristotle was staggering on this doubtful ground,
and that commentators have rushed in to wrangle where he
feared to tread.
Once more, if Aristotle compared mind at birth to a blank
writing-tablet, he meant only that the nous was not a fixed
body of innate principles, but something potential, which could
grow and develop.
NOTE. I much regret that no notes are forthcoming on Aristotle's
theory of conation (Book III, chh. ix-xi), with which the lecturer
had announced the intention of dealing at the end of the course. For
further discussion on emotion students were referred to Aristotle's
Rhetoric and Ethics. ED.
LECTURE XXII.
ON THE METHOD OF DESCARTES 1 .
READING. (Euvres de Descartes, ed. Jules Simon, 1844. ' Discours sur
la Methode.' (Euvres choisies de Descartes, ed. Gamier. 1876.
' Discours de la Methode;' 'Regies pour la Direction de 1'Esprit.'
The Method, Meditations, and Selections from the Principles of
Descartes, ed. J. Veitch, 1879. ' Discourse on Method.'
SUCH is the importance of Descartes in the history of
modern philosophy that it behoves us to enter in some detail
into the development of his thought. He, if any one, lets
us know especially in the Discourse on Method and the
Meditations what were the most intimate workings of his
thought, what he started from, what he came to, and what
he was aiming at. We must first see that we keep in mind
the circumstances of his life.
Born 1596, of a noble family in, though not of, Touraine,
Rene 1 des Cartes went at eight years of age, a lad weakly
in constitution but precocious, to the new and famous
Jesuit school of La Fleche, the Jesuits having returned to
France after the conversion of Henry IV. From the first
the Jesuits have sought to attract men of the world to the
Church by accommodating the Church to the world, chiefly
by giving a highly efficient secular education to the young.
They have always been well versed in the best thought of
1 From lectures delivered April to June, 1880.
232 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the country, and have bent that knowledge to the interests of
the Church ; but at the same time they have ever upheld and
still uphold the Scholastic philosophy, especially as taught
by Aquinas. Descartes' subsequent strictures on education
did not include any reflexion on his own teachers, with whom
he ever remained on friendly terms. Trained thoroughly
in Scholastic traditions, he was also made proficient in
mathematics. This had been neglected by the Schoolmen,
but had revived at the Renaissance, when the work both
of Euclid and of the Arabs (algebra) came to be known.
Bacon, who during Descartes' early youth was deep in
politics, and in the publication of the Advancement of
Learning and the Novum Organon, was almost absolutely
ignorant of mathematics, and had no notion of its use in the
study of nature. His Inductive Method has no place for
it, and hence he does not properly head the modern scientific
movement. To the extent that mathematics has rendered
the latter possible, Descartes is the pioneer. Wolsey's
chair of mathematics at Oxford was suspended after his
fall for a century. Hobbes while at Oxford (1603-8)
remained utterly ignorant of mathematics, and was over forty
when he first saw a copy of Euclid's Elements, whereas
Descartes was, like Pascal (his junior by twenty-seven years),
a mathematical discoverer in his early youth.
Till he was twenty-three he studied mathematics, either ex-
clusively and in seclusion, or in the intervals of military life.
It was when he was serving under Tilly, at the opening of
the Thirty Years' War, and was working still at mathematics
in winter-quarters at Neuburg, that the crisis of his philosophic
life occurred. He had been comparing the certainty of his
mathematical results with the doubtfulness of all other know-
ledge, and ihis brought him to a state of despair. Tempted
XXIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 233
to resort anywhere for light, he turned to magic ; then to
inspiration from prayer, vowing a pilgrimage to Loretto if he
could find peace of mind. Then came the day of seclusion,
' enferme' seul dans un poele ' (read the Discours, Part II).
Mathematics, he saw, led to conclusions positively true.
Could he not, by applying the method of mathematics to
knowledge generally, get truth in other subjects as well ?
After two more years of service and four of travel (in-
cluding the pilgrimage), studying, as he said, the book of the
world, he returned in 1625 to Paris, feeling that, if he had
not yet got certainty, at least he had got on to the right track.
There he alternately moved in scientific circles (no other
city had a mathematical circle), and disappeared for months
together. He would reappear ever riper in thought, and
finally created great expectations among his friends. At
length, after his return from studying siege-appliances at the
siege of La Rochelle, 1628, he created a sensation at the
house of Cardinal De Bagne', where he exposed the fallacies
of Chandoux, a pretender to new science, by showing how
it was possible, by using the current arguments of the day,
to disprove anything claiming to be established truth, and to
prove true anything apparently false. Cardinal Be'rulle
thereupon advised him to set forth a constructive philosophy.
He may at this time have written the Regies (Regiilcs ad
directionem ingenti), but however that may be, he now re-
moved to Holland, where society was quiet and liberal, and
there he lived, off and on, for twenty years (1629-49),
changing his residence twenty-four times, visiting England,
Denmark and France, and finally returning to France. During
that time all his chief works were written.
The publication of the Discours de la Me'thode in 1637 at
once attracted friends and foes. The Meditationes de Prima
234 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Philosophia followed in 1641, the Prindpia Philosophies in
1644. The efforts of Dutch theologians to get him
denounced and expelled, emanating from Utrecht and
Leyden, kept him perpetually unsettled, and much con-
troversial writing was drawn from him. He was invited to
return to France, but neither there was it possible to live
quietly, society being unsettled through the Fronde. Hence
he accepted the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden,
a girl full of intellectual eagerness and his pupil already by
correspondence, and went to Stockholm, 1649. To have to
come to the palace to give instruction at five a.m. in the depth
of winter affected his lungs and killed him, February n,
1650.
The three works last mentioned and Les Passions de
A
I'Ame, published just after his death, are those in which
Descartes is most commonly studied. But much that we
know of him is derived from his Letters edited by Clerselier
(1665-7). Other works, e.g. the Regies, and the Recherche de
la Ve'rite' par la Lumiere naturelle, were not published till 1701.
After his death his MSS. were sent to Paris, but fell into
the Seine, lay there three days, and were carelessly dried, so
that there are flaws. The Recherche, though crude and
incomplete, really gives the best exposition of his system, as
a method. Internal evidence shows it must have been
written not later than 1629. The Method advocates the
importance of acquiring a certain way of thinking before
any philosophically valid results can be arrived at. With it,
as a collection of Philosophical Essays, he published three
applications of his method : Dioptrica (on refraction, giving
also a good account of sense), Meteora, and Geomeiria, the
last setting out his special method as got from, rather than
applied to, mathematics. Modern analytical geometry dates
xxil.] Elements of General Philosophy. 235
from this work. In the Method he hints at a greater work
he was keeping back. He apparently thought it best to
publish not a philosophy of mind, but a doctrine of nature,
which was really the outcome of that philosophy. This
standpoint marks him oft" from Galileo and Newton, who
investigated on lines of positive science without having regard
to mind. Accordingly, in 1630, he set himself to write the
treatise Le Monde, ou Trails' de la Lumiere, at the end of
which he brings in the philosophic principles which had
been all along in his mind. This work, which was finished
in 1633, he was about to publish, when Galileo was put on
his trial before the Holy Inquisition on account of his
Dialogue on the motion of the earth. The Copernican
theory had not even then been accepted by the Church,
although certain popes had been disposed in its favour.
Galileo dared to expound it, but only as the hypothesis that
best fitted the facts. Descartes had done the same in Le
Monde, but as timid by nature, a sincere Catholic, and above
all things preferring an undisturbed life to fame, he suppressed
the work. What was later on published under this title was
simply a section of the original work. The gist of the latter
was actually given in the Principia, with the modified view
that not the earth, but the medium in which the earth is,
moves round the sun (cf. infra p. 261). By 1637 his fears
and scruples had given way, and in the Method, written in
French, he refers to his Monde.
The Meditations, ' where are demonstrated the existence
of God and the distinction of soul from body,' written
in Latin, and appealing to the learned, were published in
1641-1642, together with the objections raised by certain
critics who had read them in MS. The most important of
these were Hobbes, Gassendi and Arnauld. the two former
236 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
advancing Epicureanism and Sensationalism of a crude
type.
Descartes after this took courage and set forth his whole
philosophy in the Pfincipia, in dogmatic form and not
analytically as in the Meditations. The Passions, a psycho-
physiological study of the relations of body to mind, was
written in 1646 for his pupil Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia,
grand-daughter of our James I.
An important minor work, entitled Remarks by Descartes
on a Certain Placard printed in the Netherlands, was written
in 1647 in opposition to the view of his ardent admirer
Regius, or Leroy, a Utrecht professor, who had, professedly
from the Cartesian point of view, transformed Dualism into
something very like later Materialism, speaking of body as
having two modes, thought and extension, and of knowledge
as due to our sense-experience of body acting on body.
The Remarks set out more clearly than elsewhere Descartes'
view as to the relation between reason, innate ideas and
experience. If elsewhere he is crude, here he is circumspect,
agreeing with what Leibniz said later on of predispositions
and aptitudes.
The Recherche adds nothing new, but shows him as
having so mastered his philosophy that he undertakes to
make it plain in dialogue to any intellect.
To understand how Descartes came to philosophise, let
us begin wilh his doctrine of method as set out expressly,
not in the Method, though in the four rules there given we
have the sum and substance of it, but in the Regies*.
His first point is that philosophy is methodic thinking as
1 The Regies is incomplete, unfinished, tortuous and not clear;
probably Descartes was striving to work his method out fully. Study
especially Rule XII.
xxii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 237
opposed to thinking received on authority or through custom,
and is free from all trace of doubt. Erudition, conversance
with opinions and facts, is not knowledge. True knowledge
must have been individually thought over. Here he opposes
both Scholasticism and the Renaissance. The philosopher's
business is to arrive at all knowledge, for knowledge is one ;
until you know all you do not know at all. This was his
attack on specialists. It is the business of philosophers to
keep all knowledge together. This is harder now than then,
yet there is now more need than ever to do so. Descartes,
however, did not by universal science mean knowledge of
everything, but that the way of arriving at truth, the method
of discovery, is the same for all things. That is to say, you
may be a specialist on the condition that you have had
a philosophic training. A specialist should know something
of the way of knowing truth generally.
All knowledge, he held, must begin with what can be
clearly thought through and through. True knowledge he
contrasts with vague opinion. We are now less inclined
than Descartes to look askance at the probable. Descartes'
certainty is found to be not so certain. There is even
mathematical knowledge that is only probable. Nevertheless
there is a great difference between what is well known
and what is badly known. The opposition between truth and
opinion does not lose its value, even when we are not so
certain on some questions as he was.
To continue : In order to arrive at perfect knowledge,
at universal science, we must start from the simplest truths,
from those we can most ' clearly ' apprehend, namely, from
intuitions, and proceed by synthesis to more complex ideas.
If other relatively complex cognitions become as clear
as those intuitions, we have then arrived at truth by
238 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
deduction. But deduction, applied in any complex case, must
begin with an enumeration or induction of all the points
entering into the question to be set out of all the conditions
on which the solution depends. Thus the deductive act
proper consists in passing progressively from condition to
conditioned, and, if the way is long and the steps are many,
in passing repeatedly up and down the same until all the
elements are mastered, and the last and most complex, with
all that it depends on, stands out with the same evidence
as the first. The first conditions which are themselves not
conditioned, and involve no conclusion, must have an im-
mediate certainty and be intuitions, that is, directly known.
For intuition, to start with, and deduction, as the way, are
all that the human mind has to go upon for certainty. This
is most plainly put in Regie V.
What we have to know indirectly we can know as certainty,
as intuition, if we practise deduction in this way. And the
method applies not only to all special questions, but also to
problems of general knowledge. Descartes was a methodo-
logist, but he had a philosophy to produce as well. To
do this it seemed to him equally essential to go back to
fundamental intuitions having reference to the fact of in-
telligence ; indeed all knowledge of special questions comes
for him to depend upon his philosophical proof of the
possibility of knowledge generally. He insists in the Regies
on the question of knowledge itself as preliminary to any
solution of special questions of science '. He there strikes
the note of the philosopher and not of the methodologist.
We must know what the human mind can settle before we
go in for any special study. The passages might have
been written by Kant and may be compared with Locke's
1 Cf. Regies I and VIII.
xxii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 239
Introduction to his Essay. But of such we find no trace
in Bacon.
The student may find Descartes' usage of the terms Deduc-
tion and Induction puzzling. He seems to waver in his
choice and render satisfactory explanation by means of them
impossible by employing them interchangeably, and in other
senses than those of logic. According to his view of know-
ledge, there are some things we are sure of directly, or can
by attention be brought to see that we really are sure of
directly. These intuitions may assume the form of pro-
positions, and as such they become useful in philosophy or
science. In them our knowledge is reduced to its simplest
terms, and we see between the terms of such propositions
a necessary connexion. For example, ' body must be ex-
tended.' Whether the necessity be analytic or synthetic, he
did not, like Kant, proceed to inquire.
Of other things we are not sure directly, but can become
sure of by a process of thought connecting them with what
we are directly sure of. And this process of becoming sure
is what he calls deduction, or sometimes, when the steps
are few r , intuition 1 . But he would never have called a deduc-
tion an intuition if it were founded upon an induction or
enumeration of conditions.
Now deduction, he declared, was a process that the
commonest minds can perform. All men have direct in-
tuition of some things, and cannot help having it ; the final
result of a deduction is also easily seen ; thus logicians are
unnecessary. Why then did he lay so much stress on
method, and even on preliminary investigation ? And what
did he mean by contemning the old logic, a view shared
for that matter by all the advancing minds of his time?
1 Cf. Regie XL
240 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Descartes never completed his method. He broke down
in the last rules when applying them to geometry. His
slighting remarks on traditional logic are therefore possibly
too hasty. But his opposition amounts to this, that he is
less concerned about proof or exposition than he is about
discovery. He wants not so much to set out what was
already got as to find how to arrive at the unknown from the
known. Yet his view was not that of J. S. Mill on real
inference. Mill (in his Logic) was concerned about a theory
of proof, of proof in general statements going beyond actual
observation, and where formal proof was therefore impossible.
Descartes wanted a theory of discovery. This is implied in
his attempt, with the help of algebra, to systematise and
extend the method of mathematical analysis, which was
a method of actual discovery not unrelated to proof, yet
different from the proving what has already been discovered '.
Nevertheless, as we have seen, while decrying the old logic,
he created difficulties by misusing terms borrowed therefrom.
Instead of deduction and induction he ought to have used
analysis and synthesis. He could then have used the
former terms as well. For analysis assumes the form
sometimes of induction, sometimes of deduction. Right
procedure is analysis followed up by synthesis. There is no
opposition between proof and discovery ; they are comple-
mentary one of the other, and are both different aspects
of the same process of knowing. Mark Descartes himself
in Rule XII, where he says that knowledge is simple or
composite, and considers the ways of knowing the com-
posite through the example of the magnet. Some men set
about investigating this with no method, turning away from
the evident and looking to find something new in it by
1 Vide my article 'Analysis,' Enryd. Brit.
xxii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 241
chance. The scientific man, who knows the difference
between the simple and the complex, musters all his particular
observations of the magnet, and is thence able to deduce the
nature of its composition, as far as experience can furnish
the requisite data. This departs little from the best any
man has ever said on the process of discovery. Mill strays
into discovery from proof. Jevons divides the two. Never-
theless Descartes so mixes up his sound idea of discovery
with the terms of proof that confusion results.
It should be borne in mind that up to Rule XII Descartes
has been setting out general considerations on the problem
of method. In XII itself he gives his theory of knowledge
in a view of the knowing faculty, showing the relation of
the intellect to sense, imagination and memory. Here is
his first really philosophic point. We have to distinguish
between ourselves as knowing and things known. The
latter he deals with in the light of what we know of the
knowing faculty. They are either simple or complex. The
former he has disposed of already ; we know them by in-
tuition ; composites we know by deduction. Into the latter
he now goes more fully, dealing with them as Questions
(a) perfectly comprehended ; (b) imperfectly comprehended.
(a) are questions of mathematics. Concerning (6) the twelve
rules he was about to give are not given, but in the Prin-
cipia we find the results of rules followed consciously or
unconsciously.
Before leaving the Method let us glance at Bacon,
Descartes' great predecessor in respect of method. We may
easily draw a parallel between them. Both were men of
their time, dissatisfied with the old ways ; both were con-
cerned about real knowledge and looked to method to bring
it about. But here the parallel ceases. Bacon's point of view
R
242 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
was objective. He always dealt with the external world as we
find it in common life, with the ordinary idea of experience.
He did not begin with a theory of knowledge as a ground
for his method. He never philosophically inquired what is
the relation of experience to knowledge. Yet it is remarkable
how, from his unphilosophic point of view, Bacon does by
induction virtually aim at explaining experience and comes
round to Descartes' results. So far as nature is concerned,
Descartes, no less than Bacon, regards extension and motion
as the fundamentals upon which we can explain all our
experience of the physical world. Bacon says constantly that,
having got experience of a certain kind, we must get other
similar experiences, mass them together, and so hope to
find the ' forms' of things, or what we can make out by com-
parison of phenomena. Ultimately ' form ' comes to be indis-
tinguishable from ' sensible appearances ' expressed in terms
of motion. He shows, for example, that heat is motion.
But permanent differences remain. Descartes regarded
all with a view to a general theory of knowledge. He
proposed to deal with the whole realm of physical science
in a certain definite and progressive way. Bacon had no
idea of a general science except as a result of all special
effort. Descartes gets his general principles by way of
deduction, Bacon, by induction. Yet Descartes by no
means makes light of experience and of experiment, but
made a place for it in his scheme of knowledge. He says,
for instance, that he could not proceed to medicine for want
of experience and experiment. And in a letter he said that
Bacon had so thoroughly treated of experimental knowledge
in his Novum Organon that it was practically useless for
any one to try to go ahead of him. But Bacon seemed to
think that in a specific solution he had got all that the mind
xxii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 243
wants. Descartes thought that, having established experi-
mentally, we could give a rational explanation deductively
which is the ideal of science.
Descartes prematurely and arbitrarily got deductions from
general principles, and thus lost the full sense of contact
with fact that exists in the properly scientific man. He
attached more value to internal coherence and consistency
than to the consistency of results with fact. He had not the
sense of the duty of verification, which is now held as so
important. This has come to us rather upon the line of
Bacon's injunctions than of Descartes' practice.
R 2
LECTURE XXIII.
ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES.
READING. The Meditations, i-v. (Simon, Gamier, or Veitch.)
IT will not be possible here to treat of Descartes' philosophy
adequately in a general explication l . I shall therefore only
single out special difficulties, and bring to bear upon them
passages from other of Descartes' works than those pre-
scribed for students' reading.
We have seen, in connexion with his Method, that if he
is to have a philosophy, he needs an immediate certainty as
a starting-point for all knowledge. In getting this for philo-
sophy, he believed himself to have got a foundation for all
physical science. The characteristic note of modern philo-
sophy, the ' critical ' point of view which has been accepted
since Kant, is that before there can be anything worth calling
science (in general), and especially any knowledge of things
as they really are, there must be a theory of knowing a
discovery of what we can know and how we can know it,
and of what we can not know. This, which became explicit
in Kant, was anticipated implicitly in Locke. Descartes
anticipated both. Kant arrived at his position by criticism ;
the English school tried to set it out by way of psychology ;
the same conception governs both, and it is at the bottom
of Descartes' procedure.
1 His philosophy is given in outline in Lect. VII ; see also
Lect. XL En.
Elements of General Philosophy. 245
We know that he found the certainty he sought in the in-
tuition Cogito ergo sum, and on it he sought to build up his
theory. Does he build it up on that one intuition ? He really
needed one more certainty, as we shall see.
Read how he arrived at his Cogito in the first Medita-
tion : dubitandum est de omnibus. The omnibus comes to be
everything he had got from authority and tradition, all the
opinions he had grown up with. In common life we feel
sure on the testimony of sense. But sense is often illusion
and never are we sure that it is not. We have not even
a criterion to distinguish between dreaming and waking
(this he modifies later on). Our very mathematical cer-
tainties may not represent reality. For our fundamental
philosophic certainty we must get below all these.
Here note first that Descartes gives way to doubt, not for
the pleasure of doubting, but only as a means to an end
only for the sake of getting to know. Compare his proviso
in the Method (Parts II, III). He is not a sceptic. He
has no wish to let practical life be affected by philosophic
doubt. He simply means, ' You are not to be satisfied with
things simply because they are in your mind.' All philo-
sophers have meant as much, even if they have not expressed
it as a principle. It is nothing more than putting one's self
at the subjective point of view. All philosophers not only
do so, but must do so. They have to interpret the things
of experience in this new subjective light, and this involves
doubting where there had hitherto been trusting. People
would say, that pillar is white, and act upon this belief;
physical science too would proceed upon it. But psycho-
logical analysis resolves this quality of the pillar into some-
thing less inherent than had seemed apparent.
Descartes then doubted in order to demonstrate. And, as
246 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Leibniz wrote to Bernoulli, there is much difference between
throwing doubt upon anything and seeking an ultimate de-
monstration of it. Nevertheless, he added, Descartes sinned
doubly, first by doubting too much, then by getting away
too easily from his doubts J . As for his doubting too much,
it were more just to say, he doubted in too theatrical a way.
It was a fault of manner ; he lacked simplicity. Nevertheless
everyone in passing over to the subjective point of view may,
possibly must, undergo a struggle ; and Descartes probably
had real and great labour in getting away from the common
conception of knowledge.
Now we have already seen how, when he had got to his
cogito, or rather his dubito, he translated it, in the second
Meditation, into Ego sum res cogitans a thing that thinks, a
mind, understanding, reason that and nothing but that. All
this, then, is implicit in the Cogito. From / think, and from
nothing else, it follows that 1 am, that I am a mind. I am
at bottom nothing but a thinking being, however I may come
to see myself afterwards ' 2 . Note this and you will understand
the objections to it. These were raised by critics to whom
Descartes showed his Meditations in MS. Garnier's edition
abridges them, missing many points in them. They are
threefold :
i. In Cogito ergo sum, the ergo introduces an inference,
and thus implies a major premise Whatever thinks, is. But
this is a generalisation, not an intuition (Objection II).
Descartes' reply (feebly abridged in Gamier) is that, in spite
of the ergo, there is no inference, but a simple act of mental
inspection. His meaning is ' I am in that I think.' ' My
thinking implies rny existence ' is an intuition. More is the
1 Cf. Erdmann, op. cit. p. 81.
3 Compare Meditation II, with the last few pages of the Recherche.
xxiii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 247
pity then that ergo, indicating neither mediate nor immediate
inference, should be there at all. In his reply to Hobbes,
Descartes comes once upon the contrapositive : If I were
not I could not think. But enough of the ergo. The Cogito
may be an intuition such as he wanted, but it is not the only
one he uses.
2. To Hobbes's objections Descartes attached least im-
portance. Hobbes, who was then (1640) fifty years old
and had formed definite philosophic notions of his own,
treated Descartes magisterially, and his criticisms are some-
times, though not always, trivial. He was unable to get at
Descartes' point of view. Descartes replied : To object that
the inference ' I am/ or ' I am a thinking thing,' from ' I
think/ is as weak as to argue that because ' I am walking/
therefore 'I am a walk/ is irrelevant. A walk is never
taken to mean anything but the action, while thought is
used indifferently for the action, for the faculty and for that
in which the faculty resides. Thought is like no other process
or thing, and to discern this is the first step in philosophy.
Thought then may = thinking thing ; and hereupon Descartes
goes on to make a statement about substance, which is at
variance with what he says elsewhere (infra, p. 256), namely,
that we have no knowledge of substance except through its
manifestations. As these are different, so do we infer different
substance. Thinking, e. g. is different from extension ; there-
fore thinking substance is different from extended substance.
Substance what it is in itself was puzzling Descartes as it
was to puzzle Locke.
3. Gassendi had no objection to the Cogito, but held that
' sum ' might be inferred as well from ambulo or any other
action. No, rejoined Descartes, ' you can only say " you are,"
because you are conscious that you walk, that is, because you
248 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
think ; ' thus reaffirming the potency for philosophy of the
subjective point of view. This shows how much Gassendi
with his revived Epicureanism and Democritean Atomism
stood outside philosophic thought. He is to Descartes
what Democritus was to Socrates and Plato. Hobbes took
the objective point of view as well as his friend Gassendi,
but he had also a keen philosophic appreciation which places
him nearer to modern thought. We now pass on.
The existence of self as a thinking being Descartes now
regards as certain because, in the midst of all his doubts,
he apprehends with perfect clearness that this is so. ' I
know distinctly that I am, and distinctly what I am : '
a thinking being and there is nothing else that I dis-
tinctly apprehend about myself. / cannot get below thought.
Now if I can as clearly apprehend anything else, this
too must be true. Else how should the cogito be true ?
Here he lays down his criterion of truth -Everything must
be true which I perceive with perfect clearness and dis-
tinctness. Thought, when perfectly clear, portends reality.
Why ? Because this is the only ground that can be given in
regard to self as a thinking being. Thus he has got his
first certainty and his criterion.
But it is a criterion which takes no account of the relative
character of anything that can be called truth or true know-
ledge. It fixes some things as final truths, which the mind
rests in because they do not happen to have been resolved
into higher or more general truths. And it denies that other
things are in any sense truths, and that the mind for any
purpose dare rest in them, because they do happen to have
been so resolved. For instance, the resolution of sense into
an effect (in mind) of mechanical stimulation may be an
important truth, but neither is that all that may be said
xxm.] Elements of General Philosophy. 249
scientifically or philosophically about sense, nor, when nothing
of the kind is said, does sense cease to be some truth and
become a mere source of error and deception.
His next step is variously stated. There are two kinds of
considerations that seem to press on his mind at this stage.
First, is there a certainty beyond self? Next, what are the
circumstances under which his criterion, even when applied
to self, can or cannot hold ? He is not prepared to apply it
straightway. He does discover another certainty which
supplies the ground for the criterion itself, and this is the
existence of God. Only as he has this is he sure about his
criterion, and even about himself.
This seemed tortuous to objectors; nor did Descartes
himself fail to see their point. In fact he gets to this
second certainty, not from the first certainty (concerning
self) by way of his criterion, or if from self then by
way not of the criterion, but of a different principle
that of Causality, which for him assumed these forms :
Nothing can come from nothing ; everything must have
a cause ; the more perfect cannot be a consequent of
the less perfect ; the cause must contain at least as much
reality as the effect. If it contain more, it is a causa emi-
nen/er, just as the artist is more than his work ; if it contain
only as much, he called it causa formaliter l , illustrating it
by a die or seal and its imprint.
1 The word ' formal ' is in Descartes more obscure than the simpler
term etninenter standing out. It is really derived from the Aristotelian
doctrine of action. Action with Aristotle always means ; forming ' ;
hence Descartes takes formal to mean ' wrought by,' and causa for-
maliter, a working cause. But while this confuses the Aristotelian
formal and efficient causes, Descartes induces further confusion by
making formal reality synonymous with actual reality, and yet
opposing it to what he calls objective reality i^Veitch has good notes
250 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
This second principle, that of Causality, is so distinctly
the means of his advancing in his system beyond self, that it
has been well named his ' Archimedean fulcrum.' Spinoza
saw as much when, in an early work, he set out an
exposition of Descartes' philosophy in mathematical form.
He said that unless this principle is assumed, away goes the
Cogito. If out of nothing something can come, then I who
think do not therefore necessarily exist. Descartes' own
chosen principle of self-certainty is barren in his system
compared with the principle of causality. The criterion
of clearness and distinctness which he uses to establish his
'Ex nihilo nihil fit,' is itself 'not established beyond objection
till God is proved to exist _/hw* that very ' Ex nihilo nihil fit.'
Ideas therefore, i. e. anything of which we are conscious,
must like everything else have a cause. Now can any of the
three possible kinds of ideas, innate, adventitious or fictitious,
of which I am conscious, but the origin of which I do not
know, carry me with the help of causality, beyond, out
of, myself? 'Adventitious' ideas seem to come from external
objects can they ?
All ideas are either of substances or modes of substance.
The latter can be left aside as having less objective reality,
i. e. as being less in thought than substances. Substances are
fivefold : bodies inanimate, animals, men, angels, God.
These are all he has ever thought of. The second, third,
and fourth he can drop out ; for in having a certainty as to
himself he can infer his equals, his inferiors, and beings
on this point). It should however be borne in mind that he uses
' objective ' in the Scholastic sense. Subjective and objective have
come to be used in precisely the opposite signification they bore for
the Schoolmen. For Descartes too the objective meant what exists as
thought of, mental representation. Subjective, on the other hand,
referred to what ivas placed under in the way of substantial existence.
xxiii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 251
relatively superior to himself. As to bodies, there is nothing
more in them than mind can account for. He can think of
them, and think of them as sensibly perceived. A sensible
perception is distinguished from other thoughts as being
less clear, hence bodies cannot have more reality than
mind. And note this ! all that is really known of body
is simply thought, is known only as he thinks, not as he
is sensitive. That the body yonder is wax he knows only
by thinking about it.
Now is it the same with the remaining substance, God ?
Here he finds a great difference, calling for special arguments.
Read Meditations ///and V, not IV.
He judges that he can explain body from himself; he can
be the cause, even ' eminently ' the cause of his idea of body.
But of God he can have no idea from himself. He must find
proofs of God's existence to make sure of the clearness of
his thought. Grouping together all that is scattered through
Descartes' works on this subject, we get as irreducible
result three separate proofs put forward : (i) The onto-
Ingical, metaphysical, or a priori proof, viz. the existence of
God is to be understood as given necessarily in the idea of
God. (2) The having in my mind the idea of an infinite
Being of which there is nothing in the finite nature of my mind
to be the cause. (3) The fact of my existing (not thinking),
and existing as imperfect. This can only be explained
ultimately by the existence of God as a perfect Being. (2) and
(3) may be called a posteriori proofs, or, according to Kuno
Fischer, anthropological, being founded on a consideration
not of the idea of God, but of the nature of man.
Now Descartes finds in the two last proofs sufficient
ground to work on in the Meditations, since he does not
bring in the first in Book III, where he gets to his real
252 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
certainty, but only in Book V. Here then it is secondary.
But in the more dogmatic Principia it is put first. Again,
in the second response to the objections (end of Meditations),
where he sets out his system in geometrical form not that
he held with this procedure, but merely to show, if he had
chosen to do so, how he would have done it he begins with
proof (i). And this in demonstration is right, just as Euclid
set out at first that which he arrived at last \
In proof (2) he applies the principle of causality to the
ideas of which we are conscious. It is a positive idea this
of an infinite Being not the result of abstraction, which would
give us the Indefinite, not the Infinite. It is there, and,
causality being true in the light of nature 2 , it must be
caused by a real infinite original. The idea of it is the mark
of the artificer, and is Descartes' ' ideal ' innate idea.
With regard to proof (i), compare the statement of it in
the Principia ( xiv.) with that in Med. V (Veitch, p. 148).
The absolutely perfect must exist, since existence is a
perfection. To this in the Principia is added that God's
existence is not only possible but absolutely necessary and
eternal. Wherefore these additions ? To make his view more
explicit, because he had been charged with merely dishing up
a mediaeval argument which had been repudiated by Aquinas,
on the ground that we have no right to infer from essence
to existence. Descartes pointed out his own opinion as
divergent from this in Objection I. The argument is as old
as Anselm, in whose time little of Aristotle was known and
the schools were thoroughly Platonic. It ran thus : God
1 Veitch gives this exposition in an Appendix.
2 Descartes uses 'light of nature' (r) in a depreciating sense, as
what is common every-day experience, (2) as the whole collection of
fundamental intuitions in any human mind.
xxiii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 253
is that than which nothing greater can be thought. But to
be in intellect and in reality is greater than to be in intellect
only ; therefore God cannot be thought not to be. Some
Schoolmen, and especially Aquinas, saw the error of making
an inference from a definition. A definition is hypothetical.
Reality must either be postulated or proved otherwise. An-
selm's argument should properly have been ' If God. exists,
He exists not only in intellect, but also in reality.' Kant,
in the Pure Reason, shows the insufficiency of the ontological
proof, as he called it. The proof, he said, supposes real
existence to be an attribute which enters into a concept
with other attributes, in which case the comprehension
of a notion should be changed according as existence is
or is not supposed. But one hundred real dollars in thought
do not contain an atom more than one hundred possible
dollars. Existence does not enter analytically into the
conception of a thing. But Descartes did draw a dis-
tinction in his answer to Caterus, namely, between notions.
In some, e. g. triangles, centaurs, essence does not involve
existence, even though he can picture them most clearly.
The notion of God however does include existence, and
not only possible but also necessary existence. And accord-
ingly in the second edition of the Meditations he added the
word necessary. Kant, by implication, does not allow for
this distinction, in which lies the whole force of Descartes'
position. Whenever Descartes is pushed into a corner
concerning this ontological proof, he always escapes on his
fundamental argument that the idea (of God's existence)
is one not so much of necessary existence as of necessary
existence originally in me. Causality is for him at the
bottom, and not the ontological proof, which usually fails to
distinguish this between real existence and the conception
254 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
of possible existence. '/ am imperfect, and / have this
idea of God or of perfection.' This of course is liable to the
objection ' You have this idea of God; / have none.'
And since Descartes' day speculation has (as with Kant)
given place to moral argument, or the consciousness of
' moral sense.' Descartes himself suggests that his arguments
have at least a cumulative value.
At all events he. has got from doubt to certainty and
a ground of universal knowledge. We have now to see
what he means by truth and what is his doctrine of error.
Notice first the two positions in the Principia, Book I.
In 30 the argument may be summarised thus : God exists,
and because He alone is perfect, He alone is perfectly inde-
pendent ; therefore all things depend upon Him, and therefore
my ideas depend upon Him. My ideas must therefore be
true because He is true. Again, the faculty of knowing which
He has given us never apprehends any object which is not
true as far as it apprehends it, that is to say, as far as it
knows clearly and distinctly.
But in xiii and in Meditation V, p. 148, the criterion
is taken as certain in itself. Where it is directly applied
Descartes does not doubt its power. But he admits there
are cases where we say that we know, although it is by no
means present to us that we clearly see what we say that we
know ; e. g. in the steps of a demonstration in Euclid, where
we have possibly forgotten the first steps, forgotten, i. e. what
we applied the criterion to, though we recollect we did apply it.
God in this case guarantees the validity of our memory
rather than that of the criterion itself. But if we know by
the help of a perfect Being, how do we come to err ?
Now turn to Med. IV. Error, he finds, is not in percep-
tion, but in judgment, where, that is, we turn what we perceive
XXIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 255
into an objective predicate 1 . But we may judge and yet
withhold assent. When we do assent (or refuse), we exercise
will in the sense of self-determination. Now the under-
standing is from God and errs not, nor does self-determination,
by the power of which we come nearest to God. But the
understanding is limited, the will is not. And whenever the
will by its liberty of indifference either affirms or denies
beyond the limit of the understanding's insight, then there is
error, even if the judgment is a right one ; and doubly so, if it
is wrong. While if the will uses its liberty of indifference so
as not to judge at all, we cannot err. That the will can refrain
from judging renders God not chargeable for our errors.
If then we know self, God, and how to avoid error, what
do we know beside, and how ? This brings Descartes to the
subject of bodies, or the external world. Read Med. VI.
The existence of bodies cannot be concluded from the
fact that we can imagine them. Imagination is not pure
intellection or thought, as he explains later, but is a mode
of our subjective life determined by the relation of mind to
body. Being inferior to thought it may proceed from the
thinking being.
Xor can the existence of bodies be proved from sensations.
It is natural in us to refer the latter to outside bodies,
but sensations themselves are no guarantee, as we know by
the case, e. g. of an amputated arm, where some sensations
are still referred to the lost limb, and by sensations affecting
us in dreams, as in waking. Descartes' arguments here
are very modern but so also are Plato's in the Thecetetus.
But my sensations of objects must have a cause. I am not
1 Compare Kant's distinction between judgments of perception
(e. g. if the sun shines the stone is warm) and judgments of experience
(the sun warms the stone .
256 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the cause. They result neither from my thought nor from
my will. They must then be due to God as their cause
enn'nenter, or conceivably to bodies as their cause formaliter.
Which ? To bodies, else I am perpetually deceived.
Note the difference between Descartes and Berkeley. The
latter leaves off with the view that God is the only certainty,
extirpating matter except as an idea coming from God.
Descartes retained matter to exclude the charge of deception
on the part of God J .
To understand how speculative philosophy took the turn
it did after Descartes, compare his dogmatic statements in the
Principia (Part II) on matter, viz. bodies exist apart from
mind as the real cause of our perception, and the mind
perceives them as they are, in as far as it has clear and
distinct knowledge. Mind, then, and body are alike sub-
stances, a substance being a thing that exists in such a way
that it has no need but of itself for its existence. This is
true of each substance with reference to other substances,
yet obviously the determination cannot strictly hold for any
finite mind or body, since all depend upon God. God
therefore is the only true substance. Substance cannot be
said univocally of God and of anything created. Here he
seems to imply that we have immediate knowledge of
substance, although he did not allow this in answering
Hobbes. Mind and body, he had said, as substances
essentially different and independent, were knowable only by
their attributes, each having one principal attribute expressing
its nature. Of these indefeasible attributes thought, extension
all those modifications on the ground of which we speak
1 In Hamilton's language he is a Hypothetical Realist, or, if an
Idealist, then a Cosmothetic Idealist. However he strips bodies of
all secondary qualities.
xxiii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 257
of substances having different qualities (not attributes) are
by him called modes ; such are figure (a mode of extension),
imagination, feeling, willing (modes of thought) 1 . Modes
are not found in Infinite Substance, for that is unchangeable.
In the Principia he proceeds to distinguish between
attributes as essential and modes as accidental. Other
qualities ascribed by us to bodies are really modes of our
thought, as Number, and especially Time, also the five
' universals ' or predicables 2 . Descartes was, in fact, no
Realist in the old sense, but a Conceptualist or a Nomi-
nalist as opposed not to Conceptualism, but to Realism. He
comes here nearer to Kant. He held, it is true, that space
was a mode of extension, something having objective reality,
but time was a mode of thought Kant would have said, of
intuition, meaning of perception.
The modes of extension depend upon the movement
of the parts into which matter is divided. Matter, i. e. is
conceived by Descartes mathematically ; there is ultimately
nothing in it which cannot come under solid geometry. All
changes in body are merely modes of motion. Towards
this new conception other minds besides Descartes' were
working. Bacon had made out that heat consists in an
agitation of the minute particles of bodies. Compare too
Hobbes's groping after a doctrine of motion H . Locke took
over Descartes' distinction, and expressed it from his expe-
riential standpoint as the distinction between Primary and
Secondary Qualities.
1 Thought (pense'e) in Descartes is simply a name for all subjective
experience, for whatever we are conscious of.
2 Genus, species, differentia, property, accident.
3 Vide Hobbes by G. C. Robertson (Knight's Philosophical Classics),
PP- 33, 4i-43, 93- ED-
LECTURE XXIV.
ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DFSCARTES (continued].
READING. Meditation VI. Principia. Les Passions de I' A rue (Simon}.
WE pass lightly over Descartes' physical philosophy (which
occupies the greater part of the Principia}, but so as to
note how it comes into his general scheme of philosophy.
Beginning with man as pure intellect, he went on to the ex-
istence of the material world, and grasping this, came round
again to deal fully with man and the ' Passions ' of his nature.
We saw that, according to Descartes, body is extended, and
nothing else, just as mind is a thinking thing only. Without
extension we have no idea of body, or only a confused idea.
Extension has length, breadth, depth, and there are no
more ways of thinking of it ; therefore body has these only.
Descartes is at some pains to defend his position that
body is space (Principia, II. 10-15), and it is interesting
to note how he tries to show that there is nothing in his view
at variance with ordinary notions. He further faces the
question, which much occupied contemporary science, of
condensation and rarefaction, and their action on the pores
of bodies, trying to prove that a body remains the same,
whether its pores expand or not. We see that he gets his
notion of body by way of metaphysic, instead of positive
science, and consequently has to defend himself against
science. For instance, as space is essentially the mode of
Elements of General Philosophy. 259
body, vacuum, as space empty of all body, is philosophically
impossible ; space cannot be free from all body. You may
empty your bucket as you please, but you cannot empty
space and therefore body till the sides collapse. What is
nothing cannot have extension, and as space has extension,
it always has body. And there never can be more or less
body in space at one time than at another. Compare this
treatment with Locke's on simple modes of space (Essay,
ch. xiii). Locke's distinction between space and body is not
got by way of metaphysic, but is accommodated to modern
physics, and is a perfectly rational determination. We can
distinguish between space which does not resist movement
and space which does ; and this difference can be psycho-
logically grounded. His psychology is often crude, but here
it stands firm.
Again, physics still assumes that there are such things
as atoms natural indivisible bodies. Nobody ever doubted
that an atom, if extended, can be thought of as broken
up, but that there are certain elements that can<?/ physically
be broken up is the basis of physical science. Descartes
meets this by saying that atoms cannot exist, for space
as always extended must always be divisible.
As to movement, Descartes laid stress on this, that it can
be said only of a body with respect to what it is immediately
in contact w y ith. If a body does not change place with
reference to what is around it, it can be said not to move.
This, it may be, was said to justify his suppression of his own
Galilean views in the Principia. The theory, which we will
not pause over longer, is another instance of the futility
of solving such questions by metaphysic. Descartes ends by
finding that movement was so different from extension that
it must come from outside, from God, who created some
S 2
260 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
bodies having motion, others having the, for Descartes, no
less positive mode of rest. And it follows from the un-
changeable nature of God that the quantity of motion and
rest is invariable for ever. He is not content to put his
conservation of movement as a hypothesis to be verified
by results, but gives it as a certainty from first principles.
He does not admit conservation of energy, nay, he abhors it.
It was Leibniz who insisted on that notion. Descartes gives
three fundamental laws of nature, i. e. of motion. Coming
shortly after Galileo had enunciated three laws, and a
generation before Newton gave them their final form, they are
interesting (Prin. II, 37-40). With the first two Newton
practically agreed, but the third turned him from Descartes.
His copy of the Principia at Cambridge bears the repeated
marginal note ' error ! error ! error ! ' The law contains
a denial of action and reaction in matter. Matter is the
mere bearer of something communicated to it ; it can have
no energy.
In the second book, where he is determining different
kinds of bodies, we come on his notion of fluid. Bodies
are hard, i. e. resist separation, only in so far as they have
' rest' in them. Bodies which do not resist separation, have
not rest but motion, and are fluid. This determination
is made with a view to his explanation of the phenomena
of the universe. His physics is an explanation of the universe
on a hydro-dynamic basis. Given bodies that don't move
and fluids that do, it follows that all change must come from
interaction of particles that have been in motion from
the beginning with those that have been at rest from the
beginning. The smallest addition of motion in any
direction is enough to set up vortices, that is, streams of
motion by which bodies, the parts of which are not moved,
xxiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 261
may be borne along, going all through the universe. With
this famous notion he goes on to attempt to set out a doctrine
of the relation of the heavenly bodies, expressing all the
results of the Copernican theory, yet so as not to run
counter to the tenet of the Church that the earth stands
still. Copernicus, in the face of Church doctrine, revived
a notion started in the Greek period, but soon submerged.
Then Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) accounted for the phenomena
by the theory that the planets (not the earth) went round the
sun, and the sun went round the earth. Descartes had
a mind to be more careful than Copernicus, and to reason
more truly than Brahe. His hypothesis is that the heavens
as we behold them are fluid, that is, in motion. In them
are streams, invisible through the rarefaction of matter,
bearing the bodies along. The earth reposes in its heaven
or vortex, while yet it is borne along with it.
He may have been quite sincere in this. By his definition
of motion, if the earth remains always in contact with the
same particles of its stream, it is not moved, however much
it may change its relations to the planets. At any rate his
theory got all the benefit of motion round the sun without the
blame. ' I am much more circumspect than Copernicus/ he
wrote. His hypothesis was accepted for some time, especially
in France, but was dislodged by the Newtonian hypothesis
of attraction. Not that physicists are even now agreed as
to how action at a distance takes place. But when more
accurate observations were made by Hooke and Newton's
other predecessors, it was inevitably suggested to Newton,
that action and reaction was a better hypothesis than bodies
borne about in streams a theory due not to observation
but to general reasoning.
In the cosmogony too which follows (Prin. III. 47)
262 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the whole conception misses its point for want of true
scientific method. It is interesting as speculation, as poetry,
but it is not science.
We now come down to earth (Prin. IV). Materials and
leisure did not suffice for him to write all he had schemed
on Plants, Animals, Man (see Preface), hence he confines
himself to objects as they affect our senses, leaving Plants
out entirely, and dealing with Animals in the Passions,
Book I, and in Part V of his earliest work on Method.
Descartes experimented much in dissecting, but found
nothing to modify his idea of animal, viz. that animals
are simply material things more complex than the rest
are only machines of a more complicated kind so complex
indeed that we must call them automata, i. e. they have
something within them that sets them moving. They are
machines with hearts, the heart distilling the mechanical
agent of ' vital spirits ' into the blood, and this bearing
them to the pineal gland in the brain, on which all external
impressions finally impinge, and from which all outward
movement issues. Animal life is the expression of the com-
plexity of their mechanism. But animals have no self-
consciousness and therefore no soul or mind ; for without
self-consciousness there is no thinking. Whereas, whatever
sense may be, man as man is thought. Descartes conceives
no middle ground between thinking and extended being.
Man is both. Animals are only the latter.
Descartes' followers rigidly applied this theory, even to
the length of treating animals with barbarity. Even the
gentle and holy Malebranche, on being remonstrated with
for mercilessly belabouring a friendly dog. replied, ' You don't
suppose it feels ? ' Vivisection was largely practised by them,
and regarded with as much indifference as the breaking
xxiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 263
up of a stone. Nevertheless Descartes himself often said,
it were better, in the interests of moral training, to treat
animals as though they did feel. He had no doubt
at all that animals were pure automata, but he was not
oblivious of the difficulties besetting his theory. Animals
might act like men and show mind to some extent, never-
theless there was nothing in their ways that could not be
interpreted as the action of a fine machine.
From animals to man the distance is great. Animals
are only bodies ; man is fundamentally not body. He is
in the first instance ' I myself,' knowing myself as mind
and body ; and if I acquire the conviction that there are
other men, of them also it may be said they are mind and
body. What then is the relation between these two ? What
is the character of man as mind, and then as body ?
Before Descartes had arrived in the Principia at his
doctrine of nature he was disposed so to aggrandise the
sphere of thinking as to regard all mental manifestations
feeling, willing, imagination, and even sense as modes
of thought. In the Regies (XII.) sense and imagination
are names for nervous processes. At the same time he
conceives a force, one with body, but yet spiritual, which
acts and reacts upon them. He then goes on to include in
that force itself sense, memory, imagination and thought
proper all being pure intellect acting under certain con-
ditions. Yet again, he denies that memory is mental. If
we do not remember our dream-consciousness, it is because
memory, being bodily, is not able to rehearse the mental.
Thought, for Descartes, implied an ever-present conscious-
ness of thinking.
Life, for Descartes (cf. the beginning of the Passions),
is not soul at a lower power, but is out of relation to it.
264 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
It is an affair simply of body, explicable in terms of physics
only not even of chemistry. Animals have life, but not
soul (or mind) a conception which is not borne out by
observation, nor now maintained except by the incautious.
In succeeding generations this materialism with regard to
life was extended to mind. Evolution is entirely and utterly
outside Descartes. Angels and God have no body ; animals
have no mind. Man alone has both mutually interrelated.
How this can be when they have been pronounced mutually
exclusive and contradictory is a difficulty that does not
escape him. He attempts to explain, but the difficulties
cause him sometimes to shift his ground. In the Meditations
and Principia he finds that this mutual interrelation of body
to mind makes sense and imagination inferior to pure
thinking. In the Passions his procedure is different. He is
fearful of bringing animals into too close a relation to man,
if he allows sense and imagination to be modes of thinking
involving relation to matter. Else it might be said, Animals
have sense, and thus mind of a low sort. He does not deny
sensations and appetites in animals ; they act as if they had
these. But it is not sense-appetite or imagination either
that he seeks to explain by reference to any conjunction
between mind and body, but a set of proper mental states
which cannot be assigned to animals 'passive mental
states,' namely, which he opposes to the ' simple actions
of the soul.' He does not abandon his view of imagination
and the rest as modes of thought, but calls them, and also
sensations and appetites, passions as regards the soul. It
is not only to save the character of man that he lays stress
on so-called passions; he desires to consider emotions
proper with an ethical purpose, of which he has said little
elsewhere. He has also a more explicit statement to
xxiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 265
make of the conditions of mind's relation to body. Sense,
imagination, &c., are what they are because of that relation.
And in this work we find the expression, turned to such
account by Leibniz, of confused and obscure perceptions,
arising from the mutually discrepant functioning of soul and
body.
We come at length to the statement (Art. 30) ' that
mind is united to all parts of the body conjointly,' the
latter being in a way, i. e. as organ, indivisible. Thus
he is forced to allow, in the human body at least, more
than mere extension. Yet, he proceeds (Art. 31), notwith-
standing this general connexion, there is a certain part where
mind functions more particularly, and that is (not the heart
but) the brain, and in that the only part not bilateral the
pineal gland. He had thus a sound idea of the importance
of the nervous system as few had before him. But here the
same difficulties meet him. For the pineal gland has two
sides, has extension, while mind is unextended. He might
just as well have taken the whole brain or the whole body.
The gland (Art. 34) stands between body and soul, and
transmits changes both ways by way of the fine matter
(animal spirits) produced by the heart, transmitted by the
nerves as through tubes, and stored in the so-called ventricles
of the brain. The gland can be moved in as many ways as
there are changes produced in the body from without. It
can also be divinely moved by the soul. And there he leaves
it in the Passions.
Now he had said nothing can move of itself. Motion
is a constant quantity, and must be transmitted. How does
the immaterial soul move the extended gland? If his reply
to the fourth objection (Arnauld's) in the Meditations be
referred to (Jules Simon's ed. p. 233), it will be seen that
266 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the soul does not really set the body in motion, but can only
direct (determiner] the motion of the vital spirits. This idea
of a directive power is worthier, and has of late years been
urged by physicists. In it he found a distinction between
animals and men. A man's actions on being struck are
characterised by a more varied range than a dog's, because
of his power to direct the vital spirits. Consciousness cannot
give us the means of creating movement, but it can give
a different outcome. Descartes' difficulties are really of his
own making. The definition that he persists in giving
of body and mind must entail perplexity as to their mutual
relation ; and it is these definitions that made Geulincx,
Malebranche, and Leibniz differ so widely from their master.
Finally as to the ' Passions/ Descartes uses the word
in a wider sense passions of mind as opposed to actions
of mind, thought including of course both and in a narrower
sense all sorts of perceptions or 'knowledges' that do not
arise through actions of the mind but are as the mind receives
them. In other words, passions are all mental states except
volitions. Of these there are three kinds. First and there
seems here a contradiction some passions may arise from
mind as the cause of the perceptions, as when we perceive
that we will. He admits these are perhaps better called
actions. Secondly, indirect affections, or sensations due to
external bodies. Thirdly, direct affections, or appetites J .
Thus he does not deny here that sensations and appetites,
arising in the body, are of the mind, although he is more
inclined to refer them all, as with animals, to the body.
His judgment wavers. To him the emotions seemed, of
all states due to the interaction of soul and body, far more
impressive than imagination and sensation. Even when
1 In Art. 23 he adds fortuitous representations.
xxiv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 267
not excited by sense as, e. g. fear at sight of a tiger an
emotion has a confusing disturbing effect on the purely
mental life. It may be said, appetites are powerful dis-
turbers ; but Descartes might have replied, they disturb
us only as they rouse emotions that disturb us. And
objects, he said, excite passions only by reason of the
diverse ways in which they may hurt or profit us, or in
general be important for us. It is only as objects can be
thought of as beneficial or hurtful to the body that
emotions can arise. Emotions, then, are the expression
of a value for the individual. This is true and shows
a sound grasp of the import of emotion.
He also orders the emotions well and scientifically, as
primitive (or general), and secondary (particular), although
general considerations, both ethical and logical, are mixed
up with his exposition. The primitive emotions are wonder,
love, hate, desire, joy, sorrow, his definition of emotion being
however applicable to only five. In his striking doctrine
of Wonder, where he shows great psychological acumen,
he really has hold of the same element as Professor
Bain has in neutral feelings, or emotions of relativity,
which no thorough scientific analysis can ignore. He means
that there is a certain emotional condition that is neutral
in the sense of not being hurtful or beneficial. And while
he thus places Wonder first, he assigns a special ethical
importance to it at the end of his treatise, as that emotion
by which the freely willing mind is able to subdue the other
passions, since it is subservient to the emotionally neutral function
of knowing.
The other five fall into three groups. Love and hate
are the simplest expression of the mind as regards pleasure
and pain. The good = the loved ; the bad = the hated.
268 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
They are one emotion in different relations. Desire is
the phase where good and evil are in the future. Joy and
sorrow are passions in the actual presence of good and
evil ; and are dual like the former t\vo. Why is Desire
not dual ? A man desiring has always hope and fear.
Desire therefore is dual, but implicitly so. Wonder is not
dual, for though it is a passion, it has no relation to good
and evil, but arises simply from novelty. From these genera
all other passions may be derived as specific or secondary.
From his definition of mind as thought, and emotions
or passions as states where pure thinking is affected by
body, it follows that in order to clear thinking the emotions
must be kept down ; nevertheless he well saw how much
driving power there lies in passion properly directed. And
of all the passions that one which makes for knowledge and
may be made to support mind as thinking is wonder. The
remedy for passion as disturbing mind is the free, voluntary
activity of thought. To keep passions down, 'we must think
clearly, know fully, under the guidance of wonder. Know-
ledge of the true value of things, of the true limits of
our powers, of the unalterable laws of nature as it can be
got by exciting wonder or curiosity, suffices to hold the other
passions in subjection. The soul, by its power of thinking,
can suppress one passion indirectly by dwelling on another.
This is good psychology, whatever may be said of his
physiology, namely, that the pineal gland diverts the course
of the vital spirits. But, he held, this was a weak method;
the better way is to live with firm and determinate judgments
touching good and evil as attained by clear thinking.
Here his system properly ends, and it is in this connexion
that he made the greatest advance on his predecessors in
psychology. He was distinctly on the track of physiological
xxlv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 269
psychology, though of course with deficient knowledge of the
nervous system.
As to the merits of his system generally, it may be said
(i) that in reach and all-comprehensiveness it stands perhaps
unique in the history of human thought. (2) Note the logical
consequence of it, onward from the methodology, in which this
is made the first requisite, to the most detailed applications
of its general principles, and into the heroic efforts made
to grapple with the difficulties which it hardly pretended
to surmount. I do not mean that everything in the system
follows with perfect consequence, but this is certainly aimed
at, and there is never any shifting of particular consequences.
(3) Mark also its originality, which is attested at every step,
notwithstanding the fact that in this or that point there had
been ancient and scholastic anticipations (especially in
Augustin) some of them striking of Descartes' doctrine.
It constituted an almost incredible advance upon Scholasti-
cism, especially in the apprehension or explanation of nature.
And this may be claimed for it, even although it so often
puts the material world out of sight when human mental
conditions are considered. It put forward the sceptical
subjective point of view as against the authoritative, tradi-
tional and formal dicta of Scholasticism, constituting, by
virtue of its personal starting-point, a philosophy which, if it
cannot be considered satisfactory, never can lose its meaning
as Scholasticism, with its abstract generalities about things,
has done.
LECTURE XXV.
ON CARTESIANISM l .
IT was in Holland and France, the land of his adoption
and the land of his birth, that the effect of Descartes'
philosophy was at once decisive and immediate. There
it was both actively opposed and actively propagated and
developed, unlike its fate in England and Germany, England
particularly, where it was received without enthusiasm, and
in neither was immediately in England not at any time
carried further.
In Holland mere propagation (headed by Reneri and
Regius) began to give place to transformation and develop-
ment through Claubergius (a German in Holland) and
others, till by Arnold Geulincx, a convert to Calvinistic
Protestantism, Occasionalism was put forth as the legitimate
interpretation of the master's thought. Violent religious
hostility, from the time of Voetius at Utrecht, on the part
of the orthodox clergy, caused the Cartesians to draw to-
wards the dissenting theologians the Arminians, &c.
with whom they were denounced as enemies, sometimes
Jesuitical (!) enemies to the faith.
In France the development of Cartesianism took place
not in the Universities, which remained scholastic, and where
(at least in Paris in 1671) it was formally proscribed, but
1 Selected from the author's MSS. and from lectures delivered
1880, 1886, and 1891.
Elements of General Philosophy. 271
among the religious orders. Opposed by the Jesuits whom
Descartes had been so eager to gain, but who stood to
the Schoolmen or to Gassendi until the new empirical
philosophy arose, the system was accepted by the Jansenists
of Port Royal, the fathers of the Oratory, and other con-
gregations. It was looked upon with favour by Fe'nelon,
Bossuet, &c., propagated in private associations for science,
and in society became a fashion. The most sympathetic
critic and follower was Arnauld, whose criticisms Descartes
treated with most respect. The most important was Nicole
Malebranche, priest of the Oratory (founded by Descartes'
patron Cardinal Berulle, a free order for the advancement
of theology). Malebranche was turned to the passionate
study of philosophy by Descartes.
The thinkers who thus succeeded Descartes may be called
Cartesians, not only because they were stirred up by him
to thought and to the discovery of a way out of the contra-
dictions in which he landed himself, but also because for
all of them the refuge lies in the idea of the Infinite Sub-
stance, God. None of them are theological thinkers in
the sense that the Schoolmen were. The starting-point
with all is the human reason, and the goal is rational ex-
planation. But the way lies through the (rational) idea of
the Deity. They are Theistic thinkers, and are ultimately
Pantheistic, perforce if not voluntarily, for the whole Car-
tesian movement tends to Pantheism.
Now Descartes'" philosophy in its result is properly ex-
pressed by Kuno Fischer as a double Dualism, viz. of
substances opposed and constituted by the opposition :
(i) of God (Infinite) and the World (finite), or all things
created; (2) of Mind (thinking substance) and Body
(extended substance). Descartes is seriously concerned to
272 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
maintain that God exists apart from the world, and the
world exists per se. And Mind, as part of the world, is,
by its liability to err, and still more by its power to escape
from error (free power of self-determination), regarded by
him as having a substantial existence. Nevertheless by his
own definition of substance, it is impossible for him to
apply it univocally to God and anything created. Mind
is dependent upon God for knowledge. Matter is entirely
inert, and must be moved by God. And creatures are not
only called into being by God, but need re-creating every
moment. Existence is a continual creation.
With regard to the other dualism, however strongly he
maintained the absolute independence of mind and body,
we saw him in difficulties through the testimony of facts
to the existence of a relation between them. He wavers
between calling this a substantial union or a unity of com-
position only. He wavers as to sense and imagination. His
chief merit is his courage and honesty in uttering his diffi-
culties. His dualism he must be understood to maintain
notwithstanding ; and the contradictions are so many incon-
sistent and wavering concessions to facts which he cannot
shut his eyes to. Or if at times he is upon a way to
surmount the difficulties by aggrandising the theistic element,
it is at the expense of his dualism.
The action of his school was determined by this position
of the master, and had two courses open to it :
i. To maintain the dualistic principles strictly as strictly
at least as possible and by a definite line, instead of the
master's wavering attitude, to explain away some, if not all,
the difficulties, resigning if necessary the very idea of natural
or philosophical explanation, the desire not to let go which
was the occasion of his very hesitation and wavering.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 273
2. To maintain the dualistic principles only in such a form
as that the difficulties cease to be in the same way real,
i.e. to give a natural or philosophical explanation of the
difficulties, but in so doing to resign the dualism.
The first course is known as the theory of Occasionalism.
The dualism of body and mind is strictly maintained; that
of God and the world as far as possible, since it is the
divine (personal) agency that is explicitly and uniformly
recurred to for the solution of the difficulty as between body
and mind. Occasionalism, in short, surmounts the difficulty
of interaction of body and mind at the expense of natural
or philosophical explanation, and by overlooking the diffi-
culty between God and World : uniformly at the expense
of philosophical explanation ; and if not by uniformly
ignoring the difficulty between God and World, then with
an explanation of this which tends towards the second course.
Now the difficulty of Body and Mind is twofold :
(a) There is no doubt according to Descartes about the
substantiality of both. Bodies in no respect need minds
for their existence, nor do minds need bodies. But bodies
and minds undoubtedly appear to be related to each other
in two obvious ways : mind is acted on through body,
e.g. in sense; body is acted on by mind, e.g. in volition.
Now how, if they are totally opposed substances, can mind
move body, or body impress mind ? Both Geulincx and
Malebranche replied, by the action of the Deity upon occasion
of the change in either, God alone being able to effect it.
There is in reality no interaction between body and mind.
By omnipotence God excites perception when he moves
body. Hence it is not less wonderful for my tongue to
move when I will to speak than that the globe should
tremble.
274 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
(b] But mind and body have a more special relation :
mind knows body, body is known by mind. Then how
can thinking substance know substance that does not think ?
How, being itself non-extended, can it have even an idea
of Extension ? Malebranche replied Plato had inspired the
thought by having a vision of Extension (as of all things)
not only through but ' in ' God ; for God can possess the
idea of Extension, and ideas are not only divine, but are
not to be detached from the nature of God. It is not \ve
who know, but God who knows through us *.
The second course is Spinozism 2 .
This retains the dualism of body and mind only as an
opposition of attributes, instead of substances, while the
dualism of God and World wholly vanishes. Deus sive
Natura is one substance, of which Thought and Extension
are alike attributes, and minds and things passing modes.
God therefore as single and solitary substance thus was
the theistic element in Descartes' system which is theistic,
if ever philosophy was developed in and by Spinoza 3 .
Manifestly the two directions of thought here outlined
1 Note that whereas Malebranche explained knowledge by God,
Berkeley explained God's existence from his theory of knowledge.
2 READING. Spinoza. By Principal Caird. (Knight's Philosophical
Classics.) (Circumspect, exact, good generally, especially on the
epistemology.) Spinoza. By Dr. Martineau. (Learned, eloquent,
but too polemical for deepest insight.) Spinoza. By Sir F. Pollock.
(Brilliant but inexact.) Kuno Fischer and Erdmann, in their histories
of philosophy.
Of the translations White's (Trubner) and Elwes's (Bohn series)
are both very good, but should be read if possible with constant
reference to the original (best edition, Vloten and Land, Hagae
Comitum, 1892-3").
" In the Ethica Spinoza has attained to fully developed Monism ; in
the Tractatus Brcvis he is still a half-hearted Dualist.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 275
are both Cartesian. Spinoza, as little as Geulincx or Male-
branche, would have thought as he did but for Descartes.
The two lines of thought are not however equally Cartesian.
It is one thing to take for a principle the Dualism that
Descartes tried to reach consistently, though he could not,
and seek a means (philosophical or not) of resting there.
It is another thing to take for a principle the Monism or
Pantheism that Descartes could not avoid falling into and
(although with the help of a dualism of Thought and Extension)
to work out into its utmost details a system antagonistic
to Descartes'. The difference is the difference between the
action of disciples and the action of an original thinker
who takes and hands on the torch in the philosophic race.
That Spinoza, and not Geulincx or Malebranche, made a real
advance, and the necessary advance in thought from the
point to which Descartes had been carried, is clear from
this, that neither of these two found it possible to save
their master's Dualism, or to get out of the current that
bore them towards Spinoza. If Spinoza himself succeeded
as little in reaching a sure resting-place, that was not because
his thought was not a distinct advance and a grand achieve-
ment, but because his principles, both his own and those
he had from Descartes, were what they were.
Let us now look more closely at the second course
(Spinozism) in its relation to Descartes.
It may seem strange to put forward Spinoza as the last
great link in the Cartesian chain, seeing he began to philo-
sophise hardly later than Geulincx, and had worked out the
greater part of his extraordinary system before Malebranche
knew a line of Descartes' writings. The last link he is,
nevertheless, in respect of the logical import of his doctrine.
T 2
276 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Even historically also, if we go upon the date of the publica-
tion of their most important works, Malebranche precedes
Spinoza. Though he lived forty years longer than the
latter, and began to think later, his chief work Recherche de la
Ve'rite appeared three years before Spinoza's Ethica, and
already in that work his involuntary Spinozism is clearly
enough marked. The truth is, Malebranche drifted towards
Spinoza before he knew of Spinoza's system, and when he
did know it, spurned it and sought to steer away from it,
he drifted as before. Malebranche's course was marked out
for him in the principles he started from. So was Spinoza's.
But the latter took it with such a will that he swiftly explored
all that it led to explored and died while Malebranche still
was young. Even the next great thinker, Leibniz, forced
by Spinoza into a new track, had time to live and shape
the thought of the eighteenth century, before Malebranche
died. So much is Malebranche outside the main course
of European thought so strongly did that current set from
Descartes to Leibniz through Spinoza.
Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (or Despinoza) was born
at Amsterdam, in 1632, of a Jewish family, emigrants from
Portugal directly, but probably of Spanish origin, which had
emigrated on account of the Inquisition. His principal teacher
was the famous Talmudist, Rabbi Morteira, a philosopher
after the Jewish-Scholastic manner of Maimonides (1135-
1204). In the translations of his works named above his
biography is given *. Persecuted in his lifetime and an
object of the fiercest hate long after his death, he has
within the last century, through Jacobi, Goethe, Schleier-
macher and others, had justice done to the singular purity
and nobleness of his solitary life, and perhaps rather more
1 The Bohn Translation dates his birth wrongly.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 277
than justice done to the philosophic value of his unique
and imposing doctrine.
The extent to which Cartesianism was the moulding
influence on that doctrine is a point on which there has
been much discussion. On the one hand, to Spinoza's
devotees Dutch and Jewish investigators his work appears
not only one of the most remarkable, but the most remark-
able achievement of the human mind. To them his philo-
sophy is the crowning result of philosophic thought never
to be surpassed. Their ecstatic admiration would not allow
that the accident of Descartes' existence could have in-
fluenced him very greatly, and that he merely received the
torch and handed it on to others. As if to atone for their
forefathers' ill-treatment of him, many Jews within the last
twenty years are proud to claim the great thinker as one
of themselves. Sir F. Pollock, on the other hand, and Kuno
Fischer exaggerate the influence of Descartes, the former
asserting, not without reason, that the view which minimises
it springs out of an insufficient study of Descartes' works
in relation to those of Spinoza. The difference of view is
due in part also to the different value attached to Spinoza's
philosophy as a whole 1 .
Dr. Joel and others ~ try to prove that Spinoza got his
ideas not from Descartes but from his own people, especially
from Maimonides and Crescas (fl. about 1400).
Spinoza often mentions Maimonides, but not in the Ethica.
Maimonides was the greatest Jewish thinker of the Middle
1 The controversy may be followed best in Professor Sorley's
excellent article 'Jewish Mediaeval Philosophy and Spinoza,' Mind.
1880.
2 Cf. Professor K. Pearson's article, 'Maimonides and Spinoza,'
Mind, vi.
278 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Ages. He did for the Jewish faith what was done by
Arabian philosophers for Mohammedanism, and by School-
men like Aquinas for Christianity. Arabian, Jewish, and
Christian thinkers were guided by the same principle, namely,
that of rationalising religion, of harmonising it with philo-
sophy. We do find traces of Jewish habits of thought in
Spinoza, but no ground for asserting that there is in him
any idea which, being a Jew, he could not have got without
Maimonides.
Crescas headed the reaction against Maimonides, as
William of Ockham did against Aquinas, holding that faith
could not be rationalised, could not be expressed in terms
of philosophy, but was there to be accepted intact. He
denied the freedom of human will, affirming the necessity of
human action. So did Spinoza, more than any one, unless
we except Hobbes. But it is a long step to say that he
got this from Crescas. I do not, I say, find anything in
Spinoza which cannot be expressed by the fact that all
three were Jews.
Spinoza was an original thinker if ever there was one,
but he would not have thought as he did if Descartes
had not thought before him. I do not deny the Jewish
influence generally, but I hold that Spinoza is a logical
development of Descartes.
Again, I can say no more for the alleged influence on
Spinoza of Giordano Bruno * ; there is no real ground for
connecting them. But I do believe that Spinoza was far
better informed in Christian Scholastic philosophy than is
supposed. Spinoza's was no such wild-flower intellect.
Modern philosophy, remember, was fighting its way into
existence, and Scholastic philosophy, in resisting it, was
1 Cf. Erdmann, II, 272, i.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 279
itself vigorously issuing new text-books. Do not assume
that Scholasticism had perished by 1700; it then held all
the Universities; all the Catholic Universities it still holds,
and it has in our day experienced a vigorous effective revival.
Spinoza certainly took up the problems that Descartes
had left, and solved them to all intents and purposes in
Cartesian terms, as he would not have done unless Descartes'
results and methods had been there. If however Spinoza
ever was a Cartesian, he consciously broke away from
Descartes and made his fame thereby. His first work which
appeared in 1663, on Descartes' Principia geometrically
expounded, gave evidence at once of his dependence and
his independence. But how far he was a Cartesian is best
seen in the work of Arnauld, Geulincx, and Malebranche,
who, professing themselves disciples of Descartes, and
shrinking in horror from Spinoza's views, were hardly able
to avoid coming to his conclusions. Spinoza ended by
opposing Descartes, but he did so under Cartesian influence.
The relation of Spinoza to Descartes, as far as concerns
the special difficulties arising from the dualism of Thought
and Extension, has been already indicated. The difficulty
as between God and the World Spinoza gets rid of by
giving up the world by denying to it any substantial
character of its own, by making it, in all its variety, a mere
mode of the Divine Existence, to which it never can assume
an attitude of opposition. The difficulty as between Mind
and Body he gets rid of by denying the substantial character
of both, and allowing them only a modal opposition :
Mind is not Body, an Idea is not an Extended thing; they
are opposed so as that the one never can be the other ;
but they are not only opposed, for they are united and
held together in their mutual opposition, being only modes
280 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
passing modes of the one great Substance underlying
them and all. Such opposition thus overcome means mutual
correspondence, and here Spinoza must be called Occa-
sionalist Occasionalist at least as to the bond between
the mental mode and the bodily mode, if not as to the
bond between links in the mental chain and between links
in the bodily chain. But it is not the Occasionalism of
Geulincx and Malebranche with the problem how do
diverse substances come to be related ? and with the solu-
tion of a personal Deity intervening. The correspondence
for Spinoza is Law of Nature, and his problem is Given
one substance, whence comes all the variety in Nature ?
Such is the special relation between Descartes and Spinoza,
but this far from exhausts the connexion between the two,
as might be said of Descartes and Geulincx or Malebranche.
Spinoza is so much the greater figure than either of them
that the connexion is more worthy of being established.
And he so distinctly by his originality stands between the
next great figure, Leibniz, and Descartes, that his own
dependence upon the inaugurator of modern speculation
requires to be more fully set forth.
I find it in three particulars: (i) in the prominence
given to the notion of Substance, (2) in the idea of mathe-
matical method to be applied to philosophy, and (3) in the
exclusion of Final Causes from human science. All three
particulars are characteristic elements of Descartes' thought.
In Spinoza's they are derived from Descartes ; only they
are so transformed by the original power of the man that
they come to be more strictly characteristic of his own.
(i) Whoso places this notion of Substance in the front
of his thought stamps its character once and finally. He
is a speculative Dogmatist. He speculates upon and with
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 281
the knowledge he has, instead of making it his first object,
with Locke and others of the psychological school, to inquire
how he came by that knowledge. He dogmatises upon
things within and beyond experience with a perfect con-
fidence in the ability of the human mind, instead of making
it his first object, with Kant and the Critical school, and
with the psychological school again, to inquire into the
limits and the scope of the mind's power. Such a specu-
lative Dogmatist was Descartes. But Spinoza was doubly
so. Descartes, though he quickly enough dogmatised, had at
least his preliminary doubt. Spinoza had none. Descartes,
though he speculated freely enough as to the hidden nature
of things, at least tried to recognise what he found, and
fell into his inconsistencies because he would labour to
reconcile undoubted facts and natural experience with his
speculation. Spinoza speculated with a perfect disregard
of natural experience, and, because he would not stoop
to any such accommodation, appears less inconsistent with
himself.
The pantheistic element in Descartes' thought, viz. the
tendency to conceive the notion of substance in the truest
sense as being only One, and the naturalistic element, viz.
the tendency to conceive the One Substance or God as
Order of Nature, were brought together and set in the
front of Spinoza's thought as the mother-idea of it all.
For this his thought must, as I have said, be regarded as
the necessary logical development of the Cartesian system,
as the last word that can and must be said about the
universe upon Cartesian principles. And the rigid manner
of the development, the spirit of philosophic calm in which
that last word is uttered, are such are, in spite of all
criticism, which touches the conception far more than the
282 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
execution, such that Spinoza's philosophy remains as yet,
and is likely to remain, the very type of a Naturalistic
Pantheism.
Spinoza also inherits from Descartes the notions of
'attribute' and 'mode.'
Now, for Spinoza, mode gets into a direct relation with
substance, as it does not for Descartes. For the latter
modes are not things, while for the former they are the
only explanation of res particulares, being the way in which
the one substance expresses itself. Mode in Descartes is
attribute specialised in a certain way, and is understood
quite apart from the question of substantiality. That he
had settled at the beginning by positing infinite substance
and finite substance. Spinoza could not quite so easily
accept Descartes' compromise. The business of philosophy
being to account for our experience, i.e. for particular
things, and Spinoza having undertaken to do so by Monism,
he had to eliminate from ' mode ' the notion of substantiality.
No less has he to account for 'attributes,' such as thought,
extension, &c. How far he has consistently fitted both
terms into his system is a much controverted point *. To
me it seems that he is not without inconsistencies to answer
for in his usage of the terms, going, in language at least,
straight from substance to mode (cf. Eth. I. Def. iv. and
Props, iv. 2 and vi. Proof), and yet no less referring modes
to attributes (cf. I. Prop. xxv. Cor.) His inconsistencies
show (i) that he had not quite made up his mind in this
1 See especially Martineau's Spinoza and Kuno Fischer's and
Erdmann's Histories of Philosophy on this point. The lecturer (in
1891) entered in detail into the controversy, but space prevents me
from reproducing. ED.
'-' Do not take Spinoza too strictly here in his use of ' substance ' in
the plural.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 283
connexion, (ii) that he felt the difficulties entailed by holding
on to Descartes while being determined to arrive at a
different conclusion, (iii) that he felt the difficulties inherent
in Substantialism difficulties which, in becoming by a later
age fully realised, have altered the position of philosophy
concerning that which was the ultimate viciousness in the
attitude of the age.
(2) The method of mathematics is not the only speculative
method in philosophy, but it is a speculative method. A
thinker may reject it, like Hegel for his dialectic method,
and still be intensely speculative, but the thinker must
also be intensely speculative who accepts it; for the use
of it commits him to the assertion that resort to specific
experience is as unnecessary in metaphysics as in mathe-
matics, that the most general truth about the nature of
all things is already as well ascertained, or as ascertainable
and ready to be formulated and fit to be applied in new
cases, as the most general truth about number and form.
A bold assertion ! It was however a very common assertion
in the seventeenth century, and one that men might be
excused for at least desiring to be able to make. The
certainty of mathematical truth, which Schoolmen had con-
cerned themselves so little about, and the uncertainty of
philosophical truth, which Schoolmen had been working
at for centuries, could not fail to appear in somewhat dis-
agreeable contrast, and the contrast in turn to excite bound-
less hopes if the method that led to uncertainty and dispute
might be changed for the method that ended in certitude
and unanimity. That the contrast should particularly strike
and excite a born mathematical genius like Descartes the
first great mathematician since the Arabians was only
natural. It led him to what we know and have seen:
284 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
the method of science is one, and is to be drawn and
generalised from mathematics ; is deductive from certain
and fixed principles ; passes from causes to effects ; dis-
plays a must-be of things ; works so certainly from principles
so large that the only difficulty is in selecting from among
the ' infinity of possible effects ' those that correspond with
the actual things and facts of this poor universe. Descartes
has all this, and it is not little ; but his mathematic is
implicit ; he does not go farther not even in his systematic
work to evolve the results from his principles in regular
geometrical form (except when expressly challenged in the
' Objections'). That was left to Spinoza. Definitions,
Axioms, Theorems, Lemmas, Corollaries Spinoza adopts
the whole machinery adopts or tries to adopt, and believes
he sustains the whole responsibility of it. Descartes' practical
departure from mathematical method and the abrupt collapse
of his project in the Regies (never, though he had plenty
of time, resumed), are explicable from his very mathematical
power, or at least from his tact or common sense ; he saw
that the thing could not in fact, or should not, be done.
Spinoza was kept back from attempt and achievement by
no such superiority of scientific ability. And as an inferior
mathematician he was pedantic in his use of the method.
Leibniz, the next great mathematician and philosopher after
Descartes, found fault after fault in Spinoza.
Spinoza however was so thoroughly a Dogmatist that
he could not but work by this method. Kant rightly dis-
cerned that the dogmatist cannot proceed in philosophy
by any other method l . With him, as with the mathe-
1 V '. Kritik of Pure Reason (Max Muller's translation), pp. 610-633:
' On the Discipline of Pure Reason in the Sphere of Dogmatism.'
Students were emphatically referred to this passage. ED.
xxv.] Elements of General Philosophy. 285
matician, first notions are given, not sought. The essence
of Dogmatism is to be prepared from the first with an
equation between thought and reality. If the day comes
when we do discern the riddle of the universe and there
is nothing more to know, then the method of setting it
forth will be the mathematical method of philosophy. But
I venture to predict that its matter and conclusions will be
very different from Spinoza's. For us, working where we
now stand, I have nothing but the strongest disapproval ot
the use of mathematics in philosophy.
For consider : how is it that in geometry we are able
to proceed from fixed principles to propositions that are
necessary? Because we are here dealing with matter that
we make, control, constitute. But this does not make the
method valid in regard to nature. If it is applicable and
in so far as it is applicable to nature, it is because all our
sensations are, more or less, ordered in space. If then
we can make out anything with regard to space, we can
apply it to nature generally.
We perceive space by activity put forth. We make
space in the knowing of it. We know it in the making
of it. If this is the proper explanation of the mathematical
method, the only question to be asked is, are we in philo-
sophy occupied in the same way ? Philosophy is the ultimate
interpretation of experience. Is experience something that
we make in the way that we make space ?
Now experience is not something that we simply receive.
It is in a manner, as Kant taught, a construction of ours.
Our thoughts about things are our mental activity func-
tioning in various ways. But there is a difference. Activity
is involved in thinking, and therefore in experience. But
there is also an element in experience that is given. That
286 Elements of General Philosophy.
element may be greater or less, but experience is in any
case reproductive and representative. We have to wait for
what comes to us before we can know. In metaphysic
therefore, as in physical science, definitions are statements of
results arrived at, and not principles proceeded from. Our
metaphysical notions cause, substance, &c. continually
change as mathematical notions do not. And our notions
of substance have changed since Spinoza. Hence he has
not, as he implies, solved the riddle of the universe for all
time. He meant to be strict, honest, exact, but he attempts
the impossible. His work is a model of what can and of
what canwtf/ be done on these lines.
LECTURE XXVI.
ox CARTESIAMSM (continued],
(3) FROM the mathematical method, adopted by Descartes
and his followers in the peculiar scientific conditions of the
time, the exclusion of so-called Final Causes of Aims or
Ends necessarily followed. A Schoolman, more theologian
than philosopher, may read all great things in the world
according to some religious idea of a divine purpose, and
in his ignorance of natural causes may pretend to a science
of smaller things in vain general statements about the ends
that things serve. A thinker like Aristotle, casting the first
scientific glance over the multiplicity of nature, may less
vainly eke out his explanation in such a way ; or labouring
to comprehend in magnificent, if premature abstraction the
first principles of being, may credit nature with an immanent
re'Xof, or End, of which all motion and mutation is the slow
accomplishment. A thinker like Kant, seeing nothing in the
realm of nature but a vast complex of phenomena linked each
to each by the iron chains of cause and effect forged within
the mind, may look beyond to a region of supra-sensible
noiimena, and conceive it as a Realm of Ends to get free
play for that power of self-determination in moral beings
which he will not resign.
But in proportion as any thinker takes the mathematical
analogy and follows it out consistently in the whole field
s88 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
of knowledge, or of assumption, he must submerge the
teleological view. It is not as the means to any end that
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles ;
the triangle, we say, ' makes ' them so (and makes them so
with a causation which anybody might call universal and
necessary), but no purpose is served, no aim thereby pro-
moted. This Descartes did not fail to see, and the idea
guided much of his scientific action, guiding it well in
physics away from the emptiness of Scholastic explanation.
Spinoza saw it, and the idea guided his every thought as it
never guided the thought of mortal man before or since.
The point is so important, so specially significant, as to
require a more particular handling. Descartes' rejection of
final causes is but partial compared with Spinoza's. It lies
to hand to connect this with his less rigid employment of
the deductive (geometrical) method. The main idea of the
method Descartes doubtless has, but, beginning his meta-
physics with a datum of the mature consciousness, and
evolving from it and with it whatever it will give, he cannot
be said to apply the method with any strictness at the first
stage of his speculation. This he does rather in his Physics
only. With his metaphysical notion of Body or Matter as
extended and nothing more, and his assumption that all
mutation, real or phenomenal, is mechanical, he does then
rigidly enough proceed to construct and explain from fixed
principles. Now it is precisely at this stage that he makes
exclusion of final causes ', and the exclusion, while it con-
stitutes his advance upon those who went before, struck
a right note for those who came after him in the history
of science. But while the exclusion is limited for, as we
know, it is not by him extended in any sense to the greater
1 Read Principia, iii. 1-3.
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 289
world of mind, every mind according to him being absolutely
self-determinant, and thought not being bound by a law
of cause and effect it is at the same time put upon grounds
that betray a manifest unsteadiness of vision. Not because
final causes would be unwarrantably foisted in by the mind
upon a scene of mere mechanical action and reaction (as
even Kant who accepts them elsewhere declared), but only
because it is too great presumption for a human mind to
measure the universe by human needs, or try to fathom the
purposes of the Deity, does Descartes enter his protest
against a teleological physics. That is a view, no doubt, but
not the view (still less favourable to final causes), that
depends upon the adoption of a peculiar method in philo-
sophy. If we will see the method strictly adopted, and with
singleness of mind carried out to its last conclusion in the
direction we are now considering, we must look beyond
Descartes to Spinoza.
Spinoza clearly is held back by no mental preoccupation
from following wheresoever his method of philosophical in-
quiry leads him. If God and Nature to him are one, and if
Nature is best exhibited as a system in which from the core
outwards everything is as it cannot but be, he will not, like
a Schoolman, embark on the search for divine ends, or,
like Descartes, draw back from the search only because it is
too high for man a . Nor, like Descartes again, can he allow
any such difference between Mind and Body as would require
the assumption of a different scientific procedure. Mind
and Body are for him perfectly distinct. Not Descartes with
his two opposed substances could draw the dividing line
more strictly and hold it more unfailingly than does Spinoza,
with his opposed attributes of Thought and Extension, pre-
1 Read Ethica, i. Appendix.
U
290 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
serving their opposition into the most transient mode of
each. But, opposed as they are, they, at every stage, high
and low, are in correspondence. No mode of Thought
without its parallel mode of Extension ; no fact of body
unaccompanied by some mode of thought (Eth. iii. 2. Schol.) ;
and where there are two chains, in which link answers to
link, although they are two, the links of the one for itself
hold as rigidly together as the links of the other, because
each is a chain. Thoughts in nature being thus not less
bound together and mutually conditioned amongst themselves
than are things, the necessities of science are in each case
alike, A body in motion moves another, and the law of
the movement, not the end or object of it, is the physical
science of the case. A thought begets a thought, and
not any free initiative of a mind creating its own purpose
should be assumed, but the law of the production is all
that should be sought.
Now Descartes, where he negatives Final Causes, namely,
in his physical science, puts forward Efficient Causes ; and
this constitutes the great merit of it. Everywhere indeed in
his philosophy, metaphysical as well as physical, this notion
of Cause, meaning Efficient Cause, stands forward; and to
him it is greatly due that in modern times we have so far
left behind that vague Aristotelian notion of Cause, covering
the four principles of things: Material, Formal, Efficient
or Movent, and Final as to have come to associate the
notion exclusively with the Efficient principle ; and this not
only in all science, but even in philosophical discussions
about Causation (where, as in Hume, Hamilton, &c., the
question is as to there being any potency and virtus,
or only mere antecedents of a certain kind, in the cause
which is efficient). The notion of Efficient Cause, embodied
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 291
in the Ex nihilo, &c., is what carries Descartes, at his meta-
physical stage, over the otherwise impassable gulf fixed by
himself between his self-consciousness and objective reality ;
and his whole physical philosophy consists in nothing else
but the attempt to show that everything in nature results
from mechanical interaction of bodies bodies in their
character of being extended, taking and giving amongst
themselves the unchanging quantum of movement once com-
municated to them by the Creator. So that, notwithstanding
his references to mathematical method and the deductive
cast of his intellect, Descartes' philosophical explanation is
seldom a mere manipulation and explication of notions and
abstract principles assumed.
But such it ought to be, if the full responsibility of the
method is accepted ; and such Spinoza aims at being.
For, as to the first point, it should be remarked, beyond
what has already been said, that Final Causes are not more
excluded from mathematical truth than is the notion of
Efficient Causation. When, to use the former example, the
triangle is said to make its angles equal to two right angles,
it makes them in any properly causative sense as little as
it makes them for any end or purpose. Even those who
recognise a necessity of connexion between cause and effect
will not, if like Kant they are wise, confound it with necessity
of implication. The equality of the angles to two right
angles follows from triangular nature quite otherwise than
it follows that a body if let go will fall to the ground. What
is contained in a notion follows from the notion, and comes
within the mind's ken in one way; a thing that is caused in
nature by another thing follows upon this, and is apprehended
by the mind as following, in another way. A system of
philosophy, if conceived and worked out on mathematical
u 2
292 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
principles, will deal in notional connexions, not in causal
relations. But if this could ever be said of a philosophic
system, it is to be said of Spinoza's.
Let me not be misunderstood. Spinoza speaks often
enough of cause, and even has the phrase causa efficient;
but where he speaks of efficient cause : ' Deum omnium
rerum esse causam efficientem ' (Elh. I. 16) it is made
clear that the efficiency is only inclusion in the definition,
conclusion from the definition and, immediately afterwards
(I. 1 8), that the cause is immanent and in no sense transient;
whilst in speaking of cause simply, he either, if it is of modes,
means it in a sense not ultimate, or when the sense is ultimate,
means precisely this implication of all in the idea of the one
Substance.
For Spinoza is pre-eminently the demonstrative thinker.
He believes, if ever man did, and far more than Descartes
ever did, that he has grasped the inner secret of the universe
and can lay bare in the orderly evolution of thought the
meaning of all that is. The demonstration he himself
supposes to rest upon a few truths perfectly self-evident
at least when he sets them forth, for no man before him
had the same insight into them and to be the most irre-
fragable, clear, and final exposition of the whole system
of things. Another might say that the principles upon
which the demonstration is supposed to rest are neither
truths nor at all self-evident, but only a rash, though striking
abstraction from experience, and that the demonstration
itself halts and is insufficient, or at the best is eked out by
sidelong glances at the actual. But demonstration, and
strict demonstration, is nevertheless what Spinoza aims at
and believes he has achieved.
Here then we touch the true difference between Descartes
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 293
and Spinoza, and can apprehend the speculative stride taken
by the younger thinker. It is not only that where the one
gets rid of final causes in physical science, and upon grounds
that may be called theological, the other bans them utterly
from the universe upon the ground of strict philosophical
principle, but it is that whereas Descartes deduces and
constructs with a principle of Efficient Causation, Spinoza
rejects, or tends to reject, also the notion of Efficient Cause,
and, with perfect consistency, resolves, or fain would resolve,
everything upon a principle of Necessity of Implication.
A word finally on Spinoza's psychology and epistemology.
The latter is a very remarkable doctrine and very closely
interwoven with his psychology and his metaphysic of mind
and body, but always with an explicit ethical object (Eth. II.
Pref.) In Parts I and II of the Ethica he is laying the
foundations and preparing the materials for his doctrine of
how man may be ethically perfect.
Special note should be taken of the seventh proposition,
Part II a a metaphysical assertion on which all his psycho-
logical observation is based. It is the first explicit utterance
of the later doctrine of Parallelism. This is now always
purely phenomenal in assertion 2 , serving the purposes of
psychological science without prejudicing ultimate hypotheses,
being held by Dualists no less than by Monists of to-day.
The doctrine of the latter both in its phenomenal and meta-
physical aspects has great affinity with that of Spinoza, but
has been got at differently, viz. by induction. The common
result has brought Spinoza into vogue, so much so that
1 ' The order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and
connexion of things.'
-Thus: 'With every psychosis is concomitant a neurosis.'
(Elements of Psychology, Lect. VI.) ED.
294 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
younger students need to be reminded that it is only lately
he has been seriously considered as a thinker. Spinoza
starts as a dogmatic metaphysician, thinking that by his
definition of substance he can account for mind and body as
they appear. In the end he practically abandons his first
position and writes as a Phenomenalist. Law of Nature
replaces Substance. Phenomenalism has got up to where he
came down. His dogmatic Substantialism is overlooked.
There was nothing new in Spinoza's Parallelism. Aristotle
was a Parallelist, dogmatic also in his procedure. Descartes
and the Occasionalists are so also. Leibniz in his Monadism
was a Parallelist. My emphasis is due to the attitude of
modern Parallelists, who write as if they were first in the field
even inventing the term Automatism or at most connecting
themselves with Descartes only. Everything modern on
body and mind is in Spinoza in principle, and is also much
more clearly thought out than it is by many, his detail
being often remarkable, e. g. when dealing with Perception,
Conception, Memory, &c. Hence Spinoza is in the front
and will remain there.
No part of him should be more studied than the latter half
of Part II giving his epistemology '. Nor should Part III be
slurred over, with its psycho-physical doctrine, systematic
beyond anything of the kind previously attempted. Note (i)
in the definition of emotion how the subjective and the bodily
side are both brought forward, and (ii) that the forty-
eight definitions are, as in all natural science, statements
of results. Note also (iii) the distinction between active
emotions and passions, these being a measure, an indication
of human bondage, i. e. of mind as limited, as confused in its
1 Note especially Prop. XL. Note II, containing his expression of
thorough-going Realism (Platonic) and of Nominalism.
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 295
representations (Props. 58, 59). By connecting 'affect' and
self-consciousness with activity 1 , he prepares the way for his
solution of the ethical question in Part V, where he trans-
forms the notion of knowledge into emotion. Before our
knowledge is effective for purposes of life it must be ' touched
with emotion.' Morality for Spinoza is knowledge emotion-
ally transformed. Thus while he begins as a bare formalist,
he ends by being a rapt mystic. Through the stiff crust
of his form he palpitates with intense emotion if not with
passion.
Leibniz.
In such a system as Spinoza's there was so much to shock
the prevailing ideas and feelings of men, that those who were
least opposed to the philosophic method of it were driven
by its results to seek other principles for their speculation ;
and if Spinoza's principles could be shown as following
from Descartes', then other principles than Descartes'. With
that, however, there was an end to the direct Cartesian in-
fluence, an end to the Cartesian school. Though the next
thinker might represent the same general direction of
thought, though he certainly was stirred up to think by the
Cartesian ideas, the conditions had become so much changed
that we have in him a new philosophical era. This era is
associated with the name of Leibniz.
To understand all that went to the making of Leibniz's
1 The emotions are shown by Spinoza (III. Props 59, 57 and 6j as
making for self-conservation. In the more general statement i^Prop. 6
he gives things an individuality, a vis of their own, which is not
as if they were mere shadowy ' modes.' This hangs together with
his theory of motus et quies (II. 13, Axioms , which is interesting
as coming between Descartes' Extension and the modern dynamic
conception of things.
296 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
thought is no easy matter. He was a man that united in
himself so much, in fact both ancient and Scholastic thought,
while he stood in conscious opposition to the thought both
of Bacon and Locke. Here I am mainly concerned with
his relation to Spinoza and Descartes.
Leibniz's doctrine of substance was expounded in con-
scious opposition to Spinoza's, but was not arrived at in
mere immediate revulsion from the latter, but as if Leibniz
had had to pass through the stage of Spinoza's doctrine, in
support or in opposition, before he could arrive at his own
view. Rather, of himself Leibniz was able to see that
Descartes' philosophy did indeed lead to conclusions such
as those that Spinoza rested in \ and without Spinoza was
moved to reject them and set up new principles instead.
But doubtless he was confirmed in his course as he came to
know Spinoza's works.
Like both Descartes and Spinoza a speculative dogmatist,
like both he put forward as the central idea of his philosophy
a conception of substance, but a conception different from
either of theirs. Struck out in ultimate revulsion from
Spinoza's unity of substance, it was other than that con-
ception of Descartes in which there lay wrapt up Spinoza's.
Leibniz saw that the individual, or particular substance
sacrificed wholly by Spinoza, or emerging at the end of his
system in spite of his principles that individual substances,
for that is the point, must on philosophical or other grounds
be conceded ; and that, for this, substance must be con-
1 Cf. Theodiccc, Pt. III. ' Qu'on prenne garde qifen confondant
les substances avec les accidents en otant 1'action aux substances
creees on ne tombe dans le spinosisme, qui est un cartesianisme
outre. Ce qui n'agit point ne merite point le nom de substance.'
&c. (Envrcs, ed. Paul Janet, t. i, p. 393.
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 297
ceived so as not, with Descartes, to render particular
substances in the last resort impossible. The new philo-
sophical era, then, is Individualistic, instead of Pantheistic.
Leibniz is no less dogmatic than Descartes and Spinoza
in assuming thought to be fully representative of reality.
But he went beyond Descartes' Dualism and Spinoza's
Monism in his Monadology, positing a multiplex gradation
of substances, each a monad simple, unextended, with
active force for its essence. He starts however in his
philosophy, first and last, from the fact of Body. The
explanation of this, or what is required for its explanation,
leads him on to all the rest 1 . More, he was, among meta-
physicians, the first who makes an approach to compre-
hension of the vast complexity of nature. But Body, he
held, must be thought as Force. And Force, as an indivisible
and so immaterial, simple, original being, must be thought
as Substance. Force-substance is ever active, and, being
the source of its own activity, is a self-active being, individual
or monad. But with self-action goes self-distinction
absolute difference and thus there is an absolute multi-
plicity of monads. The essence of an individual consists in
self-formed peculiarity, which could not be except in its
being distinguished from other peculiar beings.
Every monad, then, is a singular substance, an individual
force, and therefore at once limited and independent, passive
force and active force. That is to say, all substances save one
are not, with Leibniz, as with Descartes and the Occasionalists,
1 Cf. e. g. ' Lc corps est un agrege de substances, et ce n'est pas
une substance a proprement parler. II faut, par consequent, que
partout dans le corps il se trouve des substances indivisibles.' Lettre
a Arnauld (1690). ' Et il faut qu'il y ait des substances simples.
uisu'il ades comosees.' Monadol. 2 1714.
298 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
devoid of true independence, powerless, passive: they are inde-
pendent, active, instinct with power. They are not, in their
dependence, either merely extended or merely thinking :
their independence, one and all, consists in their being each
a Force each a force for itself, one among many, each not
another, simple and indivisible, a monad.
How should there not be substances many, and each
indivisible, when there are substances composite like bodies ?
How should the character of substance not consist in being
Force, when bodies are not lifeless extension, but quivering
with inherent energies, and when minds are forces likewise ?
Passive force is the principle of matter, active force the
principle of form. Passive force manifests itself as body,
active force manifests itself as soul. But soul and body
(Form and Matter) are conceived to be the two forces
making the nature of every body. Every monad is therefore
an animated body. Every body is a mechanical, and every
soul a living, being ; and thus every animated body is
a living machine. In the machine there are only motive or
mechanical forces ; the vital powers are formative and
work towards an end. Every living machine is therefore
a body moved according to ends, or a system of purposive
motions.
Since then bodies work mechanically according to Effi-
cient Causation, and souls work vitally according to Final
Causation, Leibniz, in the conception of the monad, unites the
two principles of Causality and Teleology which had divided all
previous systems. For final causes are related to efficient
causes as purposive to mechanical force, as life to machine
(mechanism), as soul to body, soul and body being not
different beings but the two primordial forces of every monad.
Now as soul and body make a natural unity or individual,
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 299
there are not two distinct worlds of souls and bodies, but one
universe, and for the explanation of that universe the teleo-
logical and mechanical principles must be combined. But
they are not for Leibniz combined as in Spinoza's ordo
idearum idem est ac ordo rerum, \\hich rested upon an
assumption of causality as being the same in thought and in
extension, and which reduced the difference of these in the
unity of substance. Soul proceeds ideologically only, body
mechanically only ; but soul, for its own ends, also infolds
body.
Soul and body, then, though both original 'moments' in
the monad, are not on equal footing : they remain as active
and passive force : they are as end and means. Unlike
works of human art, however, there is in them no separation
between end and means a .
This conception of force is in harmony with the increase
of physical knowledge at the end of the century. Leibniz
as much as Newton had got an idea of matter as not barely
extended, with so much movement put into it, as Descartes
had said. He saw the necessity of transforming the con-
cept of matter from the philosophical point of view just
w r hen Newton was seeing that it was necessary to do so from
the point of view of positive science.
How an aggregate of simple unextended substances
becomes phenomenally extended, Leibniz explains from the
confused perception of the percipient monad or mind.
While human minds are self-active monads, bodies are
each a multiplicity of monads in reality, only appearing
as continuous and extended to the mind through the
1 ' Les machines de la nature, c'est-a-dire les corps vivants, sont
encore machines dans leurs moindres parties jusqu'a 1'infini.'
Monadol. 64.
300 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
confusion of sense. All living monads have inner states,
which in some are developed as perceptions, representations,
but these are of different degrees of clearness in different
monads. Perceptions are clear when their objects are
marked off from others ; distinct, when the parts of the
objects can be distinguished ; adequate, when this distinctness
extends to the absolutely simple elements of the objects.
Human soul differs, for example, from animal soul not only
in dominating over a body more highly organised, but also,
and this more, in having distinct perceptions, distinguishable
from one another and from the mind itself; in fact, in having
reflective consciousness, and being to itself what the other
monads are to the eye that observes them. By this reflec-
tive activity the individual becomes Person, Self, Ego ; the
creature becomes a member of the moral world ; soul becomes
mind; representation or perception becomes apperception,
thought, knowledge ; appetite becomes will.
There is however no cleft between perception in animals
and in men.
The perceptions of the monad in part clear are in all the
rest confused. Now ' action/ Leibniz said in the Monadologie,
' is ascribed to the monad in as far as it has distinct percep-
tions, and passion in as far as it has confused perceptions '
( 49). Thus for Leibniz the unconscious or sub-conscious,
infinitely small or obscure perceptions out of which con-
sciousness arises, establish a harmony between the material
and the moral world the kingdom ' of Nature ' and that
' of Grace ' for by conceiving monads as perceptive forces
the elements of the material world are spiritualised ; and on
the other hand by its obscure perceptions the mind is
connected with the material world. Thus the two are
continuous.
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 301
This obscure side of the soul, moreover (like the passive
moment in the human soul-monad), is the ground of all
individuality what Leibniz calls the f je ne sgais quoi'-
whereby each is naturally determined to a special line.
The monad by virtue of its perceptive power is microcosm 1 ,
but each monad, as individual, reflects the universe from its
individual point of view, most clearly those parts in closest
relation with it. Being thus limited, its representation of the
All is necessarily confused. All things being microcosms,
there follow three laws making the order of the universe :
the laws of Analogy, of Continuity, of Harmony. Are all
beings microcosms or representations of the same universe,
they must be analogous. Are they analogous, they must
also be different, gradually different, forming an ascending
series of beings. Is there an endless plenum of microcosms,
there must be a difference at an infinite number of stages ;
the gradual differences must be infinitely small, and the
gradation of things be perfect or continuous.
And thus the monads must form a steady succession
of homogeneous substances ; they must therefore exhibit
the greatest variety amid the greatest uniformity, and so
form a harmonious world-order ; God, the original monad,
with perfectly adequate perceptions, and all other monads as
effulgurations of his nature. Amongst such we distinguish
(a) spirits or thinking monads, like men, able to have clear and
distinct perceptions, some of them even adequate, and to
have consciousness of self and of God ; (b] animals, or
monads having sense and memory ; (c) plants and minerals,
sleeping monads with unconscious perceptions, these being
1 ' Perceptio nihil aliud . . . quam multorum in uno expressio'
(Ep. 2 ad De Bosses) ; and again : ' Perceptio nihil aliud est quam
ilia ipsa repraesentatio variationis externae in interna.'
302 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
vital forces in plants. To the human mind the order of
monads appears in sense as the order of things in time and
space.
The flow of perceptions in each monad depends upon
an internal immanent causality ; monads, in Leibniz's phrase,
having no windows at which to take in from without. The
change in the relations of monads, on the other hand, their
movement, junction and separation, rest on merely mechanical
causality. Between this flow of perceptions or internal states
and these movements there subsists a pre-established harmony,
pre-established by God. In man, body and soul corre-
spond as two clocks of the same rate of speed, set together.
This system of pre-established harmony, referring all things
ultimately to the Deity, requires a moral explanation of
the world from God as its source. But then God also must
be justified out of the order of things ; hence Leibniz's choice
of the word Theodicy, a word he first used in a letter to
Magliabecchi in 1697.
In conclusion we may briefly summarise the position
of Leibniz in relation to other thinkers, ancient and modern.
Agreeing with Spinoza and Descartes that the nature of
things is to be expressed by a conception of substance,
he is against Spinoza in conceiving substance as self-active
force, stirring not in a single being, but in an endless number
of substances ; and against Descartes in conceiving substance
as self-active force, not as in two kinds of substance, but
alike in all things. Thus as against them both, he is for
homogeneous atoms with the Atomists. But he takes his atoms,
against Atomists ancient and modern, not as bodies, but as
forces, as eternal forms, ' substantial forms.' Here he agrees
with the Schoolmen and the Greeks, especially with Plato.
Nevertheless he is against Plato and with Aristotle in con-
xxvi.] Elements of General Philosophy. 303
ceiving his forms not as ideal, general types, but as natural
forces, independent individuals, each an ' entelechy.'
If we call upon fancy for help to get the fitting schemata
to underlie the purely logical complex, and think that in the
whole world there is nothing else but merely simple, constant,
unchangeable, substantial, subjective, force-exerting, self-
acting, representative entelechies or monads, with varying
intensity of activity these numberless entelechies or monads
placed in pre-established harmony with each other by a
Monad of monads, so that every monad, in spite of its
inability to be really influenced by the others, yet constantly
represents to itself with more or less distinctness the activities
of all other monads and harmonises with this to one common
end : we shall truly conceive the universe according to
Leibniz.
LECTURE XXVII.
ON KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 1 .
READING. The Kritik of Pure Reason (transl. by Max Miiller or by
J. P. Mahaffy), and The Prolegomena (transl. by J. P. Mahaffy).
London : Macmillan.
I. Kanfs Importance in the Present State of English Thought.
KANT thought more deeply than any man in his generation
the last of the eighteenth century and for a time reigned
supreme over the intellect of his own country, so that there
all thinking in the following generation was coloured by, and
even had shape from, that which his had been.
The like has not seldom happened in the history of human
thought. Is then our interest in the nature of his opinions
merely historic ? There are great philosophic names, later
as well as earlier, of whom that would have to be said, but it
cannot be said of Kant. His is a power that has survived,
or, if it ever died, it has had its resurrection. That it lives
and works is manifest whether we look abroad, or watch
what is stirring in our midst at home. In Germany, all
through the great period of scientific work which has
1 Selected from a course of four lectures delivered at the Royal
Institution, January, February, 1874.
Elements of General Philosophy. 305
supervened on that time of speculative fever in the early
years of this century, unparalleled in the history of any age
or country, nothing is more remarkable than the sway of
Kantian ideas over the minds of the true leaders from
Johannes Miiller to Helmholtz. It is not that such men
have been in any sense professed followers of the philosopher
Helmholtz especially, in those excursions into the philo-
sophical region by which he has signalised himself among
men of science, as often as not crosses swords with the great
thinker who himself was a man of science but they have
seen and avowed that here was one whose thought could
grasp the principles of scientific inquiry and even forecast
some of its issues. Such efforts too as those later years have
brought forth to think out a philosophic conception of things
in the light of new positive knowledge have borne a reference
to the sober work of Kant, with relatively little regard to
the more daring pretensions of his philosophical successors.
Earlier thinkers are allowed importance according as they
lead up to him, and he hardly any other is held to have
found a sure footing among shifting sands.
In France to speak of France with a single word in
passing the influence of Cousin after long wavering came
at least to be exerted in favour of a doctrine which is only
a modification of Kant's, while a thinker so different as Comte
also became in time not insensible to his power. And at the
present day a school of active thinkers is firmly organised
who pay their first allegiance to the founder of Critical
Philosophy.
In our own country an interest in Kant is one of the most
striking features of the philosophical movement now in full
course. How this has come to be a few indications must
suffice. As early as 1794 a young German, Nitsch by name,
306 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
began to lecture in London upon the new system of thought
then at the height of its repute in the land of its origin, and
he seems to have found for a time not a few hearers. Before
the end of the century also more than one statement appeared
in print of the main principles of Kant's philosophy, and
some of his minor works even were translated. Small,
however, must have been the impression made when young
Thomas Brown, himself destined to do some work in philo-
sophy, could have the face to draw entirely from a French
exposition the matter for his boyish ridicule expended on the
great thinker in the second number of the Edinburgh Review.
Not mirth but helpless bewilderment was begotten in the mind
of Dugald Stewart, the philosophical light of the day, when
a little later he tried to gain a notion from one quarter or
another of the new portent in the sphere of thought. It was
only outside the professional circle that any real knowledge
of Kant could then be found. Among the pupils of Nitsch
was one, Thomas Wirgman by name, who spent years in the
study of Kant at the original sources, and then laboured by
every device of exposition to unfold the pure doctrine to his
countrymen. In Wilkes's Encyclopaedia Londinensis one of
the many universal repositories of knowledge provided for
that age there appeared in the years from 1813 to 1823
some very long articles by Wirgman, which left unexplored
little of all Kant's work that has even yet become known to
English readers. The ardent man as good as translated
whole works of the master whom he worshipped, distilled
the whole Critical Philosophy into short sayings, set it out in
parti-coloured diagrams, defended it often with telling point,
taught it and made it quite plain (so he avers) even to his
boys. It was all in vain. Oblivion covered him and his
labours, and it was left for others of greater name to
xxvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 307
bring forward Kant far less thoroughly to a later and more
open-minded generation. Sir William Hamilton did some-
thing, and his follower Dr. Mansel did something more.
Dr. Whewell also laid hold of some of Kant's conceptions
and turned them to good account in the interpretation of
the historic growth of the sciences. Gradually, by various
channels, certain main principles and results of the system
became familiar to the English mind, and began to challenge
the attention of the inquirers working on steadily in the old
English vein of positive psychological research. Kant's
chief work, the Kritik of Pure Reason, and the greater part
of his ethical writings meanwhile had found translators ; and
now the last few years have seen the efforts of a knot of
workers in Trinity College, Dublin, to expound the Kantian
doctrine in a coherent form and set it over in opposition to
the latest developments of home-grown thought. The efforts
of these workers, chief among them Mr. Mahaffy, are worthy
of all praise, despite some traces of a disposition to assume
that now for the first time anywhere Kant has got his chance
of true interpretation. However that may be, Mr. Mahaffy is
laying English readers under a permanent debt of gratitude.
There will never, I fear, be any acknowledgement of poor
Wirgman's due.
Now there is one reason, or rather there are two reasons,
easily understood, for the importance of Kant at the present
time for his unique importance in comparison with any of
the thinkers, earlier or later, who are commonly classed with
him as speculative philosophers. Kant is not a speculative
philosopher, however it may be common to class him ; and
he is a philosopher who, whatever the province he claimed
for philosophy, left, nay vindicated, to the positive sciences
a domain of their own, whence they cannot be dislodged.
X 2
308 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Supposing him at the same time a thinker of unsurpassed
reach and power, nothing else seems wanted to explain his
pre-eminence in an age devoted above all to the pursuit of
scientific inquiry.
There were philosophers before Kant who took up that
attitude towards the sciences English philosophers chiefly,
with Bacon as their forerunner. Locke, the first who
made systematic inquiry as to the possibilities and limits
of human knowledge, tracking it from its sources, found,
as his main result, a justification of the mode of research
then being practised by one whom he calls ' the incomparable
Mr. Newton.' Berkeley was not an idealist who would hear
nothing of experimental investigation of nature : he under-
stood and approved of it thoroughly in principle, however
much he wished the common scientific conception of nature
to be supplemented by a philosophic view. Nor was Hume
such a sceptic that he derided he rather lauded and spurred
on to positive inquiry on the basis of experience. By the
side of these, however, there were in Europe, from about
the middle of the seventeenth century, or a little earlier,
thinkers of a different cast ; whose philosophy was no sober
inquiry into the conditions of human knowledge joined to
the practice or recommendation of experimental research,
but a succession of bold attempts to reason out the All
modern only in the conception that external nature, instead
of being shut out of view, as in the thought of the Middle Age,
was brought expressly and even predominantly within the
sweep of the speculative effort. Nor is any abatement to be
made from this description because Descartes, the first of
these thinkers, and Leibniz, his intellectual peer, did much to
perfect the mathematical instruments necessary for carrying
farther the scientific investigation of nature. They neither
xxvil.] Elements of General Philosophy. 309
practised nor enjoined at least not consistently the method
of inquiry common to Galileo and Newton. In their view
the various positive sciences, beginning to rear their heads
by the side of philosophy, had no legitimate standing. There
was nothing to be known that could not be rationally evolved
from within the mind, or what could not thus be reasoned out
was of no importance. Not indeed that this was expressly
declared, but the speculative philosophers worked on as if
it were so. Facts of experience were made no subject of
systematic concern, and drew notice only when they seemed,
on the whole rather unexpectedly than otherwise, to lend
a kind of confirmation to the grand theory.
But if the three last centuries are a new intellectual era
in the history of the human mind, because philosophy has
reverted and not least through the efforts of these thinkers
-to its original and proper function of carrying disinterested
inquiry, high and low, near and far, to the uttermost limit of
human conceiving, they are a new era not less in that, in
the way of positive science, inquiry has started from the
solid ground of experience, and, however free its flight, has
always come back again to rest upon the solid ground.
The natural sciences have grown up, and are indefinitely
growing, as a legitimate and fruitful system of search into
the different aspects or departments of nature proceeding
upon experience and having no higher object than to explain
and control experience. Thereby is altered the position of
philosophy. Though philosophy may have continued to be
the rational guide and director of human conduct, and may
claim to retain hold upon fields where positive inquiry has
not been able to gain a footing, it has to reckon with rivals
upon what was once an undisputed part of its domain. The
rivals have established themselves on their chosen ground by
310 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
accomplishing what philosophy tried but failed to accomplish
there, and, so far as that ground is concerned, the changed
position of philosophy is that it retains the function only of
understanding and prescribing the general limits of what the
sciences may there attempt. This was what the English
thinkers saw and kept always in view in their philosophy,
each in his own way. It was what Descartes and the other
speculative philosophers did not see or would not allow. As
we judge now, the English thinkers better understood the
task which their age required of them. Kant likewise under-
stood it, and thus is for ever to be distinguished from the
school or schools of speculative metaphysicians. He is one
of those philosophical inquirers who make no pretence of
stemming the resistless tide of scientific research whose
thought is rather bent towards guiding it into effective
channels.
Regarded as a mental philosopher, however, there is
a side of Kant on which he holds with the Rationalists (as
they may be called), and takes ground against the English
thinkers ; whence his own claim, and also his repute, to have
united the different streams of thought that were before him
in a doctrine embodying all the truth of either. The English
thinkers sought to explain all knowledge as developed out of
particular experiences, and it was from this point of view that
they could so easily make allowance for natural science by
the side of their philosophy ; this being but an application to
the general question of human knowledge of the same habit
of thought or method of inquiry exercised in the upcoming
sciences. Kant on the other hand denied that knowledge,
as actually had, could ever be developed from such experi-
ences as the English inquirers adduced, and made it a great
part of all his philosophic task to explain from the native
XXVIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 311
constitution of the mind how experience, truly so to be
called, could come to pass. Nor can it be doubted that
in the execution of that task he displayed a depth of insight
and width of intellectual grasp never before shown ; so that,
man for man, he must be pronounced a far greater thinker
than any of his English predecessors. It only does not
therefore follow that he was on the right track, and they were
on the wrong. There have been thinkers hardly inferior to
himself, upon some lines perhaps superior, who were on
a wrong track, when he was on the right. A cause is after
all something greater than any of its upholders greater, that
is, than their particular conceptions of it. It is so in the
sciences, which take to themselves the best results that all
workers bring, and often are advanced by inferior men when
greater ones have strayed. One thing at least is certain, that
Kant, in as far as he sided with the Rationalists, claimed
a finality for his philosophical position which did exclude the
notion of farther inquiry as touching that. And in view of
the course of human thought in modern days, before or since
Kant, that is a claim that must be regarded with some
suspicion.
For it is possible to look upon the course of modern
thought as one long struggle waged between the rival
principles of inquiry, for which there are no more expressive
names than Reason and Experience a struggle in which the
cause of Experience evidently makes way, though Reason
does not retire except to renew the encounter from fresh
positions, and Experience does not advance except by multi-
plying its forces and ever reorganising them in face of the
adversary. As regards the investigation of nature we have
already remarked that science, instead of reasoning out from
within how things could or should be, as of old, now
312 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.,
seeks to interpret the universe simply as found its parts
in the light of one another. But it should be added that
positive investigation, in advancing to occupy ever new fields,
has not thus broadened its scope without also acquiring
depth. There has been forced upon it the necessity of
satisfying, as far as may be, that instinct of coherent vision
which prompted the earlier speculative efforts ; and the word
Experience to a scientific mind has come to have a signifi-
cance which it needs an education to understand. Similar
is the result, or tendency, visible in the progress of the
attempt to account for the fact or facts of human knowledge.
That is the central question which philosophy at all times
has had to consider, and it is the question which modern
philosophy, as differing from the sciences, claims specially
for its own. It is so expressly in Locke and in Kant ; it is
so implicitly in the other thinkers who disregard or disavow
the restriction. In Descartes' theory of knowledge specu-
lative Reason has the form of pure intellectualism ; to him
sense-experience is sheer and incurable delusion, while truth
and certainty appertain only to knowledge that is supposed
born with or innate to the mind. It is a naive conception,
and facing it, in like manner, Experience stands at first in
the form of the crude sensationalism of Hobbes crude and
hardly making pretence to afford a full explanation. Comes
Locke, however, with his systematic inquiry into the origin
and limits of knowledge, and the philosophical standard of
Experience is definitively raised : it is proclaimed that all
knowledge originally comes by the way of experience in the
individual, and that by a reference to the sources of psycho-
logical experience the import of aught claiming to be
knowledge must be judged. On the other side, Leibniz
abandons the Cartesian position, and it is with a very much
xxvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 313
deeper conception of knowledge as the development of poten-
tialities lying in mind, or, again, as the interpretation of
experience according to native mental predispositions, that
he sallies forth by way of Reason to explain the All.
Confidently his disciples, Wolff the chief, build up a huge
dogmatic system out of his large ideas ; the while Berkeley
and Hume push farther along the line of positive inquiry
opened by Locke, and find a derivation in psychological
experience for much reckoned hitherto simple in conscious-
ness. At the same time there is in boih, as compared with
Locke, a deepened sense of the limitation put upon know-
ledge by experience, whatever different expression it has in
each ; Berkeley rejoicing to be able thus to annihilate the
bugbear of unintelligent matter with all its soul-debasing
influences, while Hume finds his pleasure in calmly pricking
the bubbles blown by the vanity of human reason.
What neither seriously attempts beyond Locke is to find
a full and systematic explanation of human knowledge and
science as existing in fact. This is the task reserved for
Kant. As little disposed as they to make light of experience,
and more than they concerned to justify the standing of modern
science, he is with them the sworn foe of metaphysical
speculation. No innate ideas, ousting experience, as for
Descartes no predeterminations to think, making experience
superfluous, as for Leibniz can for him explain the facts of
real objective knowledge. But neither can he accept the
position of the English Experientialists, working without
system where they are in the right vein, and without discern-
ment of the true issues to be met. Hence his new manner
of inquiry, named Critical, into the foundations of human
knowledge, resulting in the detection of a variety of rational
elements or conditions to be necessarily assumed as prior
314 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
to experience, and with the complement of experience-
by no means without experience making real knowledge
possible.
It looks like the reconciliation of all differences which it is
mean for. But is there an end of conflict Reason satisfied
with such a justification or excuse for its old pretensions,
Experience contented with this frank and decisive recognition
of its claim to be considered ? By no means. After Kant,
in Germany speculation returns to the onset with a vehemence
never known before, and in the end sinks exhausted rather
than is overcome. In England the cause of Experience finds
new upholders, who bend their energies in good earnest to
the development of a theory of scientific evidence, also to the
pursuit of psychological research as the only positive founda-
tion for a philosophy a philosophy not to be thought of as
other than progressive while psychology in relation with the
sciences generally makes progress. And in such a sense, the
principle of Experience, more or less profoundly conceived,
does in fact at the present time dominate the field of
philosophic thought, not here only but also in the land
of Kant.
Will it continue dominant? And what then of Kant?
Experientialism, amongst ourselves, has made its last great
advance with so little reference to the import of Kant's
doctrine as a whole, that its real conflict, where it is at
variance with that, may be said to be still to come. Perhaps
it is not altogether a matter of regret that the English philo-
sophical inquirers of this century I exclude those of the
younger generation now rising up have not gone to school,
as they might have done, under Kant. Working upon the
line of the old tradition of English thought, they have done
their best with their own principle of inquiry, and the result
xxvii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 315
is there to be judged. Nor is it a result, in one or other of
the present or newly-departed leaders on the field of thought,
to be lightly spoken of. In logical theory and psychological
science it is not to be denied that English inquirers of the
last two generations have made signal progress : the fame of
their work is spread abroad. Addressing themselves, without
special regard to Kant, to the questions concerning human
knowledge which the philosopher has to consider, they have
sought an experiential solution of difficulties which made him
desert their position, after he had been in it. Their solution
has found a large measure of acceptance, falling in as it does
with the general scientific tendency of the time, and Kant's
solution of such questions, as, for instance, the necessary
character of mathematical truth, physical causation and the
like, has been set aside, when not neglected. But nothing
strikes the attentive reader of Kant more than his anticipation,
already then, of the kind of solution which Experientialism
would give, and has in fact given. One sees that he did not
forsake the experiential position without a very hard struggle
to remain there, and that he did forsake it only because of
the impossibility, as he ultimately deemed, of explaining from
it the actual facts of human knowledge. Now that he did
right to abandon it, I do not say ; the progress of inquiry
since then has done much to justify the faith of those who
have clung to the position. But we may be sure they were
no common difficulties that urged him to enter upon the
thorny path of his critical inquiry : and the full force of these
difficulties has still to be apprehended within the English
school. Nay, I venture to think that until the dominant
Experientialism, even as transformed in the system of
Mr. Spencer, has come face to face with Kant's doctrine,
not at this point or at that, but at all points, and has stood
3i 6 Elements of General Philosophy.
the encounter, it has not secured its future. Kant's Critical
Philosophy, if it did nothing else, raised deeper, yet at the
same time more determinate, questions than any philosophy
before, and though his own way of answer be not final, the
questions abide. It concerns English thought at the present
day to mark them well, and that is the reason of Kant's
special importance now
LECTURE XXVIII.
ox KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY (continued].
II. General View of the Kritik and the Prolegomena.
THK Kritik of Pure Reason, in the shape that it finally
received from Kant, dates from the year 1787. It first saw
the light in 1781, after those eleven years of close and
sustained thinking that supervened in his life upon the long
period during which he slowly grasped the issues of other
men's thoughts, and came at last to conceive the idea of an
inquiry to be driven down deep beneath them all. The
second edition of the Kritik, appearing in 1787, was con-
siderably changed from the first changed in the expression,
Kant himself declares, at important points to make his
thoughts clearer ; changed in the conception, others declare,
to make it less abhorrent to the prejudices of the vulgar.
It is easier to repel the insinuation than to allow the improve-
ment. However well-meant, the change in expression clouds
the sense not seldom instead of clearing. What is called the
change in conception, while it can in no case have sprung
from the baseness of compromise in one of the most fearless
of thinkers, is no more than an effort, only partially successful,
towards a greater consistency than was possible, or at least
was attained, in the first execution of so stupendous a work.
At all events the position in which Kant rested from 1787
318 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
was already taken in 1783. Two years after the appearance
of the Kritik, when it was beginning to draw public notice,
but hardly yet had been grasped in its full scope by any
readers, while it was grievously misapprehended by some,
Kant wrote a short and simpler treatise to bring out the main
principles and results of his investigation, without the elaborate
system of its supports. The Prolegomena to any Fulure
Metaphysic, very serviceable as an introduction to the severity
of the method of the Kritik, is conceived in the same key as
the second edition of the latter.
The- Kritik contains the systematic exposition of Kant's
thought, so widely conceived, so laboriously worked out.
When his mind, in full maturity, originated the great purpose,
part of it seemed to be achieved as with a spring, but it was
by no means so with the whole, and the years as they passed
saw him groping about for a path and baffled long before he
found one. The traces of the internal struggle, wherever it
was severe, are only too apparent in the exposition, though
this was far from designed. Kant did not write out his work
till he had succeeded in thinking it out the mere writing out
took, it is said, but five months after so many years of mental
effort and the greater difficulty in the exposition at some
places represented in his own view only the greater complexity
of subject there. For it was a system of philosophical thought
fully and equally developed in all its parts, and no mere
essay towards a philosophical view, that Kant put forward
in the Kritik of Pure Reason. Nor was it less a systematic
whole, because it did not attempt over again the task of past
metaphysical systems because it even stopped short of the
soberer positive doctrine which it held out in prospect as the
true substitute for these. ' The inventory of all our posses-
sions through pure Reason, systematically disposed' such
xxvui.] Elements of General Philosophy. 319
is Kant's own description of his work. A mere inventory,
and not the rational possessions themselves ; yet withal one
systematic and complete.
Reason : it dealt with knowing the mind's faculty of
knowledge ; not with Being, as dogmatic metaphysic had
done.
Pure Reason : it dealt with knowledge as dependent only
on the mind, or with faculty before and apart from all
experience ; not with the variety of the sources or channels
of experience, as Locke's inquiry had done. Kritik of Pure
Reason : it was an exhaustively reasoned search for the
conditions of such knowledge, which, well or ill grounded,
could not, Kant held, be denied in fact ; not an exercise of
dialectical ingenuity, irregularly pursued and bent to mere
negation, as Hume's scrutiny had been.
Finding, then, in the result, the general cognitive faculty
to be twofold a faculty of Sense and a faculty of Thought
and that each had fixed and native conditions of exercise,
Kant made a corresponding division of his systematic work,
and set forth, with full detail of grounds and consequences,
the doctrine of Sense and doctrine of Thought thus critically
evolved. This doctrine he called Transcendental because
treating of the conditions of knowledge prior to experience.
The subsidiary work, the Prolegomena, is cast in quite
a different mould. It is not so much that it is short and
summary where the Kritik is elaborate to painfulness, and
that in particular it does not exhibit the most characteristic
side of Kant his determination to slur over no difficulties in
his path but rather that it has, by the side of the Kritik,
the distinctive character of disclosing the route by which he
began to work down to that resolution of the problem of
knowledge in general which the systematic work gives in full.
320 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
As Kant himself technically expresses the difference, the
Prolegomena proceeds analytically while the Kritik is syn-
thetic ; and though the resolution in the one case is far from
being as exhaustively pursued as is the composition in the
other, the insight, nevertheless, given into the working of his
mind cannot be too highly valued. The Prolegomena shows
us the very questions that broke Kant's rest till he found
answers for them, and, if it does not give the complete
answers as they may be extracted from the Kriiik, it gives in
each case what he is most disposed to lay stress upon.
We have seen what was the school of dogmatic meta-
physic in which Kant had his philosophical nurture. Wolff's
system of metaphysic began with a general doctrine of pure
Being, or Ontology, and then broke up into three parts
dealing with the special kinds of being, namely, \Vorld or
Cosmos, Soul, God. By pure reasoning Wolff sought to
determine the character of all these, and there could be
nothing but Reason to determine them by. He had indeed
his empirical physics and empirical psychology, but these
were subordinate to the rational doctrine of World and Soul,
more especially as far as concerned their ultimate essence or
inner substance, of which there was no experience. Of the
World as a harmonious whole of real beings appearing, as far
as they appeared to our sense at all, in the guise of external
nature, or, again, of the Soul as that permanent substance or
force, the spring of all our conscious life, there could be no
experience; still less could there be any experience of the
Infinite Being, the Being of Beings. Yet into all these
supernatural entities and pure Being itself Wolff claimed to
have rational insight ; nay the more, the farther they were
removed above experience.
A fine prospect surely, that philosophic reason should be
XXVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 321
able to determine all that was best worth knowing determine
it fully, and (what was of as much account) determine it all
from within. Nor could there be any doubt that it was by
an unconquerable impulse that the human mind was ever
being driven forth beyond its experience to find a realm of
the purely intelligible, when system after system of metaphysic
had been appearing since the dawn of reflexion. But was
it not a strange and suspicious circumstance that system after
system as regularly disappeared, even though it were only to
appear over again in some new shape ; nothing here being
fixed, while other sciences were making steady progress?
The prospect, however fine, somehow remained prospect
always. And now here was Hume, with cool, steady hand
drawing a veil that shut out all such prospect for ever ; nay,
as the result of his dialectic, leaving it doubtful whether even
on the field of experience any one thing could be brought
into fixed and certain connexion with anything else. It was
time indeed that metaphysic should be called on to establish
its pretensions to establish them, or, failing that, to abandon
them. Such was the form in which it first became a question
with Kant to inquire into the nature and capabilities of Pure
Reason. Metaphysic, as dealing with the supernatural, was
a creation of Pure Reason : Was such a science possible ?
The Prolegomena is mainly an answer to the question in that
form. It is answered by implication and with much more
circumstance in the Kritik in this other form : Is knowledge
possible through pure Reason, apart from all or any experience,
and transcending experience ?
Whether Hume was right or not as regards knowledge of
the supernatural, Kant came in time to be convinced, as he
had from the first suspected, that the general question of
knowledge was tried upon far too limited an issue by his
Y
322 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
acute predecessor. In particular was it not a fact that
sciences existed, pure in respect of having their origin not
in experience and being freely extended without reference
to actual experience, yet real in having an indubitable
application to the realm of experience ? What of Mathe-
matics, the very type of exact knowledge, carried so far by
the continuous labour of many generations? And what
of that body of laws or principles (in which the law of
causation was but one), which men had ready to employ
for the interpretation of their natural experience, and which
taken altogether formed a general Science of Nature ? Related
to Metaphysic in respect of their method, so that any settle-
ment of its fate must needs reflect upon them, they had
all the character of universal recognition and progressive
development so notoriously wanting to it. Why then not
judge of its pretensions or claims in the light of their
achievements ? Let it be discovered how they could be
what in fact they were, and so it might be clearly seen
whether it could be what in fact it yet was not. A critical
search for their conditions would at the same time show
what conditions should be required of it. Therefore the
Prolegomena, for the sake of the main question, seeks first
to answer two others : How is pure Mathematics possible ?
How is pure Science of Nature possible ? Both are answered
by implication and more exhaustively in the Krilik in another
form : How is knowledge possible through ptire Reason, which
shall hold for experience received by Sense and fashioned by
Thought ?
If this makes clear the relation of the two works, it will
be possible without misunderstanding to pass from the one
to the other, where need is. There remains, however, one
mode of statement which not only may be adopted from the
xxviii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 323
point of view of either, but has the advantage of bringing
the whole inquiry into the compass of a single question.
How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? Till the
critical question is made to assume this general form, it does
not admit of a general solution. The solution in full is to
be looked for only in the Kritik, or rather the Kritik is the
solution. But first the statement of the question itself needs
some explanation J .
III. Mathematical Necessity and Muscular Sense.
Reverting to the first special question in its most general
form : How is the pure science of Mathematics possible ? or
rather, How is pure geometry possible ? for it is practically
to geometry that Kant limits the inquiry there can be little
doubt that it was through this question that he first got
beyond Hume, when already by the year 1770 he is seen
with his doctrine of space wrought out. It took a much
longer time before he was equally sure of having surmounted
Hume's doctrine of physical experience. The reason for
this was not only because the second question was one more
difficult in itself: Hume did not grapple with the first in that
portion of his work known to Kant' 2 . Neither had Locke
done much more to explain the true import of mathematical
science, though to attempt it lay still more in his way than in
Hume's, bent as he was on giving a positive account of the
variety of human knowledge from the ground of experience.
Before Kant's time the Rationalists also had failed to
1 The student should here refer to supra, Lect. XIII, and study
the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' in the Kritik. ED.
2 Hume's Inquiry concerning Human Understanding was translated
into German in 1765 ; the Treatise (in which he does deal with the
question of mathematical truth) was not translated till 1793. Kant,
when he wrote the Kritik, knew the former work only.
Y 2
324 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
account for the nature of the science of mathematics.
Splendid mathematician as Leibniz was, he did not in his
philosophy distinguish between the logical necessity of
analytic judgment and the necessity that might be claimed,
which he was foremost to claim, for judgments that were
really synthetic. Kant just did that, and so put the question
as to mathematical truth in train for settlement ! It may be
said that on all hands before Kant the necessity of geometry
was saved at the expense of its character as a real objective
science.
The answer of the Prolegomena to the question, How
can geometry be at once a science of pure intuition and
objectively valid ? if not in these words, may be thus stated:
Geometry can make universal and necessary determinations,
if it makes them concerning that which is not got by way of
experience, but is furnished forth from within the mind ; and
these determinations are objectively valid of sensible things,
if sense-experience cannot be had by the mind except under
conditions of that which is thus supplied by the mind.
Geometry deals with space and is valid for objects as filling
space. If space is not got through sense, but is given with
the sensibility is presupposed before sensations then what-
ever is determined regarding it is necessarily determined for
all that cannot be received except as falling within it.
But this is only half the battle. We are not told how the
determination of space is made. Granted that, being made,
it is made also necessarily for all that in any case it may
enfold, the real difficulty is as to the making of it. Space
taken merely as a Form of Sensibility a sort of indispensable
frame within which sensations are received is something
inert and barren, explaining nothing. That the mind should
be so constituted as to receive sense-impressions only in
XXVIIL ] Elements of General Philosophy. 325
a fixed way is one thing : it is another that the mind should
be able, as regards this fixed way of receiving, to make all
kinds of a priori determination of it to make it the subject
of an endless variety of pure intuitions. Or let the difficulty
be put thus : Geometry in its intuitive judgments brings to-
gether into synthetic unity different aspects of space. Where
does the combining power come in ?
The Kritik, within its wide scope, does not fail to meet and
resolve this difficulty. It draws a distinction, which we shall
dwell upon more fully at a later stage, between receptivity
of sense and spontaneity of knowledge through under-
standing. The mind is not only liable to be affected, but
is capable of acting, in the one case, as in the other, in
a determinate manner prescribed by its constitution. Its
action is what is called thinking, and how Thought must
operate to become Knowledge proper may be called the
central question in the whole critical inquiry. Geometrical
science, being knowledge knowledge indeed of the most
perfect sort involves thinking or the spontaneous activity
of mind; but, as its judgments were said to be intuitive,
depending upon no generalised experience nay, for that
matter, upon no experience at all the mental action takes
place in a manner peculiar. What the mind spontaneously
brings before itself to be regarded intuitively, for example
a line, is something singular, as much singular as in the
empirical intuition of sensation. Without having an object
actually before the senses it is as if an object were there.
That condition, with reference to anything that we have had
sensible experience of, is called Representative or Reproductive
Imagination. The geometrical figure is also had in Imagi-
nation, but not representatively, because there never was any
experience of it. The mental act by which it is called into
326 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
being is an act of Productive Imagination. When we think
of a line or circle we draw it in thought by a motion which,
says Kant, is an act of pure subject. Drawing it so, we in
the very act or fact accomplish a synthesis of the successive
stages. Such is the agency through which it comes to pass
that within space, as the pure Form of Sensibility, pirticular
determinations can be made and particular conjunctions
be established. The space of the geometer, had by pure
intuition, is therefore something very different from space
as the mere form of Sensibility. Were space not such
a form, no pure intuition would be possible, or at least
none having any reference or application to sensible objects.
But for the pure intuition to take place, constructive action
is necessary, and this, according to Kant, is the work of the
faculty called Productive Imagination.
Between Kant and modern Experientialism the question
as to geometry still remains under dispute. I say geometry,
because that is the particular exact science as regards which
Kant fully defined his position ; but, of course, it is not only
geometry that is involved. Modern Experientialism has
generalised the inquiry, and has found its profit in so doing.
But what is this Experientialism ? Under that common ban-
ner are ranged inquiries of very different kinds. When Kant,
defining the exact character of the pure science of geometry
upon the side where its demonstrative certainty had been
confounded with mere logical necessity, declared that it could
never be explained if its subject were held to be given in or
through any experience, he was reckoning only with psycho-
logists like Locke and Berkeley, and with these when they
had implied rather than asserted certainly not when they
had ever tried to show that the science had an experiential
XXVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 327
origin. Professional mathematicians except Leibniz, and
he rather in his other capacity as a speculative philosopher
had not reflected upon the theory of their practice. But.
since the time of Kant, and more or less in the light of his
Criticism, mathematicians have been forward to probe
the secret of their methods and sound the foundations of
their science. Logicians also, or general theorists upon
Method, have considered the case of mathematics in
relation to that of the positive sciences generally. And
psychologists, concerned to trace the development of human
knowledge, have brought to light sources of experience and
determined the character of intellectual processes of special
import to the theory of mathematics. As regards the pro-
fessional mathematicians, I take it to be a mere statement of
fact to say that their late researches and their present outlook
do not tend to make them rest content with Kant's resolution
of his first problem. I refrain, however, from the presump-
tion of offering a lay opinion upon the attitude now taken by
the leaders on this line of special inquiry. Neither is the
opportunity suitable for resuming and estimating such
a general theory of science, inclusive of mathematics, as,
in this country, J. S. Mill especially has wrought out from
the ground of Experience. But as Kant based his theory of
geometry upon a doctrine of Sense his Transcendental
doctrine, devised to explain what he denied was or could be
explicable through psychological experience there is forced
upon us the consideration whether psychology can better
now than then meet the requirements of the case.
In investigating the conditions of geometry Kant laid
stress on the two facts that it dealt with a subject of which
there was direct intuition, and that it accomplished its
synthesis by actual construction. In both respects he must
328 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
be held to have judged rightly, and shown great insight
beyond his predecessors. The psychology of that day
whether that of Berkeley, which was the most advanced as
regards sense-perception, or any that Kant himself wrought
out before he entered upon the line of critical inquiry which
raised him, as he thought, above the field of psychological
research took no account of any intuition but that of
sensation in which the mind remained wholly passive.
Hence it became necessary for Kant, as we shall see, to
ascribe all mental activity to the faculty of understanding or
intellect ; and having to provide for the construction of figures
a priori, he did, as we have already seen, call into play the
intellectual faculty working as Productive Imagination.
But modern psychology has shown that empirical intuition
is by no means confined to sensation in which the mind's
state is to be described, with Kant, as receptivity, and in
which the bodily organs of sense are also passively affected
or acted upon. There is a direct intuitive consciousness
when the muscular organs are thrown into action from the
brain outwards, and in such circumstances the mental state
can only be described as spontaneity or activity. Intellectual
action there is as little in this latter as in the former mode of
intuition, or, if the view be so taken, it is present as much in
the first as in the second.
Why then, for the sake of the construction necessary in
geometry, resort to the recondite agency of Productive
Imagination ? When we think of a line, says Kant, we
draw it in thought by a motion which is an act of pure subject.
Be it so ; but to have intuition of a line we can also draw it,
and do first draw it, by a motion which is an act of muscle
with a peculiar state of consciousness attached.
Mere empirical intuition this, it will be said, and incapable
xxvni.] Elements of General Philosophy. 329
of being made the ground of judgments holding necessarily
and universally. True, it is empirical ; but that it is incapable
of being made the ground of all that geometry in fact is, is
not so clear. It is empirical after a fashion of its own
a fashion very different from that of sensation proper. Sen-
sations, as it were, come or happen to us ; are had under
certain circumstances over which we may not have the least
control, and in the absence of those circumstances are not
had. That is the true note of what Experience, in the
despised sense of the word, is. How different our expe-
rience of muscular activity ! We can have it when we like,
for as long as we like, as varied as we like ; and when we
like, we can cease to have it. What more does Kant get
from the Productive Imagination in the way of intuition
a priori ?
Then it is an experience which enfolds and circumscribes
our experiences of sensation proper. When Kant declares
Space to be the Form of all External Sense he says more
than the truth ; for there are sensations received by some of
the external senses without any reference to space ; or, at all
events, there are among the so-called external sensations
great differences in this respect, some being referred altogether
away into objects as qualities thereof, others being referred
not beyond our own organs, and so forth. But precisely in
as far as any sensations have a reference to space, in so far
are they subject to modification through muscular move-
ments of which we are conscious ; and if they have a definite
setting in space, they are sensations which movements of
ours may bring on, and which movements of ours may
limit.
It is now a psychological commonplace to say that we
apprehend objects as spread out in space through conscious
33 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
movements of our members, and such experience renders
account of their extension as much as our sensation renders
account of their sensible qualities. We may think away,
says Kant, all the sensible qualities of a body, but not ex-
tension. If he means its determinate extension of which
we had experience by particular conscious muscular move-
ments, the statement is not true : we can think that away as
well as the rest. If he means space generally or space
altogether, the statement is irrelevant ; no Experientialist
would pretend to think that away, in thinking away any-
thing belonging to a particular body. Space in general or
space altogether, supposing it developed by experience, was
assuredly not got with the experience of any particular body.
Upon what varied and protracted experience it may be
supposed to be developed, there is no time now to consider.
Suffice it only to say or to repeat that the experience is such,
in comparison with the experience had through the senses
proper, that the difference of result I mean between the
appearance of space and appearance in space is not at all
surprising. And scientific determinations made of it, though
they need not have that absolute character ascribed to them
which Kant claims for geometrical propositions, must still be
allowed a character of relative generality and priority in com-
parison with the propositions of physical science.
It is enough if the remarks just made have indicated that
Kant's theory of Space and Geometry, however it rose high
above any that had been thought out before, is now put on
its defence and has a hard task to maintain itself. Yet no
theory that may take its place can do so without well regard-
ing all that it involves. Of such importance the part of
Kant's critical doctrine which we have now considered can
never be robbed.
XXVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy, 331
IV. On the Nature and Conditions of Intellectual Synthesis.
WE now come to the most difficult part of Kant's critical
doctrine the part at least that has commonly been found
most difficult, and of which even the general import has mostly
remained sealed to the English thinkers who have touched it
in going about their own business. In the Kritik it is the
subject of a very long and crooked exposition, enough to
daunt the resolution of many who are not weak. Kant
himself found it the hardest part of all his task to think out,
and was after all so little satisfied with his first exposition of
it, that he must needs, at the most important stage, make
another attempt in his second edition an attempt ending in
a result which not the most devoted adherent can pronounce
a uniform improvement. It is the part of his doctrine
where we seem to have most reason to be thankful for
having the Prolegomena to bring out into relief the points of
greatest importance from the surrounding mass of subsidiary
argument ; and we shall accordingly begin with the questions
as there put and answered. But here, even more than before, it
is impossible to confine the view to the minor work. Unless
resort is had to the Kritik itself, the strength of Kant's
position, with its elaborate system of defences, must remain
unknown. Its weak points also, if we can discover such,
must then become more apparent when he is seen wrestling
with the difficulties which he was too acute not to apprehend,
and too honest to glide over.
The general question as put in the Prolegomena is in this
form : How is pure Science of Nature possible ? which, as
we must now understand, is the same as asking, How is it
possible for the mind to determine anything necessarily about
Nature ? The mind does so, for example, when it declares
332 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
that every event must have a cause ; also in mathematical
physics, or the application of mathematics to nature, the
determinations made are necessary. About the fact, in
Kant's opinion, there can be no doubt, and we may at
once have before us his general answer to the question.
Nature could never become the subject of synthetic judgment
a priori if for our knowledge we were dependent on mere
experience that comes to us ; in other words, if Nature had
an existence quite independent of the mind. It can be
known as it is known only if the mind, which so judges
a priori, itself constitutes or makes Nature.
The strain of this answer is manifestly similar to that of
the solution given to the question about pure Geometry.
But it is not less clear that the circumstances of the two
questions are very different. The mind in making determi-
nations of space by intuition a priori is, in Kant's view, in no
respect dependent on experience. True, the determinations
when made are valid for sensible objects ; but this fact,
which makes geometry a real objective science and has to
be explained, does nothing to impair its purity as regards
experience. On the other hand, Nature is the world of
Experience the complex of all the objects of Experience,
as Kant himself calls it. How then can the mind make or
constitute that which confessedly it has to acquire ? Or how
can that be experience which the mind, in order to know
anything about it a priori, must constitute ?
Kant meets this difficulty also by a further application of
the distinction of Form and Matter before employed to
account for Intuition a priori of Space and Time. Such
intuition was possible because it bore altogether upon the
mere form of sensibility, which is innate, to the exclusion
of the matter of sensation, which is received or acquired.
xxviii.] Elements of General Philosophy. 333
In like manner a priori determination of experience will
be possible, if it bears altogether upon the mere form
of experience to the exclusion of its matter. The matter
of experience is the variety of phenomena constituted of
sensations received in Space and Time, and this matter
cannot but be empirically got ; but Nature is more than
a variety of phenomena. We have just spoken of Nature
as a complex of objects, meaning that the objects are in
fixed relations with one another are connected bound up
together. Otherwise expressed, Nature is the complex of
the objects of experience constituted through or according
to fixed laws. Formally, it is the system of laws. These
laws in so far as necessary which is to say, the form of
experience cannot be acquired as matter of experience is.
The only alternative is that the form must be innate that
the necessary laws of experience spring from the mind ;
and that experience, in the full and effective sense that is
meant when we speak of Nature, is constituted by the mind
imposing laws upon phenomena.
Now the Prolegomena says shortly that judgments of
perception or merely subjective associations (e.g. 'when the
sun shines on the stone it grows warm ') are turned into
judgments of experience or objective conjunctions holding
necessarily for all (e.g. 'the sun warms the stone') by the
addition of concepts having their origin a priori in the
understanding. This is fully explained only in the Krilik^.
The truly fundamental question at this stage with Kant
is as to the nature and conditions of intellectual synthesis
1 Read Transcendental Logic, first division ; especially Book I of
Transcendental Analytic. Cf supra, Lect. XIII. ED.
334 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
at all stages indeed, but more especially now at this. The
general problem of the Critical Philosophy, How are
synthetic judgments a priori possible ? showed it to be so
everywhere. In the Prolegomena the first special inquiry,
How is pure mathematics possible ? raised a question of
synthesis. The second special inquiry, as to Science of
Nature, raises it again. In the first part of the Kritik (the
Transcendental Aesthetic) the question was submerged, only
to come forth expressly now. What was the result of the
Transcendental Aesthetic ? That all sensations are received
by the mind in the form of Time, and external sensations
farther in the form of Space. In Sense the mind is passively
affected, and not less so, because the affection takes place
under conditions that are fixed in its nature. There is, in
Kant's view, no synthesis in the faculty, or, as we should
more properly call it, the capacity, of Sense. Synthesis
means activity Spontaneity as opposed to Receptivity and
in Sense the mind is not active at all. But the mind can
act can combine ; manifests another faculty truly to be
called such the faculty, namely, of Thought or Understand-
ing. That faculty also will have its fixed conditions, as the
other had. The mind will think in a determinate way, as
it was shown to be in a determinate way liable to be sensibly
affected, and by reason of its native constitution in the one
case as in the other. To discover the a priori conditions
under which the mind thinks or performs synthesis that is
the second part of the critical task.
Kant wrought out the theory with infinite pains in revul-
sion from the scepticism of Hume. The force of all that
Hume had urged as to the impossibility of finding outside
the mind a ground of order and connexion among things he
XXVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 335
\vas constrained to allow; but while Hume was content to
rest all upon mere subjective custom a tendency to imagine
upon the strength of past experience Kant's interest in
science of nature, if nothing else, impelled him to find some
surer foundation. Nothing besides was more obvious than
that Hume, in his dialectical handling of Cause in Nature,
was touching but one side of a much greater question the
question of objective knowledge generally ; and no less a
question than this, in all its aspects, could Kant stop short of
raising and trying to settle. The world had never seen the
attempt made with such consciousness of its full import
before.
It was made by Kant upon assumptions both as to fact
and principle that drew a clear line of separation between
him and Experientialism, which had spent itself for the time
in the scepticism of Hume. But Experientialism girt itself
again to the task of positive explanation, and stands now in
a very different position from where it stood when Kant
sought to take away the very ground from beneath its feet.
What is known as the Associationist school in psychology
which connects itself, doubtless, through Hume with Berkeley
and Locke, but which made, as it were, a new start after
Hume in Hartley and the elder Mill has expressly aimed
in this generation at rendering an account of Objective
Experience. And in particular the theory of scientific know-
ledge of nature, which was Kant's first care, has found
among Experientialists in the younger Mill one who made
it his chief object of philosophic concern. Mill's System of
Logic indeed, however different its aspect first and last, does
attempt from its own point of view a task corresponding with
that of Kant's Transcendental Logic. Through Mill the
conception of a Real or Material Logic as opposed to one
336 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
purely Formal, has become familiar to English minds ; and
a Real or Material Logic is what, from his own principles,
Kant gave in his Transcendental Analytic. Let this be well
understood, that with its own lights, and in the light more-
over of advancing science, the present English school has
made it its object to give all that satisfaction which Kant
failed to find in the thought of the English school before his
day, and set himself to supply upon a different line of inves-
tigation. With what present success, and yet with what
remaining obligation to ponder now, since it did not ponder
earlier, Kant's extraordinary work, I have already tried to
suggest. I have greatly failed if I have not conveyed such a
notion of the reach and profundity of that work as to make the
obligation apparent. Quite apart from the validity of Kant's
principles or assumptions, there is, in his appreciation of the
problems to be grappled with for the explanation of objective
knowledge, a depth of insight which later inquirers might
have profited, and still have to profit, by.
The side of Kant's doctrine now before us on which
it is most open to remark or exception, is where he dis-
tinguishes the two faculties of Sense and Thought. Nothing
could more cast suspicion upon the distinction amounting
to opposition as he puts it, than the heroic nature of the
effort necessary to bring the two again together. That the
two should be brought together was of the very essence of
his general doctrine : this we have seen already, and it will
still more decisively be seen another time in his criticism of
metaphysic as the science of the supernatural, or his criticism
of the rational faculty claiming to think without reference to
empirical intuition. His determination to bring them together
marks him as much off from the Rationalists, as, upon the
other side, his manner of distinguishing them separated him
XXVIIL] Elements of General Philosophy. 337
from the Experientialists. But what is the result of the
effort ? An opposition like that between Sense, in which the
mind is merely receptive, and Thought, in which the mind is
all active, cannot be got rid of by placing Imagination between
the two, and declaring that on the one side it partakes of the
character of the one, and that on the other side it partakes
of the character of the other. Or if it can be so got rid of
and there is no contradiction in the union of such characters,
then the two extreme faculties have been unwarrantably
thrust apart, and there is no occasion for spending so much
pains to bring them together. Either way there is something
wrong with the theory.
The pure faculty of Imagination, with Kant, does in truth
everything for knowledge. Wherever synthesis has to be
operated and knowledge is a synthesis forth steps the
ready-witted agent to do the work, and never in vain. With
its two faces- one towards Sense, the other towards Thought
it has the survey of all and acts accordingly. Nor was it in
Kant, compared with his predecessors of any school, a small
achievement to have thus set knowledge going as from one
mainspring. He did set it going. He did not only say:
' In knowledge there is this and this, as is plainly to be seen/
but he showed how it might come to be, and proceed.
It is another question whether he succeeded in finding the
truest expression of the process when he called it an act of
pure subject. Let me recall what I have said or suggested on
a former occasion as to the now extended view of the sources
of psychological experience, particularly as to our direct
consciousness of muscular movement. That has a bearing
upon the development of our physical experience not less
than upon that of our apprehension of space and form. We
cannot move without having passive sensations along with
z
338 Elements of General Philosophy.
our consciousness of the movement ; we cannot receive
passively the sensations that enter into our apprehension of
objects without executing actual movements. Is not the
beginning of synthesis to be sought here ? To justify the
answer ' Yes/ a far more elaborate argument is necessary
than any experiential psychologist has yet attempted to work
out, but it is one for which the psychology of the present
time is preparing. When it is made, the attempt will have
the better chance of being successful, if Kant's profound
explanation of objective experience is at no point ignored.
LECTURE XXIX.
ON KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY (continued],
V. The Ideas of Pure Reason.
THE general result of Kant's Transcendental Analytic, so
far as it is negative, has been sufficiently caught, and been
passed on as a commonplace, in later English philosophy,
agreeing, as it practically does, with the result attained in
their own way by the English inquirers themselves. But the
result of Kant's thought, so far as it is positive his explana-
tion, namely, of objective experience with the consequences
flowing therefrom as to the character of Science of Nature
has been only imperfectly apprehended, for want of the
patience requisite to follow the threads of an investigation
which the nature of the subject more than any fault of his
renders extremely complex. In that positive doctrine of
pure knowledge by way of understanding, however, lies
Kant's highest claim to philosophical importance.
It is, however, in as far as it is negative that we are now
to be concerned about the general result. Let it be
remembered that the object of the whole critical inquiry was
to test the pretensions of Metaphysic to be a science of the
supernatural ; or, in the other language employed by Kant,
to discover whether by pure Reason anything can be deter-
mined regarding that of which there can be no experience.
34 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
We have seen how, in Kant's view, there is a wholly pure
or rational science of mathematics, applicable to the world
of experience; also, to certain lengths, a pure or rational
science of nature, which is the realm of ordered experience.
What then of metaphysic which professedly deals with all
that transcends experience ? Can pure Reason determine
anything synthetically in that region speak positively and at
the same time with a real meaning there ? The mere want
of experience would not seem to be a bar against such
knowledge of the supernatural. Mathematics, in which
Reason proceeds by way of pure intuition, depends upon no
experience is not knowledge of anything given in experience.
Yes, but mark the difference. Mathematical science, while
it is intuitive, extends only to the form of things, and
determines nothing as to their real nature. For the know-
ledge of that we are dependent upon sensible experience, so
that our knowing consists farther only in the interpreting and
ordering of this under certain pure concepts which are
expressions for the varied functions of the mind's synthetic
activity.
Now, unless it is asserted that we have pure intuitive
knowledge of things metaphysical which can only mean
that we have the power constructively to generate them, in
other words, to create them, as is the case with mathematical
figures and this nobody maintains, it is clear that our
knowledge of these also must proceed by way of general
thinking or comprehension ; and then it does become
important whether we have hold of anything to think about.
In physical knowledge or common objective experience we
have matter for thought in the affections of sense which we
receive, and when this is elaborated through the action of
understanding the result is knowledge. Is metaphysic in
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 341
like manner, or in any corresponding manner, knowledge, or
is it only mere thinking ?
It is, then, with physical knowledge or knowledge of Nature
not mathematics that Metaphysic must be compared.
Physical knowledge is a knowledge of things or objects : but
objects of what sort ? Let us see, working backwards from
the position we have reached. Objects were constituted such
in relation to pure self-consciousness under pure concepts
of the understanding within schemata developed by the
pure faculty of imagination ; and what were they else, that is
to say, previous to being so constituted ? A variety of
sensations, which are subjective affections, received within
the subjective forms of Space and Time. We see that even
when the part of intellect or understanding is left out of
account, the matter of knowledge is purely subjective is
something which appears to the senses is Phenomenon.
Knowledge must thus be declared to be of phenomena only.
Outside of this subjective circle we cannot get. However,
then, we may be able to make universal and necessary
determinations about phenomena and that we can do so is
the positive result of Kant's investigation so far we make
them about nothing but phenomena. This is the general
result on its negative side. How should we be able to pass
outside the circle of sensible appearances ? We may, indeed,
says Kant, be quite sure that the sensible appearances portend
somewhat else ; we may have most sufficient reasons for
denying that the phenomena are mere illusion and show
Kant, as was said before, vehemently resents the imputation
that he could suppose them such ; we may nay, we must
conceive of Things-in-themselves as the real ground of
things as they appear to our sensibility, and because they are
conceived call them Noiimena by opposition to Phenomena.
342 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
It matters not, so far as knowledge of ours is concerned : at
least it matters not, so far as any knowledge is concerned
that goes beyond mere conviction thai they are. What
Things-in-themselves are, we cannot know. We can know
them only as they sensibly affect us, and then they are no
longer Things-in-themselves. We do, however, know some-
thing of what they are not. They are not in Space or Time ;
for Space and Time are mere subjective forms of our sensibility
and contain sensations only. Neither have the Categories
any application to them ; for the Categories have application
through the transcendental scheme only to what is given in
Time. Thus the conception of Things-in-themselves is one
wholly devoid of positive meaning ; and knowledge is
confined to that of which there is experience, actual or
possible. On the one hand we have sensible experience to
be knit up into knowledge through the Categories, and we
have no other matter of experience to be knit up. On the
other hand the Categories are there as pure forms, empty till
there comes matter to fill them bare functions effecting
nothing till sense gives them that upon which they may set
to work.
Metaphysic as a general science of the supernatural, of
things whereof there can be no experience general because
it employs concepts is upon that showing impossible.
But, however it may be with metaphysic as a science of
the supernatural, if there is one thing clearer than another,
it is that men will not, and even cannot, rest shut up within
the circle of actual or possible experience ; they will put out
from their island, as Kant calls it, for a land a very different
land beyond the sea. That region, which they cannot find,
they will conceive of as they can, peopling it with thoughts
and fancies to stand for objects or real beings there. In
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 343
other words Metaphysic is a natural and ineradicable
tendency of human reason. No conviction as to the limits
of knowledge, founded upon such an inquiry as has now
been carried through, can avail to prevent it. Nor can any
critical inquiry, even when directed to Metaphysic itself,
avail to stem it. But direct criticism may, notwithstanding,
be of use to expose once for all the true character of the
tendency and to call off the mind to other pursuits, this one
being seen to be vain. Therefore Kant proceeds to subject
to the closest scrutiny the metaphysical dogmas set out by
previous thinkers, especially those of Wolff, the most syste-
matic dogmatist of all. In one sense, as has already been
more than once observed, this part of the critical doctrine is
his crowning labour. Equally, however, may it be urged
that such scrutiny is entered on as affording the best test
of his positive theory of objective knowledge wrought out
before. At one stage in particular this will be seen to be
the uppermost thought on Kant's mind namely, in the
famous doctrine of the Antinomies.
In the Kritik, the question now presents itself in this
shape : Is Thought by itself knowledge ? Can we by pure
thinking, without reference to matter of intuition, make
synthetic determination a priori ? The part of Transcen-
dental Logic which expounds the elements of pure know-
ledge by way of thinking, is called by Kant Transcendental
Analytic, and is a Logic of Truth. When, without regard to
the material element of Intuition, the mere form of Thought
is made to give an illusion or show of knowledge,
Transcendental Logic becomes what Kant calls dialectical.
The critical scrutiny of such dialectical illusion is the second
part of this Logic, and gets the name of Transcendental
Dialectic. It is in the main a critical inquiry into the faculty
344 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
of Reason, taken in the special sense in which it is opposed
to the faculty of Understanding. Both are included under
the general faculty of Thought, or intellectual combination
through general notions, but they differ as regards the
notions they employ 1 .
The function of Reason as a natural faculty of mind,
has reference to all such knowledge as the Understanding is
competent to attain to. The knowledge that we have through
Understanding operating on the manifold of sensations is
Ordered Experience a knowledge that is limited every way.
The experiences limit or condition one another, and hence
the need arises to have them brought to a higher intellectual
unity. In the processes of thought as exhibited in Formal
Logic Reasoning or Syllogism has the function with
reference to bare judgment, that it brings a conditioned
under its condition. And in like manner, argues Kant,
Reason as a synthetic faculty has laid upon it the obligation
of bringing together under the higher conditions, or rather
under the highest possible condition, the varied knowledge
operated through Understanding. Short of the condition
which is itself unconditioned there is no halting-place ; for
anything less only leaves occasion for the same work of
rational interpretation to be repeated. Now, seeing that
with everything given as conditioned all its conditions must
at the same time be supposed given, Reason is moved to
conceive of the whole sum of conditions as unconditioned
1 By ' faculty of Reason ' Kant does not mean that which he calls
' Pure Reason ' (in the title of his work), and which is his name
for the general faculty of knowledge a priori. This, in the result, is
shown to include a faculty of Pure Intuition, and a faculty of Under-
standing through pure concepts. It does not include, or it includes
onty upon an altogether different footing, the faculty specially called
Reason in contradistinction to Understanding.
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 345
ground that is wanted for ultimate intellectual satisfaction.
But in the clear impossibility that there is of mustering
and keeping hold in thought such an endless series of condi-
tions, what Reason actually does is to make an object out
of its mere notion or idea of the Unconditioned ; and then,
treating this as if it were an actual object of which we could
have experience, Reason would make use of it to give
the ultimate theoretic explanation of all that Experience
does in fact bring to view. Such, in the most condensed
form, is a representation of Kant's view of the function and
procedure of the faculty of Reason with regard to human
knowledge in general. It may now be understood how the
Criticism in detail will consist in the exposure of a tendency
which, however natural, gives a mere pretence of real
knowledge.
Kant, by a new stroke of subtle refining, seeks to show
that just because there are three and only three forms of
syllogistic reasoning in pure logic, so the faculty of Reason,
in its synthetic operation upon the knowledge got by under-
standing, develops three pure concepts or as he prefers, in
view of their peculiar nature and use, to call them Ideas
as functions of unity. Commentators have often and justly
remarked that this exercise of his subtlety, if open to no
other exception, is thrown away. In truth he had Wolff's
system of dogmatic Metaphysic before him, and there within
the general doctrine of pure Being or Ontology he found
wrought out a rational doctrine of Soul or Psychology, of
the World or Cosmology, and of God or Theology. Being,
with Wolff, was either Matter or Spirit, and Spirit was either
finite like the human soul or infinite as God. Then Wolff
only set out systematically the subjects that all metaphysicians
had been confidently reasoning about ; and Kant, for his
34 6 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
task of criticism, had here no need of other clue to guide
him. Was the question one as to Metaphysic claiming to
be a science of all that was most truly real ? The World as
macrocosm, the Soul as microcosm, and the Deity as ground
of both, were by universal acknowledgment the unseen and
deeper realities whose nature was to be rationally expressed.
Was the question as to the faculty of Reason working to
interpret by its Ideas, or from out its Ideas to develop,
all lower knowledge related to experience ? These and no
others in their rational expression were the parent-con-
ceptions of all.
The Rational Psychology of Wolff and other metaphy-
sicians, when it seeks to determine the essential nature of
the Soul or thinking principle, and thence to afford the
explanation of all mental experience, involves, according to
Kant, in every one of its affirmations a Paralogism or Fallacy
of Pure Reason. The doctrine asserts (i) that the Soul is
a thinking or immaterial Substance; (2) that it is a Simple
Substance, and so not liable to dissolution ; (3) that it is
a substance always identical with itself, in other words,
a Person; (4) that it has an existence apart from other
things, though able to enter into relation with Body. In the
case of every one of those assertions the fallacy consists in
the Reason making a real thing or entity out of that pure
consciousness of self which, for him, was involved in every
act of thinking.
Logically regarded, self is the subject to which all thinking
is referred, but logical subject is not the same as real sub-
stance. So, in thinking, self is undoubtedly to be regarded
as simple with reference to the manifold which is bound
together; again, as one and the same while the manifold
varies; once more, as distinct from all else which comes
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 347
before it. But, argues Kant, all this proves nothing what-
ever as to the real nature of the soul. Accordingly all
speculations based upon the metaphysical assertions thus
shown to be false conclusions from the facts and conditions
of phenomenal consciousness have no warrant. Immortality,
for example, cannot be established by any effort of Specu-
lative Reason. As little, however, can any assertions running
counter to the foregoing be upheld. Materialism in its
principles, and in its conclusion against immortality, can by
no possibility be proved. As regards immortality upon which
interest is here centred, the result of the critical inquiry is
that no valid reason of the theoretic sort can be given either
for or against it ; and as there can be none against it, it is
open to be proved upon other grounds.
When Reason, acting upon its general idea of the Uncon-
ditioned, proceeds next to interpret the phenomena of Nature
or the mind's Objective Experience, it involves itself in diffi-
culties of quite another cast. Taking phenomena on the
side of their conditions, and impelled to conceive of these in
their totality or completeness, it goes beyond experience and
thinks a world or cosmos as a separate whole. The start
here is from experience, but in every way the extension made
is such that experience can never come up with it. So, under
the four heads of Categories through which experience is
constituted, absolute determination is made of the world in
four ways. It is asserted (i) to have absolute beginning
in Time and bounds in Space; (2) to be compounded, in
respect of its sensible reality, of parts absolutely simple;
(3) to involve causes which act with absolute freedom in no
necessary dependence upon one another ; (4) to imply the
existence of an absolutely necessary Being as either part
or cause.
348 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
But however cogent be the reasons that are assigned for
these assertions from the point of view of pure dogmatism
whence they are made, the strange fact presents itself that,
from another point of view, precisely opposite assertions can
be made and upon grounds of reason not a whit less strong,
(i) The world is as to Time and Space infinite; (2) there is
nothing simple, but everything without exception is com-
posite ; (3) there is no freedom, but everything happens
according to natural law ; (4) nothing exists that is abso-
lutely necessary.
On the one hand, in the series of conditions, a first is
taken as itself unconditioned and made the absolute ground
of the series ; on the other hand, it is the series itself that
is taken as unconditioned. Either course may be justified
equally and developed to its consequences.
Such is a brief representation of what Kant calls the
Antinomy of Pure Reason, and nothing, he declares, is so
much calculated to pull it up in its headlong course of spe-
culative interpretation. Once give Reason way, and it cannot
help becoming thus divided against itself. Criticism is the
only means of filling up the breach of composing the strife.
To be able so to do is, with Kant, the true test of any philo-
sophical theory of knowledge, and none but his own can
withstand it. As thus : The Antinomies fall into two
classes the first two to be called Mathematical, the other
two Dynamical, in the same sense as that in which those
terms were used to distinguish the Principles of Pure Under-
standing. In the Mathematical Antinomies the uncondi-
tioned in either form of it is homogeneous with the
conditioned which it is set up to explain ; thus in the first
Antinomy, the world, whether taken as infinite or absolutely
bounded in space, is conceived after the fashion of things which
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 349
we have sensible experience of in space. In the other class
of Antinomies the unconditioned and conditioned need not
be thus homogeneous ; a cause may be of a nature quite dif-
ferent from that of its effect. Now where the unconditioned
and conditioned are alike, the two opposed assertions in the
Antinomy are contradictory and exclude one another; not
one only, however, but both must be held false. For, as we
know that it is only phenomena that are in Space and Time,
and these pure forms of our sensibility have no application
to things in themselves, the world of Reason, which is not
the world of Experience, cannot possibly have ascribed to
it either infinity or absolute limitation in the one or the
other form.
The second Antinomy is to be resolved likewise. Divi-
sion in space has application only to phenomena of which
there is experience, and takes place as there is experience of
it : the opposite views err alike in misconceiving the world of
sensible experience for a world of things-in-themselves, or in
applying to the latter language which has a meaning only
in relation to the former. Different is the resolution to be
made of the Antinomies of the other class. Here the
counter-assertions are verbally opposed, but may both be
true in a different application. It is quite possible that all
phenomena may be connected with other phenomena as
their cause, and so the chain of cause and effect in nature
be unbroken, and yet that they should depend on causes
working freely in the intelligible world of Noiimena or
things-in-themselves. So, again, it may well be that there is
nothing within the realm of phenomena that is not subject in
every way to conditions, and yet there may exist intelligibly
an absolutely necessary being the unconditional ground of
all that appears.
350 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
Kant's conclusion, then, is that, if not sought within the
sphere of phenomena, free agency or freedom of will is
possible, also that no argument from experience can exclude
the possibility of an absolute being the supernatural cause
of Nature. But he proceeds to show that, when Speculative
Reason, planting itself wholly outside of Experience, seeks to
determine Being in general, and turns its subjective Ideal of
Being brought to highest unity into an objective existence,
including all reality and perfection, moreover conceived as
a person, the step, regarded from the critical point of view,
is wholly inadmissible. As if conscious of the uncertainty of
the step, Reason, in the way of Speculative Theology, has
sought to justify it by a variety of arguments ; and Kant
accordingly subjects these, known as the proofs of the
existence of Deity, to a scrutiny which remains for ever
memorable.
The proofs commonly given are brought to three (i) the
a priori or ontological argument, from the very nature of the
concept or idea of Deity; (2) the cosmological argument,
from the contingent existence of things actual to the exist-
ence of a necessary being as their ground ; (3) the physico-
theological, also called the teleological, argument, from the
evidences of design in nature to an intelligent First Cause
or Creator.
In the last resort, according to Kant, all depends on the
validity of the a priori or ontological proof. The argument
from Design, however striking and forcible, does not take us
beyond Nature, or, even supposing it to do so, cannot prove
the supernatural cause to be one and absolute. At least it
cannot do this of itself without the help of the second or
cosmological argument from contingent to necessary exist-
ence ; while that in turn labours under the defect that the
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 351
necessary existence has still to be proved the Being inclusive
of all reality and perfection. Does then the conception of
a Being as most real and perfect prove the existence thereof?
Yes, it is argued, because it would be contradictory to sup-
pose such a Being non-existent, or, again, to suppose a Being
most perfect, if the attribute of existence be wanting. But
just there, Kant urges, lies the error. Existence is no attri-
bute to be added to or taken from a concept : the content
of a notion remains the same, whether reality is ascribed to it
or not. Real existence is a synthetic, not an analytic pre-
dicate, the ground of which for phenomena is sensible
experience received by us. In default of such experience,
impossible in the case of a being not phenomenal, thought
cannot make the necessary synthesis. The existence can
neither be begged nor proved.
The general conclusion, then, to which Kant is brought
is that the Ideas of Pure Reason are in no respect principles
constitutive of a knowledge beyond experience, as the Categories
are principles or rules constitutive of experience. Through
the Categories objects are constituted or made, and they may
be drawn out into synthetic propositions a priori valid for all
experience. The Ideas, transcending all experience, con-
stitute nothing objectively for want of appropriate matter,
such as sense supplies to the Categories; and drawn out into
such synthetic propositions a priori as make the burden of
metaphysical systems, they give a mere pretence of know-
ledge. Yet are they not, therefore, of no account for our
cognition? Applied to experience constituted through the
Categories or pure Concepts of Understanding they have
a regulative function of the highest importance. They are
constantly directing that knowledge had through under-
standing be brought, as far as may be, to unity and system.
352 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
They are, then, so many problems to be solved, and not less
effective for direction or regulation, because of the insight
which criticism gives into the theoretic insolubility. For
example, however impotent Speculative Reason may be to
establish an absolute First Cause, what more promotive of
systematic scientific knowledge than the view that the world
is one and the work of a Supreme Reason?
The Kritik of Pure Reason, in disallowing a science of
speculative metaphysic, after explaining and justifying the
pure science of mathematics and physics, leaves wholly
problematical the immortality of the soul, free-will, and the
existence of God, to demonstrate which was the metaphy-
sician's highest aim. Often Kant has been understood to
demolish all three assertions as pure figments, and it has
been charged against him as inconsistency and weakness
that he forthwith proceeded upon other grounds to set up
again what no one so triumphantly as he had overthrown.
But this is altogether to misconceive the man and his work.
We see him in his earliest period of speculative confidence
concerned above all to affirm and maintain the existence of
Deity, and again years after Hume had destroyed his faith in
reason at all other points, it still asserts itself in him with
regard to this central position of all. By-and-by, indeed,
when embarked on his own critical inquiry, he recovers his
faith in reason at other points, only to lose it here ; but there
is sufficient evidence in his work and otherwise that, however
the fearless honesty of his intellect drove him to resign what
most he had cherished, in his heart he cherished it still. He
leaves this question and the others, as I said, problematical;
which means, indeed, that the answer is uncertain theo-
retically, but that an answer is required. And if an answer
in the affirmative is uncertain, he takes quite special care to
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 353
show that a negative answer is theoretically no more certain
either. The field is open then for argument other than of
the theoretic sort.
It must suffice here to give the merest indication of the
way in which Kant was able to attain to the measure of
certainty which he found needful. The supernatural shown
by the Kritik of Pure Reason to be closed against man's
speculative insight, is disclosed by a Kritik of Practical
Reason as the necessary condition of man's moral action.
There is in human consciousness a law of duty, categorically
imperative : Act so that the maxim of thy will may at all
times become a universal law for all. The law is there, but
how can man so act ? He can because he ought : in having
the duty he has the power : he must have the power. Free-
will is the first postulate of moral action. Now, of a truth,
it is not as man is a natural being having a place in the
world of phenomena that he can thus act freely : in the realm
of phenomena everything takes place according to a neces-
sary law of causality. But speculative reason was good for
this at least that it pointed to a realm of intelligible existence,
of which it could be said affirmatively that it did exist and
negatively that it was not subject to the law of phenomena
in space and time. The Krilik of Pure Reason farther solved
the third antinomy by showing that it could well be that
human actions should be determined in the way of natural
causation by phenomenal circumstances, and yet that they
should be at every stage determined quite otherwise across
from the supernatural sphere in which a law of freedom of
pure self-determination might reign. What thus theoretically
was possible, the fact of Duty turns into necessary assumption.
Man must be free as an intelligible being or Noiimenon ;
and it is upon man as Phenomenon that the law of Duty is
A a
354 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
imposed. Freedom of Will is thus the great postulate of the
Practical Reason. But the Practical Reason, besides enjoining
a law of Duty, provides also a final end of action in the idea
of an unconditioned Supreme Good ; and man being a sen-
tient as well as a rational being, Happiness as well as Perfect
Virtue or Moral Perfection must be involved therein. Now
since there is no necessary conjunction of the two in nature,
it must be sought otherwise. It is found in postulating
Immortality and God. Immortality is required to render
possible the attainment of moral perfection. Virtue from
respect for law, with a constant tendency to fall away, is all
that is attainable by man in this life. Moral Perfection, or
complete accommodation of the Will to the Moral Law, can
be attained to only in the course of an infinite progression,
which means personal immortality. God must farther be
postulated as the ground of the required conjunction of
Happiness with Moral Perfection. Happiness is the condition
of the rational being in whose whole existence all goes ac-
cording to wish and will ; which is not the condition of man,
for in him observance of the Moral Law is not conjoined with
any power of disposal over the laws of Nature. But as Prac-
tical Reason demands the conjunction, it is to be found only
in a Being, the author at once of Nature and of the Moral
Law ; and this is God.
This part of Kant's doctrine has, as usual with him, its
two aspects. There is the denial of any speculative know-
ledge of the supernatural, and there is prepared in the
Kritik of Pure Reason and consummated in the Kritik of
Practical Reason the assertion that there are grounds for
the strongest practical conviction of it.
It is easy now, as Kant's contemporaries found it easy
then, to lay the finger upon the weak place in this two-sided
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 355
theory. The Noiimenon or Thing-in-itself, the unknowable
ground of what appears, which notwithstanding from the
very first proves to be so far knowable and known that its
existence is most positively declared, ends by having much
else positively affirmed concerning it. It is namely some-
what in its nature higher and better than the phenomenon ;
for in man it has the right to impose on his phenomenal
being an imperative law of action. It also is a cause with
reference to the phenomenon : Kant's whole theory of sense
as a receptivity rests upon this basis, and his postulate of
human freedom under his solution of the Third Antinomy
demands it. But surely here transcendent application is
made of a category whose proper sphere of application, in
Kant's own view, is experience. It was not to be expected
that thinkers should rest in such a conception of the
Noiimenon as unknowable. Either it had to become fully
known and so be got rid of, or it had to be got rid of by
being discounted. Speculative Reason had to find a means
of surmounting the barriers which Kant had set, or need was
that human inquiry should withdraw therefrom and frankly
resign itself to the phenomenal. Kant's speculative suc-
cessors from Fichte to Hegel spent themselves in the former
task, and their efforts left little, if anything, to be ever after
attempted in that direction. In various ways by the pur-
suit of positive science and the resort to psychological inquiry
others have taken the alternative course a course that
from the nature of it is in no danger of being too speedily
run.
Kant in his Kritik decided for ever if it had been left,
which practically it was not, to be so decided that verifiable
knowledge is confined to the region of phenomenal expe-
rience. Practically it was not left to be so decided, for
A a 2
356 Elements of General Philosophy. [LECT.
already the positive sciences had advanced too far to be
stayed by any philosophic theory. Not the less, however,
was such a comprehensive theory as his a great and oppor-
tune work in the interest of the sciences themselves. It is
not all scientific men that are aware, even as regards their
own special science, by what right of tenure it is held ; and
even superior scientific men have been known, off the line of
their own special science, to have curious ideas as to the
possibilities of human knowledge, from which a course of
the Critical Philosophy, better than anything else, would have
saved them. Kant, by his profound analysis of the conditions
of knowledge, established once for all in what directions and
within what limits it could be had. Nor, because he thought
it possible to determine a priori the general principles of
physical science, were these principles of aught but phe-
nomenal experience. Besides, it was the science of external
nature only that he thus made bold to forecast. His Meta-
physic of Nature made no profession to cover the field of
mind. A pure science of psychology, even as phenomenal,
was no part of his projected philosophical system. In his
view there could be merely an empirical science of mind.
All the more significant is it, then, that in later days those
who are least disposed to underrate the importance of his
philosophical labours turn to psychology for the means of
resolving the difficulties as to human knowledge which his
critical inquiry, if it did not succeed in resolving them,
must always have the credit of first bringing to light. That
philosophy must be based on a science of psychology, in-
volving the best attainable knowledge concerning the growth
and development of mental life, remains, after all the thought
of the past, the dominant idea in the thought of the present.
It is an idea altogether in keeping with the general intel-
xxix.] Elements of General Philosophy. 357
lectual tendency of the century. After much thinking about
things as they are found, men have learned to look for a truer
comprehension of them through an inquiry how they have
come to be. We seek now to understand things in the
light of their development and such conception as can be
had of their origin. It is so in all matters of scientific
interest in things natural, whether animate or inanimate,
also in things or institutions that have come into being
through human action or effort. Why not also mind more
especially as mind has its evolution, not in the individual
only, but also in the race ? Yet, though insight may be had
in this way not to be had otherwise, there is in such method
itself no safeguard against superficiality of treatment. In
regard to things not in our power it is easy to fancy that we
are working out a continuous representation of their develop-
ment, when the representation is anything but continuous,
and when we have got but little hold of that which has truly to
be traced. Therefore must analysis of the actual be never
intermitted but carried deep, to make known what it is of
which the origin has to be sought. I believe that Kant's
critical inquiry into the human faculty of knowledge was an
analysis that disclosed elements in it, the import of which has
not yet been fully apprehended, and raised questions most
real and pressing which yet await their answer from psy-
chology. And I end as I began, by asserting that it greatly
concerns the English psychology of the present day to give
heed to them.
APPENDIX.
NOTE TO LECTURE XVIII, p. 183.
From Elements of General Psychology, LECTURE II.
OBJECTIVE.
[Logic]
T. Mathematics.
2. Physics.
3. Chemistry.
4. Biology.
5. Psychology.
6. Sociology.
Scheme of Fundamental Sciences.
SUBJECTIVE.
Psychology.
Regulative doctrines or disci- \ Logic,
plincs (not sciences) dependent upon V ^Esthetics.
Psycliology.
Ethics.
INDEX.
Abelard, 49, 50.
Abstraction, 70, 79, So.
Academics, 29, 35.
Action, 86 et seq,, 144, 194.
Active sense, 171.
Activity, 179, 285, 328.
Adamson, 13.
Altruism, 197.
/Esthetics, a department of philo-
sophy, 2, 181.
Analysis, 21, 207, 216, 240, 357.
Analytic propositions, 127.
Anaxagoras, 31, 33, 218.
Animals, in Cartesianism, 262.
Animism, 173, 218.
Anselm, 49, 50, 252.
Antinomies, 343 et seq.
A posteriori. See Knowledge.
A priori. See Knowledge.
Aquinas, 42, 48-50, 53, 232, 253-
278.
Arabian philosophy, 26, 36, 42,
44, 278.
Archimedes, 28, 36, 54.
Aristotle, his so-called ' meta-
physic,' 7, 8, 18 ; his influence,
26, 35, 43~4 6 > 4 8 -5. 5.2 : on
nature, 29 ; his Categories, 43,
69 ; works translated, 43, 69 ;
his Realism, 47, 7274 ; as
conciliator, 101 ; on cause, 136,
141 ; on common sensibles, 156 ;
on Plato, 211 ; his logic, 214 ;
his psychology, 214 et seq.
Arnauld, 59, 60, 62, 235, 271.
Art, 1 86.
Association, 1 14, 115.
Associationism, 65, 112, 116, 131,
335-
Astronomy, 35, 210.
Atomism, 27, 302.
Augustin, 37 et seq.
Authority and philosophy, 37, 39,
Bacon, Francis. 57, 58, 64, 102,
232, 241.
Bacon, Roger, 50, 54.
Bain, mixes up psychology and
philosophy, 2 ; discounts onto-
logy, 8 ; on muscular sense, 67,
133 ; a Nominalist, 79 ; on be-
lief, 86 ; his philosophical posi-
tion, 117; on matter, 169; on
freewill, 196; on heat, 257 ; on
neutral feelings, 267.
Belief, philosophical import of,
1 6 ; psychological analysis of,
86; philosophy of, 91 ; b. and
knowledge, 86 ; complexity of,
89 ; b. and opinion, 208.
Berkeley, 23; his Experientialism,
64-66; his Nominalism, 78, 79;
on cause, 1 40 ; B. and Locke,
113, 156; theory of matter, 154
et seq. ; B. and Descartes, 256.
Body and mind, 177, 255 et seq.,
271.
3 60
Index.
Boethius, 43.
Boyle, 54.
British philosophy, 22, 52, 215,
244.
Brown, 67, 1 1 6, 306.
Bruno, 52, 278.
Burnet, 31 n.
Butler, 155, 191.
Calvin, 193.
Carlyle, 75.
Cartesianism, 270 et seq.
Cartesians, 56-60, 270 et seq.
Categories, of Aristotle, 43 ; of
the understanding. See Under-
standing.
Causality, 122, 135, 249, 298.
Causation, 135 et seq.
Cause, 100 ; notion of, 135 ; in
science, 139; in Cartesianism,
141 ; final, 287, 298 ; efficient,
290.
Charlemagne, 41.
Chemistry, 21.
Christian philosophy, 24, 25, 37
et seq., 199, 219.
Church, 37 et seq., 261.
Cicero, 35.
Claubergius, 270.
Clerselier, 234.
Cogito ergo sum, 61, 245 et seq.
Cognition, 15, 16, 67.
Coleridge, 101.
Common sense, philosophy of, 63,
118, 122, 165, 226.
Common sensibles, 156, 224.
Communication, 81, 148.
Comte, 6, 18, 141, 149, 209, 305.
Conation, 86, 191.
Concept, import of, 69 ; variety in
79, 82.
C'.onception, 67, 68.
Conceptualism, Socratic, 34, 70 ;
mediaeval, 72-84.
Condillac, 67, 82, 206.
Conditioned, principle of the, 122,
138, 195-
Consciousness, circle of, 168, 341.
Conservative faculty, 120.
Consistency, 188.
Constantinople, fall of, 44, 50.
Contiguity, law of, 1 14.
Continuity. See Leibniz.
Co-ordination of sciences, 18-20.
Copernicus, 51, 55, 261.
Cosmology, 27, 32, 33, 345.
Cosmothetic Idealism, 166, 256.
Cousin, 305.
Crescas, 277.
Criterion, of good, 185 ; of truth.
248 et seq.
Critical philosophy, 57, 63, 124,
244, 304 et seq.
Custom, 114, 335.
Cynics, 30.
Cyrenaics, 30.
Dark ages, 24, 37-42.
Darwin, 148.
Deduction, 93, 238, 242.
Democritus, 27, 28, 30-32, 216.
Descartes, birth, 52, 231 ; scien-
tific discoverer, 54 ; founder of
modern philosophy, 57,61, 62 ;
his philosophic position, 61,
102 ; life, 231 ; method, 231 et
seq. ; philosophy, 244 et seq. ;
his criterion of truth, 248 ; as
dualist, 62, 155, 271 ; on the
self, 248 ; on substance, 247,
256; as Conceptualist, 257 ; on
space, 258 ; on the soul, 264.
Destutt de Tracy, 67, 116.
Determinism, 192.
Dialectic, 208, 216, 343.
Ding an sich. See Noiimenon.
Disbelief, 90.
Discovery, 240.
Discursive faculty, i 20.
Doctors of the Church, 37, 41 et
seq.
Dogmatism, 280 ; metaphysical,
56-59-
Doubt, 90.
Dualism, 40, 61, 62, 164, 271.
Duns Scotus, 50.
Index.
361
Eastern Church, 42.
Ecclesiastical philosophy, 24, 25,
37 et seq.
Eclectic, 35.
Education, in Plato, 209.
Effect, 137.
Effective thought, 24, 42.
Ego, 161. See Descartes, Soul.
Elaborative faculty, 120, 137.
Emerson, his aphasia, 80.
Empedocles, 217.
Empiricism, 57.
Ends, 185, 220, 287.
Entelechy, 217, 303.
Epictetus, 30, 35, 40.
Epicureans, 27, 29, 35, 39.
Epicurus, 29. 30, 219.
Epistemology and logic, 4, 13 ;
e., philosophy as, 5, 9, 10 et
seq. ; e. and psychology, n, 12 ;
beginnings of, 23. Sec Plato,
Spinoza.
Erigena, 42, 46, 47.
Error, 254.
Ethical standard, 198.
Ethics, a department of philosophy,
2, 181 ; as a science, 184 ; e. and
psychology, 191 ; e. and politics,
198 ; e. and Christianity, 199 ; e.
and theology, 199.
Euclid, 36, 209.
Evolution, 147, 264, 357.
Experience, 58, 94, 148, 285, 311,
339 ; e. and reason, 23, 58, 64,
71, 242.
Experientialism, 58, 112, 138, 145,
I 5 2 > 3ip 326, 335-
Experientialists, 64.
Faculty psychology, 119.
Faith and philosophy, 38, 40 ; f.
and reason, 48-50.
Fatalism, 193.
Fathers, Christian, 41.
Ferrier, 165.
Fichte, 63, 355.
Final cause, 287.
Fischer, Kuno, 56, 251, 271, 277.
Forms of intention, 126, 324 et
seq.
Freewill, 136, 192 et seq., 352.
Frobel, 190.
Galileo, 54, 55, 210, 235.
Gallon, F., 81.
Gassendi, 235, 247.
General philosophy, i, 2.
Generalisation, 68, 137, 143.
Generic images, 80, 81.
Geulincx, 59, 60, 62, 141, 266, 270,
273-
God, idea of, 103, 249 et seq.,
345.350-354.
Good, idea of the, 206.
Greek philosophy, historical sketch
of, 24 et seq. ; under Scholas-
ticism, 39.
Green, on method, 3, 159.
Grote, 101, 203, 219, 224-229.
Hamilton, confuses psychology and
philosophy, 2, 120; his classifi-
cation of philosophers, 23; his
philosophic position, 63, 78 ; on
faculty, 119; on cause, 137;
on matter, 163 ; on freewill, 195 ;
on Aristotle, 225.
Harmony, pre-established, 302.
Hartley, 65, 66, 115, 335.
Harvey, 54.
Hegel, 13, 63, 149, 212, 283, 355.
Heracleitus, 31, 32, 48.
Heredity, 147.
Hipparchus, 35.
Hippocrates, 35, 223.
History, 19; in philosophy and
in science, 20, 22 ; of Western
philosophy in outline, 236! seq.;
of psychology, 214.
Hobbes, 57, 64, 78, 232, 235, 247,
257-
Homo mensura, 34, 205, 222.
Hooke, 261.
Hume, his scepticism, 57, 59, 63,
115; hisExperientialism,65,H3;
his Nominalism, 78 ; on associa-
362
Index.
tion, 114; on cause, 114, 137,
140 ; his theory of matter, 160;
and Protagoras, 205 ; and Kant,
3!3, 319-321, 323, 334, 352-
Idea, in Plato, 71 ; in Descartes,
104; in Hume, 104, 114; in
Kant, 128, 162, 339 et seq.
Ideal, 185.
Idealism, 28, 56, 71, 72, 212.
Imagination, 9, 227, 337.
Imitation, 150.
Immaterialism, in Plato, 31 ; in
Berkeley, 157.
Immortality, 35 2 -354-
Import, 15, 22, 66.
Indeterminism, 192.
Individualism, 115, 149.
Induction, 94, 137, 143, 239, 242.
Inductive logic, 189.
Inductive method, 75.
Innate ideas, 99, 103, 250.
Instinct, 103.
Intellection, 2, 15, 67, 75.
Intuition, 103, 237, 327, 340.
Italian nature-philosophers, 52.
James, on belief, 84.
Jesuits, 231, 271.
Jevons, 117, 125, 189, 241.
Jewish philosophy, 36, 59, 219,
278.
Joel, Dr., 277.
Judgments, 127, 138, 255, 333.
Justinian, emperor, 26.
Kant. 9; his division of philosophy,
56; his philosophic position,
58, 63, 67, 1 24 et seq., 244, 304 ;
influenced by Hume, 59, 65,
321, 323, 334; his theory of
space, 129, 324 et seq.; his
influence, 63, 65 ; on experience,
125; his Idealism, 161 ; his
Realism, 162 ; on self, 162 ; on
proof, 253 ; on intellectual syn-
thesis, 331 ; on pure reason,
339 ; on soul, 346.
Knowledge, its philosophical im-
port, 14, 15, 6d, 341 ; theory of,
see Epistemology ; kn. and belief,
16, 86 ; universality in, 21, 68,
126 ; nature of, 23, 57, 85; dis-
cussed by Plato, 31, 204 et seq;
as relative, 33 ; objectivity of,
97, 116, 154; a posteriori and
a priori, 125, 332; necessity
in, 126, 130.
Kritik of Pure Reason, 124, 317.
Lange, 32.
Language and universals, 78-83,
150.
Laura Bridgmnn, 83.
Law in science, 136; as norm,
182 ; moral, 354.
Laws, by Plato, 202.
Leibniz, a scientific discoverer, 54 ;
a Cartesian. 59-65; a Rationalist,
107 ; Z. and Locke, 108 ; on
Descartes, 246 ; on necessary
truth, 109, 324; on continuity,
260, 300 ; on substance, 296 ;
on soul, 298.
Lewes, 149.
Leucippus, 31.
Locke, his Experientialism, 57,64-
66, 105; Nominalist and Con-
ceptualist, 78 ; his influence,
no; L. and Berkeley, 113; his
doctrine of matter, 155 ; on
space, 259.
Logic, a department of (practical)
philosophy, 2, 3, 181 ; as science,
3, 183 ; /. and epistemology, 4 ;
/. and psychology, 186 ; depart-
ments of, 189.
Lucretius, 30, 35.
Mnhaffy, 307.
Maimonides, 276.
Malebranche, 59, 60, 62, 142, 262,
266, 271, 274, 276.
Man, the measure of all things,
32 et seq.
Mansel, 82, 144.
Index.
363
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 35,
40.
Martineau, 141.
Materialialism, 32, 113, 170, 236,
347-
Mathematics, 209, 232, 283, 322
et seq., 340.
Mechanical philosophy, 27, 31.
Mediaeval philosophy, 24, 37 et
seq.
Memory, 227, 263.
Metaphysic, 5, 7, 321 et seq., 339
et seq.
Mill, James, 8, 66, 78, 335.
Mill, John S., confuses psychology
and philosophy, 2 ; rejects onto-
logy? 8 ; confuses logic and
epistemology, 1 3 ; his philoso-
phical position, 66, 67, 116; on
Realism, 75 ; a Nominalist, 78 ;
on uniformity of nature, 95 ; as
a logician, 117, 187, 240; on
cause, 142 ; on external world,
172, 335-
Mind, philosophy of, i ; m. and
world, 22, 27, 28; and body,
177, 271.
Modern philosophy, 53, 56 et seq.
Modern scientific movement, 54,
55-
Modes, 256 et seq., 274, 282.
Monadology, 108, 180, 300.
Monads, 108, 180, 300.
Monism, 274.
Morality, 184, 199, 295.
Morteira, 276.
Motive, 194 et seq.
Muscular sense, 67, 132, 171, 226,
328, 337-
Nature and mind, 8, 27, 28 ; philo-
sophy of, 5 1 ; n. and experience,
332; uniformity of, 95, 136;
n. and God, 274, 289.
Necessity. See Knowledge, Organ-
ism, Freewill.
Neo-Platonism, 35, 43, 47.
Newton, 54, 67, 260, 299, 308.
Nominalism, extreme, 49, 80;
mediaeval, 72-84 ; in Aristotle.
228.
Nominalists, 64, 150.
Nomology, 3, 122, 182.
Norm, 182.
Noiimenon, 162, 341, 355.
Nous, 33, 101, 208, 217.
Object, 166, 189, 221.
Objective, in philosophy, 250.
Objectivity of knowledge, 97, 116,
154.
Occasionalism, 62, 141, 270.
Ontology, 5, 7, n, 320.
Opinion, 206.
Organism, as predetermined, 1 33.
Origen, 39.
Pantheism, 75, 142, 271.
Papal supremacy, 48.
Parallelism, 293.
Paralogism, 161, 346 et seq.
Parmenides, 31, 32, 48.
Parmenides, 202, 204, 211.
Pascal, 54.
Passions, 262 et seq., 294.
Patristic philosophy, 37 et seq.
Pearson, Prof. Karl, 277.
Perception, philosophical aspect
of, 4, 14, 70; in Plato, 71 ; and
belief, 93 ; of external world,
154 et seq., 169 ; confused, 265,
300.
Peripatetics, 29.
Personality, 173.
Phado, 204, 210, 213.
Philebus, 202, 204, 211.
Philosophy, psychological basis of,
i, 2, 356; confused with psy-
chology, 2, 16; its meaning and
history, 5, 6 ; ph. and conduct,
6, 17, 182 ; ph. and science, 6,
17 et seq., 54, 74-76; aspects
of, 10 ; ph. and insight, 17;
Greek, 24-36 ; mediaeval, 37-
53 ; modern, 56 et seq. ; and
mathematics, 283, 322-330.
3 6 4
Index.
Phenomenalism, 160, 294.
Phenomenology, 4, n, 122, 182,
341-
Philolaus, 30, 31.
Physics, 7 1 ii 210.
Plato, his use of terms, 5 ; his
influence, 26, 35, 50 ; his Ideal-
ism, 28, 35 ; his theory of ideas,
34, 99, 210; his Realism, 46,
68-71 ; on pre-existence, 71, 148;
his epistemology, 201 et seq. ;
his life, 201 ; his psychology,
205.
Platonism, 73.
Plotinus, 30, 36, 40.
Pollock, Sir F., 274, 277.
Porphyry, 30, 43, 46, 67.
Predestination, 193.
Predisposition, 105, 118, 147.
Pre-existence, 71, 148, 213.
Presentative consciousness, 121.
Pre-Socratics, 31 et seq., 202.
Probability, 88, 237.
Proclus, 30, 40.
Productive Imagination, 326-
329-
Prolegomena, Kant's, 317 et seq.
Proof and discovery, 240; of God's
existence in Descartes, 250; in
Kant, 253.
Protagoras, 31 et seq., 205, 222,
225.
Psychological philosophy, 65.
Psychology, as basis of philosophy,
1,2; as distinct from philosophy,
2, 16, 182 ; and from episte-
mology in particular, n, 12;
history of, 214; rational, 345-
34 6 -
Ptolemy, 35.
Pure reason, 125, 317.
Pythagoras, 31.
Qualities, doctrine of, 155, 171,
222, 257.
Rationalism, 58, 59.
Realism, 47 et seq., 56, 70-76, 164.
Reality, 4, 14, 15, 17, 62,91, 175,
253.
Reason, 22, 49, 58, 64, 68, 122,
162, 311, 340, 344.
Reasoning, 186.
Reflexion, 109.
Regius, 236, 270.
Regulative doctrine, 3, 4, 181 et
seq., 351.
Regulative faculty, 120, 137.
Reid, 23, 57, 63, 79, 118, 163,
191.
Relativity of knowledge, 10, 165,
173 ; in Plato, 205.
Renaissance, 52 et seq.
Reneri, 270.
Representative imagination, 1 20,
325-
Representationism, 164.
Reproductive faculty, i 20.
Republic, 202 et seq.
Res, 77.
Roscellin, 49, 81.
Ruskin, 75.
Sayce, 81 ., 83.
Scepticism, 57. See Hume.
Schelling, 63.
Scholasticism, 24, 25, 37 et seq.,
102, 232, 250, 269, 278 ; limita-
tions of, 44 ; the case for, 45 ;
Realism in, 47 et seq. ; divisions
of, 48.
Schwegler, 56.
Science, and philosophy, 6, 1 7, 74 ;
history of, 20 ; modern, 54, 55 ;
s. and language, 82, 83 ; causa-
tion in, 139; classification of,
209, 358; of nature, 322, 331,
34'-
Scottish school, 63, 78. See Com-
mon Sense.
Sensationalism, 33, 67, 82, 99.
Sense, in Plato ; in Kant, 336. See
Active, Experience, Muscular.
Shelley, 70.
Sidgwick, 191.
Sight, 92.
Index.
365
Simplicius, 37.
Social factor, 149, 199.
Sociology, 184.
Socrates, 27 et seq., 70, 202, 218.
Solidarity, 149.
Solipsism, 179.
Sophist es, 202.
Sophists, 28 et seq., 222.
Soul, Aristotle's definition of, 173,
215; Plato on the, 221; immor-
tality of, 352-354. See Animism,
Descartes, Kant, Leibniz.
Space, 126 et seq., 285, 323 et seq.,
341 et seq.
Speech. See Language.
Spencer, mixes up psychology and
philosophy, 2 ; his philosophical
position, 67, 215; on heredity,
148 ; his Realism, 166 ; on ethics,
184.
Spinoza, 59-63; life of, 276; on
Descartes, 250, 280 et seq. ; as
Cartesian, 274etseq.; asMonist,
279; as Occasionalist, 280; his
psychology. 293 ; his epistemo-
igy> 2 94-
Spinozism, 274 et seq.
Standard, ethical, 198.
Stephen, Leslie, 184.
Stewart, Dugald, 63, 79, 118, 306.
Stoics, 29, 34. 35.
Subject, 166, 189, 221.
Subjectivity, 175, 217.
Substance, 61, 62, 73, 175, 250,
280.
Substantialism, 61.
Synthesis, 240, 331 et seq.
Synthetic propositions, 127, 323,
334, 35 1 -
Tabula rasa, 102, 106, 147, 230.
Taine, on the concept, 79.
Teleology, 32, 220, 298.
Telesius, 52.
Tertullian, 39.
Thecetetus, 35, 202 et seq.
Thales, 24, 26, 218.
Theodicy, 302.
Theory of Knowledge. See Episte-
mology.
Thought, 120, 1 86, 336, 343.
Timceus, 43, 202, 212.
Time, 126 et seq., 332, 341.
Touch, 92, 222.
Transition to modern thought, 51-
53-
Truth, 187.
Tycho Brahe, 261.
Ultimate inquiry, 4.
Unconditioned, 345, 349.
Understanding, 121, 187, 208,344;
categories of the, 128, 334, 342.
Uniformity of nature, 95.
Universalia, Universals, 23,47, 5^,
68-84.
Universality, in philosophy, 21,
22 ; in knowledge, 21, 68, 126.
Validity, 15.
Verification, 17, 29, 95, 185.
Voetius, 270.
Voltaire, 67.
Wallace, Edwin, 214 et seq.
Whewell, 307.
Will, 86, 192, 25;, 353. See Free-
will.
William of Ockham, 37, 50, 51, 74.
Wirgman, 306.
Wisdom, 6, 1 83.
Wolff, 56, 59, 313, 320, 345.
World, as external, 23, 27, 154 et
seq.
Zeno, 29, 30.
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