RECON 
 
AMERICAN THOUGHT 
 
 FROM PURITANISM TO 
 PRAGMATISM 
 
 BY 
 WOODBRIDGE RILEY, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN VASSAR COLLEQB 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND CO:\n*ANY 
 
 1915 
 
CopTRionT, 1915, 
 
 BT 
 
 HENRY nOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 THE OUINN « BODEN CO. PRESS 
 
TO 
 
 MY FIRST TEACHER IN PHILOSOPHY, 
 GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD 
 
^ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 We, as a country, have been told that we have no 
 philosophy, that we do but reflect the speculations of 
 other lands. This is not wholly true. We have had phi- 
 losophers, original thinkers who, though their influence 
 may not have reached abroad, were makers of history 
 at home. So a study of the speculative movements in 
 America leads to a clearer understanding of our national 
 character, for these very movements are so closely allied 
 to our history and our literature that they may be said 
 to form a background for both. 
 
 The colonial background I have presented in a pre- 
 vious volume — American Philosophy: The Early Schools. 
 This described the most important forms of thought as 
 they crossed from the Old to the New World, developed 
 during two centuries, and slowly prepared the way for 
 the native philosophy of Emerson. The present work 
 condenses the previous account and continues the de- 
 velopment of national thought until it emerges tri- 
 umphantly in pragmatism — a typical American phi- 
 losophy. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. PUBITANISM 1 
 
 1. Philosophy and Politics, from Absolutism 
 
 to Democracy 1 
 
 2. The New England Fathers .... 6 
 
 3. The Revolt Against Puritanism: Ethan 
 
 Allen 
 
 II. Early Idealism 
 
 1. Samuel Johnson, Disciple of Berkeley 
 
 2. Jonathan Edwards, Mystic . 
 
 3. Mysticism: From Quakerism to Christian 
 
 Science 
 
 III. Deism 
 
 1. The English Influences .... 
 
 2. The Colonial Colleges and Free-Thought 
 
 3. Philadelphia and Franklin . 
 
 4. Virginia and Jefferson .... 
 
 5. Thomas Paine, and Popular Deism 
 
 IV. Materialism 
 
 1. The French Influences .... 
 
 2. Joseph Priestley, and the Homogeneity of 
 
 Man 
 
 3. Benjamin Rush, and Mental Healing 
 
 V. Realism 
 
 1. The Scottish Influences . 
 
 2. The Princeton School 
 
 3. The Lesser Realists .... 
 
 VI. Transcendentalism 
 
 1. Emerson, Interpreter of Nature . 
 
 2. The Sources of Transcendentalism 
 
 vu 
 
 12 
 
 19 
 19 
 
 28 
 
 37 
 
 54 
 ,54 
 
 57 
 68 
 77 
 8G 
 
 96 
 96 
 
 100 
 104 
 
 118 
 118 
 123 
 1.35 
 
 140 
 140 
 154 
 
ii CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 cnAPTEn 
 
 VII. Evolutionism 172 
 
 1. The Forerunners of Evolutionism 172 
 
 2. The Antagonism of Agassiz . 184 
 
 3. The Reception of Darwinism 191 
 
 4. Cosmic Philosophy: John Fiske . . 211 
 6. Genetic Evolutionism: James Mark 
 
 Baldwin 216 
 
 VIII. MoDEBN Idealism 229 
 
 1. The German Influences . . . .229 
 
 2. The St. Louis School: William T. Harris 240 
 
 3. Romantic Idealism: Josiah Royce . . 254 
 
 4. Idealism and Science: George Trumbull 
 
 Ladd 265 
 
 IX. Peagmatism 279 
 
 1. Pragmatism: The Philosophy of Prac- 
 
 ticality 279 
 
 2. Primitive Pragmatism: Charles Peirce . 284 
 
 3. The Chicago School: John Dewey . . 289 
 
 4. The Cambridge School: William James 308 
 
 5. The Sources of Pragmatism . . 320 
 
 6. The Critics of Pragmatism . . . 331 
 
 X. Notes on the New Realism 341 
 
 Select Biblioqbaphy 361 
 
 Index 369 
 
AMERICAN THOUGHT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 PURITANISM 
 
 1. Philosophy and Politics, from Absolutism to 
 Democilvcy 
 
 The influence of philosophy upon politics in America 
 is easily seen in the evolution of such a familiar phrase 
 as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This 
 declaration of independence was derived indirectly, by 
 way of reaction, from a declaration of dependence. The 
 belief of the Puritans was a belief in passivity, determin- 
 ism, and pessimism. They considered that man was a 
 mere worm, a dull instrument in the hands of Deity; 
 that his acts were predestined. Deity foreordaining 
 whatsoever comes to pass ; that his life was a vain show, 
 and nature a vale of tears. Over against these lugu- 
 brious doctrines of the Puritans we may put those of 
 their successors. It was the deists who believed in 
 activity, freedom, and optimism. They held that man 
 was a real agent ; that he was free to do what he chose ; 
 that his goal was perfection itself, and they even went 
 so far as to say that whatever is, is right. These beliefs 
 slowly spread among the people and were gradually trans- 
 lated into the plain language of the day. Instead of 
 passivity the deists believed in activity,— that is, life; 
 instead of determinism they believed in freedom, — that 
 
2 ... .PURITANISM 
 
 is, .liberty ;' instead* of ^pessimism they believed in opti- 
 ,'iiUMh;^tliJ\tis;, -tlKJ f>Mrsuit of happiness. In short, be- 
 tween the Boston Platform of 1680 and the Declaration 
 of Independence of 1776 a marked change had come 
 about. Tlic deistic sun had arisen, dispelling the winter 
 of Puritan discontent. Humanity was considered per- 
 fectible and this world the best of all possible worlds. 
 
 A more striking instance of the influence of philosophy 
 upon politics is seen in the problem of political sov- 
 ereignty. Popular government in this country was 
 gained only after a long struggle in which philosophical 
 tenets played a large part./ Developing side by side, the 
 one influencing the other, the philosophical and political 
 movements passed through the same changes. In the 
 seventeenth century we find men's interest chiefly cen- 
 tered about God. In the eighteenth century that interest 
 is twofold Tit concerns itself with nature, as well as with 
 God. In the nineteenth century the interest has trans- 
 ferred itself mainly to nature. The same transfer of 
 thought takes place in politics. In the seventeenth 
 century- the interest centers in the king; in the eight- 
 eenth century in both king and people; in the nine- 
 t_eenth century the people fill the foreground. 
 
 We may go back and express this great movement in 
 terms of metaphysics, and say that the conception of 
 the absolute in America is, in the seventeenth century, 
 monistic ; in the eighteenth century, dualistic ; in the 
 nineteenth century, pantheistic. Under Puritanism 
 there is a belief in one, supreme, self-sufficient being, 
 the sole ruler and disposer of all things. Under deism 
 there is a belief in a deity whose powers and functions 
 are limited by a law outside himself, — the law of nature, 
 inviolable and immutable. Under transcendentalism, 
 the deity, becoming immanent, is submerged in nature, 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 3 
 
 can scarcely be distinguished from the cosmic proc- 
 esses. 
 
 We have here three philosophical conceptions. It is 
 not hard to show that they were influenced in their 
 growth by the current theories of government. At the 
 time of Puritanism there is a belief in absoluie_ monarchy, 
 when sovereignty is conceived to be give n by Gq^ ^o _ 
 the king, who thus rules by divine right. Then, at 
 the time of deism there is a belief in limited monarchy, 
 when sovereignty is conceived to be shared between 
 ruler and subject, under a dual control. Finally, along 
 with transcendentalism there arises a true conception 
 of representative democracy, when sovereignty is con- 
 ceived as vested in the people through the inalienable 
 right of the law of nature. Between these two move- 
 ments there is a striking parallel. In philosophy, the 
 predominant interests are first: deity; then deity and 
 nature ; and lastly nature. In polities the kindred in- 
 terests are: king, then king and people, and finally the 
 people alone. That these sets of conceptions are really 
 kindred is shown by the fact that one may be expressed 
 in terms of tlie other. Under Puritanism the deity is V^ 
 represented as a dread monarch and sovereign ruler. 
 This is the Calvinistic description of the immortal GQd._ 
 The same terms are used in reference to the temporal^ 
 king. In the Articles of the Plymouth Church occurs 
 the phrase: " The King's majesty we aeknoxyledge for" 
 supreme governour," while the subscribers to the Ma^- 
 /foii'er compact sign themselves " loyal subjects of our 
 dread sovereign Lord King James." 
 
 These^two conceptions sound so much alike because 
 they are derived from common principles. Both English 
 monarchy and New England theocracy are based upon""" 
 the underlying tenet of transcendence and determinism. 
 
4 PURITANISM 
 
 In ivligion this meant, briefly, that God was far off 
 from his world and that he foreordained all its events. 
 In politics, as Tom Paine bluntly expresses it in his 
 Common, k'^cnsc, this meant that the state of a king shuts 
 him off from the world, yet the business of a king re- 
 quires him to know it thoroughly. To carry out the 
 parallel. The state advocates of divine right made the 
 king high above his people and, at the same time, an auto- 
 crat who decided the smallest affairs in the utmost bounds 
 of his kingdom. The church advocates of divine sover- 
 eignty were of the same temper and held that the Most 
 High doth direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, 
 actions, and things from the greatest even to the least. 
 
 Here are two sets of belief similar in sense and leading 
 to similar results. Yet neither king nor Calvin was to 
 reign forever. A reaction followed which, in the case 
 of the state, led to political revolt, and in the affairs 
 of the church to a philosophical revolt. The former is 
 a commonplace of history, the latter has not been made 
 sufficiently prominent. The Puritan divinity was too 
 much like the Stuart dynasty to be long acceptable 
 to Anglo-American Independents. Special providences 
 exerted in behalf of the elect bore too striking a resem- 
 blance to his Majesty's partiality to a favored few. 
 And then, too, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God — 
 absolute and unchallenged in will, power, and decree — led 
 to the political equivalents coming under fire. Thus it 
 was that William Livingston treated of the political 
 correlatives and wrote picturesquely on " Passive Obe- 
 dience and Non-Resistance ": " The tyrant used to club 
 with the clergy and set them a-roaring for the divine 
 rights of royal roguery. 'Twas a damnable sin to resist 
 the cutting of throats and no virtue more Christian and 
 refulgent than of a passive submission to butchery and 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 5 
 
 slaughter. To propagate such fustian in America argues 
 a disposition prone to senility. And yet 'tis not above 
 four years ago, that in this very province I heard a 
 dapper young gentleman, attired in his canonicals, con- 
 tend as strenuously for non-resistance as if he had been 
 animated with the very soul of Sacheverell. " 
 
 Writing such as this marks the change from the Cal- 
 vinistic or Puritan to the deistic or rational point of 
 view. "What has been said of this change in England 
 holds true of the colonies. The theological conception 
 of politics gave way before what may be termed the 
 naturalistic. Instead of the constructive theory of the 
 divine rights there was a transition to the theory of 
 natural rights vested not only in the king but in the 
 people. The latter, as propounded by Locke, was merely 
 the former in disguise, for the doctrine oF^ivine rights 
 not only was transformed by imperceptible degrees into 
 the theory of natural rights, but left behind it a legacy, 
 in the sense that, because it is natural, government in 
 general is divine. 
 
 This process was destined to be carried further. 
 LTnder the constant appeals to an absolute law and 
 absolute right, there was a tendency to substitute lex 
 for legislator, the principle for the person, and thus to 
 run from the dualistic to the pantheistic stage. Conse- 
 quently, that law of nature which under Puritanism was 
 a subordinate source of authority, and under deism a 
 co-ordinate, under transcendentalism became in itself 
 an ultimate source"6f authority — a veritable absolute. 
 Or, put in terms of political history: That sovereignty 
 which first appertained to the king by divine right, 
 and was then shared by the people by natural right, was 
 at last lodged inalienably in the democracy. "With this 
 supersession of the vox dei by the vox populi, there 
 
6 PURITANISM 
 
 resulted a curious analogy between the pantheism of 
 Emerson and the doctrine of popular sovereignty. With 
 the belief that the universe governs itself, is sufficient 
 to itself and is itself its own end, came the declaration 
 that the federal government is a government of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people, 
 
 2. The New England Fathers 
 
 Puritanism in America enjoyed a metaphysical mo- 
 nopoly for almost two centuries. JFrom the landing of 
 the Pilgrims to the appearance of Emerson the prevalent 
 faith of the colonists and their descendants was Cal- 
 vinism. This faith has been summed up in five points; 
 it can be even more briefly put under two. These are 
 transcendence and determinism, or the conception of a 
 deity who lives apart from the world, and still guides 
 and governs that world in the smallest details. This 
 / belief in " one supreme self-sufficient Being, sole ruler 
 and disposer of all " obtained along the Atlantic coast 
 for even more miles than it did years. It was adhered 
 to by the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
 by the Dutch Reformed in New York and New Jersey, 
 by the orthodox German sects in Pennsylvania, and in 
 the South, on the seaboard by the Huguenots, and in 
 the mountains by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, the 
 so-called Puritans of the South. 
 
 Thus wide was the influence of Calvinism both as to 
 duration of time and extent of space, for even the 
 Church of England in America contained a large in- 
 filtration of Genevan doctrine. 
 
 With such a monopoly it is not surprising that Puri- 
 tanism has been violently attacked, and that its history. 
 has suffered at the hands of the expositor who delights 
 
THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 7 
 
 in presenting its sulphurous side. Thus a New England 
 poem like the ' ' Day of Doom ' ' is taken as a fair example 
 of the distressing illusions once inflicted upon them-_ 
 selves in the name of religion by the best of men, and 
 lis "author "^is declared to have attributed to the Divine 
 Being the most execrable and loathsome character to 
 be met with in any literature, Christian or pagan. This 
 is said to be his narrow and ferocious creed : All men are 
 totally depraved, all of them caught from the farthest 
 eternity in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; 
 the most of them also being doomed in advance by those 
 decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment, 
 and the whole world, when the Judge of all the earth 
 appears, to an universal conflagration. 
 
 In this sketch too black a pencil has been used. If 
 there is a dark side of Puritanism there is also a bright 
 one. Later we shall examine the mystical portrait of 
 Jonathan Edwards with its sweetness and light. But 
 now we may look at Calvinism as if it were a larger 
 canvas painted in the grand manner. As such it in- 
 eluded the belief in the divine Sovereignty which left 
 meETfree from care. To the elect no final ill could fall 
 because they were eared for by a Spirit, " infinite, 
 eternal, and unchangeable." Theirs was a sublime trusty 
 and theirs a sublime fatalism. But this was earried_to 
 extremes. As the historian of colonial literature has 
 described it: the belief in a present, watchful, and 
 benign Providence turned to abject superstition, — the 
 belief in a microscopic and picayune providence con- 
 cerning every falling tower, capsized sail-boat, or lost 
 cow. It is almost incredible that the sublime and the 
 ridiculous could be drawn from the same source. But 
 such is the fact. The tone of Puritanism is a matter 
 of interpretation. At the first there was about it the~^ 
 
8 PURITANISM 
 
 lingering luster of the Elizabethan age; at the last it 
 became mean and petty in the narrow routine of provin- 
 cial life. 
 
 We turn now to the American system of high Calvin- 
 ism as it was expressed in official standards, like the 
 Boston Platform of 1680, and in the utterances of its 
 expositors from the Mathers to Jonathan Edwards. 
 Calvinism as a system stands four-square. It may be 
 viewed from the philosophic standpoints of ontology, 
 the theory of being; of cosmology, the theory of the 
 world ; of epistemology, the theory of knowledge ; and 
 finally of psychology, the theory of personality. First, as 
 a theory of being, Calvinism teaches that the deity lives 
 outside the framework of the universe ; that he interferes 
 as he sees fit according to an absolute and arbitrary 
 will ; that he works through inscrutable decrees ; that he 
 foreordains whatever comes to pass. Second, as a theory 
 of the cosmos, Calvinism teaches that the world is under 
 the curse of the divine displeasure; that it conceals 
 rather than displays its creator; that it is created from 
 nothing and is destined to return to nothing; that the 
 evil in it is a permissive act of God. Third, as a theory 
 of knowing, Calvinism teaches that true knowledge comes 
 more through revelation than through reason, being a 
 gift of the divine pleasure rather than a result of human 
 endeavor; that the decretive will of God is involved in 
 deep mystery, which is for us little better than learned 
 ignorance; that man has only a dim revelation of a 
 hidden God communicated from without; that the 
 human mind has no natural capacity for understanding 
 the divine nature. Fourth, as a theory of personality, 
 Calvinism teaches that God is alien in essence from 
 man; that human progress comes through arbitrary 
 grace, man being by nature corrupt ; that our liberty is 
 
THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 9 
 
 not self-determined, but works only within the limita- 
 tions of our foreordained nature; that the last dictate 
 _of_tlie understanding determines the will, — and yet, that 
 within the will are included the inclinations. 
 
 Such, in brief compass, was the system of official 
 Calvinism. In its extreme form it obtained chiefly in 
 Now England, for like an Arctic current of thought, 
 it grew slowly warmer and was gradually dissipated 
 as it flowed south into the more genial regions of 
 Anglican belief. We have now to consider some of 
 the general causes which, in the course of time, have 
 modified this frigid system. The first rival of Calvin- 
 ism was Arminianism, which has been defined as an 
 appeal to consciousness against a system of abstract 
 logic. Calvinism had emphasized the God-ward side 
 of theology and turned the divine government into an 
 inexorable fate. Arminianism, on the contrary, em- 
 phasized the man-ward side of theology and regarded 
 human activity as a necessary condition of moral re- 
 sponsibility. This contrast was rather in the way of 
 professional theological rivalry; it remained for ordi- 
 nary human nature to exhibit the full psychological 
 revulsion : the head might believe in determinism and 
 depravity, but the heart revolted against such dreadful 
 doctrines. 
 
 The second rival of Calvinism was deism, — the com- 
 ing system of free-thought. This questioned the arbi- 
 trary fiat of the Creator, and succeeded in bringing back 
 liberty of human action. Between an absolute creator 
 and an abject creation there was brought in a third 
 factor, the law of nature in whose benefits man par- 
 ticipated. However, in emphasizing the importance of 
 that law, in making its bounds more and more exten- 
 sive, deism tended to push the creator entirely away 
 
10 PURITANISM 
 
 from his world. Hence by the time the law of nature 
 was madt' universal, the deity was brought to a far 
 remove, and while counted the maker, was no longer 
 considered the ruler of the universe. Here was the 
 abseutee landlord theory carried to extreme; for with 
 this banishment of the master the servant grew boldly 
 arrogant, Man, looking within himself, was becoming 
 a law unto himself; hence that air of moral conceit and 
 self-sufficiency assumed in increasing measure towards 
 the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 We have anticipated and must therefore go back and 
 study the more exact processes that brought about the 
 disintegration of Calvinism. 'First, there was a gradual 
 degradation or lowering of the doctrine of transcen- 
 dence, through the belief in miraculous intervention ; here 
 the deity is brought into the world, not by immanence, 
 but by interference, and general providence is turned 
 into special providences. In place of the noble defini- 
 tion of ** the living and true God, infinite in being and 
 perfection, a most pure spirit, immutable, immense, 
 eternal, incomprehensible," there comes a conception of 
 a being who manifests himself in " remarkable sea- 
 deliverances, remarkables about thunder and lightning, 
 remarkable judgments upon Quakers, drunkards, and 
 enemies of the church." There followed also a gradual 
 integration or hardening of the doctrine of determin- 
 ism ; the freedom of the will which was verbally allowed 
 in the Westminster standards being practically denied 
 by the later consistent Calvinists. Instead of the pro- 
 vision w'hereby " no violence is offered unto the will of 
 the creature, nor is the liberty or contingency of second 
 causes taken away," there comes Samuel Willard's 
 avowal that there is in man a *' miserable impotency 
 and malignity of will with respect to holy choices." 
 
THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 11 
 
 Nevertheless there was a gradual elimination or soften- 
 ing of the doctrine of the necessary depravity of human 
 nature; here the new world being perforce a better 
 world than the corrupt society Calvin had in view, men 
 began somewhat egotistically to plume themselves on 
 their virtues. Thus, in place of the ancient saying that 
 " all noisome lusts abound in the soul like snakes in an 
 old hedge," we find Cotton Mather rejoicing that the 
 Puritan by flying from the depravity of Europe to the 
 American strand doth improve his manners. Finally, 
 there came a more lenient conception of the character 
 of the Absolute. There was no longer a sovereign will 
 at an immeasurable distance from man, but a more 
 kindly leader, commander, and ruler of nature. In 
 place of the outpourings of the divine fury, there comes 
 the infiltration of the quality of mercy due to the essen- 
 tial benevolence of the deity. 
 
 In tracing the processes at work in the amelioration 
 of Calvinism we notice that the positive factors were 
 more powerful than the negative, the best minds pre- 
 ferring the progressive to the reactionary tenets. The 
 process of elevation, in short, was stronger than degra- 
 dation. It therefore came about that Calvinism found 
 itself insensibly drifting into the deistic current, — away 
 from the pessimistic towards the optimistic, away from 
 the misanthropic towards the philanthropic. How strong 
 that current was may be seen fully only after we have 
 explored the contributing streams. These were three: 
 The political, which reached from a state-supported 
 church to perfect liberty of philosophizing; the natu- 
 ralistic, which reached from the supernatural to the 
 scientific; the rationalistic, which reached from revela- 
 tion to reason. These three streams or tendencies were 
 represented by three men : the political by Thomas Jef- 
 
12 PURITANISM 
 
 ferson; the scientific by Benjamin Franklin; the ra- 
 tionalistic by Ethan Allen. 
 
 3. The Revolt Against Puritanism : Ethan Allen 
 
 Ethan Allen of Vermont has been previously known 
 for his military exploits, but quite ignored for his 
 speculative ventures. In the preface to his Oracles of 
 Reason, 1784, the captor of Ticonderoga confesses that 
 he has been denominated a deist ; whether he is he does 
 not know, but this he does know, that he is no Calvin- 
 ist. In a pungent letter to one who inquired concern- 
 ing his philosophy, he writes that he expects that the 
 clergy, and their devotees, will proclaim war upon him 
 in the name of the Lord, having put on the armor of 
 faith, the sword of the Spirit, and the artillery of hell 
 fire. " But," he concludes, "I am a hardy Moun- 
 taineer and have been accustomed to the ravages and 
 horrors of War and Captivity, nnd scorn to be intimi- 
 dated by threats; if they fright me they must abso- 
 lutely produce some of their tremendous fire, and give 
 me a sensative scorching." 
 
 For Allen's roughness of manners and coarseness of 
 speech Jared Sparks gives as mitigating circumstances 
 the rude and uncultivated society in which the author 
 lived. It might be added that the " Green Mountain 
 Boy " was one of those backwoods thinkers who claim 
 to be largely independent of outside ideas. Some rival 
 asserted that he stole his title from Blount's Oracles of 
 Reason, but the author of this " Compenduous System 
 of Natural Religion " throws no direct light on its 
 sources. He maintained that the Bible and the diction- 
 ary were his only authorities, but while he might have 
 made a better use of both, it is hard to learn of what 
 
THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 13 
 
 other means of information he availed himself. He 
 tells how in his youth, being educated in what were 
 commonly called " Armenian " principles, he was much 
 disposed to contemplation, and at his commencement 
 in manhood, being in the habit of committing to manu- 
 script such sentiments or arguments as appeared most 
 consonant to reason, he practiced this method of scrib- 
 bling for many years. So claiming to have something 
 of a smattering of philosophy, he recounts that while in 
 an English prison-ship in 1775 and meeting two clergy- 
 men, — " We discoursed on several parts of moral phi- 
 losophy and Christianity, and they seemed to be sur- 
 prised that I should be acquainted with such topics, or 
 that I should understand a syllogism or regular mode 
 of argumentation." 
 
 Whatever the impulses that affected Ethan Allen, 
 whatever the value of his claims as a self-made thinker, 
 his work furnishes a good example of the popular recoil 
 from Puritanism on the part of one who wished to pur- 
 sue the " natural road of ratiocination." This negative 
 side of the Oracles is couched in a lively and aggressive 
 style, for the writer is appealing to readers who despise 
 the wearisome reasonings of philosophers and are pre- 
 possessed with principles opposed to the religion of 
 reason. In these parts of America, he explains, men are 
 most generally taught that they are born into the world 
 in a state of enmity to God and moral good and are 
 under his wrath and curse ; that the way to heaven and 
 future blessedness is out of their power to pursue, and 
 that it is encumbered with mysteries which none but the 
 priests can unfold ; that we must " be born again," have 
 a special kind of faith, and be regenerated. 
 
 Upon the priests and their so-called scheme of mys- 
 teries, Allen now proceeds to make his onslaught. This 
 
14 PURITANISM 
 
 is the substance of his tirade: the spiritualists, who 
 pretend to be as familiar with the supernatural world 
 as witli their own home-lot, talk as if the creator and 
 governor of the universe had erected a particular acad- 
 emy of arts and sciences in which they, the tutors, were 
 alone intellectually qualified to carry on the business of 
 teaching. With their special revelations they talk as 
 if they only were rational creatures, and the rest of 
 mankind a pack of clodhoppers, as ignorant as a stable 
 of horses ; but that is no revelation to me which is above 
 my comprehension, or which from any natural sagacity 
 I knew before. They may keep their alleged manuscript 
 copy of God's eternal law, it is sufficient for me to 
 possess the deistical Bible, reason, by which I judge 
 that even the commandments of the Decalogue would not 
 be binding upon any rational being unless they coincided 
 with the law of nature. 
 
 Allen next proceeds to attack the Calvinistical system 
 with all the homely wit of which he is master. Against 
 the cardinal belief in magical interferences in the course 
 of nature he argues that such intervention would turn 
 nature into a supernatural whirligig, an inconstant and 
 erring piece of mechanism; would reduce all nature to 
 the level of fanaticism ; would lead men to abandon the 
 great discoveries of Newton for awful apprehensions 
 of God's providence, whereby world would crash upon 
 world, or the tail of the next comet would set this world 
 on fire. But such apprehensions are unwarranted and 
 lead to a logical fallacy; either the great architect of 
 nature has so constructed its machinery that it never 
 needs to be altered, or, admitting miracles, we must 
 admit this syllogism : the laws of nature have been al- 
 tered, the alteration has been for the better, therefore, 
 the eternal establishment thereof was imperfect. In 
 
THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 15 
 
 fine, to demonstrate such a scarecrow belief, one need 
 but quote the anecdote attributed to his Most Christian 
 Majesty, the King of France: " By command of the 
 King, God is forbidden to work any more miracles in 
 this place." 
 
 These are fair examples of Allen's anti-Calvinistic 
 bias. Against other connected doctrines of the old 
 systems he argues in a like short and easy manner, 
 asserting, for example, that original sin had as little to 
 do with the premised Adam as with the man in the 
 moon; that the doctrine of imputation, or the transfer 
 of the personal demerit of sin, is contradicted by the 
 old proverb that every tub stands upon its own bottom ; 
 and that instead of insisting upon the gloomy doctrine 
 of predestination, the teachers of this doctrine should 
 spend their salaries in good wine to make the heart 
 glad. 
 
 With this vigorous but coarse attack upon the five 
 points of Calvinism, there is little wonder that Allen's 
 miscalled theology should have been cordially detested 
 by the orthodox, and that it should have been con- 
 sidered an evidence of the workings of a watchful provi- 
 dence that most of the edition was accidentally burned. 
 Nevertheless the Vermont free-thinker had something 
 else to do but startle the natives with his rustic wit. 
 Besides the negative part of his work, in which he 
 attempted to lop off the excrescences, there was the 
 positive, in which he feels confident that he has struck 
 the outlines of a consistent system. Briefly, in the 
 place of the conception of a transcendent being, occa- 
 sionally active in the affairs of the world, quite incom- 
 prehensible within the mere limits of reason, he would 
 substitute the conception of an immanent power, con- 
 tinually active in the world, knowable in his nature from 
 
16 PURITANISM 
 
 a man's own rational nature. Here, as the matter has 
 been previously summarized, the origin of the concep- 
 tion of a superintending power is traced to the sense 
 of dependence on the laws of nature; from studies of 
 those laws reason discovers the perfections of that 
 power; order implies an orderer, harmony a regulator, 
 motion a mover, and benefits goodness; chaos would 
 prove a creator, but order and beneficent design are 
 necessary to prove providence. 
 
 Allen has now taken the first forward step in his 
 system, and that step is optimism. As he expressed the 
 matter in a line obviously drawn from the Essay on 
 Man: of all possible systems, infinite wisdom must have 
 eternally discerned the best. This, it is explained, im- 
 plies the essential benevolence of the deity and thereby 
 we discover the prime requisite of moral perfection. 
 But great difficulties arise in attempting to discover 
 God's natural attributes, especially his eternity and 
 infinity: Because of these difficulties the writer is now 
 forced to postulate two absolutes: God, the efficient 
 cause, eternal and infinite, and nature the eternal and 
 infinite effect; eternal here being defined as without 
 end or duration, infinite as without degree or measure ; 
 hence, on the one side, is a cause uncaused and eternally 
 self-existent who gave being and order to nature coeval 
 with his own existence; on the other is nature coex- 
 tensive and coexistent with the divine nature, eternal 
 because of an eternal and immense fullness, infinite 
 because infinitely complete and independent of any 
 particular form. 
 
 With two absolutes on his hands Allen is now in 
 dire trouble. He sees the break between creator and 
 creation and tries to mend it by expanding his previous 
 notions of nature as being in a constant state of flux. 
 
THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 17 
 
 He explains that all forms are indebted to creation for 
 their existence. The dissolution of forms animate or 
 inanimate neither adds to nor diminishes from crea- 
 tion; reduced to their original elements they are 
 changed into new and diverse forms in never-ceasing 
 rounds. The particles of matter vi^hich compose my 
 body may have existed in more millions of different 
 forms than I am able to enumerate, and be still liable 
 to fluctuations equally numerous. This elementary 
 fluxility of matter, which is mere creation, is as eternal 
 as God, yet the particular productions, arising from 
 natural causes, have a beginning and an end. 
 
 "With this reference to the ancient doctrine of nature 
 as a plastic principle one may leave the Oracles of 
 Reason. This work the elder President D wight of Yale 
 called the first formal publication in the United States 
 openly directed against the Christian religion ; Presi- 
 dent Jared Sparks of Harvard described it as a crude 
 and worthless performance, in which truth and error, 
 reason and sophistry, knowledge and ignorance, in- 
 genuity and presumption are mingled together in a 
 chaos which the author denominates a system. These 
 academic strictures were perhaps deserved from the 
 standpoint of the orthodox, yet the author received 
 some praise, for as his friend George Washington said: 
 " There is an original something about Allen that com- 
 mands attention." 
 
 The " original something" which Allen contributed 
 was this: a clear recognition of tlie difficulties of 
 dualism, the old theological separation between God 
 and the world. Allen suggested but did not effect a 
 compromise. He spoke of the immense creation that 
 we denominate by the name nature, and of its being 
 necessarily coextensive and coexistent with the divine 
 
18 PURITANISM 
 
 iijifiirc. l'>ut how to identify creator and creation, how 
 to make the two one, that final step he never took. 
 Nevertheless, in this very failure to identify the two 
 conceptions, to make creator and creation the same One 
 and All, permanent and infinite, the Vermont philoso- 
 pher did but leave a speculative task to be undertaken 
 by a greater mind in a neighboring State, for it was 
 Emerson who, struggling with the apparent dualism 
 between God and nature, had the boldness to announce 
 that the Absolute is one with the ordering and creative 
 power of the universe. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 1. Samuel Johnson : Disciple op Berkeley 
 
 In Samuel Johnson of Connecticut wc meet a colonial 
 idealist of an unusual type, not a mystic and recluse, 
 but a publicist and traveler. After graduation at Yale Col- 
 ege, Johnson voyaged across the Atlantic, met such nota- 
 bles as Alexander Pope and the English Samuel John- 
 son, and visited Oxford and Cambridge Universities, from 
 which in due course he was to receive honorary degrees. 
 
 Returning to the narrow bigotry of the British 
 provinces, Johnson was not able to renew his larger 
 interests until the visit of the Reverend George Berke- 
 ley, the Irish idealist, who in 1729 took up his residence 
 in Newport, Rhode Island. It was there that Johnson 
 became a convert to the " New Principle," against 
 which he had been warned in college, but which now 
 seemed to him more apt than any other to be the true 
 philosophical support of faith, to harmonize with our 
 individual dependence on the Supreme Mind or Will, 
 perpetually present and perpetually active. IMoreover, 
 the new system offered a satisfactory substitute for cer- 
 tain old notions of matter. In place of the scholastic 
 notion of an occult substance, and of the Cartesian 
 notion of a dead, inert somewhat, Berkeley substituted 
 spiritual causality. In place of a phantom world lying 
 behind the visible and tangible universe, and in place of 
 masses of matter moved by mechanical forces he would 
 
 19 
 
20 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 put as " proper, active, efficient causes none but Spirit; 
 nor any action, strictly speaking, but where there is 
 Will." 
 
 Such is Berkeley's explanation of the universal im- 
 materialism in reply to a question of his ardent 
 American disciple. The latter 's first letter contained 
 some doubts as to the propriety of denying the absolute 
 existence of matter, though he strove to understand how 
 that meant nothing more than a denial of an incon- 
 ceivable substratum of sensible phenomena. From 
 Johnson's letter of inquiry, which lay unpublished for 
 over a century and three-quarters, we may now give 
 these extracts: 
 
 Rev.d Sr. 
 
 The Kind Invitation you gave me in Reading those ex- 
 cellent Books which you was pleased to order into my Hands, 
 is all the Apology I shall offer for the Trouble I now presume 
 to give you : But nothing could encourage me to expose to 
 your views my low and mean way of Thinking & wi-iting, but 
 my hopes of an Interest in that Candor and Tenderness which 
 are so conspicuous both in your writings & Conversation. 
 
 These Books, (for which I stand humbly obliged to you) 
 contain Speculations the most surprisingly ingenious I have 
 ever met with : & I must confess that the Reading of them has 
 almost convinced me, That Matter as it has been commonly 
 defined for an unknown Quiddity is but a meer non-Entity. 
 That it is a strong presumption against the Existence of it, that 
 there never could be conceived any manner of connection be- 
 tween it & our Ideas: That the esse of Things is only their 
 percipi: & that the Rescuing us from the Absurdities of Ab- 
 stract Ideas & the Gross Notion of Matter that have so much 
 obtained, deserves well of the Learned World, in that it clears 
 away very many difficulties & Perplexities in the Sciences. . . . 
 
 That all the Phenomena of Nature must ultimately be re- 
 ferred to the Will of the Infinite Spirit, is what must be al- 
 lowed ; But to suppose his immediate Energy in the production 
 of every Effect, does not seem to impress so lively & great a 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 21 
 
 Sense of his Power & wisdom upon our Minds, as to Suppose 
 a Subordination of Causes & Effects among the Arehtypes of 
 our Ideas as he that should mak-^ a watch or clock of ever so 
 beautiful an appearance & that should measure the Tkne ever 
 so exactly, yet if he should be obliged to stand by it & influ- 
 ence & direct all its motions, he would seem but very deficient 
 in both his ability & skill, in comparison with him who should 
 be able to make one that would regularly keep on its motion 
 and measure the time for a considerable time, without the 
 Intervention of any immediate force of its Author or any one 
 else, impressed upon it. . . . 
 
 It is after all that has been said on that Head, Still some- 
 thing shocking to many to think that there should be nothmg 
 but a meer show in all the art & contrivance appearing in the 
 Structure, (for Instance) of a Human Body, particularly of 
 the Organs of Sense : The Curious Structure of the Eye, what 
 can it be more then meerly a fine show, if there be no con- 
 nexion more than you Admit of, between that & vision? It 
 Seems from the make of it to be designed for an Instrument 
 or means of conveying the Images of External Things to the 
 perceptive Faculty within ; & if it be not so if it be really of 
 no use in conveying visible objects to our minds, & if our 
 visible Ideas are immediately created in them by the Will of 
 the Almighty, why should it be ma.'e to seem to be an Instru- 
 ment or medium as much as if indeed it really were so? . . . 
 
 To these and similar queries Berkeley wrote a series 
 of letters, most of which are lost. But from those to 
 be found in his published works we learn that the master 
 went to great pains in forming the opinions of his 
 pupil. How ably the latter expounded the doctrines 
 of universal immaterialism and the divine visual lan- 
 guage we shall see in the works of his maturity. Mean- 
 while Johnson had visited Berkeley at Whitehall, the 
 hitter's country place near Newport, and within another 
 year Berkeley had finished his Alciphran; or, the Minute 
 Philosopher, which formed a most pleasing set of ideal- 
 istic dialogues, wherein, from their many allusions and 
 
22 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 touches of local color, Berkeley may be said to stand for 
 Euphranor, the philosophic farmer, and Johnson for 
 his friend Crito. So it was about this time that the 
 neophyte expressed his conversion to the ideal theory, 
 since, as he himself acknowledges, he found the Dean's 
 way of thinking and explaining things utterly precluded 
 skepticism, and left no room for endless doubts and 
 uncertainties. His denying matter at first seemed 
 shocking ; but it was only for want of giving a thorough 
 attention to his meaning. It was only the unintelligible 
 scholastic notion of matter he disputed and not any- 
 thing either sensible, imaginable, or intelligible; and 
 it was attended with this vast advantage, that it not 
 only gave new incontestable proofs of a deity, but 
 moreover, the most striking apprehensions of his con- 
 stant presence with us and inspection over us, and 
 of our entire dependence upon him and infinite obli- 
 gations to his most wise and almighty benevolence. 
 
 On quitting the American strand, Berkeley has been 
 most vividly described as leaving behind him a meta- 
 physical double, another self, sharing his faith, speak- 
 ing his language; viewing all things from the same 
 angle; reasoning, discussing, concluding as he himself 
 had done or would have done. In dedicating his prin- 
 cipal work, from the deepest sense of gratitude, to 
 George, Lord Bishop of Cloyne, Johnson admitted the 
 truth of this description, for he confessed that he was 
 in a particular manner beholden to that excellent phi- 
 losopher for several thoughts that occur in the follow- 
 ing tract. This was the Elementa Philosophica: Con- 
 taining chiefly, Noetica, or Things Relating to the Mind 
 or Understanding ; and Ethica, or Things Relating to 
 the Moral Behavior. 
 
 From the Elements we may take two passages. The 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 23 
 
 first of these, like the Irish idealism, emphasizes the 
 vision of all things in God; the second, with a certain 
 colonial independence, gives to the individual some 
 share in the acquirement of knowledge: 
 
 The notices which the mind has, derive originally from (or 
 rather by means of) the two fountains of sense and conscious- 
 ness. By means of the senses we receive simple ideas. These 
 are sorted out mto a vast variety of fixed combinations or 
 compound ideas distinct from each other, in which the simple 
 ideas are always found to co-exist; of these compound ideas 
 consist every individual body in nature, such as we call horse, 
 tree, &c. These various distinct combinations, connected to- 
 gether in such a manner as to constitute one most beautiful 
 and harmonious whole, make up what we call universal nature 
 or the entire sensible or natural world. In the perception of 
 these ideas or objects of sense we find our minds are merely 
 passive, it not being in our power (supposing our organs 
 rightly disposed and situated) whether we will see light and 
 colours, hear sounds, &e. We are not causes to ourselves of 
 these perceptions nor can they be produced in our minds with- 
 out a cause, or (which is the same thing) by any imagined, un- 
 intelligent, inert or inactive cause. Hence they must be de- 
 rived from an almighty, inteUigent, active cause, exhibiting 
 them to us, impressing our minds with them, or produc- 
 ing them in us. Consequently it must be by a perpetual 
 intercourse of our minds with the deity, the great author of 
 our beings, or by his perpetual influence or activity upon them, 
 that they are possessed of all these objects of sense and the 
 light by which we perceive them. No sooner does any object 
 strike the senses or is received in our imagination, or appre- 
 hended by our understanding, but we are immediately con- 
 scious of a kind of intellectual light within us (if I may so 
 call it), whereby we not only know that we perceive the object 
 but directly apply ourselves to the consideration of it both in 
 itself, its properties and powers and as it stands related to all 
 other things, and we find that we are enabled by this intel- 
 lectual light to perceive these objects and their relations in 
 like manner as by sensible light we are enabled to perceive 
 
24 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 the objects of sense and their various situations; so our minds 
 are passive in this intellectual lijjht as they are sensible to 
 light and can no more withstand the evidence of it than they 
 can withstand the evidence of sense. Thus I am under the 
 same necessity to assent to this — that I am or have a being and 
 that I perceive and freely exert myself, as I am of assenting 
 to this — that I see colours or hear sounds. I am perfectly 
 sure that 2 + 2 = 4, or that the whole is equal to all its parts 
 as that I feel heat or cold, or that I see the sun. I am 
 intuitively certain of both. This intellectual light I conceive 
 of, as if it were a medium of knowledge just as sensible light 
 is of sight. In both these is the power of perceiving and the 
 object perceived; and this is the medium by which I am 
 enabled to know it. This light is also one, and common to all 
 intelligent beings, a Chinese or Japanese, as well as an Euro- 
 pean or American. By it, all at once see things to be true or 
 right, in all places at the same time, and alike invariably at 
 all time, past, present and to come. ... 
 
 Interesting as were Johnson's philosophical writings 
 they were not entirely original. There is, however, a 
 chapter in the Elements which anticipated by many 
 years the psychological study of the development of the 
 child mind. At a time when another New England 
 idealist could publicly assert that children were " like 
 little vipers," and almost an half-century before the 
 first hints of the kindergarten had reached the countiy, 
 Johnson gave this delightful presentation of the early- 
 stages of infancy: 
 
 The first notices of the mind are doubtless those of sense, 
 but directly joined with a consciousness of its perception. 
 Warmth and hunger, and probably some pains, are, perhaps, 
 all the sensations the infant hath before its birth; and when 
 it comes into the light of this world, it is directly impressed 
 with the sense of light and colours, as well as sounds, tastes, 
 odours, and frequent uneasy and painful sensations, all of 
 which still more and more awaken its consciousness; and 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 25 
 
 every fresh notice of sense and consciousness still goes on to 
 excite its admiration and ensrage its attention. And being a 
 perfect stranger to everything about it, it hath everything 
 to learn ; to Avhicli it diligently applies itself, as its conscious- 
 ness more and more awakens upon the repetition every mo- 
 ment, of fresh impressions of sense, until by degrees, having 
 a great number of feelings, tastes, odours, sounds and visible 
 objects, frequently repeating their several impressions, its 
 conscious memory still enlarging, it begins, by means of the 
 intellectual light with which it finds its consciousness attended, 
 gradually to collect and recollect the several relations and 
 connections it observes to obtain among its various ideas. And 
 at length, when it is in ease, it discovereth a wonderful curi- 
 osity and delight in observing these connections, as well as 
 being impressed with new ideas. Now it hath b^en made very 
 evident, both by reasoning and experiment, that, as Bishop 
 Berkeley shows in his Theory of Vision, the objects of sight 
 and touch are entirely different and distinct things, and that 
 there is no necessary connection between them. It must, there- 
 fore, be a matter of great exercise of thought in an infant 
 mind to learn this connection, and particularly, to leam the 
 notion of the various distances and situations of things tan- 
 gible, by its observations on the various degrees of strength 
 and weakness, of vividness or faintness of the light reflected 
 from them, in the things visible constantly connected with 
 them. And at the same time that it hath these things to learn, 
 which must be a laborious work, as being the same thing with 
 learning a language, it is also learning the names of things, 
 and the connection and use of words, which is another lan- 
 guage. And, as if all these were not task enough, it hath all 
 this while to be learning how to use its limbs, its hand in 
 handling, its tongue, and other organs of speech, in making 
 and imitating sounds, and its whole body in all its exertions, 
 and particularly, at length, the poise of its centre of gravity 
 and the use of its feet in walking. All these things require a 
 great deal of application, and the exercise of much thought 
 and exertion. So that it seems evident that these little crea- 
 tures from the beginning, do consider, reflect and think a 
 prodigious deal more than we are commonly apt to imagine. 
 The reason why so many little, low, weak and childish 
 
26 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 tliiiijjs appear in (hem, which we are apt to despise and think 
 beneath our notice, is not lor want of good sense and capacity, 
 but merely for want of experience and opportunity for in- 
 tellectual improvement. Hence also it appears that we ought 
 to think little children to be persons of much more importance 
 than we usually apprehend them to be; and how indulgent 
 we should be to their inquisitive curiosity, as being strangers; 
 with how much candour, patience and care we ought to bear 
 with them and instruct them; with how much decency, honour 
 and integrity we ought to treat them; and how careful it con- 
 cerns us to be, not to say or do anything to them or before 
 them that savours of falsehood and deceit, or that is in any 
 kind indecent or vicious. Pueris maxima debetur reverentia 
 is a good trite old saying. 
 
 This remarkable sketch of the progress of the mind 
 concludes the Xoetica. This, together with the Ethica, 
 made up the Elementa Philosophica, which was used in 
 both King's College during Johnson's presidency and 
 also in the philosophy school of the Academy of Phila- 
 delphia. And yet the use of this idealistic text-book 
 was without palpable effect upon either institution, and 
 that because of an unfavorable environment ; in the one 
 case there was such a spirit of commercialism as to 
 stifle mere speculation, in the other such a tendency 
 towards materialism that, as Franklin wrote to John- 
 son, — " Those parts of the Elements of Philosophy that 
 savor of what is called Berkeleism are not well under- 
 stood here." 
 
 But while Johnson was much disappointed that his 
 work was not more generally appreciated, he received 
 some crumbs of comfort. Benjamin Franklin gener- 
 ously assumed the expense of printing the American 
 edition of the Elements; William Smith, provost of the 
 College of Philadelphia, wrote a laudatory introduc- 
 tion to the London edition, and Cadwallader Colden, 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 27 
 
 lieutenant-governor of New York, was so stimulated by 
 the perusal of the latter, that he renewed his amicable 
 controversy with Johnson regarding the material uni- 
 verse as a dynamic whole. Although there were these 
 gratifying results for the Connecticut idealist in Penn- 
 sylvania and New York, in other provinces there was a 
 different condition of affairs. During Berkeley's so- 
 journ in Rhode Island, Edwards was living in Massa- 
 chusetts, yet here there were no sure signs of the 
 Irish idealism to be found. Even the college at Cam- 
 bridge was so satisfied with its own speculations, so 
 wrapped up in its peculiar ecclesiasticism, that it paid 
 no attention to the distinguished foreign visitor of 
 another faith. The same result obtained in New Jersey, 
 but for somewhat different causes. Harvard was ration- 
 alistic to a degree, but Princeton was so imbued with 
 the common sense philosophy that the Berkeleian ideal- 
 ism, which had somehow stolen into that abode of 
 orthodoxy, was denominated a mere philosophical day- 
 dream. 
 
 Besides these special causes there were general causes 
 for the American indifference to Berkeleism. It has 
 been declared the fault of circumstances that Johnson's 
 book fell on a time when the New World was engaged 
 in conquests in the material rather than in the spiritual 
 sphere. A Gallic critic finds this a polite but shrewd 
 way of saying that Anglo-Americans of the late eight- 
 eenth century were unfit to receive or to develop a true 
 idealism, for what was true in the British colonies was 
 also true in the mother country. The indifference with 
 which Johnson's work was received in England was 
 owing to its appearance at a moment the most in- 
 opportune ; the spiritualistic philosophy was then losing 
 ground, a crass sensualism or a radical skepticism was 
 
28 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 taking its place. If Johnson could have presented his 
 immaterialism to an entirely new age, he might have 
 arrested general attention. The most that can now 
 be said of his endeavors was that he was the meta- 
 physical double, the ideal image of the good Bishop of 
 Cloyne, but withal unsuccessful in spreading, to any 
 groat extent, that form of idealism for which the latter 
 stood. 
 
 2. Jonathan Edwards, Mystic 
 
 Tradition has marked Jonathan Edwards as the 
 greatest of our Puritan divines, the relentless logician 
 who left the print of his iron heel upon the New Eng- 
 land conscience. It is true that Edwards delivered the 
 dreadful Enfield sermon " Sinners in the Hands of an 
 Angry God," and that he composed that rigid treatise, 
 concerning the Freedom of the Will, which belied its 
 title and doomed the bulk of mankind to the workings 
 of an inexorable fate. But this is only one side of the 
 picture. In public Edwards was the pitiless profes- 
 sional theologian. In private he was poet, mystic, phi- 
 losopher of the feelings. As a boy he reached the 
 thought that ** this world exists nowhere but in the 
 mind." As a young man he used frequently to " retire 
 into a solitary place on the banks of the Hudson 's Kiver 
 for contemplation on divine things." In maturity he 
 wrote his treatise concerning Religious Affections in 
 which he described the true believers' soul as receiving 
 light from the sun of righteousness in such a manner 
 that their nature is changed, that they become little 
 suns partaking of the nature of the fountain of their 
 light. 
 
 This inward and intimate side of the " saint of New 
 England " is that which makes him pre-eminently a 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 29 
 
 mystic and seeker after the interior or hidden life. At 
 a very early age he built himself a hut in a swamp. 
 There he communed with his God, became enamored 
 of nature, and reached the conclusion that the one was 
 but the expression of the other. As he put it in one of 
 his later writings: "We have shown that the Son of 
 God created the world for this very end — ^to communi- 
 cate Himself an image of His own excellency. . . . 
 When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, 
 the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous 
 bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and good- 
 ness; and in the blue sky, of His mildness and gentle- 
 ness. There are also many things wherein we may 
 behold His awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, 
 in comets, in thunder, with the lowering thunder-clouds, 
 in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains." 
 
 We are then to count Edwards a mystic because of 
 his wonderful sense of the immediateness of the divine 
 presence and agency. But in addition to his youthful 
 ecstasy he had a philosophical basis for his convictions. 
 Shortly after entering Yale College at the age of twelve, 
 he wrote a little essay which had this as its corollary, — 
 " it follows from hence that those beings which have 
 knowledge and Consciousness are the Only Proper and 
 Keal And substantial beings, inasmuch as the being of 
 other things is Only by these, from hence we may see 
 the Gross mistake of those who think material things 
 the most substantial beings and spirits more like a 
 shadow, whereas spirits Only Are Properly Substance." 
 This is the famous undergraduate paper entitled Of 
 Being, which has been declared as precocious as the 
 Thoughts of Pascal and also remarkable as the counter- 
 part of Berkeley's theoiy of the divine visual language. 
 As to its originality there are many reasons for thinking 
 
30 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 that the young Puritan did not borrow from the Church 
 of England divine. There is the negative reason that 
 the given eoroUary follows from a supposition to the 
 contrary. . . . Let us suppose for illustration this im- 
 possibility that all the Spirits in the Universe to be for 
 a time to be Deprived of their Consciousness, and Gods 
 Consciousness at the same time to be intermitted. I 
 say the Universe for that time would cease to be of it self 
 and not only as we speak because the almighty Could 
 not attend to Uphold the world but because God knew 
 nothing of it. . . . 
 
 There is also the positive reason that Edwards gives 
 a definition of the divine language of signs which has 
 been declared truly marvelous as emanating from a 
 mere boy. . . . Indeed, reasons Edwards, the secret lies 
 here : That, which truly is the Substance of all bodies^ 
 is the infinitely exact, and precise, and perfectly stable 
 Idea, in God's mind, together with His stable Will, that 
 the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and 
 to other minds, according to certain fixed and exact 
 established Methods and Laws ; or in somewhat different 
 language, the infinitely exact and precise Divine Idea, 
 together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise, 
 and stable "Will, with respect to correspondent com- 
 munications to Created Minds, and effects on their 
 minds. 
 
 The logical side of Edwards's mind is not that which 
 we would dwell on. It is the poetical and the mystical 
 which give a truer insight into his nature. The first hint 
 of his quietistic experience is given in the phrase that 
 " nothing " is " the same that the sleeping rocks dream 
 of." The next is in his definition of inspiration as 
 an absolute sense of certainty, a knowledge in a sense 
 intuitive, wherein such bright ideas are raised, and such 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 31 
 
 a clear view of a perfect agreement with the excellencies 
 of the Divine Nature, that it is known to be a communi- 
 cation from II im ; all the Deity appears in the thing, and 
 in everything pertaining to it. 
 
 Edwards is convinced of the verity of mystical intui- 
 tion. At the same time he is wise enough to state that 
 while this may be immediate, it does not come all at 
 once nor arise without painful preparation. There are 
 three stages in the process: first, comes by great and 
 violent inward struggles the gaining of a spirit to part 
 with all things in the world; then, a kind of vision or 
 certain fixed ideas and images of being alone in the 
 mountains or some solitary wilderness far from all 
 mankind; finally, a thought of being wrapt up in God 
 in heaven, being, as it were, swallowed up in Ilim for- 
 ever. In these few words Edwards has summed up the 
 mystic progression presented in the ancient manuals, 
 those three stages in the ladder of perfection, — first, 
 the purgative, brought about by contrition and amend- 
 ment ; then, the illuminative, produced by concentration 
 of all the faculties upon God; lastly, the intuitive 
 or unitive, wherein man beholds God face to face and is 
 joined to Him in perfect union. In a passage of ex- 
 quisite beauty, which may well be called a classic of 
 the inner life, the saint of New England thus proceeds 
 to unfold the record of his youthful ecstasy : — 
 
 After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, 
 and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward 
 sweetness. The appearance of everj-thing was altered; there 
 seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of 
 divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wis- 
 dom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in 
 the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds, and the blue sky; in 
 the gi-ass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which 
 
32 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the 
 moon for continuance; and in the day, spent much time view- 
 ing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in 
 these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, 
 my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce 
 any thing, among all the works of nature was so sweet to me 
 as thunder and lightning; formerly, nothing had been so terrible 
 to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder 
 and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm 
 rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, 
 so to speak, at the first appearance of a thunder-storm; and 
 used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in 
 order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear 
 the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder which often- 
 times was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet con- 
 templations of my sweet and glorious God. While thus 
 engaged, it always seemed natural to me to sing, or chant forth 
 my meditations; or, to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a 
 singing voice. Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my con- 
 templations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, 
 charming, serene calm nature; which brought an inexpressible 
 purity, brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. 
 In other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of 
 God, with all manner of pleasant flowers; all pleasant, de- 
 lightful, and undisturbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the 
 gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Chris- 
 tian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a 
 little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low, 
 and humble on the ground, opening its bosom, to receive the 
 pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a 
 calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing 
 peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round 
 about ; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in 
 the light of the sun. There was no part of creature-holiness, 
 that I had so great a sense of its loveliness as humility, broken- 
 ness of heart, and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing 
 that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this, — 
 to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, 
 and that God might be ALL. 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 33 
 
 In the concluding passage of this exquisite rhap- 
 sody there appear what have been called the un- 
 mistakable marks of the mystic in every age, — the 
 desire to be united with the divine, the longing to be 
 absorbed into the inmost essence of the Absolute. But in 
 Edwards's full narrative there are also to be found the 
 marks of mysticism from the modern point of view. Let 
 us now submit the matter to the test of the psychology 
 of religion. William James has given the proper marks 
 of mysticism as four in number: Ineffability, — the sub- 
 ject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that 
 no adequate report of its contents can be given in words, 
 — in this peculiarity mental states are more like states 
 of feeling than like states of intellect. The noetic qual- 
 ity, — although so similar to states of feeling, mystical 
 states seem to those who experience them to be states of 
 knowledge ; they are states of insight, illuminations, 
 revelations, full of significance and importance, all in- 
 articulate though they remain. Transiency, — mystical 
 states cannot be sustained for long, their quality can 
 be but imperfectly reproduced in memory, yet this is 
 susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as 
 inner richness and importance. Passivity, — the oncom- 
 ing of mystical states can be facilitated by preliminary 
 voluntary operations, yet when the characteristic sort 
 of consciousness has once set in, the mystic feels as if 
 his own will were in abeyance. 
 
 We may apply these tests to the records of Edwards's 
 inner life in order to gain a further insight into his 
 mental processes. The mark of transiency may be neg- 
 lected. The brief duration, the constant intermittence, 
 is an accident, not an essential of the mystic state. Ed- 
 wards complained that his earlier affections were lively 
 and easily moved, and that it was only after he had spent 
 
34 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 most of his time, year after year, in meditation and 
 solilo(iuy that liis sense of divine things seemed gradually 
 to increase. Leaving aside, then, the mark of transiency, 
 one reaches the more important mark of passivity. Here 
 Edwards says in his early notes on the ]\Iind : Our 
 perceptions or ideas that we passively receive through 
 our bodies are communicated to us immediately by 
 God. There never can be any idea, thought, or action 
 of the mind unless the mind first received some ideas 
 from sensation, or some other way equivalent, wherein 
 the mind is wholly passive in receiving them. 
 
 We should note, in passing, that there is here given 
 a clew to Edwards's precocious idealism. The passive 
 or quietistic state readily lends itself to a sense of the 
 unreality of the external world. In Edwards's lan- 
 guage this takes the form of a belief that corporeal 
 things could exist no otherwise than mentall}^ and that 
 other bodies have no existence of their own. In modern 
 psychological terms the recognition of the unreal sense 
 of things may be laid to a temporary absence of con- 
 £Esthesia, a transient loss of the sense of the compact 
 reality of the bodily organism. Furthermore, this in- 
 direct phenomenalism, this extreme subjectivism, being 
 carried to its logical extreme, might well lead to the 
 conclusion embodied in Edwards's first fragment, the 
 corollary of the essay on Being, which protested 
 against the view that material things are the most 
 substantial, and affirmed that spirits only are properly 
 substances. 
 
 Vivid, intense, personal impressions furnish in largest 
 measure the substance of Edwards's idealism. But that 
 idealism was only suppplementary, only an afterthought 
 to his mysticism. We return therefore to that most 
 positive mark of mysticism— the noetic quality. In his 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 35 
 
 maturer essays on the Spiritual Light and the Religious 
 Affections Edwards attempts to express the manner and 
 means of his conviction of that " new sense of things " 
 quite different from anything he ever expressed before. 
 As a sign of the thoroughness of his thinking he takes 
 pains to present the negative side. What is this divine 
 and supernatural light immediately imparted to the 
 soul by the Spirit of God? ... It does not consist in 
 any impression made upon the imagination, as when one 
 may be entertained by a romantic description of the 
 pleasantness of fairy-land, or be affected by what one 
 reads in a romance, or sees acted in a stage-play. No, 
 rather as he that beholds objects on the face of the 
 earth, when the light of the sun is cast upon them, is 
 under greater advantage to discern them in their true 
 forms and natural relations, than he that sees them in 
 a dim twilight, so God, in letting light into the soul, 
 deals with man according to his nature and makes use 
 of his rational faculties. 
 
 So far as Edwards was concerned, the objects of the 
 mystical knowledge were as substantial realities as his 
 Berkshire mountains, yet he felt obliged to bring home 
 to others the proper rationality of that knowledge. 
 Then, too, the treatise on the Religious Affections being 
 called forth by the revival which had meanwhile swept 
 over his parish, the Puritan divine was in a further dififi- 
 cult position, for he stood midway between the skeptics 
 of his age and those persons who were of abnormal 
 emotional sensibility. On the one side, he explains, are 
 many in these days who condemn the affections which 
 are excited in a way that seems not to be the natural 
 consequence of the faculties and principles of human 
 nature; on the other side are those of a weak and 
 vapory habit of body and of brain easily susceptive of 
 
36 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 iinpn'ssions; as a person asleep has dreams of which he 
 is not the voluntary author, so may such persons, in 
 like manner, be the subjects of involuntary impressions, 
 when they are awake. But the true saint belongs to 
 neither of these. In him the divine spirit may co- 
 operate in a silent, secret, and undiscernible way, with 
 the use of means, and his own endeavors, and yet that 
 is not all. Spiritual light may be let into the soul in 
 one way, when it is not in another; in a dead carnal 
 frame, it is as impossible that it should be kept alive in 
 its clearness and strength as it is to keep the light in 
 the room when the candle that gives it is put out, or 
 to maintain the bright sunshine in the air when the 
 sun is gone down. 
 
 By this final figure of speech Edwards has expressed 
 more than the inadequacy of reason to explain the 
 mystery of the inner life. The figure is itself a reason 
 which explains why Puritan mysticism failed to spread 
 in the land. Edwards himself was the chief luminary in 
 that system, and with his eclipse came irreparable loss. 
 He was not only the chief of New England divines, but 
 the chief native exponent of the scholastic of the heart, 
 the dialectic of the feelings. But those teachings of 
 his had now a lessening audience. In the mid-year of the 
 century he was forced by an unhappy estrangement 
 from his pastorship at Northampton and driven from 
 the haunts of scholarship to the edge of the Western 
 wilderness and into actual peril from the inroads of 
 the savages. And so his arduous missionary labors 
 among the Indians at Stockbridge had much to do in 
 preventing the elaboration of his mystical doctrine. 
 
MYSTICISM 37 
 
 3. Mysticism: From Quakerism to Christian Science 
 
 The spreading of Edwards's mystical beliefs was 
 thwarted by local conditions. But there were other 
 and more general causes at work to prevent the ac- 
 ceptance of such tenets. For one thing, orthodox 
 Puritanism was opposed to the belief in a " divine and 
 supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul." 
 As Increase Mather declared : Here on earth we have 
 but a dark and very imperfect knowledge of God ; only 
 in heaven do the glorified saints have the beatific vision. 
 The reason for this restriction is not hard to find. The 
 notion of self-illumination was abhorrent to those be- 
 lievers in historic revelations and oracles, who consid- 
 ered that they already possessed sufficient sources of 
 inspiration in the Bible, the church, and reason. Of 
 these three the first was counted chiefest. " The word 
 of God as contained in the Scriptures " was the final 
 record of the divine message to men. So, as Edward 
 Channing has said in the ease of Mistress Anne Hutch- 
 inson, the conception that any man — much less any 
 woman — should pretend to be inspired by the Almighty 
 was not to be held for one instant. 
 
 Orthodox Puritanism was therefore out of all sym- 
 pathy with mysticism. Only contempt met the " famil- 
 ist," who depended upon rare revelations and forsook 
 the revealed word. This explains not only the neglect 
 of Edwards as mystic, but the Puritan persecution of 
 the Quakers in Massachusetts, and Puritan hatred of 
 the colony of Rhode Island, where all quietistie brethren 
 were welcome. This colony was to its neighbors " the 
 drain or sink of opinionists." To Friends it was a 
 " true port and quiet habitat." Nevertheless Roger 
 Williams and his adherents were enabled to make but 
 
38 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 little impression on the times, for the reason that New 
 England was too narrow in its views. So it remained 
 for the broader acres to the South to take in those who 
 cared for the contemplative life. Foremost of these 
 were William Penn and the Pennsylvania Quakers. The 
 latter term, as is well known, is derisive not descriptive. 
 Not Quakers, but Friends is the proper designation. As 
 one of their own number has said : ' ' There is a principle 
 which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in 
 different places and ages has had different names; it is, 
 however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and 
 inward, confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded 
 from any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. 
 In whomsoever this takes root and grows they become 
 brethren." 
 
 This is the statement of John Woolman, the humble 
 tailor of New Jersey. It may be supplemented by that 
 of the royal proprietary of Pennsylvania. William 
 Penn had sent to his friends a Key opening the Way 
 to every Capacity. The key is to be found in personal 
 illumination; not the light of mere reason, but some- 
 thing higher. This light, it is explained, is some- 
 thing else than the bare understanding man hath as a 
 rational creature; since, as such, man cannot be a light 
 to himself. . . . For we can no more be a mental or 
 intellectual light to ourselves, than we are an external 
 corporeal light to ourselves. What Penn expressed 
 negatively another of the primitive Friends expressed 
 positively: That which God hath given us the experi- 
 ence of, is the mystery, the hidden life, the inward 
 spiritual appearance of our Lord. 
 
 We have reached the second stage in the search for 
 the sources of mystic illumination. As to divine truth, 
 the Puritans had taught that the Bible gives, the church 
 
MYSTICISM 39 
 
 expounds, the reason accepts. The Quakers now pro- 
 ceed to drop the second channel of communication. To 
 them there is no need of other men as intermediaries, 
 since it is Christ's light communicated to the soul that 
 makes manifest the things that belong to the soul's 
 peace. Such a sentiment as this makes a priesthood 
 and even a ministry unnecessary. In their stead, then, 
 arise the Friends' meeting-houses, — places for " silence 
 and heavenly frames." Here the congregation awaits 
 the moving of the Spirit, since it is held that resigna- 
 tion and quietness are the safest way to attain the clear 
 discerning of the motions of truth. 
 
 The process of elimination did not stop even here. 
 While the orthodox Friends appealed both to the Bible 
 and reason, the unorthodox or Hicksite Friends ap- 
 pealed to reason, so far as possible unfettered by Scrip- 
 ture. They argued that if reason alone is competent 
 to reach divine truth, revelation is superfluous. Thus 
 Elias Hieks took the traditional Quaker inspiration for 
 the union of self with a larger whole and tried to turn 
 the feeling regarding " the universal divine principle " 
 into a conclusion concerning the ' ' fullness of God in us 
 and in every blade of grass." An opponent called this 
 a wandering off into the dreary wastes of pantheism. 
 We dissent from the description except in so far as there 
 was a real tendency towards a philosophical monism. 
 
 At this point we have apparently reached the conclu- 
 sion of the whole matter. All three channels of mystical 
 communication seem exhausted, yet the process of elimi- 
 nation was carried even further. That inward fellow- 
 . ship, received immediately from the divine fountain, 
 was now sought by a group of mystics who cared less 
 for the Bible, the church, and reason, than for reason 
 transcended. It was the so-called Pennsylvania Pietists, 
 
40 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 wlio sought 1)3' direct intuition to get at " tlie world 
 behind this world." Their quest was for " the real 
 above all reason, beyond all thought." Such was the 
 actual aim of Conrad Beissel, head of the monastic com- 
 munity at Ephrata near Philadelphia. Unfortunately 
 these speculations in the " camp of the solitary " were 
 hidden behind a veil of theosophic lore, — the esoteric 
 doctrine of the Sophia or principle of wisdom. Penn- 
 sylvania Pietists, like the European brotherhood of 
 which they were a branch, sought to be tasters of su- 
 preme experience, but their quest of the truly transcen- 
 dental, of knowledge above knowledge, was only laughed 
 at by their neighbors and contemporaries. As a writer 
 of the day expressed it: " Cabbalists and Quietists all 
 affect a mystical language, a dark kind of canting; 
 they talk much of a light within them, instead of com- 
 mon sense, — whoever shall reconcile all these must be 
 an CEdipus indeed." 
 
 Because of this essentially Anglo-Saxon way of re- 
 garding mysticism and nonsense as convertible terms, it 
 is not surprising that early mysticism in America rap- 
 idly evaporated. One reason for its comparative failure 
 has already been given : It opposed the standards set by 
 church and by Scripture. But there were other reasons. 
 Beside being unorthodox, it was inarticulate or without 
 a vehicle of self-expression. There was, of course, Ed- 
 wards's quietistie tractate on the Affections, but that 
 was counteracted by the excesses of the religious re- 
 vivals. Outside of this there was no native book which 
 could serve as a mystic manual. John Woolman's 
 Journal was only rescued from oblivion by the Quaker 
 poet Whittier. William Penn's No Cross, No Crown, 
 written in the Tower of London, went through several 
 American editions, but it was too didactic to attract wide 
 
MYSTICISM 41 
 
 attention. " Think not thine own thoughts," " "Wait 
 to feel something divine," — directions such as these 
 lacked the poetic and imaginative touch necessary to 
 mystic enthusiasm. So without living native sources 
 the stream ran dry. Recourse was had to foreign parts. 
 During the century of Quaker Quietism translations of 
 Fenelon and even of Juan de Valdes were circulated 
 among American Friends, but the imagery of France 
 and of Spain was hardly in keeping with that of the New 
 World. 
 
 Besides being inarticulate, native mysticism was in- 
 opportune. At the end of its century Quakerism should 
 have borne the fruit of literary expression. But cir- 
 cumstances were against that fruition. The Eevolu- 
 tionary War arose and the results to mystical men of 
 peace were disastrous, militarism being by nature op- 
 posed to mysticism ; pomp, and outward show to the 
 quiet concentration of all the inner forces of the soul 
 upon supernatural objects. And this quest of a world 
 beyond this world was hindered by another circum- 
 stance, — the cessation of immigration from the home 
 country. For the Society of Friends this meant that 
 there was no one to take the place of such men as 
 Robert Barclay, and for the Pennsylvania Pietists of 
 such men as Conrad Beissel. While both English and 
 German suffered from the lack of fresh blood, new rivals 
 arose in the coming of the Scotch-Irish. In place of the 
 men of feeling and sentiment came the men of cold 
 intellect and plain common sense. With Philadelphia as 
 their chief point of entry these dogmatists spread over 
 the very regions, West and South, into which pietists 
 and Quakers had made their timid advances. This 
 matter is one of the psychology of race and the survival 
 of the fittest. As regards number and influence the 
 
42 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 soft-hcartod were supplanted by the hard-headed. And 
 the latter wore also helped by their spiritual kin, the 
 deists. It was a characteristic of the rationalist to look 
 at " enthusiasts " with a coldly critical eye. The fol- 
 lowers of Penn were not openly derided because their 
 commercial standing was secure and their social posi- 
 tion assured. But the followers of Jacob Boehme were 
 called fantastic, and Franklin, who printed some of the 
 " Dutch " books, had only contempt for those Quietists 
 who removed hither from Germany. 
 
 We must now attempt to estimate the value and 
 results of early American mysticism. It was unortho- 
 dox, it was inarticulate, it was inopportune. Was it 
 ineffective? There are some who hold that mysticism 
 is by nature passive and theoretical, not active and 
 practical. They claim that the mystical life is a life of 
 contemplation, not of ethical energy ; that the individual, 
 being lost in the excess of divine light, loses his sense 
 of personality. To such critics we offer these facts: 
 William Penn's treaty with the Indians, John Wool- 
 man's protest against slavery, and the continued agita- 
 tion of the Society of Friends against militarism, from 
 the time of the Revolution to this year's Mohonk Con- 
 ference. To those who would scornfully say that mys- 
 ticism is by nature theoretical and never practical, we 
 point not only to this list of emancipators, abolitionists, 
 pacificists, but to the causes which underlay their ac- 
 tivities. That cause has been suggested by Whittier. 
 It was that they were men who sincerely applied their 
 minds to true virtue and found an inward support from 
 above. Nevertheless a compromise must be made be- 
 tween critic and defender. Our early American mys- 
 ticism was in a sense ineffective. Privately the practice 
 of quietism engendered a state of tender sensibility and 
 
MYSTICISM 43 
 
 an appreciation of the higher morality. But publicly 
 the movement did not spread because it was not a truly 
 social movement. Quietists were in one sense separatists. 
 Beside their matrimonial segregation they had their own 
 meeting-houses and brotherhoods, and communities like 
 that started by Count Zinzendorf, near Sharon, Con- 
 necticut. Such segregation put them out of joint with 
 the times. The country needed public participation by 
 all in the era of political reconstruction, and the sub- 
 sequent era of commercial expansion. But after the 
 adoption of the Constitution, and after the winning of 
 the West, there arose again a felt need for private con- 
 templation. This need was supplied in part by the 
 transcendentalists of New England. Emerson found 
 in nature the " dial plate of the invisible "; Upham 
 saw in Christianity a field for the cultivation of the 
 interior or hidden life. But this second mystical 
 movement, like the first, was disturbed by a similar set 
 of events, — another war, another period of reconstruc- 
 tion, another territorial expansion. So it was not until 
 the present generation that there was either leisure or 
 occasion for the cultivation of quietism. 
 
 Some have called the present phase New Thought. It 
 should rather be called the oldest of thought in a new set- 
 ting. As will be shown subsequently it is in large measure 
 a revival of pagan mysticism and of medieval magic. 
 The magical side we shall take up in another chapter, 
 in treating of mental healing as it degenerated into the 
 American form of mesmerism. The mystical side it is 
 almost impossible to portray, except as we study by the 
 outward comparative methods the spread of such a 
 symptomatic movement as that called Christian Science. 
 The sources of this system are inextricably confused. 
 I have elsewhere pointed out that it contains a portion 
 
44 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 of the doctrine of the Yankee mesmeric " healer," 
 Quimby of Maine; a portion of the doctrines of the 
 Shaker prophetess, Mother Ann Lee of New Hampshire ; 
 a portion of the orphic sayings of the transcendental 
 rhapsodist, Bronson Alcott. But such dissection does 
 not explain the vitality of the movement. For an ex- 
 planation we must have recourse to the comparison of 
 the statistics of the sect with conditions in various parts 
 of the country. The statistics are to be found in the 
 last federal census; the conditions are suggested by an 
 interesting, but as yet unpublished map designating 
 the absolute number of Christian Scientists in the land. 
 A first glance at the map shows this threefold dis- 
 tribution of the sect: the East, the Middle "West, the 
 Far "West. By States this means Massachusetts and 
 New York; Illinois and Missouri; Colorado and Cali- 
 fornia. This confirms the official statement that the 
 influence is strong over comparatively limited areas in 
 the United States. In this threefold distribution the 
 pathological factor is primarily in evidence, for the 
 centers of influence are large cities, with their concomi- 
 tant nervous disorders, and the health resorts of the 
 mountains and coast, where it is natural that groups of 
 invalids and semi-invalids should welcome any new 
 therapeutic agency. But besides the physical there is 
 a mental factor at work, besides " Health," there is 
 " Science," and for the acceptance of the proffered 
 metaphysics there are deeper and more subtle influences 
 to be considered. The new gospel of mental medicine 
 is also a system of philosophy. " Hopelessly original," 
 as Mrs. Eddy calls it, the system appeals to those who 
 are inclined to novelties. Tired of the dry doctrines 
 of the churches, to most beginners in speculation, un- 
 acquainted with the history of the schools, Christian 
 
MYSTICISM 45 
 
 Science has all the air of discovery. Now such persons, 
 who have, at the least, the merit of thinking for them- 
 selves, are found chiefly in cities, and the acknowledged 
 preponderance of urban over rural adherents is ex- 
 plained by a third factor, that of free-thinking or a 
 liberal attitude toward the unconventional. In the 
 little town it is notoriously difficult to break from the 
 dogma of local churches ; it does not approve of changes 
 in ecclesiastical caste. Free-thinking is, therefore, a 
 second potent factor in the spread of Christian Science. 
 The map of distribution by States discloses this. Con- 
 necticut and New Jersey, with conservative colleges like 
 Yale and Princeton, are far below the average of their 
 more liberal neighbors. It is not so in Massachusetts, 
 that hotbed of heresies ; nor in Illinois, with its mixture 
 of foreign faiths ; nor in Colorado, early home of woman 
 suffrage; nor lastly in California, pervaded with 
 esoteric Buddhism and the doctrine of Maya, — of the 
 world of sense as shadow and illusion. 
 
 A third factor is financial. Christian Science has 
 spread largely along the fortieth degree of latitude, — 
 the richest pay-streak in our civilization. From their 
 personal appearance and from the showiness of their 
 churches the followers of " scientific mental thera- 
 peutics " are manifestly prosperous. Yet with this very 
 physical prosperity there goes a spiritual change. As 
 in the case of those primitive Christian Scientists, the 
 followers of Plotinus who centered in rich cities like 
 Alexandria and Rome, so these modern Neo-Platonists 
 tend to revolt against over-prosperity. "With a plethora 
 of wealth thc}^ incline toward asceticism, and long for a 
 breath of the upper airs of mysticism. In a word, too 
 much of the material has brought a desire for the 
 immaterial. 
 
46 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 This introduces a fourth factor in the distribution of 
 the sect, for Christian Science as immaterialism has 
 had, as a prepared soil, the previous American idealisms. 
 If a mental isothermal line could be drawn for such a 
 phenomenon, it would begin in Massachusetts, stretch 
 to that historic projection of New England — the West- 
 ern Reserve — and continue on with the latter 's pro- 
 longation into Illinois. This, it should likewise be noted, 
 was the path of Puritanism; westward the course of 
 Calvinism took its way, and on this same path, seeking 
 his audiences among those of New England stock, 
 Emerson brought to the winners of the West the message 
 that ^' the spiritual principle should be suffered to 
 demonstrate itself to the end." 
 
 Still another form of transcendentalism, not native 
 but foreign, came into this region. The St. Louis school 
 of German idealism, brought in by the refugees of the 
 revolution of '48, worked its way up the Missouri and 
 Mississippi and found a congenial soil in such Teuton- 
 ized towns as Cincinnati and Chicago. Consequently, 
 if one were to compare our given map with a philosophic 
 map designating the areas of the early speculative 
 movements in the country, this comparison would show 
 that the preparation for the spreading of Christian 
 Science was both positive and negative. Thus, where 
 immaterialism was rife, it has followed; where ma- 
 terialism flourished, it has gained little ground. The 
 former fact has already been pointed out. Christian 
 Science has run along the old grooves of New England 
 transcendentalism, just as the latter ran along those of 
 the older English Puritanism. Now, that the North 
 has been continuously idealistic we know; but we are 
 not so familiar with the fact that the South has been 
 the opposite in its speculative spirit. Indeed, in the 
 
MYSTICISM 47 
 
 generation before Emerson, there was a flourishing 
 school of materialists down the Atlantic coast. Radiat- 
 ing from the Philadelphia Medical School that influence 
 spread chiefl}^ below Miison and Dixon's line. This 
 would go to explain the peculiarity that Christian 
 Science has found its line of least resistance north of 
 that parallel and its line of greatest resistance south 
 of it. 
 
 How far there are deeper underlying causes for this 
 complex result it would be hard to say. Lacking as yet 
 an adequate map of the distribution of races in our 
 land, we cannot state, with precision, to what extent 
 idealism and materialism follow the paths of racial dis- 
 tribution. But this, at least, is of significance, — that 
 our Northern idealism has been Anglo-American, our 
 Southern materialism Franco-American. In the North 
 the philosophic succession has been through Emerson 
 and Edwards back to the English Platonists like Cud- 
 worth, Norris, and More. In the South that succession 
 has been through Jefferson and Franklin back to the 
 Gallic materialists like the authors of the System of 
 Nature and Mail a Machine. 
 
 That these four factors are valid may be corroborated 
 in a specific way. Take the case of the founder of the 
 " Church of Christ, Scientist." First, as to the patho- 
 logical factor. Mary Baker Glover's prime search was 
 for health ; after her first marriage in 1843 she tried in 
 turn allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, electricity, 
 spiritualism, and mesmerism. Next, free-thinking af- 
 fected her; like the more prominent New England re- 
 ligionists she revolted against current Calvinism; " the 
 horrible decree of predestination," she saj's, was ap- 
 proached only to be abhorred. The third factor applies 
 in only an indirect way. The invalid was of necessity 
 
48 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 forced into painful ascetic practices. But the fourth 
 factor, the search for an immaterial first principle, was 
 one which has worked with especial strength on the 
 discoverer of ' ' divine science. ' ' The story of the inner 
 life of Mary Baker is the story of a typical reaction to 
 current philosophies. Negatively, there was a revolt 
 against materialism; materia medica was rejected for 
 " the higher attenuations of homeopathy " and these 
 prepared the imagination for a sheer immaterialism, 
 where mind was everything and matter nothing. Posi- 
 tively, there was an acceptance of contemporary ideal- 
 ism, for the terms, though not the exactitudes, of Emer- 
 sonianism are to be found scattered through Eddy ism. 
 The faithful will, of course, deny that the penumbra 
 of Concord, Massachusetts, reached to Concord, New 
 Hampshire, just as they have denied that Science and 
 Health is an adumbration of the doctrines of the mag- 
 netic healer Quimby. Nevertheless in both these cases 
 the denial is not final. The author has pointed out 
 elsewhere how the quarrel between Eddyites and 
 Quimbyites can be settled by recourse to the solution 
 of common sources, — the teachings of itinerant animal 
 magnetizers who, like their master Mesmer, had inad- 
 vertently hit on the principle of suggestive therapeutics. 
 In like manner, the affiliations between Eddyism and 
 transcendentalism tend to throw new light on the prob- 
 lem of distribution. Although it is difficult to discover 
 any personal contact between the frequenters of Brook 
 Farm and Mrs. Eddy when at Lynn, except for a flying 
 visit paid her by the visionary Bronson Alcott ; yet the 
 appeal to both the academic transcendentalist and the 
 New Hampshire seeress was the same. The earlier 
 movement has been described by Frothingham as having 
 its data secluded in the recesses of consciousness, out 
 
MYSTICISM 49 
 
 of tlie reach of scientific investigation, remote from tbe 
 gaze of vulgar skepticism ; esoteric, having about them 
 the charm of a sacred privacy, on which common sense 
 and the critical understanding might not intrude. Its 
 oracles proceeded from a shrine, and were delivered by a 
 priest or priestess, who came forth from an interior 
 holy of holies to utter them, and thus were invested with 
 an air of authority which belongs to exclusive and 
 privileged truths, that revealed themselves to minds of 
 a contemplative cast. To the pure transcendentalist the 
 soul, when awakened, utters oracles of wisdom, proph- 
 esies, discourses grandly of God and divine things, per- 
 forms wonders of healing on sick bodies and wandering 
 minds. This form of transcendentalism was decried by 
 Emerson as the Saturnalia or excess of faith, lacking 
 the restraining grace of common sense. In the case of 
 Mrs. Eddy this extreme mysticism took the following 
 form. As she wrote to one of the directors of her 
 church: " I possess a spiritual sense. ... I can dis- 
 cern in the human mind, thoughts, motives, and pur- 
 pose; and neither mental arguments nor psj'chic power 
 can affect this spiritual insight. . . . This mind reading 
 is first sight ; it is the gift of God. ... It has enabled 
 me to heal in a marvelous manner, to be just in judg- 
 ment, to learn the divine Mind." 
 
 It would be interesting to hunt for the sources of 
 these claims, for, if Eddyism be considered an after- 
 clap of transcendentalism, a common ancestry can be 
 traced through a series of intermediate links back to 
 Neo-Platonism. At the least we can make a brief com- 
 parison between the old and new ways of thinking. The 
 old made the possibility of knowledge dependent on 
 divine communications, the new claims that " science is 
 an emanation of eternal mind, and is alone able to in- 
 
50 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 terprct truth aright." The old denied sensible existence 
 and strained for something behind reality; the new 
 •' reverses the testimony of the physical senses and by 
 this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts 
 of Being." The old had a contempt for reason and 
 physical science ; the new ' ' eschews what is called phys- 
 ical science, inasmuch as all true science proceeds from 
 divine Intelligence." The old destroyed the distinction 
 between sensible and intelligible, the new says, ' ' matter 
 is but a subjective state of what is here termed mortal 
 mind." 
 
 This recrudescence of Neo-Platonism in the New 
 World is not surprising. Like causes have produced 
 like effects, materialism has been followed by imma- 
 terialism, one mood being a natural recoil from the 
 other. One outburst of mystic idealism occurred in 
 New England a generation ago, for as Margaret Fuller 
 explains of her contemporaries, it is *' because Ameri- 
 cans are disgusted with the materialistic workings of 
 rational religion that they become mystics ; they quarrel 
 with all that is, because it is not spiritual enough, since 
 they acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for 
 his deeds, a standard transcending sense and time." At 
 the present day, after the struggles of the Civil War and 
 after the commercial expansion of the country, the same 
 phenomenon is recurring under the form of the so-called 
 New Thought. It would be going too far afield to at- 
 tempt to explain the significance of the latter move- 
 ment, — its occultism or love of the mysterious, its 
 gnosticism or claim to peculiar knowledge, its affiliations 
 with previous mystical systems, — but we can at least 
 point out that Christian Science is but a single phase of 
 a larger interest which ranges from the teachings of 
 William James to the allegories of Maeterlinck. 
 
MYSTICISM 51 
 
 "We may here examine, in conclusion, a final factor in 
 the spread of the sect, namely the type of mind to which 
 it appeals. In general that type is practical and yet 
 uncritical, non-academic and yet speculative. Although 
 the great mass of Christian Scientists consists of women 
 who stand for the unrest of the new feminism, yet 
 that given type is well represented by imaginative 
 business men without a college training, such as are 
 to be found in large cities, and such as predominate in 
 the present directorate of the church. To carry out the 
 analysis of the individual : in the first place such a man 
 is practical, he wants results. When he sees benefits 
 conferred upon his immediate circle he is led to specu- 
 late as to the cause. Here, he says to himself, is the 
 movement, and here is the result, therefore the " demon- 
 stration " or the " absent treatment " must be the con- 
 necting link. Now, this is the non-academic way of 
 thinking. It belongs to that class of persons who are 
 capable of framing a syllogism, but not capable of dis- 
 covering its fallacious forms. To the academic or 
 college-bred type " demonstration," " absent treat- 
 ment " are as much matters of dubiety as " mental 
 telepathy " or " wireless mental messages." Now the 
 veriest undergraduate is taught the distinction between 
 mind and matter, and is taught to keep the two spheres 
 apart. Not so the business man. To draw such dis- 
 tinctions is not in his line. Consequently, although he 
 is a " practical " man, he will occasionally take a 
 "flier" in a scheme that savors of alchemy, where 
 secret formula? are claimed to transmute metals, and, 
 although a " self-made " man, he is often in fear of 
 being overreached by some rival with more " magnet- 
 ism," as if the latter possessed some sort of irresistible 
 psychic effluence. 
 
52 EARLY IDEALISM 
 
 And thus arises the failure to perceive the funda- 
 mental fallacy of Christian Science; that, while it dis- 
 claims materialism, it still reeks with materialistic 
 terms. Even a recent edition of Science and Health, 
 in spite of its countless recensions from the original 
 Eddyite edition, contains such rubrics as " Mental 
 Offshoots " and '' Gravitation Godward." It also 
 contains phrases of this sort: " Astronomical order 
 imitates the action of Divine Principle " ; " Mind, God, 
 sends forth the aroma of Spirit, the atmosphere of In- 
 telligence "; "If the individuals have passed away, 
 their aroma of thought is left which is mentally scented 
 and described. Mind has senses sharper than the body ' ' ; 
 " Mental chemicalization, which has brought conjugal 
 infidelity to the surface, will assuredly throw off this 
 evil, and marriage will become purer when the scum is 
 gone." 
 
 This fatal flaw, this failure to distinguish between 
 mental and physical, is not recognized by the ordinary 
 " Scientist," hence the ease with which strange doc- 
 trines can be accepted. Christian Scientists deny the 
 existence of the material, yet are reinforced in their 
 beliefs by the latest physical discoveries. Just as Mes- 
 merism was helped by " Franklinism," the theory of 
 psychic emanations by the fluid theory of electricity, so 
 " absent treatment " and silent " demonstration " are 
 bolstered up by appeals to Hertzian waves. X-rays, and 
 the like. 
 
 In fine, Christian Science is liable to spread wherever 
 fundamental distinctions fail to be made. Ignorant, 
 then, of the real procedure of suggestive therapeutics, a 
 procedure which has been confessedly neglected in our 
 medical profession ; ignorant also of such historic ap- 
 proaches to Science arid Health as have been made by 
 
MYSTICISM 53 
 
 the classic mystic manuals from those of the Neo- 
 Platonists to those of the Quakers, it is no wonder 
 that, in the present state of American culture, Chris- 
 tian Science spreads where there is a " struggle for the 
 recovery of invalids," and where there is a " yearning 
 of the human race for spirituality. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER III 
 DEISM 
 
 1. The English Influences 
 
 In deism as a movement toward free-thought we have 
 a typical example of English influence upon the Ameri- 
 can mind. It was a case of make haste slowly, for it was 
 only by gradual degrees that British subjects emerged 
 from the apologetic to the constructive, and from the 
 constructive to the destructive type of free-thinking. 
 The term free-thinker, as it first appeared in English 
 philosophical literature, meant simply one whose thought 
 is freed from the trammels of authority, who sought a 
 characteristic Anglo-Saxon compromise between the 
 Bible and the church on one side, and reason on the 
 other. This w^as reflected in such works as Christian- 
 ity Not Mysterious and Christianity as Old as the Crea- 
 tion. 
 
 Such an attitude was too vague, too apologetic. So it 
 was succeeded by one more positive, more constructive. 
 This attitude was reflected in a search for a natural or 
 universal religion, a platform of belief on which all good 
 men could unite. Such were the so-called five points 
 common to all religions, which began with the existence 
 of a Supreme Being and ended with future rewards and 
 punishments. But constructive deism was, in turn, suc- 
 ceeded by destructive. This began when natural religion 
 was made to supplant revealed, when prophecies were 
 eliminated, when miracles were considered not as props 
 
 64 
 
THE ENGLISH INFLUENCES 55 
 
 to belief but as mere myths. These three phases of 
 English deism were exhibited in the colonies. The 
 apologetic is represented by Cotton IMather in his 
 Christian Philosopher, or A Collection of the Best 
 Discoveries in Nature With Religious Improvements. 
 The moderate is represented by Benjamin Franklin, . 
 who, with judicious vagueness, offered as his creed those 
 old points common to all religions. The destructive is 
 represented by Thomas Paine, who, in his Age of 
 Beason, argues boldly against mysterj^ and miracle. 
 Deism, according to him, declares to intelligent man the 
 existence of one Perfect God, Creator and Preserver 
 of the Universe; that the laws by which he governs the 
 world are like himself immutable ; and that violation of 
 these laws, or miraculous interference in the movements 
 of nature must be necessarily excluded from the grand 
 system of universal existence. 
 
 American deism began in a reaction against Puritan 
 determinism. The belief in a deity separate from the 
 world, an idle spectator, an absentee landlord, was a 
 logical rebound from the belief in a deity constantly 
 interfering with the world, a magical intervener, a 
 local busybody. Thomas Paine 's Age of Reason, with 
 its notion of a creator whose " arm wound up the 
 vast machine " and then left it to run by itself, formed 
 a kind of counterpoise to Cotton IMather's Magnalia 
 Christi Americana, with its faithful record of many 
 illustrious, wonderful providences, both of mercies and 
 judgments, on divers persons in New England. In a 
 way, also, these two books marked the transition between 
 two different political points of view, one standing for 
 class favoritism, the other for the natural rights of 
 man. The Calvinistic doctrines of sovereign grace and 
 an elect people savored too much of tlio claims of British 
 
56 DEISM 
 
 supremacy to be long acceptable. Hence the five points 
 of Calvinism became so many points of irritation. 
 Total depravity might apply to effete monarchies, 
 but not to the New World ; absolute predestination to the 
 land of passive obedience, but not to the land where men 
 sought to be free. 
 
 Calvinism as a doctrine of necessity was, then, the 
 proximate cause of deism as a doctrine of freedom. 
 The notion of a partial and arbitrary deity prepared 
 for the religion of humanity; the system of inscrutable 
 decrees for a religion of reason. The change was strik- 
 ing. Talk about creatures infinitely sinful and abom- 
 inable, wallowing like swine in the mire of their sins, 
 brought about a reaction, and the next generation went 
 from the extreme of Puritanic pessimism to the ex- 
 treme of deistic optimism, the belief in the perfectibility 
 of the human race. This change in sentiment is recorded 
 in the attacks on the old divinity. When the consistent 
 Calvinist merely filed smooth the rough edges of a cast- 
 iron system, the forerunners of the Unitarian movement 
 boldly threw the dead weight overboard. To speak in 
 reproachful language of the moral virtues, comparing 
 them to filthy rags, was held absurd ; while the Calvin- 
 istic doctrine of the tendency of man's nature to sin, 
 as implying his utter and eternal ruin and the tor- 
 ments of hell fire, was declared shocking to the human 
 mind and contradictory to all the natural notions both 
 of justice and benevolence. 
 
 These protests against determinism were character- 
 istic of early American deism; but behind these acute 
 personal reactions there were larger and quieter forces 
 at work. In a word the dogmas of an unnatural re- 
 ligion were giving way to the principles of natural 
 religion, and rationalism had at last a chance to assert 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 57 
 
 itself. Here deism constituted the moving cause and the 
 colonial college the vehicle in the transaction. 
 
 2. The Colonial Colleges and Free-Thought 
 
 Deism, as a form of rationalism, had been hanging 
 on the skirts of Puritanism during the last quarter of 
 the seventeenth century, but it was not until the 
 eighteenth that it took to an independent growth and 
 hastened the intellectual emancipation of New England. 
 The old Boston Platform had recognized the light of 
 nature, but more in the way of a forlorn negation 
 than a hopeful aflSrmation. It spoke of natural reason 
 as greatly impaired, saying that man retained no more 
 of the light of reason than would conduce to torment- 
 ing reflections. From these timid limitations there arose 
 the desire for a change from a gloomy theology to a 
 cheering theodicy, from the doctrine of inscrutable 
 decrees to the belief in rational purpose and benevolent 
 design in the universe. This change is marked by two 
 such representative works as ^Mather's Reasonable 
 Religion and Chauncy's Benevolence of the Deity. 
 
 Cotton Mather did not attain his rationalistic results 
 without some mental perturbation. At first his attitude ■ 
 was that of one opposed to the use of reason. Thus he 
 uttered the warning: " Hearken ye of Har^'ard and 
 Yale College to old Eubulus, exhorting you with his 
 counsel. In most academies of this world nothing is 
 acquired but worldly wisdom; the philosophy taught in 
 them is nothing but foolosophy." After such strictures 
 as these it is rather strange that Mather can avail him- 
 self of rational arguments. But this he does in his 
 Christian Philosophy, where he quotes with approval 
 the statement of an English writer that the divine reason 
 
58 DEISM 
 
 runs like a golden thread through the whole leaden mine 
 of brutal nature. Applying this principle to whatever 
 he saw about him, he exclaims: 
 
 How charniini? the proportion and pulchritude of the leaves, 
 the flowers, the fruits. How peculiar the care which the great 
 God of nature has taken for the safety of the seed and fruit! 
 When the vegetable race comes abroad, what strange methods 
 of nature are there to guard them from inconveniences. How 
 nice the provision of nature for their support in standing and 
 growing, that they may keep their heads above ground and 
 administer to our intentions ; some stand by their ow'n strength, 
 others are of an elastic nature, that they may dodge the violence 
 of the winds: a visible argument that the plastic capacities of 
 matter are governed by an all-wise infinite agent. Oh! the 
 glorious goodness of our deity in all these things! 
 
 There was a note in this little book that did not die. 
 While its scientific arguments for design fell flat, its 
 esthetic elements lived on ; it anticipated by a century 
 the transcendentalist's love of nature for its own sake. 
 I\Iather might have said with Emerson " Come into the 
 azure and love the day." Belonging to the same school 
 of apologetic deists as Mather but of far higher rank 
 was Charles Chauncy. In his Benevolence of the 
 Deity, in place of a being cruel, inscrutable, acting by 
 particular providences, we find a being benevolent, ra- 
 tional, acting in harmony with wise goodness and accu- 
 rate justice. The deity does not communicate being 
 or happiness to his creatures by an immediate act of 
 power, but by concurring with an established course 
 of nature. He makes them happy by the intervention of 
 second causes, operating in a stated, regular, uniform 
 manner. 
 
 Chauncj-^'s work combines sound matter with a noble 
 style; it marked a notable advance in the progress of 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 59 
 
 rationalism. To teach that man is free and not deter- 
 mined ; active and not passive ; perfectible and not de- 
 praved, was to sum up the three great tenets of deism 
 gained by way of painful reaction against the harsher 
 doctrines of Calvinism. The way in which this reaction 
 came about may be traced more closely in the later 
 writings of the Han-ard worthies, who possessed one 
 notable means for the public expression of their views. 
 This was the Dudleian lectureship founded for " the 
 pro^^ng, explaining, and proper use and improvement 
 of the principles of natural religion." The significance 
 of this lectureship is that it furnishes an historical cross- 
 section of the American mind. In it may be observed 
 not only the rise and progress of deism, but also its 
 destruction through a number of powerful solvents. The 
 first of the Dudleian discourses furnishes an appropri- 
 ate introduction to the whole course by giving an his- 
 torical summary of the problems of dualism as con- 
 nected with cosmology. Here President Edward Hol- 
 yoke was the initial speaker: 
 
 There were three opinions as to the existence of the world. 
 One was that it was from Eternity, & Plato it seems, was the 
 Father of it, and thoui^ht it flowed from God as Raies do from 
 the Sun, where, by the way, we may note. That tho' they tho't 
 the world to be eternal, yet that it proceeded from God; his 
 Scholar also, Aristotle, propagated the same Notion & asserted 
 that the world, was not generated so as to begin to be a 
 world, which before was none. He supposes preexistent & 
 eternal flatter as a Principle and thence argn'd the world to 
 be eternal. . . . Another Opinion as to the Existence of the 
 world, was that it came into this beautiful Form, by Chance, 
 or a fortuitous concourse & jumble of Atoms, This is bj' all 
 known to be the Pliilosophy of Epicurus, & his Notion was, 
 that the LTniverse consisted of Atoms or Corpuscles of various 
 Forms & Weights, which having been dispei-s'd at Random thro' 
 
60 DEISM 
 
 the immense Space, fortuitously concur'd, into innumerable 
 Systems or Worlds, which were thus formed, & afterward from 
 time to time increased, changing & dissolving again without 
 any certain. Cause or Design, without the Intervention of any 
 Deity, or the intention of any Providence. And yet this Phi- 
 losopher did not deny the Existence of a God, but on the Con- 
 trary asserted it, but tho't it beneath the Majesty of the Deity 
 to concern himself with humane affairs. . . . But the most 
 prevailing Opinion . . . was. That the world had a beginning, 
 & was form'd by some great and excellent Being whom they 
 called God. And this indeed is a tho't that is perfectly agree- 
 able to Reason. 
 
 The first Dudleian lecturer granted that natural re- 
 ligion was not unreasonable. A certain successor twenty 
 years after argued for what he calls a coincidence of 
 natural and revealed religion. He presents his argu- 
 ments in a sort of imaginary conversation : 
 
 Reason would say : " Surely this stupendous universe is the 
 work of some invisible agent, beyond all comparison & con- 
 ception superiour to man ; for such a grand complete System 
 so infinitely complicate, & yet so exactly adjusted in all its 
 parts, the most minute as well as the grandest, that all kinds 
 of symmetry and perfection concur to complete the whole, 
 could never be the effect of chance or the product of endless 
 essays & mutations of matter. This Agent must have an un- 
 limited mind, to comprehend these vast innumerable works in 
 one perfect Idea, before they were made. His power also 
 must be equal to his unlimited understanding. And he is 
 evidently as good as he is wise and powerful; otherwise 
 malignity against his creatures would appear in universal 
 discords through nature, perpetually generating all manners 
 of evil. ... In some such manner as this Reason in its perfect 
 state might be supposed capable of arriving at the knowledge 
 of the One True God, & deducing from thence a compleat 
 system of natural religion. Yet it can hardly be conceived, 
 according to our experience of the labour of searching out 
 truth, that the human mind, in its utmost stx^ength, could by 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 61 
 
 one glance of thought discover all the essential characteristics 
 of the Deity, or the proper acts of worship & obedience which 
 he requires. We might as well affirm, that unimpaired reason 
 must naturally, at the first view of the heavenly bodies, have 
 a clear knowledge of their magnitudes, distances and revolu- 
 tions: or by looking round on the earth, immediately be 
 acquainted with the innumerable gradations of animal life, & 
 vegetable productions & fossils of all forms & kinds. . . . 
 Therefore it may be justly questioned whether it would not 
 have cost the labour of Ages to demonstrate a true System 
 of religion, as it has taken nearly six thousand years to search 
 out the laws of the material system & bring natural philosophy 
 to its present perfection." 
 
 The arguments just presented were delivered in the 
 year before the Declaration of Independence. It was 
 not until after the second war with England that the 
 Dudleian lectures show the weakening of the old con- 
 servative scheme under the assaults of the destructive 
 deists. But it remained for a lecturer of the year be- 
 fore the publication of Emerson's Nature to recog- 
 nize the drift of a priori arguments for natural 
 religion as leading to the self-sufficiency of nature. 
 Abstract arguments, reasons John Brazer in 1835, are 
 objectionable because they virtually assume the point to 
 be proved. Thus, the axiom that every effect has a 
 cause avails little with those who deny that the universe 
 is an effect; the axiom that whatever begins to exist 
 must have had a cause of its existence, will have no 
 pertinency with those who, like the ancient and modem 
 Epicureans, assert that the universe is eternal and the 
 creative power, whatever it be, only plastic. Again, the 
 statement that every contrivance must have a contriver 
 is no argument to him who denies that there is any proof 
 of contrivance further than the particular instance in 
 question is concerned, as did Hume. Finally, the prin- 
 
62 DEISM 
 
 ciple that nothing can be a cause of its own existence 
 will conclude little against him who asserts that the 
 world is an exception to this general rule, — it being self- 
 existent, as Spinoza maintained. 
 
 We have here at Harvard an hypothetical approach 
 to pantheism. In this free-thought had achieved a vic- 
 toiy over the old dualism. Instead of a creator and 
 creation separated by a gap which could not be bridged, 
 instead of the old doctrine of transcendence with which 
 the apologetic deist had begun, we have now the doctrine 
 of immanence, — the very affirmation of Emerson that 
 nature, comprehending all existence, may be its own 
 cause. 
 
 The rise of deism in the second oldest of the New 
 England colleges is much like that in the first. At 
 Harvard deism as a movement of enlightenment de- 
 veloped through opposition. Cotton Mather, w4th his 
 eye upon the free-thinkers, had declared that " to ques- 
 tion the being of God would be exalted folly." Similar 
 academic attempts to stem the tide of rationalism were 
 early made at Yale. In spite of them the freshening 
 currents came stealing in. At New Haven, as at New 
 Cambridge, the heads of the college could not escape 
 the eclectic spirit of the times. Rector Thomas Clap 
 avowed that the great design of founding this school 
 was to educate ministers ' ' in our own way ' ' ; neverthe- 
 less, he based his moral philosophy on the deistic Wollas- 
 ton's Religion of Nature. But there was another 
 head of the Connecticut college who more clearlj^ showed 
 the pervasive influence of English thought combined 
 with the mental independence of a young colonial. It 
 was President Ezra Stiles, who nourished a hope that 
 America might be a land of British liberty in the most 
 complete sense. As student and tutor he had read 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 63 
 
 through some thirty-odd deistic works left to the col- 
 lege library by Bishop Berkeley. These books did much 
 to open the eyes of their reader ; at the same time they 
 did not lead him into the most radical skepticism. He 
 recounts how he read Clarke's Demonstration of the 
 Being and Attributes of God, but did not find entire 
 satisfaction; how he read Shaftesbury's Character- 
 istics and admired them as sublime views of nature 
 and of the moral government of the Most High. But 
 he could not go beyond this the Deist's Bible and ac- 
 cept the conclusions of the arch-skeptic Hume. Against 
 the latter 's strictures upon the evidences of Christianity 
 he exclaims, " Shall a King be able by a Seal and other 
 infallible Signatures to evince his Proclamations to 
 his Subjects so that they shall have no doubt of his 
 Majesty's Will: and shall the Great Omnipotent King 
 of the Universe be unable to evince & ascertain his "Will 
 to such a handfull of Intelligences the small System of 
 Man? " 
 
 Having described the moral jaundice of the leader 
 of skepticism in old England, Stiles as Anglus-Ameri- 
 canus turns to the movement in New England and 
 gives a vivid account of the agitations of local thought 
 during the French and Indian War: 
 
 ... As we are in the midst of the struggle of Infidelity 
 I expect no ^eat Reformation until that [Revelation] is 
 demonstratively established. . . . From the Conduct of the 
 Officers of the Army you entertain an Expectation favorable to 
 Virtue. Far from this I imagine the American Morals & 
 Religion were never in so much danger as from our Concern 
 with the Europeans in the present War. They put on indeed 
 in their public Conduct the Mark of public Virtue — and the 
 Officers endeavor to restrain the vices of the private Soldiery 
 while on Duty. But I take it the Religion of the Army is 
 Infidelity & Gratification of the appetites. . . . They propa- 
 
64 DEISM 
 
 gate in a jrenteel & insensible Manner the most corrupting 
 and debauching Principles of Behavior. It is doubted by many 
 Officers if in fact the Soul survives the Body — but if it does, 
 they ridicule the notion of moral accountableness, Rewards & 
 Punishments m another life. ... I look upon it that our 
 Officers are in danger of being corrupted with vicious prin- 
 ciples, & many of them I doubt not will in the End of the 
 War come home mmute philosophers initiated in the polite 
 Mysteries & vitiated morals of Deism, And this will have an 
 unhappy Effect on a sudden to spread Deism or at least Scepti- 
 cism thro' these Colonies. And I make no doubt, instead of 
 the Controversies of Orthodoxy & Heresy, we shall soon be 
 called to the defence of the Gospel itself. At Home the 
 general grand Dispute is on the Evidences of Revelation — ■ 
 some few of your small Folks indeed keep warming up the old 
 Pye, & crying Calvinism, Orthodoxy &c — these are your 
 Whitefields, Romaines, &c that make a pother: but the greater 
 Geniuses among the Ministers are ranging the Evidences of 
 Revelation to the public View, expunging the Augustine In- 
 terpretations of Scripture with the other Corruptions of the 
 Latin Chh, yet retained among protestants — and endeavoring 
 a just & unexceptionable, rational Explication of the great 
 Doctrines of the Gospel. The Bellamys &c of New England 
 will stand no Chance with the Corruptions of Deism which, I 
 take it, are spreading apace in this Connfx-y. i prophesy 
 your Two Witnesses will avail more towards curing the Con- 
 tagion than thousands of Volumes filled with cant orthodox 
 phrases & the unintelligible Metaphysics of Scholastic Divinity, 
 which is a Corruption of Christianity with arabian philosophy. 
 
 Yet Stiles was no such reactionary as some of his 
 correspondents thought. He did not hold that the 
 overvaluing of reason tends to promote atheism. When 
 he was informed that Kector Clap would not suffer 
 a donation of certain books from the free-thinking 
 colony of Rhode Island, he wrote to the rigid Rector and 
 made a notable appeal for unrestrained thought: 
 
 . . . Different men indeed object from different motives, 
 some from the Love of Orthodoxy & some from the Hatred 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 65 
 
 of it, & some from the generous Sentiments of that generous 
 & equal Liberty for which Protestants & Dissenters have made 
 so noble a Stand. It is true with this Liberty Error may be 
 introduced; but turn the Tables the propagation of Truth 
 may be extinguished. Deism has got such Head in this Age 
 of Licentious Liberty, that it would be in vain to try to stop it 
 by hiding the Deistieal Writings: and the only Way left to 
 conquer & demolish it, is to come forth into the open Field 
 & Dispute this matter on even Footing — the Evidences of 
 Revelation in my opinion are nearly as demonstrative as 
 Newton's Prineipia, & these are the Weapons to be used. 
 Deism propagates itself in America very fast, & on this 
 Foundation, strange as it may seem, is the Chh of Engld built 
 up in polite Life. A man may be an excellent Chhman & yet 
 a profound Deist. While public pojiular Delusion is kept up 
 by Deistieal Priests, sensible Laymen despise the whole, & 
 yet, strange Contradiction! joyn it, and entice others to joyn 
 it also. — and they say all priests are alike, we all try to 
 deceive Mankind, there is no Ti'ust to be put in us. Truth 
 & this alone being our Aim in fact, open, frank & generous 
 we shall avoid the very appearance of Evil. 
 
 The protest of Stiles was unavailing. Measures were 
 now taken to stop the infiltration of any form of deism. 
 By a vote of the president and fellows, students were 
 to be established in the principles of religion according 
 to the Assembly's Catechism, Dr. Ames's Medulla, and 
 Cases of Conscience. Yale was now outwardly a strong- 
 hold of orthodoxy ; how it came to be called a hotbed of 
 infidelity is a matter of later times. It was not until 
 after the Revolutionary War that the satirist could 
 describe undergraduate skepticism, could tell how the 
 clockwork gentleman was made " twixt the Tailor and 
 the Player, and Hume, and Tristram and Voltaire." 
 All this might have been expected. Action and re- 
 action were equal. As at Harvard opposition had 
 brought electicism, so at Yale the policy of sup- 
 
66 DEISM 
 
 pression brought an explosion of free-thinking upon 
 the advent of the Franco-American deism of Citizen 
 Paine and President Jefferson. 
 
 Meanwhile it is in order to follow the fortunes of 
 deism outside of New England, and to see how the other 
 colonial colleges of the first rank were laid open to the 
 advances of rationalism. 
 
 The first head of King's College, New York, destined 
 to become the future Columbia University, was that 
 Samuel Johnson who had been forced out of Yale be- 
 cause of his liberal tendencies, which were early shown 
 even in the reputed land of the blue laws. The very 
 title of his most juvenile work, Raphael, or the Genius of 
 English America, was a protest against colonial con- 
 servatism. But Johnson's actions spoke louder than his 
 words. As an undergraduate he was warned against 
 reading Descartes, Locke, and Newton ; becoming a tutor, 
 he introduced these works into the college library. As a 
 theological student he was cautioned against a certain 
 new philosophy, that of Berkeley, which was attracting 
 attention in England, being told that it would corrupt 
 the pure religion of the country and bring in another 
 system of divinity. The warning was ineffective, for 
 Johnson became a clergyman in the Church of England 
 and sought to spread that very philosophy against which 
 he had been warned. What trials met the students in 
 the provincial seats of learning is suggested in a recently 
 recovered manuscript entitled: The Travails of the In- 
 tellect in the Mycrocosm and Macrocosm. In this ju- 
 venile work Johnson leaves the little world of Puritan 
 thought and emerges into the larger world of construct- 
 ive deism. His scheme has as its beginning benevolence, 
 and as its end evidences of cosmic design. This scheme 
 was conceived by the author at the age of eighteen, but, 
 
COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 67 
 
 being obliged to conceal his opinions with caution, it 
 was not for half a generation and through an English 
 magazine that the young American was enabled fully to 
 express his views. 
 
 To show how judicious was the rationalism of this 
 Introduction to Philosophy we may explain that the 
 purpose of this small tract, " by a gentleman educated 
 at Yale College," was declared to be: the setting be- 
 fore young gentlemen a general view of the whole sys- 
 tem of learning in miniature, as geography exhibits a 
 general map of the whole terraqueous globe. As in the 
 natural so in the intellectual world, young students 
 must have a prospect of the whole compass of their busi- 
 ness and the general end pursued through the whole. 
 
 We may here cite the case of another graduate of 
 Yale, at King's College, whose effusions, though light 
 like straws, showed how the wind was blowing in the 
 deistic direction. William Livingston, in his Remarks 
 upon Our Intended College, wished to have the rules 
 free to all, offensive to no sect. Fighting the ett'orts 
 of the Episcopalians to obtain control of the institution, 
 he was charged with deism and atheism. He thereupon 
 retorted upon his opponents with a travesty of the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles, whose tenor may be judged by the 
 following : 
 
 I. I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, without any forei.<rn comments or human explications 
 but my own : for which I should doubtless be honoured with 
 Martyrdom, did I not live in a government which restrains 
 that fiery zeal, which would reduce a man's body to ashes for 
 the illumination of his soul. . . . XXXIX. I believe that this 
 creed is more intelligible than that of St. Athanasius and 
 that there will be no necessity for any to write an exposition 
 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of my faith. 
 
68 DEISM 
 
 The position of King's College in colonial free-think- 
 ing was significant. It was a sort of half-way house 
 between the extreme piiritanism of the North and the 
 extreme deism of the South. The former had made God 
 eveiy thing: the latter made man everything. Samuel 
 Johnson was a mediator between these two views: his 
 first book made the happiness of mankind to be God's 
 chief end; his last made the glory of God not incon- 
 sistent with our pursuing our own happiness. 
 
 To trace the further development of deism in the 
 colonies, we pass over the College of New Jersey, de- 
 fender of the faith, opponent of rationalism, and go on 
 to Philadelphia and Franklin. 
 
 3. Philadelphia and Franklin 
 
 " I was scarce fifteen," narrates Benjamin Franklin, 
 " when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I 
 found them disputed in the different books I read, I 
 began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against 
 Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the 
 substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It 
 happened that they wrought an effect on me quite con- 
 trary to what was intended by them ; for the arguments 
 of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, ap- 
 peared to me much stronger than the refutation; in 
 short, I soon became a thorough Deist." 
 
 We have here the confession of the most precocious of 
 the American skeptics. There is added to it an ex- 
 planation which takes in, with characteristic inclusive- 
 ness, the two factors of heredity and environment. 
 Franklin explains that he was a free-thinker because of 
 a free-thinking ancestor, and a deist because of a youth- 
 ful overdose of Calvinism. Thus he relates how his 
 
PHILADELPHIA AND FRANKLIN G9 
 
 matomal grandfather had written some homespun 
 verse in favor of liberty of conscience, and that his 
 father's little collection of books consisted mostly of 
 polemical works of divinity. Although Franklin con- 
 sidered that some of the dogmas of the Presbyterian per- 
 suasion, such as the eternal decrees of God, election, 
 reprobation, appeared very unintelligible and others 
 doubtful, yet he never doubted that deity exists; that 
 he made the world and governed it by his providence; 
 that the most acceptable service of God was the doing 
 good to man ; that our souls are immortal ; and that all 
 crimes will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either 
 here or hereafter. 
 
 This creed was nothing but Herbert of Chcrbury's 
 five points common to all religions, the veritable creed 
 of a moderate deist, and yet Franklin tells how he was 
 obliged to leave Boston when his indiscreet disputations 
 about religion began to make him pointed at with horror 
 by good people as an infidel and atheist. He next re- 
 counts how, being employed in London, at the age of nine- 
 teen, in composing as printer for "Wollaston 's Religion of 
 Nature Delineated, and some of the author's reasonings 
 not appearing well founded, he wrote a little metaphysi- 
 cal piece entitled A Dissertation on Liberty and Neces- 
 sity, Pleasure and Pain. The purport of this essay 
 was to prove the doctrine of fate from the supposed 
 attributes of God, reasoning in some such manner as 
 this : That in erecting and governing the world, as he was 
 infinitely wise, he knew what would be best; infinitely 
 good he must be disposed, and infinitely powerful, he 
 must be able to execute it ; consequently all is right. 
 
 Franklin stated that the printing of this " wicked 
 tract " of 1725 was an " erratum " in the book of his 
 life. That confession was probably meant to disarm 
 
70 DEISM 
 
 criticism. The deistic fatalism of this pamphlet was as 
 nothing compared with the strange views set forth three 
 years later in his Articles of Belief and Acts of Re- 
 ligion. Drawn up among the regulations of the Phila- 
 delphia Junto or club for mental improvement, this 
 document formed a kind of shopkeeper's litany, or home- 
 service for young mechanics. Among its parts were the 
 First Principles, Adoration and Petition, of which the 
 last begged that the petitioner might be preserved from 
 atheism and infidelity; the second urged the reading 
 of deistic authors like Ray, Blaekmore, and the Arch- 
 bishop of Cambray; while the first, as if in conscious 
 opposition to the Anglican creed, taught the doctrine, 
 not of one God without parts and passions, but of many 
 gods endowed with human passions. 
 Here, then, follow Franklin's peculiar 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES 
 
 I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being, Author 
 and Father of the Gods themselves. For I believe that Man 
 is not the most perfect Being but one, rather that as there 
 are many Degrees of Being-s his Inferiors, so there are many 
 Degi'ees of Beings superior to him. 
 
 Also, when I stretch my imagination thro' and beyond our 
 System of Planets, beyond the visible fixed Stars themselves, 
 into that space that is every Way infinite, and conceive it fill'd 
 with Suns like ours, each with a Chorus of Worlds forever 
 moving round him, then this little Ball on which we move, 
 seems, even in my narrow Imagination, to be almost Nothing, 
 and myself less than nothing, and of no sort of Consequence^ 
 
 When I think thus, I image it great Vanity in me to sup- 
 pose, that the Supremely Perfect does in the least regard such 
 an inconsidei'able Nothing as Man, More especially, since it is 
 impossible for me to have any positive clear idea of that 
 which is infinite and incomprehensible, I cannot conceive 
 
PHILADELPHIA AND FRANKLIN 71 
 
 othenvise than that he the Infinite Father expects or requires 
 no Worship or Praise from us, but that he is even infinitely 
 above it. 
 
 But, since there is in all Men something like a natural prin- 
 ciple, which inclines them to devotion, or the Worship of 
 some unseen Power; 
 
 And since 'Men are endued with Reason superior to all other 
 Animals, that we are in our World acquainted with; 
 
 Therefore I think it seems required of me, and my Duty as 
 a Man to pay Divine Regards to Something. 
 
 I conceive then, that the Infinite has created many beings 
 or Gods, vastly superior to Man, who can better conceive his 
 Perfections than we, and return him a more rational and 
 glorious Praise. 
 
 As, among Men, the Praise of the Ignorant or of Children 
 is not regarded by the ingenious Painter or Architect, who is 
 rather honour'd and pleas'd with the approbation of Wise 
 Men & Artists. 
 
 It may be that these created Gods are immortal; or it may 
 be that after many Ages, they are changed, and others Supply 
 their Places. 
 
 Howbeit, I conceive that each of these is exceeding wise 
 and good, and very powerful; and that Each has made for 
 himself one glorious Sun, attended with a beautiful and 
 admirable System of Planets. 
 
 It is that particular Wise and good God, who is the author 
 and owner of our system, that I propose for the object of 
 my praise and adoration. 
 
 For I conceive that he has in himself some of those Pas- 
 sions he has planted in us, and that, since he has given us 
 Reason whereby we are capable of observing his Wisdom in 
 the Creation, he is not above caring for us, being pleas'd with 
 our Praise, and offended when we slight Him, or neglect 
 his Glory. 
 
 I conceive for many Reasons, that he is a good Being; and 
 as I should be happy to have so wise, good, and powerful a 
 Being my Friend, let me consider in what manner I shall 
 make myself most acceptable to him. 
 
 Next to the Praise resulting from and due to his Wisdom, 
 I believe he is pleas'd and delights in the Happiness of those 
 
 I 
 
72 DEISM 
 
 he has created; and since without Virtue Man can have no 
 Happiness in this World, I firmly believe he delights to see 
 me Virtuous, because he is pleas'd when he sees Me Happy. 
 
 And since he has created many Things, which seem purely 
 design'd for the Delight of Man, I believe he is not offended, 
 when he sees his Children solace themselves in any manner of 
 pleasant exercises and Innocent Delights; and I think no 
 Pleasure innocent that is to Man hurtful. 
 
 I love him therefore for bis Goodness, and I adore him for 
 his Wisdom. 
 
 Let me then not fail to praise my God continually, for it is 
 his Due; and it is all I can return for his many Favours and 
 great Goodness to me; and let me resolve to be virtuous, that 
 I may be happy, that I may please Him, who is delighted to 
 see me happy. Amen ! 
 
 Franklin's First Principles form an astonishing docu- 
 ment; they teach a veritable polytheism in a land 
 monotonously monotheistic. We may postpone for a 
 moment the search for the precise sources of this doc- 
 trine and give a general reason for its rise. It was 
 Franklin's penetrating gaze that saw the essential weak- 
 ness of the deistie tenet of transcendence. As the God 
 of the deist was removed farther and farther from the 
 world he became less and less an object of worship. This 
 removal occurred in both time and space. On the one 
 hand the conventional date of the creation was dis- 
 counted; geology lengthened Genesis, and the coming 
 into being of the world was thrust into the dark back- 
 ward and abysm of time. The same thing happened in 
 regard to space. The deity was dogmatically placed 
 outside the framework of the visible universe, but as that 
 universe was enlarged its maker was necessarily put be- 
 yond the uttermost bounds. So by a double process the 
 deity became less an object of woi*ship than a vague 
 first cause at an infinite remove. 
 
PHILADELPHIA AND FRANKLIN 73 
 
 Franklin's strange intermediate God was perfectly 
 logical. ]\Iore than that, his pluralism of divinities had 
 a reputable literary source. There was the prevalent 
 belief in a graded scale of reasoning life, as when Pope 
 sought to discover " what varied being peoples ev'ry 
 star. ' ' More particularly, there was the familiar scheme 
 of Wollaston, who spoke of "the fixed stars as so many 
 suns with their several sets of planets about them." 
 Finally, inserted in the midst of Franklin's document, 
 there Avas the " Hymn to the Creator," wherein ]\Iilton 
 sang of " Sons of light, angels, fixed stars." But we 
 have still more exact knowledge as to what was at 
 the very bottom of these peculiar Articles of Belief. 
 It is known that the original manuscript was Frank- 
 lin's daily companion to the end of his life, but it seems 
 to have escaped notice, for a full century after his 
 birth, how far he was indebted to Plato. Nevertheless 
 it has been shown how Franklin's writings give evidence 
 that in his youth he fell under the spell of the ancient 
 charmer. He tells how in his sixteenth or seventeenth 
 year he procured the Memorabilia. From this he 
 adopted the Socratie method of dispute, dropping abrupt 
 contradiction and positive argumentation and putting 
 on the humble inquirer and doubter. To Plato, then, 
 we may trace the polytheism of the Philadelphian. For 
 instance, the description, in the First Principles, of the 
 Father of the gods themselves embodies the doctrines of 
 the Timceus concerning the Father who begat the world 
 and made the eternal gods, who formed the universe 
 and assigned each soul to a star, who was good, and being 
 free from jealousy, desired that all things should be as 
 like himself as possible. 
 
 Space is lacking in which to reproduce one of Frank- 
 lin's delightful dialogues in the classic style, nothing to 
 
74 DEISM 
 
 c(|u;il which for charm and fancy had so far appeared in 
 the colonies. Space also is lacking in which to tell 
 about his ethical schemes: his practical pocket-book for 
 eradicating the vices; his Society of the Free and 
 Easy, " a sect that should be begun and spread at 
 first among young and single men, each one of whom 
 should exercise himself with the thirteen weeks' examina- 
 tion of the thirteen virtues, and only then should the 
 existence of the Society be made a matter of public 
 knowledge. ' ' 
 
 We pass, therefore, from Franklin as the virtuous 
 Poor Richard to Franklin as the advocate of free- 
 thought. Here we should distinguish between his pri- 
 vate and his public views. The best portraits of Frank- 
 lin present as their mark of authenticity a secretive 
 smile playing about his lips. This is characteristic. It 
 suggests that what he expressed outwardly did not 
 always obtain within. After his early speculative " er- 
 rata " he assumed a cautious attitude toward religion 
 as a public institution. Thus he writes to an anonymous 
 correspondent, presumably Thomas Paine, that he has 
 read his manuscript with some attention, but that the 
 arguments it contains against the doctrine of a particu- 
 lar providence strike at the foundation of all religion. 
 He therefore gives as his opinion, that though the 
 author's reasonings are subtle, and may prevail with 
 some readers, yet he will not succeed so as to change 
 the general sentiments of mankind on the subject, and 
 the consequence of the printing of the piece will be a 
 great deal of odium drawn upon himself, and no benefit 
 to others. He that spits against the wind spits in his 
 own face. 
 
 Of the same nature as this homely piece of advice 
 was Franklin's Information to Those Who would Re- 
 
PHILADELPHIA AND FRANKLIN 75 
 
 7nove to America. Here he writes that, in the New 
 World, religion under its various denominations is not 
 only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism 
 is unknown there ; infidelity rare and secret ; so that per- 
 sons may live to a great age in that country without hav- 
 ing their piety shocked by meeting with cither an atheist 
 or an infidel. This is a Jesuitical generalization, its 
 truth being contradicted by the single fact that when 
 Franklin made a motion for the holding of prayers in 
 the Constitutional Convention, as a means of correcting 
 the melancholy imperfections of the human understand- 
 ing, he added in a satirical note, that the convention, 
 except for three or four persons, held prayers to be 
 unnecessary. 
 
 These are contradictory statements, but there was a 
 reason why Franklin's writings and private beliefs did 
 not hang together. The reason was his utilitarian point 
 of view: he might consider free-thinking as a thing 
 good in itself, but like his electric fluid, it was to be 
 guided and conducted into safe channels. In spite of 
 his general attitude of caution there were cert-ain times 
 when he took a firm stand against intellectual and re- 
 ligious coercion. This was shown in the aid he extended 
 to the radical Joseph Priestley, author of the Corrup- 
 tions of Christianity; also in his request to Cadwallader 
 Colden to stop prosecution of the editor of the Nciv York 
 Gazette, for publishing a defense of deism ; and finally 
 in his letter to Ezra Stiles of Connecticut, wherein he 
 reiterates the deistic creed of his youth, confesses that 
 he believes that primitive Christianity has received cor- 
 rupting changes, and concludes with the observation that 
 he does not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss 
 by distinguishing the unlielievers in his government 
 of the world with any peculiar marks of displeasure. 
 
76 DEISM 
 
 The result of Franklin 's liberal policy was that Phila- 
 delphia in his day was in the van of intellectual prog- 
 ress. When John Adams sarcastically observed that the 
 place considered itself the pineal gland of the United 
 States, one might have retorted that that was true since 
 Franklin was the seat of its intellect. It was due to his 
 influence as founder that the University of Pennsylvania 
 became noteworthy for requiring no religious test 
 of its instructors, and for being so unprejudiced 
 as to bestow an honorary degree even upon Thomas 
 Paine. 
 
 Forced to be cautious at home it was in France that 
 Franklin came out in his true colors. On his mission to 
 Paris in 1776 he showed a remarkable liveliness of 
 spirits for a man of seventy. A kind of Socrates in small- 
 clothes, he preserved to the last the ancient irony, the 
 mastery of dialogue he had shown in his youthful es- 
 says. Upon his arrival, being publicly introduced to 
 Voltaire, he was hailed as the Solon embracing the 
 Sophocles of the age. And Condorcet made the remark- 
 able eulogy which contains the parallel between these 
 two men as representatives of philosophy rescuing the 
 race of man from the tyrant fanaticism. What the old 
 diplomat was thought to believe at this time is told in 
 a conversation which John Adams recounts having had 
 with De Marbois, later secretary of the French legation 
 in the United States : ' ' All religions are tolerated in 
 America," said M. Marbois, " and the ambassadors have 
 in all courts a right to a chapel in their own way; but 
 Mr. Franklin never had any." ''No," said I, laughing, 
 
 " because Mr. Franklin had no " I was going to 
 
 say what I did not say, and will not say here. I stopped 
 short and laughed. "No," said M. Marbois, " Mr. 
 Franklin adores only great Nature, which has interested 
 
VIRGINIA AND JEFFERSON 77 
 
 a great many people of both sexes in liis favor." 
 " Yes," said I, laughing, " all the atheists, deists, and 
 libertines, as well as the philosophers and ladies, are in 
 
 his train, — another Voltaire, and thence " " Yes," 
 
 said ]\I. Marbois, '* he is celebrated as the great philoso- 
 pher and the great legislator of America." 
 
 4. Virginia and Jefferson 
 
 As Philadelphia was intellectually dominated by Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, so was Virginia by Thomas Jefferson. 
 How firmly the latter stood for liberty of thinking is 
 manifest in the President's express desire to have in- 
 scribed on his tomb: " Author of the Declaration of 
 American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for 
 Religious Freedom, and the Father of the University of 
 Virginia." As the advocate of free-thought in the Old 
 Dominion, Jefferson was but the embodiment of his class. 
 In contrast to the heresy-hunting Calvinists of the North, 
 he typified the fox-hunting Arminians of the South. His 
 earliest intellectual impressions were gained from that 
 local species of Anglican clergy who, from reading the 
 fashionable, skeptical literature of the mother country, 
 came to be considered as lax in thought as they were 
 reputed to be loose in living. 
 
 Besides the Cavalier clergy, the College of William 
 and Mary had marked influence on Jefferson's mind. 
 In addition to the liberty of philosophizing advocated 
 in its charter the scientific spirit prevailed in the place. 
 William Small, friend of Watt, the inventor of the 
 steam engine, and of Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather 
 of the evolutionist, came to the Virginia institution in 
 1758, and Jefferson, who attended his lectures in natural 
 philosophy, declared that he fixed the destinies of his 
 
78 DEISM 
 
 life. Adding to these liberalizing forces the elective 
 system of studies, and the naturally volatile temper of 
 the Southerner, it was inevitable that Jefferson should 
 develop that receptive spirit which made him the typical 
 progressive of his times. As he wrote in regard to the 
 proposed University of Virginia : the Gothic idea that 
 we are to look backwards instead of forwards for the 
 improvement of the human mind, is not an idea which 
 this country will endure. 
 
 These were glittering generalities in education, but 
 Jefferson backed them up by specific details. For the 
 education of the young there was offered a scheme of 
 Jeffersonian simplicity, — it was to start the inquiring 
 student with books of a harmless sort and gradually 
 and insidiously to wean him away from orthodoxy. He 
 might begin with Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy and con- 
 tinue with Lord Kames's Natural Religion, but he was to 
 end with the Corruptions of Christianity by Dr. Samuel 
 Priestley, the Anglo-American free-thinker. It was un- 
 der the influence of the latter that the great deist in 
 the White House, during the strenuous year of the 
 Louisiana Purchase, took time to write what he called 
 a Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doc- 
 trines of Jesus, compared with those of others. In this 
 short work the author proposed to take first a gen- 
 eral view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable 
 of the ancient philosophers ; next, a view of the deism 
 of the Je^\•s, to show in what a degraded state it was; 
 finally, to proceed to a view of the life, character, and 
 doctrines of Jesus, who, sensible of the incorrectness of 
 their ideas of the deity and of morality, endeavored to 
 bring them to the principles of a pure deism. 
 
 This Syllabus remained a mere sketch; knowledge of 
 it leaked out and public charges of atheism w^ere brought 
 
VIRGINIA AND JEFFERSON 79 
 
 against the President. Hence in the political agitations 
 of the times Jefferson declared he had had no idea of 
 publishing a book on religion, and that he should as 
 soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam as 
 the world of religious sects. So the fonner ambitious 
 project for a study of comparative religions dwindled 
 to a home-made harmony of the Gospels. As to the har- 
 mony, Jefferson's object was merely to take the four 
 Evangelists and cut out from them every text they had 
 recorded of the moral precepts of Jesus. There will be 
 found remaining, he avers, the most sublime and benevo- 
 lent code of morals which has ever been offered to man, 
 " I have performed this operation for my own use," he 
 continues, ' ' by cutting verse by verse out of the printed 
 book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, 
 and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in 
 a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages 
 of pure and unsophisticated doctrine." 
 
 This production, issued by Congress in its four- 
 fold polyglot form — Greek, Latin, French, English — a 
 full century after its inception, is the so-called Jefferson 
 Bible. Bearing the title The Life and Morals of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, the compiler acknowledges that it was at- 
 tempted too hastily, being the work of two or three 
 nights only at Washington, after getting through the 
 evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day. 
 To the larger undertaking Jefferson never went back, 
 perhaps, because he realized that the role of a philosoph- 
 ical higher critic was an impossible one, that to dis- 
 tinguish between primitive Christianity and later accre- 
 tions was a task beyond the scholar of that age. Jef- 
 ferson's partial comparative studies remain as the most 
 formal, but not as the sole expression of his beliefs. In 
 addition to the Syllahus and the Bihle there is a volu- 
 
so DEISM 
 
 minous correspondence, from which the Virginian's 
 somewhat motley philosophy may be reconstructed. In 
 general, that philosophy was an eclecticism of a pro- 
 nounced deistic type, since it was the very peculiarity 
 of the deist to wear a patchwork philosopher's cloak, 
 yet to wear it in the fashion of the day. Thus, when on 
 different occasions Jefferson exclaimed : " I am an Epi- 
 curean," "I am a Materialist," "I am a sect by 
 myself," there w^as discoverable beneath these vari- 
 ous disguises the strut and swagger of the age of 
 reason. 
 
 Of the different phases of thought through which Jef- 
 ferson passed the most interesting was the materialistic. 
 It was his five years' residence in France, before the 
 outbreak of the Revolution, that gave the free-thinking 
 Southerner an insight into the possibilities of material- 
 ism when carried to a logical outcome. As American 
 minister Jefferson had the fortune to enjoy the society 
 of the same lively set of spirits as did his predecessor, 
 Franklin. Thus he could recall to Cabanis the pleasant 
 hours he passed with him at the house of Madame 
 Helvetius; confess that the French literati are half a 
 dozen years ahead of the American, and yet make no 
 effort to catch up with them. 
 
 Here Jefferson's fundamental deism held him back. 
 Like the more moderate exponents of the Enlighten- 
 ment, while disbelieving in a revealed, he was at the 
 same time convinced of the advantages of a natural 
 theology. So it was that " the savage from the moun- 
 tains of America," living in the midst of the intellectual 
 seductions of Paris, could still remain a believer in the 
 Eire Supreme. The system of Diderot, D'Alembert, 
 and D'Holbach was designated by his friend. Baron 
 Grimm, an exposition of atheism for chambermaids and 
 
VIRGINIA AND JEFFERSON 81 
 
 barbers. Jefferson, not so witty but more wise, criticised 
 this extreme presentation more broadly and more 
 soberly. Remarking that the atheistic was a more nu- 
 merous school in the Catholic countries, while the in- 
 fidelity of the Protestant took generally the form of 
 deism, he puts the arguments of both sides thus : When 
 the atheist descanted on the unceasing motion and cir- 
 culation of matter through the animal, vegetable, and 
 mineral kingdoms, never resting, never annihilated, al- 
 ways changing form, and under all forms gifted with 
 the power of reproduction; the theist, pointing " to the 
 heavens above and to the earth beneath and to the waters 
 under the earth," asked if these things did not pro- 
 claim a first cause, possessing intelligence and power. 
 
 Thus far Jefferson's view of the universe was that 
 of a moderate deist. The same attitude is taken in his 
 characteristic compromise between the Epicurean doc- 
 trine of the eternity of the world and the Puritanic 
 doctrine of interference with the ordered course of na- 
 ture. Calling himself a skeptical reader, he neverthe- 
 less reasons on the supposition that the earth has had a 
 beginning. However, he does not agree with those 
 biblical theorists who suppose that the Creator made 
 two jobs of his creation, that he first made a chaotic 
 lump and set it in motion and then, waiting the ages 
 necessary to form itself, stepped in a second time to 
 create the animals and plants which were to in- 
 habit it. 
 
 The last phase through which the Southern thinker 
 passed was that of natural realism, or that form of 
 thought which emphasizes intuition and common sense. 
 When he was young Jefferson recalls that he was fond 
 of speculations which seemed to promise some insight 
 into the hidden country. After his retirement from 
 
82 DEISM 
 
 active life he rests content in the belief that there is a 
 reality which we directly recognize in beings, and that 
 we are guided unconsciously by the unerring hand of 
 instinct. In defense of his final faith in the common 
 sense of moral sense the reminiscent statesman puts this 
 patriotic question: If our countr}^ when pressed with 
 wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed 
 by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have 
 been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's. 
 The heads began to calculate and compare numbers; 
 the hearts threw up a few pulsations of their warmest 
 blood; they supplied enthusiasm against wealth and 
 numbers; they put their existence to the hazard when 
 the hazard seemed against us, and they saved the coun- 
 try. 
 
 To bring Jefferson's philosophy into bolder relief it 
 may be compared with that of John Adams, the cautious 
 speculator and taster of systems, who, even in the days 
 of their political rivalry, Jefferson considered " as dis- 
 interested as the being who made him." Now, it was 
 after their reconciliation through Benjamin Rush that 
 the correspondence between the Whig and the Federal 
 ex-presidents discloses two gentlemen of the old school, 
 both omnivorous readers, both averse to Calvinism and 
 clerical obscurantism, both interested in the rising 
 study of comparative religion, both tinged with the 
 current deistic thought. Of the two the Southerner 
 was more prone to generalizations, more impatient of 
 other men's beliefs; the Northerner more tolerant, not 
 inclined to go beyond " New England guesses." " The 
 Philosophical Chief of Monticello is such a heterodox 
 and hungry fellow," so runs a doggerel couplet of the 
 day; Adams appears equally versatile but far less ar- 
 dent. Confessedly afflicted with a kind of Pyrrhonism, 
 
VIRGINIA AND JEFFERSON 83 
 
 he numbers himself among those Protestants qui ne 
 croycnt Hen. 
 
 Adams's ironical deprecation of his own knowledge was 
 doubtless one reason for Jefferson's drifting away from 
 the Gallic speculation. Adams is sensible of the services 
 of the French philosophers to Liberty and Fraternity, 
 yet he cannot but think that they are all destitute of 
 common sense: 
 
 They all seemed to think that all Christendom was convinced 
 as they were, that all religion was " visions Judaicques " and 
 that their effulgent lights had illuminated all the world. They 
 had not considered the force of early education on the millions 
 of minds who had never heard of their philosophy. And what 
 was their philosophy? The universe was matter only, and 
 eternal ; spirit was a word without a meaning. All beings 
 and attributes were of eternal necessity; conscience, morality, 
 were all nothing but fate. Who, and what is fate? He must 
 be a sensible fellow. He must be a master of science. He 
 must calculate eclipses in his head by intuition, and what is 
 more comfortable than all the rest, he must be good natured, 
 for this is upon the whole a good world. 
 
 In these jocular criticisms there was a sly dig at 
 Jefferson's deism. The French fate bore a striking 
 resemblance to his benevolent deity, trust in whom would 
 bring the philosophic millennium. And so Adams writes 
 again : * ' Let me now ask you very seriously, my friend, 
 where are now in 1813, the perfection and the per- 
 fectibility of human nature ? Where is now the progress 
 of the human mind? Where is the amelioration of so- 
 ciety ? . . . I leave those profound philosophers to enjoy 
 their transporting hopes, provided always that they will 
 not engage us in French Revolutions. . . . " And so 
 throughout the correspondence. — the impartial Novan- 
 glian meets the strenuous Virginian with whimsical 
 advice. When as Epicurean he becomes too stoical, he 
 
84 DEISM 
 
 urges him to eat his canvas-back duck ; when as deist he 
 becomes too dogmatical, he remarks: " It has been long, 
 very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is 
 now, never will be, and never was but one being who 
 can understand the universe. And that it is not only 
 vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to compre- 
 hend it." 
 
 It was easy for Adams to write in this way; an ag- 
 nostic's apology was tolerated in the case of one who 
 would leave " metaphysics in the clouds." But with 
 Jefferson things were different ; politics complicated the 
 situation and faction spoiled philosophy. The Federal- 
 ists linked together Jeffersonianism, atheism, and the 
 excesses of the French Revolution. They called the 
 President a Jacobin, an infidel, and a republican villain. 
 They spoke of a dangerous, deistical, and Utopian 
 school of which a great personage from Virginia was 
 a favored pupil. They said his principles relished so 
 strongly of Paris, and were seasoned in such a pro- 
 fusion of French garlic, that he offended the whole na- 
 tion. In these attacks the Federal clergy of New Eng- 
 land were implicated. "When Jefferson had brought 
 over from France the arch-infidel Thomas Paine in a 
 government ship, they spoke of him as an Ephraim who 
 had become entangled with the heathen. Jefferson's 
 defenders were unable to mend matters. The author of 
 the Hamiltoniad, or an Extinguisher of the Eoyal Fac- 
 tion of New England dismisses the worn-out tale of the 
 President 's irreligion by retorting that ' ' he has thrown 
 into the lap of Morality the purest apothegms of the 
 Apostles and Fathers; he confounds the politicians by 
 calling them Tory bloodhounds, yelping upon the dan- 
 gers that may arise from the Virginian or Southern in- 
 fluence." These mixed metaphors betray a political 
 
VIRGINIA AND JEFFERSON 85 
 
 confusion in which Jefferson found it hard to pre- 
 serve a philosophic calm. He asserted that the priests, 
 to soothe their resentments against the act of Virginia 
 for establishing religious freedom, wished him to be 
 thought atheist, deist, or devil, who could advocate free- 
 dom from their religious dictations. Having opposed 
 the scheme of a state-supported church — " Christianity 
 for pence and power " — he pronounced IMassachusetts 
 and Connecticut the last retreat of monkish darkness 
 and bigotry. 
 
 And so against the narrowness of the North and as 
 a bulwark against the " pious young monks of Harvard 
 and Yale," Jefferson proposed to erect his Southern 
 University. In the plan for this institution which he 
 proposed to the Virginia legislature, he intended to 
 place the entire responsibility for religious training 
 upon an ethical basis, where all sects could agree. As he 
 explained the matter-. " The proofs of the being of a God, 
 the creator, preserver and supreme ruler of the uni- 
 verse, the author of all the relations of morality, and 
 the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the 
 province of the professor of Ethics; to which adding 
 the development of these moral obligations in which all 
 sects agree ... a basis will be found common to all 
 sects." Because of his plan of having no professorship 
 of divinity and allowing independent schools of the- 
 ology to be established in the neighborhood of the Uni- 
 versity, Jefferson complained that a handle had been 
 made to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, 
 not only of no religion, but against all religion. But in 
 spite of his opponents' fulminations " the liberality of 
 this State," concludes the Virginia humanist, " will 
 support this institution and give fair play to the cultiva- 
 tion of reason." 
 
86 DEISM 
 
 5. Thomas Paine and Popular Deism 
 
 In examining the books of the early colleges and the 
 thoughts of their representative men, there have been 
 found numberless signs of colonial free-thinking, of 
 mental independency before political independence. In 
 addition to these academic studies there must now be 
 made a search for the more elusive traces of the spread- 
 ing of infidelity, before the actual outburst of revolu- 
 tionary thought. As has been already intimated, this 
 movement, beginning as a popular reaction, was more 
 felt than avowed, more a matter of subtle distrust than 
 of precise knowledge. It was the faint smoke in the 
 air, presaging the coming forest fire. It was a time 
 when the clergy might warn against " the insidious 
 encroachments of innovation," but when the laity pre- 
 ferred the Indian summer of indifference. Toleration 
 was pervasive. It has been described as gradually dif- 
 fused over the land by such fostering circumstances as 
 colonial impatience with prescription and custom, and 
 that original adventurous spirit which, combined with 
 dissatisfaction with home conditions and voluntary 
 exile, insensibly fitted the mind for the propositions of 
 liberty. 
 
 Of these propositions, the liberty to think and feel 
 as one liked was the most conducive to the coming of 
 free-thought. Paine 's Age of Reason was especially op- 
 portune because it was in agreement with that liberty 
 of conscience granted or implied in so many of the Revo- 
 lutionary documents. Among these documents we may 
 refer to Patrick Henry's Bill of Rights, in which he 
 held that religion can be directed only by reason. To 
 this Madison added that all men are equally entitled to 
 the full and free exercise of religion according to the 
 
THOMAS PAINE AND POPULAR DEISM 87 
 
 dictates of conscience. This was followed in 1785 by 
 Jefferson's Declaratory Act, establishing religious free-' 
 dom in Virginia, and by the Pennsylvania constitution, 
 advocated by Franklin, which contained the clause as to 
 the natural and inalienable right to worship according to 
 the dictates of the understanding. In brief, twelve out 
 of the thirteen original States allowed an increased 
 measure of mental freedom. It was only in Massa- 
 chusetts that a dread of liberty was expressed. There 
 we find the question debated as to whether public offices 
 might not be held " even among those who have no 
 other guide to the way of virtue and heaven, than the 
 dictates of natural religion." 
 
 The political expressions of rationalism in the Revo- 
 lutionary period are many, the philosophical few. Be- 
 tween the Stamp Act and the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion, there was but one native work worth mentioning 
 in the deistic connection. But Ethan Allen's Reason 
 the Only Oracle of Man did not arrest the popular at- 
 tention. So it remained for a naturalized American to 
 turn the tide of thought. It was the Age of Reason of 
 Thomas Paine which marked high water in the deistic 
 movement, for it was carried upon the wave of enthusi- 
 asm caused by the author's Revolutionary pamphlets 
 Common Sense and the Rights of Man. The radical 
 writer affirms that, as his motive in his political works 
 had been to rescue man from tyranny and false sys- 
 tems and false principles of government, so in his re- 
 ligious publications it was to bring man to the right 
 reason God had given him, unshackled by fable and the 
 fiction of books. 
 
 The Age of Reason is a perfect example of the popu- 
 larizing of current deistic opinions. It has the same 
 method of so-called mathematical proof, the same me- 
 
88 DEISM 
 
 chanical view of nature, the same disregard of the 
 problem of evil, the same aversion to mystery, the same 
 iridescent dream as to mankind's perfectibility, the 
 same delusion as to monotheism being a primitive be- 
 lief, — " Adam was created a deist " says this prehis- 
 toric critic. In a word, the book is anything but origi- 
 nal. With the exception of a phrase or two like the 
 ' ' religion of humanity, ' ' there is not an idea in it which 
 cannot be matched in the writings of the English free- 
 thinkers of the Georgian era. Paine simply repeats, in 
 the language of the street, the arguments of Collins 
 against prophecj'^, of Woolston against miracles, of 
 Tindal against revelation, of Morgan against the Old 
 Testament, of Chubb against Christian morality. 
 
 This is the negative side of the book. More effective 
 is the positive. In place of the false " bases of Chris- 
 tianity ' ' Paine would put what he calls a true theology. 
 He cannot see how man can hold to a system where 
 Satan is deified and given power equal to that of the 
 Almighty; where man is called an outcast, a beggar, a 
 mumper, calling himself a worm and the fertile earth a 
 dunghill, and all the blessings of life but the thankless 
 name of vanities. But there is a substitute for all 
 these corruptions " from Moloch to modern predesti- 
 narianism," — it is eighteenth-century optimism, thus 
 grandiloquently set forth: If objects for gratitude and 
 admiration are our desire, do they not present them- 
 selves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair 
 creation prepared to receive us the instant we are bom 
 — a world furnished to our hands, that costs us noth- 
 ing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down 
 the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether 
 we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe 
 still goes on. 
 
THOMAS PAINE AND POPULAR DEISM 89 
 
 The effect of the Age of Ecason on the community 
 may be easily imagined. The clergj' attacked it, the 
 colleges criticised it, but the populace read it. Dedi- 
 cated to the author's fellow-citizens of the United States 
 of America, it was sold for a few pence the copy or 
 given away gratis. The first edition, printed in France, 
 was spread broadcast through the free-thinking so- 
 cieties affiliated with the Jacobin Club of Philadelphia. 
 Within two decades the pamphlet was to be found on the 
 banks of the Genesee and Ohio ; within two more it was 
 circulated among the reader of Volnoy and Voltaire 
 and in those places in Tennessee and Kentucky whose 
 names still attest the French sympathies of the first 
 settlers. It is astonishing how far the light of nature 
 threw its beams. The president of Transylvania Uni- 
 versity was suspected of teaching an unrestrained natu- 
 ralism, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln reported that 
 in Indiana the Age of Reason passed from hand to hand, 
 furnishing food for the evening's discussion in tavern 
 and village store. 
 
 The book, moreover, met with that sincerest form of 
 flattery — imitation. An example of this was Elihu Palm- 
 er's Prospect, or View of the Moral World for the Year 
 1804. According to the allegorical thunder and light- 
 ning frontispiece, the Book of Saints and Ten Command- 
 ments are being dashed to the ground from the Altar of 
 Truth and Justice to be supplanted by the Age of Rea- 
 son and the Eights of Man. Of an equally destructive 
 aspect was George Houston's New York Correspondent 
 of 1829, containing lectures delivered before the Free 
 Press Association on the inconsistencies, absurdities, and 
 contradictions of the Bible. This journal also presented 
 the advanced views of Fanny Wright, a sort of Wilhelm 
 Meister in petticoats, who wandered over the country 
 
90 DEISM 
 
 from Woodstock, Vermont, to Cincinnati, Ohio. The 
 opponents of popular deism now raised their heads. 
 The free-thinking societies, spread through New Eng- 
 land and the Middle States, were designated the 
 banded Goths and Vandals of political atheism. The 
 autlior of the Sceptic's Manual retailed petty and ma- 
 licious gossip concerning the last days of Hobbes and 
 Hume, Voltaire and Paine. In the Antidote to Deism, 
 Ethan Allen is called an ignorant and profane deist, 
 Paine a drunkard, to reason with whom would be like 
 casting pearls before swine. 
 
 Such were the attacks of the minor clergy. In the 
 colleges the battle was waged more in accordance with 
 the rules of war. The most prolific of the writers against 
 deism, and the materialism which happened to be asso- 
 ciated with it, was President Timothy Dwight of Yale. 
 As one of the Hartford wits, he had composed a sort of 
 American Dunciad, the Triumph of Infidelity, which 
 was ironically dedicated to Voltaire. How that poem 
 confined the deist in the pillory of his own terms, and 
 flung into his teeth his own arguments, is to be seen 
 from these lines: 
 
 "His soul not cloath'd in attributes divine; 
 But a nice watch-spring to the grand machine. 
 
 Enough, the Bible is by wits arraigned. 
 
 Genteel men doubt it, smart men say it's feigned." 
 
 In contrast to this effusion were the earlier poems of 
 Dwight 's salad days which showed a decided leaning to 
 the philosophy of the French Encyclopaidists. In the 
 Columbia and the Conquest of Canaan, French 
 phrases are curiously wrought into a sort of biblical 
 epic on the New World. The sons of this ' ' blissful Eden 
 
THOMAS PAINE AND POPULAR DEISM 91 
 
 bright " are urged to " teach hiws to reign and save the 
 Rights of Man." The author subsequently explained 
 that these were the mock heroics of a time when the 
 strong sympathy towards the leaders of the French 
 Revolution prepared to make us the miserable dupes of 
 their principles and declarations. But the doctrines of 
 the 14th of July were not to be confused with those of 
 the 4th of July. As the head of Yale College, Dr. 
 Dwight became the leader of the forces against deism. 
 His Century Discourse gives a trenchant account of the 
 progress of infidelity, — its descent from the lofty philo- 
 sophical discourse to the newspaper paragraph, its 
 spread among the masses, and the ultimate return to 
 more sober thought. " Infidelity," the discourse pro- 
 ceeds, " was first theism, or natural religion, then mere 
 unbelief, then animalism, then skepticism, then partial, 
 and finally, total atheism. The infidel writers have used 
 terms so abstract, and a phraseology so mysterious as to 
 attract readers fond of novelty, but the common people, 
 never honored by Voltaire with any higher title than the 
 rabble or the mob, have been caught by these writers, 
 who volunteered to vindicate their wrongs and assert 
 their rights. Happily it was soon discovered that the 
 liberty of infidels was not the liberty of New England ; 
 that France instead of being free, merely changed 
 through a series of tyrannies ; and that man, unre- 
 strained by law and religion, is a mere beast of prey. 
 Even sober infidels began to be alarmed for their own 
 peace, safety, and enjoyments." 
 
 The air of gravity and severity about this passage is 
 explained by what men remembered of the events fol- 
 lowing the peace of 1783, the intrigues of Genet, the 
 terrorism incited by Freneau, when IMarket Street, 
 Philadelphia, was filled with a mob, the distrust of 
 
92 DEISM 
 
 Napoleon implied in President Adams's proclamation. 
 This passage is also explained by the wild and vague 
 expectations everywhere entertained, especially among 
 the young, of a new order of things about to commence, 
 in which Christianity would be laid aside as obsolete. 
 In the exultation of political emancipation, infidel 
 philosophers found ready listeners when they repre- 
 sented the restraints of religion as fetters of the con- 
 science, and moral obligations as shackles imposed by 
 bigotry and priestcraft. 
 
 At Harvard College, the academic attitude toward 
 deism was somewhat complicated. Federal in politics 
 and Unitarian in religion, it was doubly averse to the 
 enthusiasms and raptures of Franco-American rational- 
 ism; it deplored the " foul spirit of innovation," and 
 sought some check to the " infuriated steeds of in- 
 fidelity." At Princeton the Age of Beason was opposed 
 by the philosophy of common sense. Where Berkeleian 
 idealism had been driven out, the Bridgewater Treatises 
 came in. According to its catalogue, the library 
 abounded in volumes like Dick's Celestial Scenery Illus- 
 trating the Perfections of the Deity, and Front's Chemis- 
 try, Meteorology and the Functions of Digestion consid- 
 ered with reference to Natural Theology. The favorite 
 text-book, as in the majority of conservative colleges, 
 was Dugald Stewart, and Stewart's aim was declared 
 to be to stem the inundation of the skeptical, or rather 
 atheistical publications which were imported from Eu- 
 rope. But a conservative literature does not alone ex- 
 plain the stringent policy of Princeton ; behind the 
 books were such facts as that, after the revolutionary 
 war when the students had been " freed from all sanc- 
 tuary and Sabbath restraint," there was left only a 
 handful of students who professed themselves Christians 
 
THOMAS PAINE AND POPULAR DEISM 93 
 
 and that, in 1S02, the trustees in their " Address to the 
 Inhabitants of the United States," declared that their 
 purpose was to make this institution an asylum for pious 
 youth, in this daj' of general and lamentable depravity. 
 
 Popular deism was rejected by the clergy and thrust 
 out by the colleges. It remains to be seen how the pub- 
 lic first accepted, then grew tired of it. Chancellor 
 Kent said that in his younger days there were very few 
 professional men who were not infidels; Ezra Ripley, 
 that a large portion of the learning not possessed by the 
 clergy leaned to deism. A few specific events will illus- 
 trate how this rapid growth of the army of free-thinkers 
 was followed by an equally rapid defection from the 
 ranks. In 1801, James Dana of Connecticut said that 
 infidelity appeared to be gaining ground; by 1810, it 
 was reported that infidelity abounded to an alarming 
 degree and in various shapes in the district west of the 
 Military Tract in New York. In 1822 an anonymous 
 " letter to a deist in Baltimore " stated that deism is 
 taking root rapidly and soon will grow up surprisingly 
 and become the only fashionable religion. In Virginia 
 about the same time Bishop Meade asserted that in every 
 young man he met he expected to find a skeptic, if not an 
 avowed unbeliever. 
 
 This was the advance of the movement. A reaction 
 followed which started in protests from the church, the 
 state, and the professions, and ended in a series of re- 
 ligious revivals. In 1798, the Presbyterian General 
 Assembly uttered a warning against the abounding in- 
 fidelity which tends to atheism itself; in 1800, the Presi- 
 dent referred to the dissemination of principles sub- 
 versive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and 
 social obligations, that have produced incalculable mis- 
 chiefs in other countries ; in 1824, Dr. Charles Caldwell 
 
94 DEISM 
 
 thought fit to write a Defence of the Medical Profession 
 against the charge of Infidelity and Irreligion. The 
 unpopularity of deism is likewise exliibited in the light 
 literature of the day. Fenimore Cooper describes one 
 of his heroines as being properly impressed with the 
 horrors of a deist's doctrines, and another as shrinking 
 from his company, Harriet Martineau wrote back to 
 England how she was told of one and another with an 
 air of mystery, like that with which one is informed of 
 any person being insane, or intemperate or insolvent, 
 that so and so was thought to be an unbeliever. 
 
 The results of deism in America may now be briefly 
 summed up. Among the people the majority were 
 drawn off by an emotional substitute for thought, the 
 revivals that swept over the country. At bottom the 
 deistic system was too cold and formal; it externalized 
 deity, lacked a continuing enthusiasm, and so failed to 
 satisfy the cravings of emotional excitement. The 
 philosophy of a Franklin might appeal to the business, 
 it did not appeal to the bosoms of men. In the colleges 
 those who were not affected by revivalism were held 
 in cheek by circumscribed courses presenting the simi- 
 larities between natural and revealed religion. Finally, 
 among the clergy, the great part stood for orthodoxy. 
 As expressed by one of the numerous century sermon- 
 izers, there was no neutral ground to be taken between 
 evangelical doctrines and infidelity. 
 
 Such were the results of the hundred years' war for 
 free-thinking, — apparently fruitless unless judged by 
 later events. One such event was New England tran- 
 scendentalism, whose programme on its negative side was 
 almost precisely what the deists had been denying; on 
 its positive, an assertion of what they had been lacking. 
 Transcendentalism denied the need of miracle, revela- 
 
» 
 
 THOMAS PAINE AND POPULAR DEISM 95 
 
 tion, dependence on an outward standard of faitli ; it 
 affirmed the need of intuition, mystic ecstasy, inward 
 dependence upon an immanent life. As the philosopher 
 of Concord exclaimed: " Pie re is now a perfect religion, 
 which can be set in an intelligible and convincing man- 
 ner before all men by their reason." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 MATERIALISM 
 
 1. The French Influences 
 
 The story of materialism in America is the story of 
 a struggle for existence but not of the survival of the 
 fittest, — so at least thought its opponents. The move- 
 ment was at first chiefly described by those who were 
 hostile to its spirit and its aim. As a form of genial 
 naturalism it was in marked contrast to the austere 
 supernaturalism of the North. And yet it is to its 
 Northern adversaries that we must go for our earliest 
 accounts. One of the founders of the Harvard Medical 
 School explains that modem philosophers say matter is 
 inert, yet that there are certain powers which the par- 
 ticles of matter have of acting on one another, as 
 gravitation, cohesion, the attraction of crystallization, 
 of magnetism, of electricity, of chemical attraction. But 
 none of these merit the name of vitality, nor in them 
 is the origin of intelligent ideas to be looked for. Sen- 
 sible objects may be the destined medium to awaken the 
 dormant energies of man's understanding, yet these 
 energies are no more contained in sense than the ex- 
 plosion of the cannon in the spark which gives it fire. 
 Again Noah Webster, the lexicographer, has " some 
 doubts " concerning Erasmus Darwin and his " laws of 
 organic life." The author of such " laws " by merely 
 observing the phenomena of animal motion might trace 
 them to fibrous contractions, and fibrous contractions to 
 
 96 
 
THE FRENCH INFLUENCES 97 
 
 irritation of external objects, to pleasure, pain, voli- 
 tion, or association; but at last he is compelled to in- 
 quire why and how the fibers become obedient to the 
 impulses of stimulus. ^Mounting a step higher in the 
 catenation of causes, he is compelled to create or imagine 
 a certain something to reside in the medullary sub- 
 stance of the brain to which he gives the denomination 
 of the spirit of animation. What this principle is he 
 makes no attempt to explain ; and the very existence of 
 it is rather assumed than proved. 
 
 These opinions represent the jealous attitude of the 
 North toward the prevalent system of the South. A 
 fairer and indeed a mediating attitude was taken by a 
 writer of the Middle States. Reviewing the opinions of 
 the principal materialists of the eighteenth century 
 Samuel Miller of Princeton shows how they resemble 
 those of the ancients. Just as when Epicurus supposed 
 the soul of man to be a material substance, but a very 
 refined and attenuated kind of matter, so Dr. Priestley 
 denies that there is any ground for making a distinction 
 between the soul of man and the body, supposing the 
 whole human constitution to be made up of one homo- 
 geneous substance. 
 
 In turning from the English to the French material- 
 ists such as Condillac and Helvetius, the Princetonian 
 touches on the heart of the matter. The real agents for 
 the naturalizing of French materialism in the South 
 were Franklin and Jefferson. It was Franklin as a 
 philosopher, in the eighteenth-century use of the word 
 as a natural philosopher, who chiefly stimulated the in- 
 terchange of ideas between France and the western 
 world. Had it not been for the Philadelphian's elec- 
 trical experiments, there would have boen fewer points 
 of contact between the two republics. The modern 
 
98 MATERIALISM 
 
 Prometheus drew lightning from the clouds, as Turgot's 
 famous lines expressed it ; lie also drew ideas from men, 
 and despite that non-conducting medium, the Anglo- 
 American mind, succeeded in introducing into the 
 colonies many of the stimulating notions of his French 
 acquaintances. Among those of a philosophic turn who 
 had a transatlantic influence were Buffon, whose View 
 of Nature fortified the American deists; Cabanis, whose 
 materialism influenced Jefferson; Chastellux, who an- 
 ticipated the philosophic travels of De Tocqueville ; Con- 
 doreet, whose Progress of the Human Mind received an 
 early printing in Maryland ; Crevecceur, whose letters 
 on America fascinated and misled Europeans; du Pont 
 de Nemours, who projected a settlement of philosophers 
 on the Mississippi; Lavoisier, whose pneumatic theory 
 was used to explode the phlogistic view of Priestley in 
 Pennsylvania ; Quesnay, a follower of Lafayette, whose 
 grandson sought to found a kind of French academy in 
 Virginia ; Rochefoucauld due d 'Enville, who translated 
 the Constitutions of the thirteen original States ; Volney, 
 whose Euins, or Revolutions of Empires stirred up great 
 popular interest. 
 
 In this impressive list of those who threw in their lot 
 with the struggling republic there is one that stands 
 out. When Jefferson exclaimed: " I am a materialist," 
 it was not so much because he had read Epicurus as be- 
 cause he had heard Cabanis. While the Virginian 
 was in Paris, Cabanis had delivered before the Academy 
 the series of lectures on the relations between mind and 
 body which contained the famous apothegms: " the 
 brain secretes thought," " the nerves make the man." 
 So, on hearing the lectures of the distinguished sensa- 
 tionalist, Jefferson asks : Why may not the mode of action 
 called thought have been given to a material organ of 
 
THE FRENCH INFLUENCES 99 
 
 a peculiar structure, as that of magnetism is to the 
 needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular 
 manipulation of the steel? They observe that on igni- 
 tion of the needle or spring, their magnetism or elas- 
 ticity ceases. So on dissolution of the material organ 
 by death, its action of thought may cease also, for nobody 
 supposes that the magnetism or elasticity retires to 
 hold a substantive and distinct existence. 
 
 Jefferson's sympathy with the Gallic culture was im- 
 portant ; indeed his mission to France was a vital im- 
 pulse in his life and equally vital in the life of Southern 
 thought. That sympathy was, of course, fostered by the 
 political situation. The regard felt by the French for 
 this country led to an intellectual entente cordiale. In 
 spite of this good feeling there were some who deplored 
 the presence of such effective advocates of the new natu- 
 ralism as were the followers of Lafayette. These ad- 
 vocates were described by the elder President D^^^ght of 
 Yale as men of polished manners, improved minds, and 
 superior address, who knew how to insinuate the gross- 
 est sentiments in a delicate and inoffensive manner, 
 and were at the same time friends and aids of the Ameri- 
 can cause — nos trcs chers et tres grands Amis, et Allies. 
 
 As a mirror of the Gallic mind Jefferson became a tar- 
 get for the orthodox. Whenever he tried to introduce 
 French literature he was invariably criticised. When 
 he thought Becourt's Sur la Creation du Monde to be 
 merely an innocent attack on the Newtonian philosophy, 
 he was mortified to find that certain persons contem- 
 plated its censorship by the government as an offense 
 against religion. In these affairs, Jefferson's country- 
 men showed themselves in a bad light; once they had 
 boon willing enough to receive French gold, now they 
 seemed to fear the Gauls even when they were bearing 
 
100 MATERIALISM 
 
 gifts. Wiiat this narrow attitude led to, and how the 
 Gallic invasion was checked has been pointed out. If 
 French ideas had really penetrated Virginia society 
 they would have become as dominant in the South as 
 Gennan ideas later became in the North ; it was one of 
 the difficult tasks in Southern educational history to 
 dislodge French philosophy from its academic strong- 
 holds in North and South Carolina ; it was done by 
 a strong current of Scotch Presbyterianism proceeding 
 from Princeton College southwards. And so it was that 
 after all his endeavors to introduce the philosophical cul- 
 ture of France, the President's plans seem to have met 
 with defeat. 
 
 2. Joseph Priestley, and the Homogeneity of Man 
 
 In 1794 there came to America Joseph Priestley, 
 metaphysician and materialist. In the words of Jeffer- 
 son, he fled from the fires and mobs of Birmingham in 
 order to gain a refuge in the land of free thought. His 
 reputation, based on his discovery of oxygen, preceded 
 him and insured his welcome. Also his particular praise 
 of Franklin in his history of electricity, prejudiced 
 Americans in his favor. In this history Franklinisra 
 was used to explain the constitution of matter. Instead 
 of that coarse and impenetrable substance which it is 
 generally represented to be, Priestley utilizes the con- 
 ception of the American's electrical fluid as consisting 
 of particles extremely subtle, since it ,can permeate 
 common matter. 
 
 We have here Franklinism combined with a dynamism 
 much like that of Colden's. It is interesting to know 
 how the distinguished English chemist unites these doc- 
 trines in order to explain the relations of mind and 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTL-EY Wl 
 
 body. His aim is to show that these apparently contra- 
 dictory substances are really homogeneous. He renders 
 them of like substance by performing a contrary process 
 upon each. ]\Iind he coarsens to a certain degree ; matter 
 he attenuates to a like degree. There is now a common 
 area upon which the two substances overlap. This is 
 human nature, for in man there is a meeting-point where 
 the two substances are harmoniously joined. No longer 
 is body that coarse and impenetrable substance which 
 it is generally represented to be. No longer is mind 
 that indefinite and aerated substance to which tradition 
 has held. No, the two are practically consubstantial 
 and one can be put in terms of the other. Indeed, the 
 learned author has no objection, if his critics choose to 
 call this matter by the name of spirit. Nor does he ob- 
 ject if they say that he is materializing mind. His ulti- 
 mate object, he contends, is to show that there is no 
 real conflict between mind and matter, since one sub- 
 stance may admit of the properties of both, if that 
 substance be characterized by active powers and impene- 
 trability. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of anthropological materialism. 
 It appeared so novel to most Americans that it was little 
 appreciated and less understood. In spite of the author's 
 friendship with Franklin and with Jefferson, and in 
 spite of his seeking in America a refuge for free thought, 
 this Priestleyanism, as it was called, was violently at- 
 tacked. For example, these three inferences were drawn 
 from the supposition that the whole human constitution 
 was made up of one homogeneous substance; first, that 
 there is no distinction between the soul of man and the 
 body; second, that the idea of the natural immortality 
 of the soul is wholly fallacious; and third, that the 
 properties of sensation and thought must be extinguished 
 
162 MATExlIALISM 
 
 by the dissolution of the organized mass in which they 
 exist. To explain the unpopularity of Priestleyanism 
 we need only point out how these inferences ran counter 
 to current beliefs. The first was against the dualism of 
 the day. The second was against the prevalent hope 
 that the soul is by nature indestructible. The third im- 
 plied a belief in pantheism. Now, of these three doc- 
 trines it is clear that the first two were opposed to the 
 past, and the third was an anticipation of the future. 
 For their doctrine of dualism, the men of the eighteenth 
 century looked back to the authority of Descartes. For 
 the doctrine of natural immortality, they relied upon the 
 Christian tradition. These were positive factors against 
 which Priestley had to contend. Finally, the coming na- 
 tive form of pantheism, the doctrine of an immanent 
 world-soul, had not yet received clear expression. It 
 remained for Emerson to brush away the difficulties 
 that were offered by a world of apparently passive 
 matter. 
 
 Priestley's system was carried from Pennsylvania 
 into the South by his son-in-law, Thomas Cooper. In 
 spite of his ingenuity, this companion of the great 
 chemist had a personality which antagonized the public. 
 He was attacked by the clergy when proposed by Jeffer- 
 son as first professor of natural science and law in the 
 University of Virginia. He was indicted in Pennsyl- 
 vania for his violent writings against the Federal party. 
 Finally he engaged in the nullification agitation in South 
 Carolina. In short, he was a living example of his own 
 doctrine of nervous irritability. He had, however, one 
 advantage over Priestley in his wider knowledge of the 
 literature of materialism from Blount to Broussais. 
 Thereby he is able to show that Priestley's historic 
 method was as diffused and porous as that homogeneous 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 103 
 
 matter for which he contended. So. too, in his View 
 of the Metaphysical and Physiological Arguments in 
 Favar of Materialism he is able to state the arguments 
 on both sides in a way that his okler colleague could not. 
 Thus, he shows that the prime argument for immaterial- 
 ism is, that from matter and motion nothing but matter 
 and motion can result. Hence life and the properties 
 connected with it must have been originally impressed 
 by that being to whom all creation is to be ascribed. 
 But this statement, which favors creationism. Cooper 
 cannot accept. He therefore takes up another line of 
 reasoning in favor of his doctrine: The chief meta- 
 physical argument is that one thing is the property 
 of another because of the universality in which they 
 accompany each other. Such is the necessary connection 
 between the nervous system of animals and the proper- 
 ties of sensation and of perception. These properties 
 are inseparable, for no one can explain how the im- 
 material soul can act on a material body, witliout hav- 
 ing one property in common with it. But let the 
 soul have no property in common with matter, then 
 neither can act upon the other, else one might conceive 
 of erecting the Coliseum of Rome by playing Haydn's 
 Rondeau. 
 
 Cooper next turns from metaphysics to physiology. 
 We need not resort, he continues, to the doctrine of 
 some distinct and superadded being, such as the in- 
 tellectual, sensitive, or vital soul of the ancients, since 
 that would give an immortal soul to an opossum or an 
 oyster. Nor need we resort to some being of analogous 
 existence to the immaterial soul of the orthodox, for, if 
 the seat of the soul be in the medullary substance, then 
 has it all the properties of matter. On the contrary, 
 all the mental phenomena are explicable as phenomena 
 
104 MATERIALISM 
 
 of the body, or attributable to the nature of the society 
 in which we are thrown. For example, a man born and 
 educated in Constantinople will have one set of im- 
 pressions and associations, and a man with a similar 
 arrangement of nervous apparatus, bom among the 
 Quakers of Philadelphia, will have another. All this 
 is the result of generating causes extraneous to the 
 system. 
 
 In this emphasis on the external or environmental, 
 Cooper strikes a fresh note, for when he says that the 
 intellectual faculties vary with education and with 
 habitual difference in the stimuli applied, he is approach- 
 ing the coming doctrine of plasticity. This is a valuable 
 addition to the doctrine of homogeneity. It brings in 
 the principle of differentiation. Granted that man is of 
 one substance and that there is a like nature among men, 
 how are we to account for the varieties among races? 
 Cooper was on the verge of the new evolutionary theories. 
 What Lamarck was doing in France, he had a chance to 
 do in America, but it remained for another thinker of 
 South Carolina to carry out the principles of environ- 
 ment to a logical conclusion. It was not Thomas Cooper 
 but Joseph Leidy whom Charles Darwin acknowledged 
 to have anticipated, in a measure, the principle of natu- 
 ral selection. That principle, as a partial resultant of 
 materialism, w^e shall recur to later. 
 
 3. Benjamin Rush, and Mental Healing 
 
 In Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia we have the 
 most notable of the American medical materialists of 
 the eighteenth century. His reputation was due not so 
 much to the high offices he held, such as that of physician- 
 general of the Continental Army and professor of the 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 105 
 
 institutes of medicine in the new University of Penn- 
 sylvania, as to his anticipations of modem thought. 
 As a metaphysician he is at times weak, but as a phj'si- 
 cian he shows himself cognizant of such difficult dis- 
 coveries as the cure of mental disorders by suggestion. 
 He has been called the father of psychiatry in America. 
 That is a true description, for his whole life was filled 
 with speculations as to the practical application of 
 mental medicine. These speculations began with his 
 early work, the Influence of Physical Causes upon the 
 Maral Faculty. At that time the mental faculty was 
 considered something apart from the physical. It was 
 a faculty which had a high office, as it never mingled 
 with the material. Indeed, the moral sense was so 
 sublimated that it was made almost unreal. It was an 
 intuition, an instinct, mysterious in its movements. 
 Rush changed all this. He showed that the moral 
 faculty could be treated in a scientific way. It was not 
 like a sensitive plant, acting without reflection; it was 
 rather something subject to physical influences. This 
 conception, of course, ran counter to current beliefs. It 
 seemed to be a base materializing of a lofty spiritual 
 principle. To meet this prejudice Rush attacks the 
 problem in the form of an indirect question : Do we 
 observe a connection between the intellectual faculties 
 and the degrees of consistency and firmness of the brain 
 in infancy and childhood? The same connection has 
 been observed between the strength and the prog- 
 ress of the moral faculty in children. Do we observe 
 instances of a total want of memory, imagination, and 
 judgment, either from an original defect in the stamina 
 of the brain, or from the influence of phj^sical causes? 
 The same unnatural defect has been ob.servcd. and prob- 
 ably from the same causes, of a moral faculty. A nerv- 
 
106 MATERIALISM 
 
 oils fover may cause the loss not only of memory but 
 of the habit of veracity. The former is called amnesia, 
 the latter unnamed malady will compel a woman, be she 
 even in easy circumstances, to fill her pocket secretly 
 with bread at the table of a friend. 
 
 In this judicious parallel drawn between the physical 
 and the psychical, we see Rush's method of approach 
 upon the dark things of the mind. That these things 
 were dark; that the mental operations are mysterious, 
 the physician grants when he confesses that, in ventur- 
 ing on this untrodden ground, he feels like ^neas when 
 he was about to enter the gates of Avernus, but without 
 the Sibyl to instruct him in the mysteries before him. 
 In order to clear up these winding subterranean ways, 
 he throws the clear light of definition on his pages. In 
 the case of mental derangements he begins by making a 
 definite list of the aberrations of the mind. Thus a 
 weakened action of the moral faculty is called micro- 
 nomia, its total absence anomia. These are technical 
 terms. They are mere names. But, beside them, Rush 
 offers real explanations. These aberrations, he says, 
 may be caused not only by madness and hysteria, but 
 also by all those states of the body which are accom- 
 panied by preternatural irritability, sensibility, torpor, 
 stupor, or mobility of the nervous system. It is vain, he 
 continues, to attack these accompanying vices, whether of 
 the body or of the mind, with lectures upon morality. 
 They are only to be cured by medicine and proper treat- 
 ment. Thus the young woman that lost her habit of 
 veracity by a nervous fever, recovered this virtue as soon 
 as her system recovered its natural tone. Furthermore, 
 it makes no difference whether the physical causes that 
 are to be enumerated act upon the moral faculty through 
 the medium of the senses, the passions and memory, or 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 107 
 
 the imagination. Their action is eqiiallj" certain whether 
 they act as remote, predisposing, or occasional causes. 
 For instance, the state of the weather has an unfriendly- 
 effect upon the moral sensibility, as seen in the gloomy 
 November fogs of England ; so does extreme hunger, as 
 in the case of the Indians of this country, who thus whet 
 their appetite for that savage species of warfare pecu- 
 liar to them. Again, the influence of association upon 
 morals is strong. Suicide is often propagated by the 
 newspapers and monstrous crimes by the publication 
 of court proceedings. And as physical causes influ- 
 ence moral, so do they influence religious principles. 
 Religious melancholy and madness will yield more readily 
 to medicine than simply to polemical discourses or casu- 
 istical advice. 
 
 A treatment such as this for moral lapses must have 
 shocked the community. Discourses upon morality had 
 hitherto been the cure for those lapses. So it seemed to 
 degrade these advices to say that a chief influence was 
 that of physical causes. Rush realized that an objection 
 would be raised from his being supposed to favor the 
 materiality of the soul. He meets the objection by say- 
 ing that he does not see that his doctrine obliges us to 
 decide upon the question of the nature of the soul. 
 Still he cannot help giving his own opinion as a ma- 
 terialist, and boldly states that matter is in its own 
 nature as immortal as spirit. 
 
 Rush's well-known essay on the Influence of Physical 
 Causes upon the Moral Faculty was followed in the last 
 year of the century by another upon the same influ- 
 ences in promoting an increase of strength and activity 
 of the intellectual faculties of man. This treatise, which 
 was delivered as an introductorj- lecture to Rush's stu- 
 dents in medicine, is a model of its kind. It is clear 
 
 > 
 
108 MATERIALISM 
 
 and intelligible ; it is scientific and practical. In a happy- 
 analogy he helps out the undergraduate in grasping the 
 mysteries of the mind. The faculties, he says, may be 
 compared to a well-organized government: the memory 
 and imagination to the House of Representatives, the 
 understanding to the Senate, in which the transactions 
 of the House of Representatives are examined, the moral 
 faculties to the Courts of Justice, the conscience to the 
 Court of Appeals. 
 
 At this point the Philadelphian begins his fruitful 
 study of abnormal mentality. This study is based on the 
 safe doctrine of the co-ordinate value of the physical 
 and psychical. Those dreams and phantasms and sup- 
 posed voices which have been superstitiously ascribed 
 to supernatural influences, the physician now explains 
 in a natural way. For instance, unfavorable changes 
 discovered in diseases in the morning are often the effect 
 occasioned by the disturbing dreams of the night before, 
 while the pain of a surgical operation is often lessened 
 by telling the patient that the worst part of it has been 
 performed. A reference like the last is remarkable 
 for that day and generation. It was the principle of 
 suggestive anesthesia stated some forty years before 
 the application of material anjestheties in America. The 
 former principle Rush had not as yet developed, for it 
 was now his purpose to render the general science of 
 mind a more exact science. He disparages metaphysics 
 as consisting only of words without ideas, of definitions 
 of nonentities. In its place he would put the stress 
 upon the physical science of the mind, for which he asks 
 to be allowed to coin the word phrenology. This was 
 another anticipation. A decade before the word was 
 used by Europeans — the American applied it to ex- 
 plain dreams. For example, he stated that whatever 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 109 
 
 part of the brain is affected, tlie dream that takes place 
 is of that nature; different parts of the brain being 
 allotted to the different faculties and operations of the 
 mind. Thus, if the moral part is affected, we dream of 
 committing crime, at the very thought of which we 
 shudder when awake. 
 
 We shall see later how phrenology was rendered ridic- 
 ulous by misuse. At this point we may only note that 
 Rush used it in the sensible way of brain localization. 
 His suggestions of this period were supplemented by 
 more exact descriptions of mental derangements in 
 some remarkable little papers on the " Different 
 Species of Phobia and Mania." Among the former are 
 instanced the cat-phobia, and the solo-phobia, the phobia 
 being well defined as a fear of an imaginary evil, or an 
 undue fear of a real one. Troubles like these may be 
 cured, asserts the doctor. To compose and regulate 
 the passion, there are to be found means ranging from 
 the physical influence of music to the removal of painful 
 associations of ideas, as when a fever, got while out 
 gunning, was cured bj^ removing the gun from the ill 
 man's room. So much for the psychical side; the physi- 
 cal is now expanded in the statement that all operations 
 in the mind are the effects of motions previously ex- 
 cited in the brain, and every idea and thought appears 
 to depend upon a motion peculiar to itself. A state- 
 ment like this might almost be counted a rough formula- 
 tion of the modern theory of psyeho-physieal parallel- 
 ism. At the least, it is a practical working hypothesis, 
 or, as Rush puts it, a system of principles that shall 
 lead to general success in the treatment of the diseases 
 of the mind. 
 
 This last phrase is the title of the work which gives 
 to Rush his chief claim to fame. In it the American 
 
110 MATERIALISM 
 
 alienist seeks to discover tlie various causes of intel- 
 lectual derangements. Briefly put, these are of two 
 classes: first, those that act directly upon the body, as 
 malconformations and lesions of the brain ; second, those 
 that act indirectly upon the body through the medium 
 of the mind, as intense study over the means of dis- 
 covering perpetual motion, or even researches into the 
 meaning of certain biblical prophecies. Rush next takes 
 up the difficult subject of the derangement of the will, 
 in which subject he is declared to have led his genera- 
 tion and forecasted the later work of the French school. 
 At this time he was in touch with the Gallic specula- 
 tions for the treatment of such a negative affection of 
 the will as aboulia, or what he would call a debility or 
 torpor, or loss of all sensibility to the stimulus of mo- 
 tives. This disorder may be cured in two ways: From 
 the physical side he has been informed by his friend 
 Brissot that animal magnetism will cure like cases; 
 for himself he prefers the psychical remedy, what we 
 would now call mental suggestion. In fact, he actually 
 anticipates the modem formula of the will to believe 
 when he states, that a palsy of the limbs has been cured 
 by the cry of fire, and a dread of being burned. Why, 
 he asks, should not a palsy of the will be cured in a 
 similar manner? There is a more subtle mental dis- 
 order connected with that of the will, it is a palsy of 
 the believing faculty. For this form of a weak mental di- 
 gestion. Rush's treatment is to go back to a plain in- 
 tellectual diet. If the will to believe is deficient, the 
 remedy should consist in putting propositions of the 
 most simple nature to the mind, and after gaining assent 
 to them, to rise to propositions of a more difficult nature. 
 That the mind is capable of re-education is now seen 
 in a negative way. Just as there are various forms of a 
 
I 
 
 BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 111 
 
 weak will, so are there of a weak raemor5^ There may 
 be an oblivion of names and vocables, or of the sounds 
 of words, but not of the letters which compose them, of 
 the qualities or numbers of the most familiar objects, 
 of events, time, and place. These different varieties 
 of forgetfulness are summed up in the remarkable 
 case of an Italian victim of yellow fever, who, in the 
 beginning of his malady spoke only English, in the 
 middle only French, and on the day of his death only 
 the language of his native country. And just as there is 
 a discontinuous memory in fevers, so there may be a 
 continuous memory in trances. Here was a hint of the 
 later French discoveries that by means of subconscious 
 states it is possible to patch up the lost recollections of 
 the normal conscience into an unbroken secondary series. 
 To Rush the best instance of this so-called dual personal- 
 ity is somnambulism. Somnambulists, he asserts, recol- 
 lect in each fit what they did in the preceding one. 
 They appear to have two distinct minds, but he in- 
 quires, may this not be owing to impressions made on 
 the other parts of the brain and excited by the same 
 stimulus ? 
 
 It is unfortunate that the Philadelphia physician did 
 not have an opportunity to work on such interesting 
 cases as these. He complains that such abnormal experi- 
 ences are commonly considered to be supernatural and 
 that people are averse to having them treated in a sci- 
 entific way. At that time there was little field for the 
 application of Rush 's theories outside of his own private 
 patients, with a single exception. That exception re- 
 ferred to what he calls his system of Christian juris- 
 prudence, in which he tried to apply to public institu- 
 tions like the Philadelphia jail the principles of a 
 merciful mental healing. In a final passage, which 
 
112 MATERIALISM 
 
 anticipates by a full century the modern treatment of 
 the criminal insane, Rush speaks thus feelingly: 
 
 It would be as absurd to inflict the punishment of death upon 
 a fellow creature for taking away a Hfe under a deranged 
 state of the will, as for a surgeon to cut off an arm or a 
 leg because in its convulsive motions it injured a toilet or 
 overset a tea table. Now, while these morbid operations of 
 the will may include in their consequences even theft and 
 murder, yet they are to be considered, not as vices, but as 
 symptoms of a disease. Therefore, for persons thus afflicted 
 legislators should abolish the punishment of death, cropping, 
 branding, and public whipping, and substitute for them con- 
 finement, labour, simple diet, cleanliness, and affectionate 
 treatment. As is shown by the moral effects thus produced in 
 the jail of Philadelphia, the reformation of criminals and the 
 prevention of crimes can be better effected by livmg than by 
 dead examples! 
 
 It is somewhat of a problem to find out why with such 
 a good foundation for mental healing in America, the 
 subject was not properly developed. To obtain a solu- 
 tion we shall have to make a drag-net of generaliza- 
 tion. There were two schools in the country which 
 were destined to have different opinions about the rela- 
 tions of mind and body. Following Rush's example, we 
 find the Philadelphia school emphasizing the reciprocal 
 influences of the physical and psychical. Thus, Provost 
 Beasley of the University of Pennsylvania asserted that 
 in every case in which there is performed an operation 
 of the mind, there takes place, at the same time, a cor- 
 respondent, correlative, and consentient operation of the 
 body. Here was a good alliterative anticipation of the 
 formula of psycho-physical parallelism, in which the 
 . material side of human nature is given its due. Now 
 we can say that this just balance was owing to the 
 influence of the English materialists Ilobbes and Hart- 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 113 
 
 ley, Darwin and Priestley, and the French materialists 
 from Holbach to Cabanis. 
 
 Over against the Southern followers of these material- 
 ists we may put the immaterialists of New England and 
 the North. These were the followers of Cudworth and 
 Norris, of Berkeley and Edwards. They emphasized the 
 principles of pure reason at the expense of the principles 
 of physiology. They were descendants of ascetic Puri- 
 tans and so attempted to live on supersensible realities. 
 Moreover, Plato being their spiritual father, they sought 
 to disparage the body and to cure the ills of the flesh 
 by denying their real existence. They were so bent on 
 cultivating the inner self, that they neglected the bodily 
 self. Emerson himself said of this kind of transcen- 
 dentalism, that it was the Saturnalia or excess of faith, 
 wanting the restraining grace of common sense. 
 
 From this point there stretch before us two diverging 
 lines of possible development. For reasons to be ex- 
 plained later, Americans did not try to strike a balance 
 between these lines, but flew off on two tangents. One 
 group leaned toward the materialistic side, another to the 
 idealistic. Among the former were the mesmerists, the 
 phrenologists, the electro-biologists. Among the latter 
 were the spiritualists and so-called new thoughters. A 
 rational development in the materialistic direction was 
 blocked by an unfortunate revival of some crude theories 
 of the olden time and the exaggerations of these theories 
 in the form of animal magnetism. It will be recalled 
 that old-fashioned English corporealists. like Thomas 
 Ilobbes. believed tl.at the gap between mind and matter 
 could be passed over by means of the animal spirits 
 which were thought of as so many volatile gases in a 
 retort, — subtle and invisible fluids similar to the prod- 
 ucts of the alchemist's distillation. These good old- 
 
114 MATERIALISM 
 
 fashioned spirits were united with the late eighteenth- 
 centuiy notions regarding the electric fluid, and thus 
 was obtained a composite elastic and electric fluid. This 
 had a twofold function. As an elastic fluid it was the 
 medium of communication between the individual's 
 brain and his body. As an electric fluid it could be pro- 
 jected beyond the limits of the individual; thus arose 
 thought-transference, clairvoyance, and mental healing, 
 both local and long-distance. 
 
 So far, we have merely an Anglo-American combina- 
 tion of Hobbism and Franklinism. This w^as made more 
 potent by being rendered occult. The French came in 
 and mesmerism aided the medical theory by means of 
 physical affluxes and the magnetic-sympathetic system 
 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is strange 
 how theories from different countries were united in the 
 notorious movement called animal magnetism. The ball 
 was started rolling in America by Franklin himself, al- 
 though he came later to stop it. The invention of the 
 lightning conductor stimulated the popular imagination 
 by rendering the marvelous probable. Now there was 
 palpable proof of the electric fluid as subtle and uni- 
 versally diffused and this seemed to corroborate the 
 theory of Mesmer that there was a radiation from all 
 things, but especially from the stars, magnets, and hu- 
 man bodies, of a force which could act in all things 
 else and which was in each case directed by the indwell- 
 ing spirit. This was Mesmer 's theoretical postulate. 
 His practical achievement consisted in application of 
 these occult doctrines in the way of psycho-therapeutics. 
 He took hold of the so-called universal radiating fluid 
 and applied it to the sick by means of contacts and 
 passes. When he claimed that he could effect cures irre- 
 spective of age, temperament, and sex, it can be seen 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 115 
 
 how his practice became a scandal. At last Franklin had 
 his revenge for the misuse of his scientific views. When 
 the French king appointed royal commissioners to in- 
 vestigate mesmerism, the name of the American am- 
 bassador headed the list. That Franklin's common sense 
 was outraged by the claims of the mesmerists appears 
 from the severe language of the royal report. It con- 
 cluded as follows : ' ' The commissioners have ascertained 
 that the animal magnetic fluid is not perceptible by 
 any of the senses ; that it has no action, either on them- 
 selves or on the patients subjected to it. They are con- 
 vinced that pressure and contact effect changes which 
 are rarely favorable to the animal system, and which 
 injuriously affect the imagination. Finally, thoy have 
 demonstrated by decisive experiments that imagination 
 apart from magnetism produces convulsions, and that 
 magnetism without imagination produces nothing." 
 
 The effect of these strictures upon the fate of imma- 
 terialism in America can be imagined. Franklin's name 
 carried great weight and his countrymen so trusted him 
 that they did not question his criticism. In a w^ay, it 
 is an historical calamity that in this famous report the 
 kernel of truth was lost in the heap of rubbish. Under- 
 neath ]\resmer's talk about passes and contacts and com- 
 plicated apparatus of tractors there lay the true prin- 
 ciple of suggestion, namely, that through suggestion the 
 subject may regain his nervous stability, relieve him- 
 self of mental overtension, and so tone up the system as 
 to hasten the process of cure. 
 
 Animal magnetism, with its good and its evil, was kept 
 out of the country for a full generation. It came in 
 again, not by means of legitimate practitioners, but by 
 means of quacks and extremists. The first of these was 
 Charles Poyen, who had been " cured mesmerically" of 
 
116 MATERIALISM 
 
 a nervous disorder, and in 1837 published his Progress 
 of Animal Magnetism in New England. In the same 
 year came Duraut's Exposition, or a New Theory of 
 Animal Magnetism with a Key to the Mysteries. In this 
 animal magnetism is declared to be a branch of elec- 
 tricity, a science which gives a new life to the religious 
 principle, creates a new method of pathological investi- 
 gation, and settles therapeutics on a basis hitherto un- 
 known to the medical world. 
 
 Finally, there came a localized form of mesmerism, 
 Dr. Grimes's electro-biology, which started the whole 
 tribe of Yankee magnetic healers. This is not the place 
 to show how this exaggerated materialism was turned 
 into a propaganda among the pious. It would lead to a 
 long digression to explain that incredible American mix- 
 ture of religion and medicine which has been noted by 
 foreign observers. It is enough to say that we did not 
 have the good fortune of France, where certain physi- 
 cians took up the subject scientifically and developed 
 out of the magical beliefs of Mesmer the real phenomena 
 of hypnotism, hysteria, and suggestion. Nor have we 
 time to more than suggest the direction of the other 
 line of development of mental medicine. In that diverg- 
 ing wedge of early tendencies the immaterialistic side, 
 the line of emphasis upon the spiritual was apparently 
 lost. The fact was, it was only latent, for the idealistic 
 emphasis upon the primacy of mind lay dormant in 
 American thought. It was last seen in the works of 
 Johnson and Edwards. It did not reappear during the 
 course of deism, nor that of materialism. It only came 
 to life again when the warmth of the transcendental 
 movement reached it. In Emerson we find a constant 
 appeal to self-reliance, to the ability of the mind to 
 comfort itself against the adversities of life. 
 
BENJAMIN RUSH, AND MENTAL HEALING 117 
 
 Self-reliance and the supremacy of the spiritual — 
 these two tenets of Emerson suffice to explain the re- 
 vival of immaterialistic mental healing in our day. 
 Just as the earlier idealism of colonial times was 
 thwarted in its growth by such events as the war of in- 
 dependence and the conquests of the English colonies, so 
 the idealism of the nineteenth century was thwarted by 
 another war, and a further conquest of the continent. 
 But the longing of the native mind for the super- 
 sensible; the true mystic conviction that spirit can con- 
 quer matter — if that be considered as dull, dead, inert — 
 that conviction never died. It has again come to life 
 and we have an immaterialism of the present day with 
 works which range in value from Hudson's Laws of 
 Psychic Phenomena to AVilliam James's Energies of 
 Men and the Will to Believe. 
 
 We have left the two lines of mental healing in 
 America at their widest point of divergence. On the 
 one hand there was the extreme materialistic view which 
 emphasized the bodily function. On the other hand, 
 there is the current emphasis on the psychical. At pres- 
 ent the prevailing tendency is to appeal to supernumer- 
 ary powers of the mind such as the subconscious. This 
 is the side taken up by the laity and one in which the 
 regular medical profession takes comparatively slight 
 interest. For a just development of the two sides, the 
 lines must be drawn nearer together. It is desirable 
 that in our medical schools we should return to the prac- 
 tice of Dr. Rush of a century and a half ago, which 
 means that a student should be required to study psy- 
 chology in connection with physiology. This would seem 
 to promise a correction of extravagances and to lead back 
 to the old principle of the Philadelphia school, that there 
 is a co-ordinate value in the study of mind and body. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 REALISM 
 
 1. The Scottish Influences 
 
 Natural realism, according to an early American 
 exponent, consists in the doctrine that the mind per- 
 ceives not merely the ideas or images of external ob- 
 jects but the external objects themselves. In short, 
 the distinguishing mark of such metaphysics is an 
 appeal from the delusive principles of the idealism 
 of Berkeley and the skepticism of Hume to the com- 
 mon sense of mankind as a tribunal paramount to 
 all the subtleties of philosophy. This is the defini- 
 tion of Samuel Miller, the Princeton historian of the 
 eighteenth century, in his exposition of the system of 
 Reid. It may be supplemented by a defense of Presi- 
 dent McCosh, the pupil of Hamilton, two genera- 
 tions later. Realism, says the latter, is that system 
 which holds that there are real things and that man 
 can know them ; that we have no need to resort to 
 such theories as those of internal ideas or occasional 
 causes coming between the perceiving mind and the per- 
 ceived objects; but that the mind knows directly and 
 intuitively three kinds of reality: first, matter, whether 
 existing in the body or out of the body as external, ex- 
 tended, and resisting; second, the perceiving self as 
 thinking or willing, a reality as certain and definite as 
 matter, but perceived by self-consciousness and not the 
 external senses; third, the objects perceived by our con- 
 
 118 
 
THE SCOTTISH INFLUENCES 119 
 
 science or moral perception, the higher knowledge of 
 voluntary acts as being morally good or evil. 
 
 Such is that natural realism which has been claimed 
 to be the American philosophy. This claim is true if one 
 considers realism's rapid growth, its wide spread, and 
 its tenacious hold upon the popular mind. Brought in 
 as a transatlantic offshoot of the Scotch school, it over- 
 ran the country, and had an exclusive and preponderant 
 influence well beyond the centennial of the country's in- 
 dependence. For this astonishing success several rea- 
 sons have been given : not only was the common sense 
 philosophy of Reid, Stewart, Brown, and Hamilton in 
 harmony with the practical note of the country, but it 
 was also an aid to faith, a safeguard to morality as 
 against the skepticism of Hume and the atheism of the 
 Voltairians. 
 
 But there are further reasons, which may be con- 
 sidered from two points of view: internally as intrinsic 
 excellences; externally as adventitious aids. Looked at 
 from within, natural realism is claimed to possess a 
 unity not only in the circumstances that its expounders 
 have been Scotchmen but also in its method, its doctrine, 
 and its spirit. Its method is that of observation and 
 induction, and not of analysis and deduction, which 
 explains phenomena by mere assumed principles. Its 
 doctrine is that of self-consciousness as the instrument of 
 observation, and not the mere obser^-ation of the brain 
 or nerves which tends to neglect our inward experienee. 
 Its spirit is that of common sense, which, by direct 
 awareness and not by a chain of reasoning, reaches prin- 
 ciples which are natural, original, and necessary. We 
 shall have to consider later if these points are really 
 excellences. 
 
 At first sight natural realism makes a false simplifica- 
 
120 REALISM 
 
 tion like a child's picture of a man, and the adult 
 realist's mind seems to work more easily than that of the 
 child once portrayed by the idealist. "Without looking 
 further from within we must now consider the matter 
 from without. Besides intrinsic excellences there were 
 adventitious aids which contributed to the success of the 
 movement. First, it happened to fit the needs of educa- 
 tional and ecclesiastical orthodoxy. It was not, as in 
 Scotland, favored by the union of church and state, 
 but by the peculiar American combination of church 
 and college. Here not only was the philosophy of 
 reality convenient, compact, and teachable, appealing 
 to a common sense of which every youngster had some 
 spark, but it was also an eminently safe philosophy 
 which kept undergraduates locked in so many intel- 
 lectual dormitories, safe from the dark speculations of 
 materialism and the beguiling allurements of idealism. 
 Or, as the details have been given by another, Hobbes, 
 because of his atomism, was considered a guide to athe- 
 ism ; Hume, because of his skepticism, the arch-enemy of 
 orthodoxy, while Berkeley was always suspected to be a 
 leader in the same direction. Therefore, to prevent the 
 undermining of the faith, college professors took philos- 
 ophy seriously and not speculatively, and a religious 
 bias helped to determine the hold of realism in educa- 
 tion. 
 
 A second cause for the success of realism lay in the 
 organizations upon which it chanced to fasten. In its 
 propaganda it used most of the denominational colleges 
 on the Atlantic seaboard, and was also backed by the 
 denominations themselves. Here the churches, like well- 
 constructed machines, turned out uniform sets of opin- 
 ions all fitting the same mold of common sense; to ob- 
 tain many men of one mind, the Protestant clergy of 
 
THE SCOTTISH INFLUENCES 121 
 
 these times were practically all formed from the Scotch 
 pattern, the text-books of Reid and Stewart, Bcattic 
 and Hamilton coming from the native press in an almost 
 unbroken series of editions, A third cause of the suc- 
 cess of realism was the character of the immigration 
 into the country. Between the Now Englandcrs and 
 their modiiied Calvinism, and the Southerners with 
 their diluted Arminianism, there came a wave of new 
 settlers, which on touching the American shore spread 
 itself more widely than any other. The Scotch-Irish, 
 entering chiefly by way of the ports of the Middle 
 States, carried along with their Presbyterian connec- 
 tions their philosophy of common sense. To trace this 
 movement into the Alleghany Mountains and down the 
 valleys of Virginia and of the Cumberland, is to trace a 
 kind of intellectual glacier, an overwhelming mass of 
 cold dogma which moved slowly southwards and ground 
 out all opposition. This glacial age in American thought 
 was of the greatest significance. Because of it deism dis- 
 appeared, save in the tide-water counties where planters 
 of English blood still remained, and materialism was 
 wiped out, save in the Gallicized portions of the country, 
 such as the Carolinas, and the Bourbon sections of Ken- 
 tucky. 
 
 That the union of church and college was a fortuitous 
 aid to the spread of realism is clear from the fate of its 
 rivals. Deism lacked new blood because English pioneers 
 of the cultured class had ceased coming to the countr}\ 
 Idealism languished because its special means of com- 
 munication, the Anglican church, was practically a chan- 
 nel cut off; few scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, no 
 ecclesiastic of the type of Berkeley came into the coun- 
 tr>' after the second war with England. But it was 
 materialism that suffered most for want of those auxili- 
 
122 REALISM 
 
 aries under which realism flourished. As compared with 
 realism the coutrast is striking. Immigration did not 
 help it, and sparks struck out by men like Priestley and 
 Cooper were a mere flash in the pan. Nor were the 
 colleges of much avail ; the University of Pennsylvania 
 by political mismanagement, Transylvania by its poverty 
 and remoteness, and the University of Virginia by politi- 
 cal complications, were together rendered inoperative as 
 aids to materialism. Even if Jefferson's late conversion 
 from materialism to realism had been known, his political 
 affiliations would have damaged him in the sight of the 
 orthodox. Thus, by way of contrast, the elder Presi- 
 dent Dwight of Yale had more weight in the scales of 
 orthodox philosophy than the President of the United 
 States himself; the one standing for respectable federal- 
 ism, the other for infidel democracy. But the lack of 
 efficient organization was the great drawback to the 
 materialistic cause. Had Jefferson succeeded in found- 
 ing his central society after the model of the French 
 Academy, had there been anything approaching the 
 Royal Society of England in the whole land, scientific 
 investigations like those of Golden and of Rush might 
 have received the stamp of institutional approval. 
 
 If these are mere conjectures as to what might have 
 happened, what did really happen was that materialism, 
 left to itself as a mere speculative movement, practically 
 disappeared from the field of thought, and that a rival 
 movement which was backed up by a strong organiza- 
 tion, a rigid faith, and well-trained agents, with all its 
 faults, inconsistencies, contradictions, and superficiali- 
 ties, remained as the dominant force in the field. Such 
 a force was Scottish realism, which held the Atlantic 
 States as a private preserve and Princeton College as 
 its hunting lodge. 
 
THE PRINCETf N SCHf f L 123 
 
 2, The Princeton SciietL 
 
 Traditionally Princeton is committed to a realistic 
 metaphysics as opposed to agnosticism, materialism, or 
 idealism. This is the opinion of one of its historians at 
 the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the found- 
 ing of the institution. The opinion is that of one who 
 takes pride in an air-tight system ; yet it has the advan- 
 tage of summing up the early history of the college as 
 it passed through successive reactions to the current 
 phases of speculation. First, it was opposed to the ag- 
 nosticism of extreme deism, considering the age of rea- 
 son as little else but the age of infidelity ; next, it was 
 opposed to materialism, whether that meant a no-soul 
 psychology as with Buchanan, or a reduction of psy- 
 chology to a psyehologj"- of the nerves as with Cooper, 
 or an identification of body and mind as with Priestley. 
 Lastly, it was opposed to idealism in all its forms. In 
 place of the mediate perception of Berkeley, Hume, and 
 Kant, the Scotch intuition puts immediate perception, 
 a direct knowledge of real qualities in things. In brief, 
 the Princeton system was a complete dualism: in its 
 cosmology, between the world and deity; in its psy- 
 chology, between soul and body; in its epistemology, 
 between .subject and object. 
 
 The advantage of such a dualism was the avoidance 
 of the difficulty of trying to think things together. Now 
 this accommodation of its teaching to the general in- 
 telligence led realists like McCosh to claim that such 
 a natural realism as was taught at Princeton was what 
 an American philosophy should be. The claim may be 
 disputed, yet it has in its favor the fact that the College 
 of New Jersey, from its verj^ foundation, had impressed 
 upon it a national character, inasmuch as it was not the 
 
124 REALISM 
 
 college of an established church, nor of a single colony, 
 nor of a people sprung from a single nationality, but 
 had for its charter an undenominational document, for 
 its heads graduates of Harvard and Yale, Glasgow 
 and Edinburgh, and for its students the sons of Eng- 
 lish Friends, New England Puritans, and Presbyterians 
 from Scotland and Ireland. But although in this con- 
 nection it be granted that Princeton was the freest col- 
 lege in the country in its beginnings, it was hardly so 
 in its development. A fatal polemic spirit seized hold 
 of it, and as the institution passed through three external 
 stages, corresponding to the three speculative movements 
 of the age, it grew more and more restricted and unre- 
 eeptive. 
 
 During the Revolutionary War Nassau Hall was a 
 refuge for the military, but not for the intellectuals; 
 it received Washington and his forces, but shut out 
 the stray followers of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, 
 and Darwin. In a word, the college which had been a 
 defense of the faith against the attacks of the deists 
 became what one of the defenders of natural realism 
 has called a bulwark of impregnable truth before which 
 all forms of error and irreligion must give way. To 
 explain this state of affairs a parallel may be drawn. 
 As Princeton, situated on the highway between New 
 York and Philadelphia, was a critical battleground be- 
 tween the British and the Americans, so it became a 
 position of strategic importance between the idealists 
 of the North and the materialists of the South. But 
 in the latter case, the victory over the opposing forces 
 was gained only at considerable expense, the loss of a 
 certain spirit of liberality, due to the replacement of 
 speculation by dogma, of philosophy by theology. Start- 
 ing as a non-ecclesiastical body, formed by the broader 
 
THE PRINCETON SCHOOL 125 
 
 men of the synod of New York, a Presbyterian form 
 of belief came in with Witherspoon, increased with 
 Stanhope Smith, until with the appearance of Ashbel 
 Green in 1812, the theological seminar}^ so dominated the 
 college, that the two were persistently identified up 
 to the very sesquicentennial of the University. 
 
 All this may serve to explain the Princetonian claim 
 that it was the Scottish- American realism, and not New 
 England transcendentalism, that was to be considered, 
 in largest measure, the peculiar philosophy of the coun- 
 try. Nevertheless, for the settling of these alternatives, 
 one might ask which of the two systems better fulfilled 
 the criteria of native origin, of progressiveness, of lib- 
 erality of spirit, and of toleration of other forms of 
 thought. The question is a large one and answerable only 
 after one has gained the proper historical data, data 
 which are in turn furnished only by a consideration of 
 the personal representatives of natural realism. 
 
 In its early days Nassau Hall went through a period -4 
 of unthinking placidity. But with the advent of Presi- 
 dent Witherspoon in 1768, the philosophical situation 
 became as agitated as was the political, for now Eng- 
 lish deism vanished, an American form of idealism was 
 driven forth, and Scotch realism became the official sys- 
 tem of the place. In short, the era of deduction and 
 design was succeeded by the era of induction and com- 
 mon sense, or as the new college head phrased the matter 
 — it is safer in our reasonings to trace facts upwards than 
 to reason downwards. 
 
 The accounts of the personality of Witherspoon vary. 
 A recent biographer describes him as a man of extraor- 
 dinary force, versatility, and charm ; eminent as a 
 teacher, preacher, politician, law-maker, and philosopher, 
 and with the exception of Washington, as having more 
 
126 REALISM 
 
 of the quality called presence than, perhaps, any other 
 man of his time in America. On the other hand, 
 Thomas Carlyle said that he was of a disagreeable 
 temper; Jonathan Odell satirized him as " fierce as the 
 fiercest, foremost of the first ' ' ; John Adams declared 
 him clear but a little heavy in his speech ; and President 
 Stiles of Yale shrewdly remarked that while the doc- 
 tor was of a reasoning make, his philosophical learning 
 was not great. In truth Witherspoon was a man of 
 action rather than reflection. As a further hindrance to 
 free speculation he had entered the country with his 
 mind somewhat rigidly made up, and at the age of five- 
 and-forty possessed ideas more conservative than those of 
 his predecessors. The former heads of the college, 
 graduates of Harvard and Yale, had been open to the 
 influences of the earlier optimistic deism; they had 
 argued in favor of this being the best possible world; 
 they had looked on the workings of nature with such 
 admiring eyes as to be well-nigh ready to grant it self- 
 sufficiency. But to the lineal descendant of John Knox 
 the external world bore a different aspect; in itself it 
 was far from being perfect or self-sufficient; rather it 
 was a created thing, a limited thing, a thing full of 
 defects. 
 
 Moreover, for those who have great charity for athe- 
 ists and deists, Witherspoon draws up, in obvious parody 
 of the Anglicans, what he denominates his Athenian 
 Creed : 
 
 I believe in the beauty and comely proportions of Dame 
 Nature, and in almighty Fate, her parent and guardian. . . . 
 I believe that the universe is a huge machine, wound up from 
 everlasting by necessity, and consisting of an infinite number 
 of links and chains, each in a progressive motion towards the 
 zenith of perfection and meridian of glory; that I myself am 
 
THE PRINCETON SCHOOL 127 
 
 a little glorious piece of clockwork, a wheel within a wheel, 
 or rather a pendulum in this gi-and machine swinging hither 
 and thither by the different impulses of fate and destiny; that 
 my soul (if I have any) is an imperceptible bundle of exceed- 
 ing minute corpuscles, much smaller than the smallest Hol- 
 land sand. ... I believe that there is no ill in the universe, 
 nor any such thing as virtue, absolutely considered; that these 
 things, vulgarly called sins, are only errors in judgment, and 
 foils to set off the beauty of nature, or patches to adorn her 
 face. 
 
 Harassed by the host of enemies raised by this 
 anonymous satire of his, "Witherspoon accepted the re- 
 peated offer of the presidency of the New Jersey Col- 
 lege, which was pressed upon him by Benjamin Rush, 
 then a student of medicine at Edinburgh, and journeyed 
 to America, where he was received as if he were the verj^ 
 prince after whom the college was named. But his 
 duties at Princeton were not easy. In teaching alone, in 
 addition to a course in moral philosophy, he included 
 lectures to the juniors and seniors upon chronology and 
 history, composition and criticism, Hebrew and French. 
 Then, too, speculative troubles stared him in the face; 
 on his arrival he found that the Irish idealism had 
 obtained a footing in the locality. According to the 
 later account of President Ashbel Green, the Berkeleian 
 system of metaphysics was in repute in the college when 
 Witherspoon entered. The tutors were zealous believers 
 in it and waited for the president with some expectation 
 of either confounding him or making him a proselyte. 
 They had mistaken their man. He first reasoned against 
 the system, and then ridiculed it till he drove it out of 
 the college. The writer has heard him stato that before 
 Reid or any other author of their views had published 
 any theory on the ideal system, he wrote against it, and 
 suggested the same trains of thought which they adopted. 
 
128 REALISM 
 
 and that he published his essay in a Scotch magazine. 
 This essay has at last been discovered, yet an extract 
 from it will show that it was but a dubious refutation 
 of Berkeleianisra, According to "Witherspoon we never 
 hear of a deceitful sound, a deceitful smell, or a de- 
 ceitful taste; but only, that the objects we see are not 
 in all respects the same as we may imagine them upon 
 the first inspection. A square tower at a distance ap- 
 pears to be round; the body of the sun seems to have 
 but two feet diameter; objects in the same line, though 
 at different distances, appear to be contiguous ; what does 
 this imply, more than that an accurate discovery of the 
 bulk, figure, and distance of bodies, cannot, and was 
 never intended to be made from sight alone ? It is very 
 probable, from the manner in which children view ob- 
 jects at first, that they appear to them all in a plain, or 
 rather that the image makes a sensible impression on 
 the retina of the eye, that it is by experience thej^ learn 
 to place them at different distances, and by the connec- 
 tion of ideas that they have an immediate perception of 
 the distance when the image strikes them. Perhaps it 
 may be objected, that color, which is allowed to be the 
 proper object of sight, and of sight alone, is not in the 
 object, and yet is supposed in it. I answer, it is as 
 much in the object as other secondary qualities are. The 
 object hath not our sensation, but a power to produce it ; 
 and there is a real difference in the object to make it of 
 a different color, viz., a peculiar disposition of its parts 
 to reflect only rays of such or such a kind. Upon the 
 whole, it is nothing else, but the very excellence of the 
 sense of sight, or its great serviceableness to us in 
 more respects than its immediate office, that gives oc- 
 casion or any plausibility to its being charged with 
 delusion. 
 
THE PRINCETON SCHOOL 129 
 
 AH that the critic offers in support of this strange 
 compound opinion, is an argument from analogj^ that 
 there are delusive or deceitful perceptions conveyed to 
 us by our senses in the natural world, that the representa- 
 tions of objects and their qualities differ from what 
 philosophy discovers them to be. Of this he gives one 
 particular instance, from the objects of sight, that a sur- 
 face appears smooth and uniform, whereas it is rough 
 and uneven when examined with a microscope. He then 
 observes in general, that it is now universally admitted, 
 that the qualities called secondary which we by natural 
 instinct attribute to matter, belong not to matter, nor 
 exist really without us; that color is not in the object, 
 etc. Now, an analogical argument cannot be more ef- 
 fectually destroyed than by showing the falsehood of the 
 fact upon which it is founded. " I affirm, therefore," 
 concludes Witherspoon, ** that the observation he makes, 
 and takes for granted, is not just ; but that the ideas we 
 receive by our senses, and the persuasions we derive im- 
 mediately from them, are exactly according to truth, to 
 real truth, which certainly ought to be the same with 
 philosophic truth." 
 
 We shall return to Witherspoon 's fight against the 
 American form of idealism. Meanwhile in his Lectures 
 on Moral Philosophy he had the distinction of being the 
 first college head in the country to set forth in his class- 
 room a definite system of ethics. This system, as Lansing 
 Collins, the editor of the recent reprint of the Lectures, 
 has said, was the realism of Thomas Reid and the Scot- 
 tish common-sense school, a philosophy not unkno^m in 
 Princeton before Witherspoon came, andfone which by 
 the labors of the next twenty-five years he was to firmly 
 intrench in the congenial soil of the New World. To 
 prove the Scotch school right Witherspoon would prove 
 
130 REALISM 
 
 that the other schools are wrong. He explains that in 
 opposition to such infidel writers as David Hume, who 
 sought to shake the certainty of our belief upon cause 
 and effect, upon personal identity, and the idea of 
 power, some writers have advanced, with great apparent 
 reason, that there are certain first principles or dictates 
 of common sense, which are either first principles, or 
 principles seen with intuitive evidence. These are the 
 foundations of all reasoning, and without them to reason 
 is a word without a meaning. They can no more be 
 proved than you can prove an axiom in mathematical 
 science. These authors of Scotland have lately pro- 
 duced and supported this opinion, to resolve at once all 
 the refinements and metaphysical objections of some in- 
 fidel writers. 
 
 Witherspoon's method of attack sheds light on the 
 most interesting philosophical event of his administra- 
 tion at the College of New Jersey. That event was his 
 successful attack on idealism. A single tutor, Joseph 
 Periam, had been the unhappy vehicle for the Berkeleian 
 metaphysics, and Stanhope Smith, the president's own 
 son-in-law and successor in office, had become infected 
 with the taint of what was described as that impious 
 skepticism which wholly denies the existence of matter. 
 According to one version, Periam, soon after his gradua- 
 tion in 1762, embraced the bishop's theory denying the 
 existence of the material universe, and Smith, who was 
 intimate with him, was thereby in great danger of mak- 
 ing shipwreck of his religious principles. Of the precise 
 manner in which immaterialism was introduced into 
 Nassau Hall we have no record. It is very unlikely that 
 Samuel Johnson's Berkeleian Elements of Philosophy 
 was used there, as it was in the Philadelphia Academy, 
 for Johnson, as head of the Episcopalian King's College 
 
THE PRINCETON SCHOOL 131 
 
 in New York, had called the rival Presbyterian College 
 of New Jersey a fountain of nonsense. 
 
 Nor did the other colonial idealist leave behind him 
 any trace of his peculiar mystical theory of knowledge. 
 Jonathan Edwards lived too short a time as president 
 of Princeton to affect the college directly. So we are 
 forced to seek a roundabout way by which idealism may 
 have filtered in. There is record of one Ebenezcr Brad- 
 ford, a Connecticut student and a subsequent advocate of 
 the Northern immaterialism, who wrote to Dr. Bellamy, 
 one of the later Edwardeans, the following ingenuous 
 tale: " Dr. Witherspoon was a great enemy to what they 
 call the Eastward or New Divinity, which was so much 
 exploded by all in college that when I came here I 
 was advised by a particular friend not to let my senti- 
 ments be known by any means, alleging it would be of 
 great disservice to me. I found two or three, however, 
 who dared to think for themselves, and we agreed to 
 promote what we judged to be truth in as private and 
 hidden manner as possible. We ventured to read some 
 of your books with the title pages cut out, which were 
 much admired by those who professed themselves ene- 
 mies to the New Divinity." 
 
 By whatever devious path idealism worked its way into 
 Princeton, it is tolerably clear, from this naive account, 
 that Witherspoon was a high conservative, preferring 
 above all things what the narrator terms ' ' notions which 
 appear greatly confined." The result of this bias was 
 practically seen in the career of Periam, who, from 
 being a " very ingenious young man," became " a verj' 
 serious man." But before this change of mind had 
 occurred, Princeton's earliest idealist had influenced a 
 person of much greater importance than himself. 
 
 Samuel Stanhope Smith, the son of an Irisli Presby- 
 
132 REALISM 
 
 terian divine, and in turn student, tutor, professor of 
 moral philosophy, and president, coming to the college 
 at the age of sixteen, before President-Elect Wither- 
 spoon had arrived from Scotland, was consigned more 
 especially to the care of tutor Periam. Now, Periam, 
 continues Smith's biographer, had not confined himself 
 to the study of mathematics, but had extended his in- 
 quiries to metaphysics also, and become infected with 
 the fanciful doctrine of Bishop Berkeley, which con- 
 sists, as is generally known, in denying the existence of 
 a material universe, and converting every object of the 
 senses into a train of fugitive perceptions. How this 
 professor, who had been habituated to the hardy pur- 
 suits of mathematical science and the inductive philos- 
 ophy, could ever have brought himself to embrace such 
 a visionary theory, a theory so repugnant to common 
 sense, and rather an object of ridicule than of serious 
 consideration, it is difficult to explain, unless it be upon 
 the principle that, having been accustomed to require 
 the most conclusive proof of everything before he as- 
 sented to its truth, he so far misconceived the subject as 
 to imagine that he must have arguments drawn from 
 reason, to convince him of the existence of an exterior 
 world, before he would admit the reality of it ; and this 
 surely is an evidence which Nature would deny him, 
 as she rests the proof of it solely and entirely upon 
 the simple testimony of the senses. However this may 
 have been, Periam had address and ingenuity enough to 
 infuse the principles of the Bishop of Cloyne into the 
 mind of Smith, and he began seriously to doubt whether 
 there were in the world such real existences as the sun, 
 moon, and stars; rivers, mountains, and human beings. 
 In this ponderous account we catch the unsympathetic 
 tone of realism toward idealism. To convert the pervert 
 
THE PRINCETON SCHOOL 133 
 
 back to the true faith the method of vilifiention is now 
 used. The account runs how, upon the arrival of Dr. 
 Witherspoon, the poor undergraduate, captivated by the 
 specious fallacies of the Bishop of Cloyne, held in 
 bondage by the silken chains of a fantastic theory, was 
 conducted out of the dark labyrinth into which he had 
 been betrayed, and from the cloudy speculations of im- 
 materialism brought back to the clear light of common 
 sense. 
 
 Stanhope Smith being the first graduate of the college 
 to become its head, Princeton was now subject to a sort 
 of intellectual inbreeding. By this the strain of realism 
 tended to become fixed. This is discovered in the writ- 
 ings of the next representative of the Princeton school. 
 In his Betrospect of the Eighteenth Century, Samuel 
 Miller informs his readers that the writers of the 
 common-sense school have contributed the most impor- 
 tant accessions which the philosophy of mind has re- 
 ceived since the time of Locke. Their first sen'icc w^as 
 to cease the senseless prattling about occult terms; their 
 next in observing the skeptical conclusions which Berke- 
 ley had dra^^Tl from the old theory of perception when 
 he contended that all the varied beauties of creation 
 which we behold are nothing more than fancy or 
 images impressed on the mind. 
 
 Here is a triple misinterpretation. It was not the 
 realists but the immaterialists who earliest attacked oc- 
 cult terms such as material " substance." Again, 
 Berkeley did not use the old theory of perception, but 
 put in its place a new theory of vision. Finally, the 
 good bishop did not draw skeptical conclusions in mak- 
 ing what are usually called material objects " mere 
 fancies, and not in accordance with the lawful language 
 of signs "; rather did he tcar-h a spiritual realism, in 
 
134 REALISM 
 
 which the objects of sense are so many alluring words 
 of a divine visual language. 
 
 Miller's Retrospect was called in irony the funeral 
 discourse of the eighteenth century. From this it might 
 easily be inferred what system he would next consign 
 to the philosophic potter's field. It was materialism. 
 Its principles he supposes many superficial thinkers 
 have been seduced into adopting by the plausible aspect 
 which it wears. Its object is to reduce all the energies 
 of intellectual and animal life to the operation of an in- 
 visible fluid secreted by the brain, and existing in eveiy 
 part of the body. But does this fluid exist? If so, it 
 explains nothing; the whole business of causation is as 
 much in the dark as ever, even after all the parade of 
 development through contractions, fibrous motions, and 
 appetencies. Indeed, the sensorial power, as applied to 
 explain the phenomena of mind, too much resembles the 
 occult qualities, the phantasms, and the essential forms 
 of the schoolmen ; for when using the word idea some- 
 times to signify the fibrous motion and sometimes the 
 sensorial, it signifies both the cause and the effect. 
 
 This is unjust. Most of the materialists in the land 
 did not pretend to explain the nature of causation, but 
 only to describe things caused. All they claimed was that 
 nervous contractions and fibrous motions were not the 
 efficients but merely the occasions of the accompanying 
 mental phenomena. They only stated that the physical 
 and the psychical occurred side by side and thus an- 
 ticipated, in large measure, the modern doctrine of 
 parallelism. But Miller cannot see the new trail which 
 was destined to open the way for the future experimental 
 psychology. Instead he concludes his work with the 
 pessimistic remark that if the physical sciences have 
 received great improvement during the century under 
 
THE LESSER REALISTS 135 
 
 consideration, it is feared that the same cannot with 
 truth be said respecting the science of the human mind ; 
 in this wide field, new experiences and discoveries, in 
 the proper sense of the word, can have no place. By 
 such a denial the Princeton historian went far to im- 
 pair the claim that realism was to be the coming philos- 
 ophy of America, for such a denial ran counter to the 
 inventive genius of his countrymen, cast reflections on 
 such psychological experiments as were framed by Rush, 
 and perhaps thereby prevented the rise of a school of 
 experimentalists among such Princetonians, for example, 
 as the electrician Joseph Henrj\ But fancies aside, the 
 facts are that the spirit of common sense left little to 
 the imagination, desired no novel inventions, but pre- 
 ferred to keep its adherents revolving in the treadmill 
 of traditional thought. In fine, the policy of the New- 
 Jersey College was to turn out safe minds content to 
 mark time in the old way. 
 
 3. The Lesser Realists 
 
 With the lesser realists we foresee the breaking up 
 of the old system. Thus Frederick Beasley recalled 
 how in the College of Princeton the fanciful theory of 
 Bishop Berkeley, as a kind of philosophical day-dream, 
 was superseded by the Scottish school, but that these 
 men had done their predecessors very great injustice. 
 Against these misinterpreters Beasley now proceeds 
 to raise against his adversaries what he calls the literary 
 tomahawk. He does this with such cruel effect as to 
 lay bare the skulls of his enemies and to discover to 
 the world brain capacities not so large as had been pre- 
 sumed. The propensity of the Scots, he exclaims, is to 
 cavil at the doctrines of preceding philosophers, espe- 
 
136 REALISM 
 
 cially Berkeley's new theory of vision and his theory 
 of the visual language. Yet these two theories may be 
 upheld by two concrete cases. There is the case of a 
 woman in Pennsylvania who, having cataracts removed 
 from both her eyes, declared that her sensations were 
 indescribably delightful, but, at the same time, her newly 
 recovered power of vision was for some time of very 
 little use to her; she was perpetually stretching out her 
 hands for fear of running against objects, being unable 
 to distinguish their distances or magnitudes. Again he 
 illustrates the justness of the observation, that in all 
 our acquired perceptions we proceed according to the 
 intei'pretation of signs, and whenever the sign of any- 
 thing is presented, the mind naturally concludes that 
 the thing signified is present. A gentleman passing 
 along the streets of Philadelphia imagines that he per- 
 ceives a steamboat in the Delaware at a distance, but 
 upon approaching it, finds that he was deceived, for 
 that the object he saw was a sign-post before an inn, 
 upon which the representation of a steamboat was rudely 
 painted. 
 
 We have here the subjective principle of interpre- 
 tation brought against the Scottish common sense with 
 its absolute and universal principles. Another instance 
 of a similar sort is found in the doctrine of relativity, 
 of a personal as against a public standard, as pro- 
 pounded by another of the lesser realists, Charles Nis- 
 bet. He explains that the old saying of Heracleitus — 
 that a man cannot go into the same river twice — applies 
 to the mental life. Every person may be said to have a 
 certain relative measure of that which is peculiar to him- 
 self and suited to his own feelings, so that a lecture in 
 philosophy may seem as long as a game of cards, though 
 the latter be actually three times longer. Nevertheless, 
 
THE LESSER REALISTS 137 
 
 when we arc attentive to our own thoughts we discover 
 a sort of pomp or procession of ideas which succeed one 
 another in our minds with a regular pace or march, and 
 this regularity could not exist unless we had a common 
 measure without ourselves, a means whereby mankind 
 can agree with each other with respect to the length of 
 determinate things. 
 
 "We could multiply instances of the lesser lights who 
 discovered breaks in the system of common sense, but 
 such men were not wanted and remained ignored. So 
 it is that in reviewing the triumphant course of natural 
 realism we get the illusion of unbroken ranks of be- 
 lievers, from the early Princeton leaders to the later 
 Northern representatives. Throughout there was ap- 
 parent agreement, from the official heads in the colleges 
 to the popular exponents who held that Reid had said 
 the last safe word in philosophy and that Kant opened 
 up the abysses of skepticism. 
 
 With the rise of New England transcendentalism there 
 came a life and death struggle between the old and the 
 new. We have previously raised the question which 
 system was destined to be the American philosophy. We 
 can now suggest an answer. Which of the two fonns of 
 thought best fulfilled the requisite of native origin, of 
 progressiveness, of liberality of spirit, and of toleration 
 of other forms of thought? In regard to natural real- 
 ism, it may be said that as it was foreign in its origin, so 
 it remained an exotic in its characteristics, lacking those 
 qualities on which the men of the N'ew World prided 
 themselves. First, it was unprogressive, being rightly 
 accused of failure to advance; thus the two principal 
 definitions of the movement, although seventy years 
 apart, were in substance essentially the same. Again, it 
 was illiberal towards unrestrained inquiry; being op- 
 
138 REALISM 
 
 posed to the speculative ferment of Hume and the free 
 critical methods of Kant, it was rationalistic, but only 
 within the limits fixed by respectability. Lastly, it was 
 intolerant of other systems; as it fought the European 
 forms of deism, idealism, and naturalism of the eight- 
 eenth century, so it came to look askance upon the French 
 positivism, the German idealism, and the British evolu- 
 tionary doctrines of the nineteenth. These are the 
 shortcomings of realism, but, inasmuch as its aim was to 
 be a safe and sound philosophy, they are to be con- 
 sidered not as fundamental deficiencies but only as the 
 defects of its qualities. In marked contrast, however, 
 to the Scottish realism was the New England tran- 
 scendentalism, whose characteristics were the direct op- 
 posite of its chief rival. Instead of being a foreign 
 importation brought over in the original form, it was 
 essentially a native growth deeply rooted in its age and 
 surroundings. Historic forces were visible in it, but 
 these had been so assimilated that they appeared not so 
 much initial impulses as remote resultants. Hence 
 transcendentalism possessed the typical marks of the 
 receptive American mind. First it was progressive; 
 starting with the Platonism latent in Puritanism, it 
 drew nourishment in turn from the Berkeleian, Kantian. 
 and Hegelian idealism. Again it was liberal; instead 
 of opposing the spirit of free inquiry, it exliibited a 
 generous interest in regard to other systems, translat- 
 ing not merely the philosophical classics of France and 
 Germany but, as in the case of Emerson, seeking in- 
 spiration from the sacred books of the East. This 
 lenient attitude towards an unrestricted immigration of 
 foreign thought brought about the last and most obvious 
 characteristic of transcendentalism, its utter tolerance 
 of other systems. Thus it took from the Puritans their 
 
THE LESSER REALISTS 139 
 
 individualism, from the deists their arguments for 
 design, from the idealists their phenomenalism, from the 
 materialists their dynamic conception of the universe, 
 from the realists themselves their doctrine of immediate 
 intuition. This may be considered such an extreme 
 eclecticism as not to deserve the name of a system ; it may 
 nevertheless be said in conclusion that whether or not 
 transcendentalism was the coming philosophy of Amer- 
 ica, it at least furnished a native epitome of American 
 philosophy as it was developed in its early schools. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 1, Emerson, Interpeeter of Nature 
 
 There is an inscription on an old wall of Revolution- 
 ary' days, that, ruined by the war, it was rebuilt more 
 strongly out of the old materials. This, in a figure, ex- 
 plains the beginnings of transcendentalism in America. 
 After the dark and sterile period in our philosophy, the 
 movement in New England suddenly gathered up the 
 forces of the previous times. Transcendentalism summed 
 up in itself the marks of all three centuries, — the faith 
 I of the seventeenth, the reason of the eighteenth, the 
 i feeling of the nineteenth. As we may recall, the age of 
 unreason, or dependency on inscrutable decrees, had been 
 succeeded by that of reason, or the power of man fully 
 to understand nature, and that in turn by the age of 
 sentiment, — the outpouring of the romantic spirit. It 
 remained for one man to fuse these three factors into a 
 system. Emerson believed in faith in self, or self- 
 reliance; he believed in reason in nature, for nature 
 was the present expositor of the divine mind; he be- 
 lieved in feeling toward his fellow-men, for he looked 
 on man as a fagade of a temple, " wherein all wisdom 
 and all good abide." 
 
 This fusion of the spirit of three centuries brought 
 a new note into philosophy. No longer was man alone 
 worshiped as admirable; no longer was nature consid- 
 ered as self-sufficient, but the two were counted com- 
 
 140 
 
EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 1-41 
 
 plcmentary. Therefore transcendentalism may be looked 
 at from a double aspect ; practically, as an assertion of 
 the inalienable worth of man ; theoretically, as an asser- 
 tion of the immanence of the divinity, not only in nature, 
 but in human nature: " There is one mind, and all the 
 powers and privileges which lie in any lie in all." 
 
 Whence arose this more ardent interpretation? How 
 were the old ideas transfused by emotion? How was 
 it that the worship of nature and of human nature 
 were thus intimately conjoined ? The answer may be put 
 in a word. These changes are due to a reaction, a re- 
 vulsion against intellect as the sole source of truth. 
 Sensibility and will now demanded their share. Men 
 wanted to be warmed, to be inspired to do something. 
 For these positive needs there had been a long negative 
 preparation. That the Northern transcendentalism was 
 such a close union of thought and feeling was due to 
 the fact that for two centuries New England had been 
 emotionally starved. The echoes of the Elizabethan age 
 had long since died away. The fervor and color of a 
 richer civilization had disappeared. In philosophy, no 
 system between 1600 and 1800 had offered a satisfac- 
 tory blending. There were three alternatives, no one 
 of which was adequate: Calvinism had degenerated 
 into superstition ; deism, with the cold, drj' light of 
 reason, had killed enthusiasm; realism had brought all 
 down to the common level of common sense. 
 
 At the beginning of the new conturs-, then, there was 
 a felt need for a larger life; the most thoughtful had 
 been so long frozen in their feelings that they waited 
 eagerly for warmer currents of thought. Tho younger 
 generation in college liad to find emotional stimulus out- 
 side of the curriculum. The change that came about 
 was, briefly, a return to nature. The rationalism of that 
 
142 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 I day was like a formal English garden with its straight 
 walks and clipped hedges. Transcendentalism was 
 like the American fields and forests with their broad 
 
 lacres and their tangled wildernesses. A new race of 
 thinkers thus arises. The closet philosopher is suc- 
 ceeded by the transcendental traveler, ever in the air 
 and face to face with the sun. He is willing to wander 
 far in search of spiritual nourishment; he seeks for 
 the fruits of nature by his own efforts and thereby en- 
 genders an appetite for those fruits. Thus comes the 
 keenness of the younger spirits in the new movement. 
 They are eager to transcend the trammels of society, to 
 go apart by themselves, to live in the woods, in order to 
 penetrate the secrets of nature, to learn the mind of 
 outdoors. 
 
 Having considered the negative preparation of previ- 
 ous movements and the positive incitements of the coun- 
 try that lay about them, we may take up the funda- 
 mental beliefs of New England transcendentalists. The 
 first of their beliefs was monism, which meant not only 
 the unity of the world in God, but the immanence of 
 God in the world. On the one hand, nature is the ex- 
 positor of the divine mind ; on the other, man is the soul 
 of the whole, of the Eternal One. A second belief is 
 that of the microcosm, — because of the indwelling of 
 divinity, every part of the world, however small, is held 
 to contain within itself all the laws and meaning of the 
 universe: — Man is conscious of a universal soul within 
 his individual life, he is an analogist and studies rela- 
 tions in all objects ; placed in the center of beings, a ray 
 of relation passes from every other being to him. A third 
 belief is that of the macrocosm, which holds that the soul 
 of each individual is identical with the soul of the world 
 and contains latently all which it contains: — Man is a 
 
EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 143 
 
 universal mirror; every rational creature is entitled to 
 partake of the soul of the world by his constitution. A • 
 final belief is that of symbolism. The transcendentalist 
 holds that nature is the embodiment of spirit in the 
 world of sense; nature is a great picture to be appre- 
 ciated, a great book to be read. As Emerson expresses 
 it, there is radical correspondence between visible things / 
 and human thoughts. . , . What was it that nature 
 would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose 
 of the valley behind the mill? The leafless trees and 
 every withered stem and stubble, rimed with frost, con- 
 tributed something to the mute music. . . . This is the 
 symbolism through which the poetic pantheist finds a 
 higher use in the study of nature. Nature, he ever in- 
 sists, is the incarnation, not only of the true and beauti- 
 ful, but of the good. Through it, the individual comes 
 in contact with the very spirit and being of God. . . . 
 Taking the old figure, that the visible world and the 
 relation of its parts is the dial plate of the invisible, he 
 adds that the universe becomes transparent and the light 
 of higher laws than its own shines through it. 
 
 It is in his love of nature and in his ability to read 
 the meaning of its symbols that Emerson showed him- 
 self a native representative of the romantic jnovement. ^ 
 Fond of the fields and a wanderer in the woods, he had 
 known nature in all its moods, and had h^arned the feel- 
 ing of kinship between man and the world in which he 
 lives. Indeed his first w^ritten confession was that in 
 the wilderness there is something dear and connate. 
 Words such as these furnish the prime bond of connec- 
 tion between native thought and that of Europe. In 
 holding that nature and human nature are akin, Emer- 
 son is in harmony with the English romantic movement 
 of his day. In reading Wordsworth he declares that 
 
144 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 The Excursion awakens in every lover of nature the right 
 feeling. We saw stars shine, we felt the awe of moun- 
 tains, we heard the rustle of wind in the grass, and 
 knew again the ineffable secret of solitude. . . . Does 
 a declaration of this sort mean that the American was 
 unoriginal? Such a conclusion can hardly be drawn 
 from the passage, for Emerson speaks as one who al- 
 ready had experienced the feelings of a lover of nature, 
 already known its ineffable secret. We may, therefore, 
 hold that the early New England transcendentalists 
 I were of like spirit with Wordsworth and Coleridge, but 
 I did not use them so much for authorities, as for corrobo- 
 rators of their kindred beliefs. They did not borrow, 
 they sympathized, and that because they had already 
 been under common influences. 
 
 Of these influences the earliest had been the^J]renph. 
 In America as inTlngland the turmoil of the great 
 revolution had stirred men's minds, for the mental un- 
 rest which followed was an outgrowth of the old liberty 
 of philosophizing. Upon the ancient stock of English 
 independency there was grafted the vigorous branch 
 of French liberty. In New England there had been 
 an unbroken expression of the rights of individual judg- 
 ment. Those Independents who came from the eastern 
 counties of England, once settled by the roving Danes, 
 , held that every man had a full right to his own beliefs. 
 ""But more fervent expressions of these beliefs and their 
 junction with the emotions of the heart now took a 
 French form. The spirit of liberty was English, but 
 warmth and ardor were brought to the cool Anglo- 
 American by his Gallic brothers. The rights of man 
 were no longer to be expressed merely in public docu- 
 ments, in measured terms, but each man was to follow 
 his own private inclinations, to break do\vn the trammels 
 
EMEKSUN, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 145 
 
 of society, to rely upon himself. Seldom before had i^-_ 
 djvidu.alism reached such heights. Indeed by a sort of 
 paradox it led to a degree of detachment that was at 
 times indifference. The transeendentalist had so freed 
 himself from tradition that he at once broke from sec- 
 tarianism. 
 
 In the case of Emerson, the break came first in re- 
 ligion. As an individualist, he felt a lack of interest 
 in the dogma of his denomination. He publicly ex- 
 pressed his opinion, that the Christian scheme no longer 
 interested him. In the words of an English critic, he 
 left his church with a yawn. 
 
 The refusal to be tied by tradition may also be laid 
 to the influence of developed deism. Non-sectarianism 
 was an heritage of the old belief that all religions are 
 but parts of one great religion, the religion of nature. 
 It made no difference to the transeendentalist whence 
 he drew his inspiration, provided there was inspiration. 
 A marked aspect of our day, observed Bronson Alcott, 
 is its recovery and recognition of past times and great 
 names. The same thought was expressed by Emerson, 
 in an early number of the Dial, when he asserted: 
 We have every day occasion to remark transcendental- 
 ism's perfect identity, under whatever new phraseology 
 or application to new facts, with the liberal thought of 
 all men of a religious and contemplative habit in other 
 times and countries. 
 
 The transeendentalist as a cosmopolite is a strange 
 figure. He has been commonly represented as priding 
 himself on being a point around which all thought re- 
 volves, and has led the scornful to infer from this, that 
 he was a vanishing point. But his conceit was really 
 not based upon mere egotism, but upon a broad knowl- 
 edge and a remarkable range of reading. It is seldom 
 
146 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 remembered that by the time Emerson published his 
 first volume, Nature, in 1836, he had traveled in Eu- 
 rope; had known many cities and many men, and had 
 read widely of other days and other climes. He had 
 been considered an eclectic philosopher ; he should rather 
 be called an ethnic philosopher. He casually puts Jesus 
 and Socrates on the same level and then goes on to quote 
 Coleridge and Spinoza, Plato and Plotinus, Zoroaster 
 and the Hindoos, and ends with the quiet assertion: 
 " All goes back to the East." 
 
 There are already sufficient factors noted to account 
 for the philosophy of Emerson, not only in its matter, 
 but in its form. The matter was got from his inner ex- 
 perience and from his own countryside, that fair appari- 
 tion that shone so peacefully about him. The form was 
 gained from much reading in the old English poets, the 
 Cambridge philosophers, and the ancient classical 
 writers. 
 
 We are now in a position to explain three principles at 
 |the bottom of Emerson's philosophy. They are imma- 
 nence in respect to nature; benevolence in respect to 
 God ; self-reliance in respect to man. Immanence implies 
 the unity of the intelligent principle in the world, in the 
 creation itself. Here man calls the universal soul, rea- 
 son ; it is not mine or thine, or his, but we are its. And 
 the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the 
 sky with its eternal calm, is the type of reason. . . . 
 Again, immanence implies that all that exists, exists in 
 God, and that there is no difference in substance between 
 the universe and God. Man as a part of nature is akin 
 to the divine spirit. . . . When I behold the sunrise 
 ... I seem to partake of its rapid transformations. . . . 
 Thus does nature deify us. 
 
 In these broken words Emerson hints at that funda- 
 
i- X. 
 
 EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 147 
 
 mental coalescence between the circles of his system. 
 Man partakes of nature, nature partakes of deity, and, l 
 through the enshrouding universal spirit, each partakes | 
 of all. These beliefs came as a revulsion from the old 
 Calvinistic transcendence. The doctrine of a deity 
 separate from his world, absolute, arbitrary, inscrutable 
 in his ways, is now supplanted by the doctrine of the 
 deification of the world, and the rendering of it: rea- 
 sonable by the indwellihg of an intelligent principle. 
 There is also a revulsion from another sort of transcend- i 
 ence, that of deism. Instead of the mechanical separa- 
 tion between deity and humanity that was held almost- 
 up to Emerson's day, there comes a joining of the two .^ .Ix: 
 by means of a mediating principle, great nature itself. — • ^,,^^. 
 Because God is in his world and man is part of that j -/vc^^^t. 
 world, it comes to pass that man feels wuthin himself x^t^^ v— ^ 
 the divine currents, is conscious of a universal soul J^^I^'^lXv 
 within his individual life. t^—'Ar^- 
 
 There is next the principle of benevolence in respect ' '^"^"^ 
 to the deity. It is a good God that has made this goodly "^ ^^^^^ 
 world. With this conviction there arises the splendid Ir- 
 
 optimism in the pages of the transcendentalist. After 
 Emerson had laid down the fundamental principles of 
 immanence, he takes up as the first use of nature that 
 of commodity. Under this general name he ranks those 
 advantages which our senses owe to nature. By it we 
 may explore that steady and prodigal provision that has 
 been made for man's support and delight on this green 
 ball which floats him through the heaven, ... In all 
 this there is a close resemblance to the old deistie delight 
 in nature as an embodiment of the divine goodness. 
 But a glamor is put upon it by the poetic New Eng- 
 lander. The argument for deistie design had degenerated 
 into such forms as the Bridgeivater Treatises, which af- 
 
148 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 forded a combination of special providences with the 
 shallow sciences of the day. Now, the purpose or the 
 utility, or the commodity which Emerson found in na- 
 ture was not special but general; not mechanical, but 
 aesthetic. Hence arises his poetic apostrophe: What 
 angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich 
 conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of 
 water beneath, this firmament of earth between; this 
 zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped 
 coat of climates, this fourfold year? 
 
 Immanence and benevolence have been combined in an 
 optimistic form of pantheism. This is in decided con- 
 trast to the pantheism of Europe, which had so often 
 tended towards the pessimistic. On this side of the 
 water there was no world-weariness, but a joy of living 
 and a true love of the soil. This was a new land for 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There was 
 no pressure on population, but a chance for all men to 
 make their way. The fact that the ardent spirit might 
 plant his foot on the ladder of fortune had much to do 
 with the bright outlook. When the younger generation 
 left New England, men were heartened by the reports 
 of their success on the frontier. Indeed, the winning 
 of the West was a highly exciting and vivifying process. 
 And, finally, while much of the pessimism of the cold 
 world may be laid to the gray skies of the northern 
 climes, here, the clear skies, the cold waves, the rapid 
 changes in temperature, stirred up the blood and stimu- 
 lated the animal spirits. So we find Emerson an op- 
 timist, pointing to those " admirable stars of possibility 
 and the yet untouched continent of hope glittering with 
 all its mountains in the vast west." It is for these rea- 
 sons also that we find not a single prophet of woe among 
 the transcendentalists. Alcott's optimism was carried 
 
EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 149 
 
 almost to excess; he seldom saw anytliing except in the 
 fervid liue of rosy hope. Thoreau, though a Diogenes, 
 was not a Cynic : he lived by himself, but he lived joy- 
 ously ; his withdrawal from society, his return to nature, 
 were made not because he was a fatalist, but because in 
 nature he found a field where man was free to hunt for 
 happiness. 
 
 The optimism of this philosophic era of good feeling 
 was extended from nature as a whole to human nature. 
 Taking over the high deistic praises of human goodness, 1 
 that complacency over man and his achievements which 
 marked the eighteenth century, the younger generation 
 joined this to an incipient doctrine of development. If 
 nature is growing perfect, man as a serial part of nature 
 is perfectible. All this explains the sudden outburst of 
 egotistic optimism which took place in New England. 
 In the Unitarian Manifesto of 1815, in the diaries of the 
 radical transcendentalists, we find a revulsion against 
 Puritanic pessimism, and a reviling of the doctrine of 
 human depravity. In one way all these phases of 
 thought do not obtain in Emerson's case. It was a 
 sign of his precocity that he very earlj'- decided that this 
 was a good world, and the men in it good ; that deity 
 was kindly disposed towards all, and that all men were 
 open to the solicitations of the spirit. And yet Emer- 
 son's life was not without adversity. He had fought 
 against poverty, ill health, and family losses ; and it was 
 through his own courage that, after a period of mor- 
 bidity and doubt, he came out with that serenity of faith 
 that characterized the essay on Nature and all he wrote 
 thereafter. 
 
 To the last principle of Emerson's thought we need 
 devote but a few words. That self-reliance on which he 
 dwelt is to he derived from the doctrine of the per- 
 
150 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 fectibility of man. It is a result of the deistic com- 
 placency, and not, as has often been held, a corollary 
 of Calvinism, Puritans have been called self-reliant; 
 they were, but not through the principles of their creed. 
 Amongst the best of them, their self-reliance was naught 
 but God-reliance, A logical Calvinist could not depend 
 on himself, but had to lean on Providence. Amongst 
 the weak brethren was this especially true. The Cal- 
 vinist who believed in particular providences was al- 
 ways begging for favors from his God. We need but 
 note Cotton Mather's agonies of soul over his impotence 
 to save himself and the sniffling spirit with which he 
 sought for special privileges. Neither one way nor the 
 other can self-reliance be derived from the doctrines of 
 Puritanism. There were other factors at work; British 
 blood and American achievements were the real causes 
 for the new spirit. The whining attitude, which at times 
 possessed New England's religionists, passed rapidly 
 away after the second war with England. With their 
 eyes on the naval victories of that day, the commonalty 
 became so excessively self-reliant that, in a cant phrase 
 of the times, they could whip the universe. Yet the 
 country was better represented by those of more quiet 
 minds, who came to rely on themselves and not on a 
 reputation. Descendants of the Puritans, they longed 
 for spiritual improvement and sought it in the oneness 
 of the individual with nature. 
 
 "\ It is here that there arises a contradiction between the 
 reliance on self and the reliance on the not-self. Emer- 
 son resolved this contradiction by making the two, one. 
 Because man is a part of nature, because nature par- 
 takes of deity, there is an unbreakable bond between 
 these elements. Man may rely on his reason because this 
 reason is not to be distinguished from the divine essence. 
 
EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 151 
 
 This is the paradox of pantheism at which Emerson ulti- 
 mately arrived. But in order that there may be no 
 abrupt identification between human and divine, he 
 brings in a third factor, the external world, which gives 
 to man the perpetual presence of the sublime. 
 
 The inference may still be made that if Emerson was a 
 pantheist, he must be a determinist and a fatalist. We 
 nevertheless find him reiterating his belief in the dig- 
 nity of human nature and the excellence of self-reliance. 
 How may this be reconciled with his statement that 
 nature is an embodied law whose divine order is in- 
 violable to us? In reply we may point out that this is 
 not the Puritanic fatalism where nature is arbitrary, 
 full of strange and overwhelming mischances. No, 
 Emerson is opposed to arbitrary decrees; to him nature 
 is inviolable, but never inscrutable. Provided man is 
 open to the solicitations of the spirit, nature is essen- 
 tially comprehensible and rational. 
 
 In this Emerson shows his Americanism. His deter- 
 minism is modified in a novel way. It does not resem- 
 ble the European fatalism derived from a philosophy 
 of the unconscious, based upon a blind will working in 
 us, we know not how. As a true son of the soil Emerson 
 is willing to be ruled, but not as a puppet worked from 
 behind the scenes. If he obeys the law like a good citi- 
 zen, he wants to know how he is ruled. As in the proper 
 form of the American government, from the town meet- 
 ing to the administration of Washington, he expects to 
 find things run in an open and above-board fashion. 
 And thus he comes to put this political interpretation 
 upon nature: It is something to be scrutinized in its 
 actions; it also stands as a representative of the will 
 of man. 
 
 Nature is open to scrutiny first by symbol isjp ; it al- 
 
 \-'WUiaX« 
 
 
 
ic^ 
 
 152 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 ways has a meaning; it can be interpreted. The use of 
 j natural history, says the transcendentalist, is to give 
 • us aid in supernatural history. Thus arises that radi- 
 calism in Emerson's philosophy which did so much to 
 soften its apparent determinism. In its first aspects 
 nature seems a discipline ; its function that of a task- 
 master, and a mere obedient subject to that law which is 
 king of kings. But Emerson, as a representative of a 
 self-ruling people, will not allow that this is a final end 
 of nature. Law as law is not paramount. Mere sci- 
 entific formulae are not enough. He declares that we 
 must seek for a higher end and purpose, a spiritual prin- 
 ciple running through all phenomtua. So idealism is 
 an hypothesis to account for nature on other principles 
 than those of carpentry and chemistry, and the spiritual 
 principle should demonstrate itself to the end. In the 
 mastery of nature, man has first to learn its waj^s. . . . 
 By discipline is the unspeakable but intelligible and prac- 
 ticable meaning of the world conveyed to man, the mor- 
 tal pupil in every object of sense. But, adds the idealist, 
 I man as part of the universe has an immediate and in- 
 tuitive knowledge of its innermost essence, and thus may 
 'he transcend those very objects of sense. Therefore, he 
 continues, if the reason be stimulated to more earnest 
 vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, and 
 are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen through 
 them. 
 
 This is the turning point in the resolution of deter- 
 minism. Knowledge is power and by this power man is 
 able to pierce through the veil and to find that nature, 
 I which before this seemed all-powerful, has a secondary 
 place. Emerson carries out his reasoning in the follow- 
 ing remarkable passage: But whilst avc acquiesce en- 
 tirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of 
 
EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE 153 
 
 the absolute existence of nature remains open. It is the 
 uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to 
 shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, 
 as of heat, water, azote ; but to lead us to regard nature 
 as a phenomenon, not a substance ; to attribute necessary \ 
 existence to spirit ; to esteem nature as an accident and / 
 an effect. . . . With this assertion of the primac^LJif \ 
 reaso n a strict determinism vanishes. The great prin- 
 ciple is not fatality, but regularity; nature is no longer 
 dominant over man but man learns to manipulate na- 
 ture. The sensual man, continues Emerson, conforms 
 thoughts to things; but the poet conforms things to his 
 thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast, 
 the other as fluid ; he impresses his being thereon ; to him 
 the refractor}^ world is ductile and flexible. 
 
 Emerson had stated that nature's divine order was 
 inviolable to us; he now goes so far as to make that 
 nature a mere appendix to the soul. This reversal of 
 a former judgment needs to be explained. How may we 
 reconcile the discrepancy as to the over-lordship of man ? 
 It is by recalling the kinship that exists between man 
 and the world. Both are imbued with reason, in each is 
 a common essence. The solid-seeming block of matter 
 has been per^-aded and dissolved by a thought ; this feeble 
 human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature 
 with an informing soul, and recognized itself in their 
 harmony, that is, seized their law. 
 
 In offering this solution Emerson has united two sides 
 of his nature, his law-abiding disposition and his strain 
 of Puritanism. The one side acknowledges conscious 
 law as king of kings ; the other contemns the un.substan- 
 tial shows of the world. But again, it may be asked, does 
 not the latter belief preclude the former? If all is an 
 illusion, is not nature's law an illusion? Emerson, with 
 
 // 
 
^-' 
 
 154 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 his inherent common sense, cannot so answer. He re- 
 marks that while the devotee flouts nature, he loves it, 
 for the advantage of the ideal theoiy over the popular 
 faith is that it transcends the world in precisely that 
 I view which is most desirable to the mind, — a " vast pic- 
 ture which God paints on the instant eternity for the 
 contemplation of the soul." In this theorizing some 
 may say there is shallo\Miess ; that it is merely the artist 's 
 way of working ; that it attempts to wipe out all nature 
 as an unsubstantial pageant. This is a misinterpreta- 
 tion, Emersjon is. no lliusionistj,Jbut_arL ide al rea list. 
 ^C*- ■ Nature is not an accident, in the sense of being a mere 
 ^< V chance happening, but rather in the sense of being the 
 j: *•* . (manifestation of a substance most profound and real. So 
 -^ \ he clings to this brave lodging, wherein man is harbored, 
 ^"^ and holds that this is the use of nature, that it is faith- 
 ful to the cause whence it had its origin. It always 
 I speaks of spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a per- 
 1 petual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to 
 * the sun behind us. 
 
 2. The Sources of Transcendentalism 
 
 In his definitive address on the Transcendentalist 
 ^merson remarks that the first thing we have to say re- 
 j^ specting what are called the new views here in New 
 r England at the present time, is that they are not new, 
 -^'^* I but the very oldest thoughts cast into the mold of these 
 'new times. Upon this disavowal there follows a defini- 
 tion of the movement in which the author was enmeshed. 
 What is properly called transcendentalism among us, 
 he continues, is idealism, idealism as it appears in 1842. 
 As such it is a protest against materialism. In place of 
 experience, of the data of the senses, of the force of cir- 
 
 1^ 
 
 X*' 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 155 
 
 cumstances, of the animal wants of man, it insists on 
 consciousness, on the power of thought and of will, on 
 inspiration, on individual culture. Again, while the 
 materialist respects sensible masses, the idealist has an- 
 other measure which is metaphysical, namely the rank 
 which things themselves take in his consciousness; not 
 at all the size or appearance. He does not respect labor, 
 or the products of labor, namely property, otherwise than 
 as a manifold symbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity 
 of details the law of being. His experience inclines him 
 to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as 
 flowing perpetually outward from an invisible un- 
 sounded center in himself. Finally, he believes in 
 miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to 
 new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration 
 and in ecstasy. 
 
 It is obvious from this confession of philosophic faith 
 that New England transcendentalism was, in many 
 points, only a new name for old ways of thinking. 
 Clearly did it re-echo the voice of the past: that of 
 Plato in its doctrines of the scale of being and of the 
 symbolism of nature, that of Plotinus in its insistence on 
 emanation and on ecstasy. And as Emer.son was not un- 
 mindful of his debt to antiquity, so also was he conscious 
 of more recent influences. Many, he recalls, have been 
 the prophets and heralds of the transcendental philos- 
 ophy, for this way of thinking, falling on prelatieal 
 times, made Puritans and Quakers ; and falling on Uni- 
 tarian and commercial times makes the peculiar shades 
 of idealism which we know. 
 
 Thus far Emerson has suggested many sources of his 
 thought,— from Platonism to Puritanism, from Neo- 
 Platonism to Unitarianism. P»ut not until this point 
 does he mention that name above all names which 
 
^ 
 
 156 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 popular opinion has held to be the fount and origin 
 of the New England transcendentalism. It is well 
 known to most of my audience, he explains, that the 
 idealism of the present day acquired the name of 
 Transcendentalism from the use of that term by Im- 
 manuel Kant of Konigsberg, who replied to the skep- 
 / ' fieal philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there 
 was nothing in the intellect which was not previ- 
 ously in the experience of the senses, by showing that 
 there was a very important class of ideas or imperative 
 forms, which did not come by experience, but through 
 which experience was acquired ; that these were intuitions 
 pf the mind itself; and he denominated them Tran- 
 ^^scendeniaTforms.' The extraordinary profoundness and 
 precision of that man 's thinking have given vogue to his 
 nomenclature in Europe and America, to that extent 
 that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought 
 is popularly called at the present day transcendental. 
 
 Emerson has suggested three sources of his philosophy 
 — Hellenic, American, and Germanic, As the Germanic 
 is considered the most important it may be left to the last ; 
 only after other possible alternatives have been weighed 
 can we decide upon the alleged preponderance of the 
 Teutonic influences. So, too, of the nearer native influ- 
 ences there must be taken into account the reactions 
 ^. from the movements current in the stream of Emerson 's 
 li own life. Thus, in the way of revulsion, he developed 
 \ from the Hobbite materialism a preference for the in- 
 stinctive and intuitive; from the Lockean negation of 
 i innate ideas the assertion of subjective principles of 
 I reason; from the Humean skepticism the avowal of a 
 I faculty transcending the senses and the understanding. 
 /_2— III addition, there were other forms of thought, actually 
 naturalized in the land, containing the very elements of 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 157 
 
 transcendentalism which Emerson was destined to ac- 
 quire. Thus, Unitarianism furnished him with its lib- 
 erality, Quakerism with its mystic spirit, and Puritanism 
 with its individualism. This was the trinity of powers 
 that energized his growing mind. Born eighth in a line 
 of Puritan divines, he received as his heritage discipline 
 without dogma ; inclined by this heritage toward the 
 interior or hidden life, he was prepared to welcome the 
 habit of introspection and solitude. But, above all, liv- 
 ing in the transitional era of Unitarianism, he was sub- 
 ject to all the varying forces of which that movement was 
 the resultant. 
 
 The resolution of these forces has been attempted, 
 but not from the philosophic point of view. It has been 
 pointed out bow the old Calvinistic stock split into two 
 branches — orthodox and Unitarian, and the Unitarian 
 again into conservative and transcendental. Such is the 
 familj' tree of the New England mind in black and white. 
 But obviously we need a greater variety of hues to give 
 its natural appearance, to explain the transition from 
 the mere light and shade of Calvinism to the highly 
 colored emotionalism of radical transcendentalism. That 
 transition forms a veritable speculative spectrum of the 
 times. In New England men had passed througli various 
 phases: Puritanism had sought the purity of faith; in 
 the worship of a transcendent Absolute the ascription of 
 any feeling was deemed to stain the white radiance of 
 eternity. Next, Calvinism was succeeded by deism, the 
 worship of deity by the worship of humanity, and with 
 the succession there came a change towards the warmer 
 tones of emotion. Lastly, arose a true philosophy of 
 feeling, for romanticism discovered a division between 
 those Unitarians who were content with the cold light of 
 reason and those who preferred the rosier hues of en- 
 
>y 
 
 158 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 thusiasm and ecstasy. Romanticism has been properly- 
 given as the cause of the transition from coldness to 
 warmth, from sense to sensibility. Before this there was 
 little to satisfy the heart. Just as the Most High God 
 of the Puritans had degenerated into a mere dispenser of 
 special providences, so the light of reason of the deistie 
 rationalists had faded out into the twilight of Humean 
 skepticism — " the frigid and empty theism " against 
 which Emerson rebelled. Unitarianism had suffered 
 from a heart-withering philosophy. As Channing put 
 it, men must look to other schools for the thoughts to 
 thrill them, to touch the most inward springs, and dis- 
 close the depths of their own souls. 
 
 Whence were to come these new thoughts, half desired, 
 half feared? It was the romantic movement as it took 
 the several forms of French naturalism, English pan- 
 theism, and German idealism that was to furnish the 
 influences. Of these three forms the first had least 
 weight. Rousseau's return to nature came to be inter- 
 preted as a return to natural passion, and the Gallic 
 materialism to be confused with the excesses of the mob ; 
 indeed the New England Federalists turned a cold 
 shoulder upon the rights of man as exemplified in the 
 ^ French Revolution. Thus, at the age of nineteen, Emer- 
 
 r 
 
 < j^ son himself confesses his belief that nobody now regards 
 '^ / Ithe maxim '' all men are born equal," as anything more 
 than a convenient hypothesis or an extravagant declama- 
 tion. Of the English romantic influences it was the 
 poetic pantheism of the Lake School that so warmed the 
 heart of Emerson. The old Puritanic aloofness from the 
 world, the conviction that matter and spirit are essen- 
 tially alien, was now giving way to a feeling of kinship 
 between human nature and the world of nature. 
 To come to the crucial point. It has been commonly 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 159 
 
 thought that the transcendentalists early partook of the 
 German idealism; that from across the Rhine earae the 
 fresh breezes that drove away the " pale negations of 
 Boston Unitarianism." It was in 1820 that Edward 
 Everett, George Bancroft, and George Ticknor returned 
 to America from Goettingen. Yet of these men Emerson, 
 in this connection, mentions but one, and gives no hint 
 that he imported a knowledge of technical transcendental- 
 ism. Germany, Emerson recalled later, had created criti- 
 cism in vain for us until Edward Everett returned from 
 his five years in Europe and brought to Cambridge his 
 rich results ... he made us for the first time acquainted 
 with Wolff's theory of the Homeric writings and witli 
 the criticism of Heine. 
 
 This is the fullest statement, before his first published 
 book Nature, that the author makes as to the influence of 
 Germany upon his mind. Previous to 1836 we find in 
 his Journals only these nominal references: to Kant 
 once ; to Fichte thrice ; to Schelling twice ; to Hegel twice. 
 Indeed the American's knowledge of German meta- 
 physics was slight and secondary. He made a few ex- 
 tracts in his blotter from a translation of Fichte. not 
 knowing as yet the tongue of the original. Later, at the 
 solicitation of Carlyle, he learned to read the works of 
 Goethe, yet even here he found but a confirmation of his 
 own beliefs and his sense of originality did not forsake 
 him. Five months before the proof-sheets of Nature 
 reached him he made this complacent note: Only last 
 evening I find the following sentence in Goethe, a com- 
 ment and consent to my speculations on the All in Each 
 in Nature this last week. 
 
 In truth it may be repeated that Emerson's knowledge' 
 of the German schools was not only slight, but second- 
 ary, when he could declare that the love of the vast came 
 
160 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 from Germany to America through Coleridge. How the 
 latter became the medium through the American edition 
 of his Aids to Reflection we shall consider subsequently; 
 meanwhile we must seek for other and earlier tendencies 
 that brought the Massachusetts leader into the tran- 
 scendental drift. Of these tendencies he was more or less 
 unconscious, for the name of transcendentalism, he as- 
 serts, was given nobody knows by whom, or when it was 
 first applied. 
 
 Yet for us, looking back on those times, it is not im- 
 possible to point out certain definite factors that led to 
 the Emersonian type of mind. The prime factor was 
 British. It was an Anglo-American environment that 
 was furnished by the Boston of that day. Here two 
 forms of thought led to the transcendental strain: the 
 Irish idealism of George Berkeley, the English idealism 
 of the Cambridge and Oxford Platonists. Of the former 
 there were few general traces, for though the good bishop 
 had lived for three years in Rhode Island his views, as 
 those of an Anglican churchman, were not acceptable to 
 Massachusetts Congregationalists. And yet we have a 
 record of the great immaterialist 's power over Emerson 
 when he said: " I know but one solution to my nature 
 and relations, which I find in remembering the joy with 
 which in my boyhood I caught the first hint of the Ber- 
 keleian philosophy, and which I certainly never lost 
 sight of afterwards." To what extent Berkeley held 
 sway over Emerson it would be hard to say, for the kin- 
 dred beliefs in sense symbolism and the divine visual 
 language the latter might have drawn from the Platoniz- 
 ing poets. Such were Quarles and Vaughan and espe- 
 cially George Herbert, from whom Emerson was so fond 
 of quoting lines that taught the congruity between things 
 and thoughts, between forms and mind. 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM IGl 
 
 Such were certain of the earlier idealistic influences 
 upon the young New Englander. Yet more important 
 than the Irish idealist, and the poetic symbolists, was 
 the influence of the older English lines. That influence 
 was of double significance, since through men like Cud- 
 worth and More, Norris and Collier, Emerson was led to 
 manifest his spiritual affinity with both Kant and Plato. 
 How far the Koenigsberger was anticipated by the Cam- 
 bridge and Oxford Platonists has been suggested by 
 William James and carried out by Arthur Lovejoy. For 
 example, in Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the 
 Universe are to be discovered not only a general em- 
 phasis on nativism, and preference for the innate and 
 intuitive over the empirical and sensualistic, but also 
 an anticipation of the Kantian a priori concepts of ob- 
 jects and the wisdom of pure speculative reason. It 
 was in Cudworth that Emerson had read from time to 
 time for years, and through him, in his college days, had 
 obtained his first glimpse into Plato. Again it was Cud- 
 worth who prepared the way for Coleridge, and Coleridge 
 who furnished the easiest way to Kant for English read- 
 ers. That the Aids to Reflection should have been issued 
 as early as 1829 in New England is not surprising, 
 when we remember that Emerson declared that the feel- 
 ing of the Infinite finds a most genial climate in the 
 American mind. So the Cambridge Platonist opened the 
 way back to his ancient master. Of Plato Emerson ex- 
 claims: " I hesitate to speak lest there should be no end. 
 He contains the future, as he came out of the past." 
 Statements like these call for a reversal of the ordinary 
 judgment as to the inspiration of our foremost tran- 
 scendentalist. In truth it wa.s the philosopher of the 
 Academy and not of Koenigsberg who, by his own early 
 confession, was Emerson's master. As is shown by that 
 
102 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 essay in Representative Men he was almost convinced 
 that " transcendental truths have a kind of filial retro- 
 spect to Plato and the Greeks." 
 
 We have examined the three suggested sources for 
 the Emersonian philosophy, namely the Germanic, Brit- 
 ish, and Hellenic. The first, in the prevalent opinion, 
 is held to be paramount, but that opinion cannot be ad- 
 hered to if the two others will account for the facts. The 
 acquisition of the Kantian system was a well-nigh im- 
 possible task in a land where German literature was, as 
 yet, known only by name. For instance, the first refer- 
 ence to Immanuel Kant in the country was given in a 
 Philadelphia magazine of 1798, and that reference was 
 only at second hand, while the first decent exposition of 
 the Critique of Pure Reason was published by a Yale 
 graduate in 1842. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, in the 
 period half-way between these dates, there was a piti- 
 able dearth of literature on the subject. George Ticknor, 
 before he set sail for Goettingen in 1815, was obliged 
 to send to New Hampshire, ' ' where he learned there was 
 ■ a German dictionary. " It is true that in the same year 
 there was for sale by a Boston bookseller a London trans- 
 lation of the Elements of the Critical Pliilosophy, but 
 it was not for some years later that the little band of 
 enthusiasts fi'om Goettingen returned to Harvard. This 
 was the band, headed by Edward Everett, that Emerson 
 mentions as arousing an interest in German modes of 
 criticism. Now that eriti€isTiT;"i1r--wilLfee_recalled, was 
 more literary than philosophical. 
 
 In the meantime Emerson 's drift towards idealism had 
 been hastened more by a revulsion against the current 
 metaphysie than by a knowledge of the now. Shortly 
 before he came of age, he protested against the-coU^g^ 
 curriculum with its emphasis on " reasoning machines," 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 1G3 
 
 such as Locke, and Clarke, aad-J^ayidllume. In his,^^ 
 required studies lie Had received such an overdose of the 
 Essay an Iluman Understanding that he wrote that 
 " while the inspired poets will be Platonists, the dull 
 men will be Lockeists." It is this dislike of the sensa- 
 tionalistic denial of innatejdeas th at broq ght out Emer- 
 son's latent transcendentalism. Against empiricism he,_ 
 protested that there were truths higher than those given 
 by experience; against sensationalism that there were 
 intuitions higher than those given by the senses. So, 
 from a temperamental reaction Emerson went back to 
 the English Platonists and through them back to the 
 ancients. Immediately after the issuance of his first work 
 he writes : Any history of philosophy fortifies mj^ faith 
 by showing me that what high dogmas I had supposed 
 were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture. — 
 and only now possible to some recent Kant or Fichte. — 
 were the prompt improvisations of the earliest in- 
 quirers. - _ 
 
 Such confessions show how lastingly Hellenism was^ 
 impress£d_upon the mind of Emerson. As a boy in col- 
 lege, through Cudworth's citations, he had come upon 
 Plato; later he added that " it was a great day in a 
 man's life when he first read the Symposium." Lastly 
 there was the notable essay in Representative Men show- 
 ing that Plato forms the most continuously powerful in- 
 fluence in Emerson 's thinking. ^Moreover, we know from 
 new sources that the ancients were Emerson's chief teach- 
 ers in transcendentalism. The Journals tell us how as 
 an undergraduate, having no faculty for mathematics, he 
 was wont to console himself with Plutarch and Plato 
 at night ; how. again, he considered himself, and not his 
 instructors, the true philosopher in college, becau.se he 
 read for " lustres " in Plato; how, finally, ho sought 
 
164 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 Coleridge in England and from himJearaad-Jliat the 
 problem of philosophy, aecorclmg to Plato, is for all that 
 exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and 
 absolute. 
 
 Three -y«ftrs after the visit to Coleridge, Emerson 
 utilized this opinion as his definition of idealism in his 
 first book, entitled Nature. How largely that work was 
 woven out of the shining fabric of antiquity can be seen 
 from an analysis of its contents. The original edition 
 has for its motto a sentence of Plotinus: " Nature is 
 but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last thing of the 
 soul." The same author furnishes the grounds for that 
 baffling dualism which Emerson ever sought to resolve 
 into its spiritual elements. Plotinus declares: " What 
 the world ends in, therefore, is matter and reason, but 
 that from which it arose, and by which it is good, is 
 soul." In like manner Emerson, giving as his postulate, 
 " philosophically considered, the universe is composed of 
 nature and the soul," goes on to sublimate nature in 
 those sections which begin with Commodity, pass through 
 Symbolism, and end in the doctrine of Universal Spirit, 
 or Over-Soul. 
 
 How kindred to his own mind was the ancient way of 
 thinking is clearly seen in the successive sections of this 
 little book with all its transport and radiancy of thought. 
 Given as our task to interrogate the great apparition that 
 shines so peacefully around us, the lover of nature is 
 defined as he whose mind and outward senses are still 
 truly adjusted to each other ; who has retained the spirit 
 of infancy even in the era of manhood. Here is the 
 Platonic doctrine of reminiscence which, as originally 
 suggested to Emerson by Wordsworth's Ode on the In- 
 timations of Immortality, was carried out in his own 
 boyish poem, " Man in the bush witk God may meet." 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 1G5 
 
 Again in the section on Commodity we have as the first of 
 the fourfold root of the final cause of nature, the doctrine 
 of compensation. — that all parts of nature incessantly 
 work into each other's hands for the profit of man. Fol- 
 lowing the lines of the Platonizing Herbert's poem on 
 jNIan, this is but the expression of Emerson's youthful 
 experience when he lay on his bed pleasing himself with 
 the beauty of the Lord's equilibrium of the universe, in- 
 stead of shuddering at the terrors of his judgments. . . . 
 Also is a nobler want of man served by nature, namely 
 the love of beauty ; for such is the meaning of the word 
 cosmos ; as understood by the Greeks the world demands, 
 as essential to its perfection, the presence of a higher, 
 spiritual element. "While Emerson designates this want 
 of man as Hellenic he would add to it that fpsthetie 
 interest of his own people, — the love of the beauty of 
 holiness. So, he adds, the problem of restoring to the 
 world original and eternal beauty is solved by the re- 
 demption of the soul. 
 
 Now Emerson approaches a cherished belief — that 
 of nature as a great symbol. As if following the apoca- 
 lypse of loveliness unfolded by Berkeley in his divine 
 visual language, he explicitly states that language is the 
 third use which nature subserves to man and has a three- 
 fold degree: first, words are the signs of natural facts; 
 again, particular natural facts are symbols of particu- 
 lar spiritual facts: every appearance in nature corre- 
 sponds to some state of the mind, for man is conscious of 
 a universal soul within or behind his individual life ; 
 lastly, nature is the symbol of spirit ; because it is em- 
 blematic the universe becomes transparent, for the light 
 of higher laws than its own shines through it ; tliis is the 
 standing problem which has exercised tlie wonder and 
 study of every fine genius since the world began, from 
 
166 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 Pythagoras and Plato to Bacon, Leibniz, and Sweden- 
 borg. 
 
 That nature is the symbol of spirit lies at the bottom of 
 the TimcEus. But the next contention concerning the 
 ethical import of natural law, or what Emerson calls dis- 
 cipline, is not strictly Platonic. In other words, that the 
 axioms of physics apply to morals is not of the Acad- 
 emy but of a later school, being rather of Plotinus than 
 of Plato. For this confusion two reasons have been 
 given, — Emerson's use of Thomas Taylor's translation 
 of Plato which was edited from the Neo-Platonic point 
 of view, and Coleridge's attempt to harmonize Plato's 
 philosophy of the good with Lord Bacon's search of 
 truth. But this is going too far afield. There is a more " 
 natural and more native source for this inversion of 
 Platonism. If Plato found the idea of the good giving 
 unity to the ideas in the intelligible world, Emerson 
 found the laws of the world leading up to the universal 
 good, and this because he was in the deistic drift. Cosmic 
 benevolence was a favorite theme of the Harvard worth- 
 ies. Even the austere Cotton Mather, as we recall, had 
 composed a cheerful little book entitled, The Christian 
 Philosopher. A Collection of the Best Discoveries in 
 Nature with Eeligious Improvements. And his more 
 genial successor, Charles Chauncy, issued his Benevo- 
 lence of the Deity, which was in harmony with that series 
 of Dudleian lectures which were a familiar feature of 
 college in Emerson's undergraduate days. It was the 
 philosophic age of optimism in his own land that left 
 their mild marks on Emerson's doctrine of discipline. 
 At the opening of his literary career, he feels noble emo- 
 tions dilating him as his mind apprehends, one after an- 
 other, the laws of physics. Later he found the survey 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 107 
 
 of cosmical powers a means of consolation in tlic dark 
 hours of private misfortune. 
 
 The transcendoutalist here discloses himself more than 
 a Platonizer; he is a modernizer. Cudworth opened to 
 Mm the Platonic symbolism ; * ' analogy -loving souls ' ' 
 like Bruno and Donne. Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan 
 gave him its poetic form ; he himself now attempts, as an 
 higher synthesis, the harmony of religion and science. 
 How wide was his reading in the latter subject may be 
 inferred from his book lists, where are to be found 
 mention of such masters of science as Newton, Laplace 
 and Hunter, Linnneus, Lamarck and Herschel, Owen, 
 Lyell, and Faraday. An earlier reference shows for 
 what end he had been gathering these stores. As he 
 had already declared : the religion that is afraid of sci- 
 ence dishonors God and commits suicide ; it acknowledges 
 that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legis- 
 hites, tyrannizes, over a village of God's empire, but it is 
 not the immutable, universal law. But because all things 
 are moral, and in their boundless clianges have an un- 
 ceasing reference to spiritual nature, herein is appre- 
 hended the unity of nature,— all the endless variety of 
 things make an identical impression. 
 
 Substantiating his belief in the essential unity of na- 
 ture by a reference to Xenophanes, Emerson now passes 
 to that most central and vital of his doctrines. For his 
 first lesson in idealism he recalls when as a child he 
 amused himself in saying over such common words as 
 " black," " white," " board," twenty or thirty times 
 until the words lo.st all meaning and fixedness, and he 
 began to doubt which was the right name for the thing. 
 Now, a nobler doubt perpetually suggests itself ... to 
 give a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the 
 World ; in my utter impotence to tost the authenticity 
 
168 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 of the report of my senses, to know whether the im- 
 pressions they make on me correspond with outlying 
 objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is 
 up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the 
 firmament of the soul? How is the doubt resolved? 
 By the end for which nature exists; whether it enjoys 
 a substantial existence without or is only in the apoca- 
 lypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable 
 to me. 
 
 As the section on Discipline suggested that the ethical 
 character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature 
 as to seem the end for which it was made, so that on 
 Idealism bears this notion out. Religion, in teaching 
 that the things that are unseen are eternal, does for 
 the unschooled what philosophy does for Berkeley. It 
 discloses the whole circle of persons and things, of actions 
 and events, as one vast picture which God paints on the 
 instant eternity for the contemplation of the soul. . . . 
 In this ardent exposition of the divine visual language, 
 the Irish idealist of the eighteenth century has found 
 an American disciple in the nineteenth. That westward 
 strand, whither Berkeley came with such high hopes, at 
 last brought forth a follower who could sympathetically 
 interpret the uses of nature. Behind nature, throughout 
 nature, says Emerson, spirit is present ; one, and not com- 
 pound, it does not act upon us from without, that is in 
 space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves; 
 therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does 
 not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through 
 us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and 
 leaves through the pores of the old. . . . Nature is thus 
 an incarnation of God, a projection of God; its serene 
 order is inviolable to us ; it is, therefore, to us, the pres- 
 ent expositor of the divine mind. 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 169 
 
 With this rhapsody over spirit — the dread universal 
 essence — Emerson concludes his great essay on Nature 
 with a section entitled Prospects. To what end is this 
 apparition that shines about us? A little poem by 
 George Herbert on Man gives him the clew. "When the 
 English Platonist affirms, " nothing we see but means 
 our good," the American, in a like strain, exclaims, 
 ' ' "When I behold a rich landscape, it is to know why all 
 thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity." 
 Here is a final note of mysticism, of the absorption of 
 the self in the All, and with this Emerson rounds out 
 that Platonism which was his by heritage, by tempera- 
 ment, and by training. By heritage he was familiar with 
 the latent idealistic teachings of the Puritans concern- 
 ing " the unsubstantial shows of the world as vanities, 
 dreams, shadows, unrealities." Nevertheless he did not 
 accept the Puritan's morbid and distorted use of such 
 teachings. I have, he adds, no hostility to nature, but a 
 child's love for it. I do not wish to fling stones at my^ 
 beautiful mother. ... If Emerson's temperament sweet- 
 ened the strain of idealism handed down from Puritan 
 days, his training strengthened it. And that training, 
 it must be insisted, was largely self-training. It was not 
 Plato and Berkeley, but Locke and Reid who were im- 
 pressed upon the boy in college, and least of all had the 
 Germans any effect upon his thought. As he informed a 
 friend, in this connection, he need not consult the Ger-^ 
 mans, but if he Avished at any time to know what the 
 transcendentalists believed, he might simply omit what 
 in his own mind he added (to his simple perception) from 
 the tradition, and the rest would be transcendentalism. 
 That Emwaan_Ka&-JinL_aL:the_^nnanic type, but 
 rather a legitimate successor of the Brjlisirrnntonizers is 
 further borne out by the^^irecTTestimony of Coleridge, 
 
170 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 who contends that the Concord philosopher was one 
 of those few Americans who, in opposition to the 
 current empiricism, which made all human knowledge 
 derived from sensations, took up with Berkeley's ideal- 
 ism, which made immediate divine agency the sole cause 
 of all the phenomena of the material world. In regard to 
 Coleridge, Emerson had visited the sage of liighgate in 
 1833, but the visit he pronounced rather a spectacle 
 than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of 
 one's curiosity. Meanwhile in an adjoining State there 
 had been issued an American edition of the Aid^s to Re- 
 flection with a competent introduction by President 
 Marsh, and it was this work which did most to introduce 
 the modified German philosophy into our country. 
 
 If Emerson has any strain of the foreign transcenden- 
 talism, it is in this modified and mediate form. He 
 possessed no such direct knowledge of Kant as did Marsh 
 or Murdock ; in fact, his reading of the German text was 
 begun at Carlyle's solicitation only after the publica- 
 tion of Nature, and was confined largely to Goethe, of 
 whom he "contrived to read almost every volume." 
 Now, although these men may have first brought Emer- 
 son into direct contact with the Germans, he expressly 
 refutes the implication that he was more of an inter- 
 preter of Coleridge than an original thinker. And al- 
 though he had gained some knowledge of the Germans, 
 he lets it be known that it was not merely in an imitative 
 w^ay. While Murdock utilized Tenneman to compile his 
 own historical narrative of the progress of speculative 
 philosophy in modern times, Emerson exclaims that 
 " the whole value of opinions like Tenneman 's is to in- 
 crease my self -trust by demonstrating what man can be 
 and do." And, lastly, although in the crucial essay on 
 Nature he had apostrophized the Germany of mystic 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 17] 
 
 philosophy, he now exclaims : * ' Leave me alono ; do not 
 teach me out of Leibniz or Schelling. and I shall find it 
 all out myself. ' ' 
 
 Emerson's son also bears testimony of him, that 
 in his eighteenth year he was delighted with the 
 saying that all goes back to the ancient East, yet 
 for modern systematic metaphysics he cared little and 
 seldom read. That characteristic American attitude 
 of independence (despite the initial admission that 
 none escapes the debt to past thought), is borne out by 
 this supplementary- statement from the essay on Quota- 
 tion and Originality: " To all that can be said of the 
 preponderance of the Past, the single word Genius is a 
 sufficient answer. The Divine resides in the new; and 
 the Divine never quotes, but is, and creates. . . . Origi- 
 nality is being one's self; genius is sensibility and 
 capacity of receiving just impressions from the external 
 world, and the power of coordinating these after the 
 laws of thought. If the thinker recognizes the perpetual 
 suggestion of the Supremo Intellect, the oldest thoughts 
 become new and fertile whilst he speaks them. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 1. The Forerunners of Evolutionism 
 
 The three centuries of American thought present three 
 phases of the doctrine of evolution. To summarize these 
 
 r phases we may conveniently use the Comtean formula of 
 the law of the three stages. In the seventeenth century 
 the interest was theological : evolution — if such it may be 
 called — was an unfolding of the divine plan according 
 to the mere good pleasure of the Most High. In the 
 eighteenth the interest was metaphysical : the divine 
 
 Vplan became rationalized, evidences of design were dili- 
 gently sought after, man's task was to discover God's 
 \ ways of working in the world. In the nineteenth the 
 interest became positive: only after theology and tele- 
 ology had been left behind was it possible to fasten atten- 
 tion on evolution in the stricter modern sense of epi- 
 genesis, of the origin of species, of the descent of man. 
 In brief, the history of evolution in America, as in Eu- 
 i rope, has been from the cosmic to the organic, has 
 \ passed through the logical phases from supernatural 
 1 election to natural selection. 
 
 *^" As in other speculative movements the development 
 of the doctrine of evolution exliibits a parallel growth 
 with that abroad. This does not imply a slavish adher- 
 ence to foreign opinion, but a common pedigree and a 
 common logical sequence. There is a continuity of 
 thought in one case as in the other, but that continuity, 
 
 172 
 
THE FORERUNNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 173 
 
 on this side of tlie water, has uot yet been traced in 
 its entirety. 
 
 In the beginning there is, of course, great indebted- 
 ness to former siiggestors. Here the Greeks lead. Aris- 
 totle, though confounded with the Scholastics, and ranted 
 against by such pious worthies as Cotton Mather, traced 
 the first faint lines which subsequent speculation was 
 to follow. Edwards and Emerson were especially influ- 
 enced by the Stagirite, and the later theologians, like 
 the earlier Christian fathers, depended upon Hellenic 
 speculation to reconcile the Mosaic account of creation 
 with the growing naturalistic explanations. Some time 
 before the appearance of Darwinism men like President 
 Hitchcock and Tayler Lewis and Arnold Guyot did 
 much in the attempt to reconcile Genesis and geology, to 
 show the harmony between the revealed and the rational. 
 The outburst of controversy upon the appearance of the 
 Origin of Species in 1859 was, therefore, no unexpected 
 thing. An earlier generation had been storing the pow- 
 der to be exploded in the battles of the '60s. Here the 
 scientists were the chief sappers, and ran long galleries 
 of anticipated objections. So when the theory of natural 
 selection had gained its adherents, the supornaturalists 
 were ready for them. The battle was extended and furi- 
 ous. Southward from Harvard to William and ^lary 
 College, westward from New York to St. Louis, there 
 was a continuous campaign of scientific controversy 
 which lasted even longer than the civil strife which rent 
 the country. The echoes of that conflict still reverberate, 
 and in the remoter fortresses of tradition like the Prcs- 
 byteri'an Review and the Bihliofhrca Sacra the garrisons 
 have not yet pulled down the flag. In brief, from the 
 day of Puritanism to the day of pragmatism there have 
 been so manv skirmishes, battles, and general engage- 
 
 n. 
 
174 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 ments as almost to merit the name of the warfare be- 
 tween evolution and revelation in America. 
 
 In the history of this warfare there are two main 
 periods. Adopting the distinction of Lord Bacon, the 
 period before 1859 may be called that of anticipation; 
 after that crucial date, that of interpretation. In the 
 first men sought for evidences of design, and design was 
 an assumed general principle, and facts were, in large 
 measure, made to fit the theory. In the second period 
 induction was increasingly used; facts were sought for 
 their own sake, and theory, or the framing of an hy- 
 pothesis out of the bits furnished by the sciences, was a 
 more cautious and hesitating procedure. It is no cause 
 for astonishment that an inevitable conflict was to be 
 expected. Between the men of deduction and the men 
 of induction there was a clash of temperaments which 
 was bound to throw out sparks. The men of the first 
 period, w^ho followed the high a priori road, were men of 
 imagination; they beheld visions of cosmic order and 
 divine purpose. The men of the second period, who 
 kept to the narrow paths of careful experimentation, 
 were not particularly interested in absolute order and 
 supreme purpose. They w^ere empiricists, not tran- 
 scendentalists, and gloried as much in the humility of 
 their tasks as their opponents did in the grandeur of 
 their speculations. The transcendentalists and super- 
 naturalists looked with scorn upon the grubbers after 
 detail, and charged them with not seeing the beauty 
 of the forest for the study of the trees. The empiricists 
 and naturalists, in turn, felt it no disparagement that 
 they should " creep by timid steps and slow, on plain 
 experience lay foundation low." 
 
 Let us take up the first period, that of deduction, of 
 pure speculation, of high imagination. From Edwards 
 
THE FORERUNNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 175 
 
 to Emerson there is a line of Platonizers who looked_ 
 at the natural through the bright lens of the super- 
 natural ; who could meet with never a fact without gloss- 
 ing it in the colors of eternity. These were the 
 " analogy-loving souls " \^-ho^w a double meaning in 
 all events. When the Puritan divTflc''* viewM the moon 
 for continuance " it was the glory of the Lord shining 
 before him; when the Concord sage crossed " a bare 
 common in snow puddles at twilight under a clouded 
 sky " it was to enjoy a perfect exhilaration. This poetic 
 spirit of interpretation impregnated the New England 
 mind for two hundred years. Besides the masters we 
 find it in Cotton Mather's Christian Philosopher, in 
 Charles Chauncy and his Benevolence of the Deity; 
 and in the Alvord professorship at Harvard, whose 
 avowed purpose was to show the coincidence between 
 the doctrines of revelation and the dictates of reason. 
 Bred in the bone, this Platonizing instinct came out 
 in all the acts of life. Its holders sought to hitch their 
 wagons to stars, to drive them according to divine design. 
 But their aims were so high that as men they became, at 
 times, unpractical, and fell an easy prey to those who 
 merely followed their own noses and were guided by 
 common sense. It might be shown how they floundered 
 in the seven seas of new facts furnished by the scientists, 
 but this is a sight upon which it is not fair to dwell. In 
 the change from a pessimistic theology to an optimistic 
 theodicy we can sympathize with Qotton Mather 's^n- 
 thusiasm over the " nice provisions~of nature' in the 
 vegetable race," based, as it was. in the plastic capacities 
 of nature as governed by an all-wise agent. This belief, 
 in fact, furnished the way out of the maze of dotf^rmin- 
 isra. Indeed it was buta &tep^ from_the old Puritanic 
 faith in aTBftrary interferences to the deistic conviction 
 
176 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 "that God docs not act b;y- interposition continually re- 
 
 \peafed, but _bx_ concurring in an established course of 
 \ nature.' It was this distinction between interference 
 \ and concurrence that later allowed Asa Gray to meet 
 \ the storm of opposition raised b'y the doctrine of natural 
 \ selection. By utilizing the concourse of second causes 
 he claime^'lITat morphology and teleology — things as 
 they were formed and things as they were foreordained 
 — were to be harmonized, since the doctrine of specific 
 creation was to give way to the larger principle of 
 design. 
 
 This distinction was unfortunately forgotten. Gray 
 complains of the absurdity of associating design only 
 with miracle, for this association was one which did much 
 to hinder the acceptance of Darwinism. At this point 
 the Harvard botanist might well have appealed to those 
 Dudleian lecturers who, in his own college, had been 
 aiming to prove that ' ' the structure and constitution of 
 the world and the accurate adjustment of its various 
 parts prove an intelligent, wise, and good Cause." But 
 the argument for design became confused with the doc- 
 trine of special creation, and the latter was one of those 
 presuppositions which hindered the acceptance of a 
 naturalistic view of evolution. The confusion was worse 
 confounded by the attempts to harmonize Genesis and 
 geology. In this the American exegetes were not such 
 literalists as the English. The Hutchinsonian school, 
 which held that the Scriptures contain a complete sys- 
 tem of natural philosophy, had little vogue in the land. 
 Benjamin Franklin, for example, complained that such 
 a manner of philosophizing was much out of his way. 
 But the psycho-theological school had some followers. 
 As early as 1811 Thomas Dobson declared that the geo- 
 logical discoveries, which seem to indicate a much longer 
 
THE FORERUNNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 177 
 
 duration of the earth than six thousand years, are not 
 inconsistent with the ^losaie history because the word 
 creation means not creating out of nothing, but putting 
 the chaotic world with its furniture in the beautiful 
 order in which it is arranged. Again, as late as 1852, 
 we find in President Hitchcock's Religion and Geology 
 the acceptance of the theory that the six days of creation 
 were but six continuous pictures that were made to 
 pass before the vision of Moses. This kinetoscopic cos- 
 mology has its absurd side, but along with the ludicrous 
 there was a certain logical framework discoverable in the 
 scheme. It had these three factors: special creation, 
 permanence of species, cataclysmic destruction. In other 
 words, that which the Almighty had been pleased to 
 create, remained fixed, until it was again his good pleas- 
 ure to destroy. As if after the analogy of man who was 
 created perfect, then fell, and was lastly punished by 
 death as the universal law, so each organic species is 
 created by special dispensation of the deity, then allowed 
 to develop up to certain limits, and finally swept away 
 in a vast catastrophe, the " platforms of death " por- 
 trayed by Hugh Miller in his Footsteps of the Creator. 
 Now this scheme of supernaturalism had, as its counters- 
 part, the scheme of naturalism which had sprung up in 
 the century preceding Darwin. Against special creation 
 there was put spontaneous generation; against perma- 
 nence of species, mutability; against cataclysmic de- 
 struction, degradation through disuse. ^^ 
 To trace the differences between these two schemes 
 and the gradual displacement of the former by the latter, 
 is to trace a sort of philosophic " fault," a metaphysical 
 cleavage which occurs where the pressure is greatest. 
 The last of these factors we may dispose of at once be- 
 cause it destroyed itself by its very exaggeration. 
 
178 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 Cataclysmic destruction was a sort of a French Revolu- 
 tion in nature, a transfer of political disasters to the 
 realm of the different natural kingdoms. As one of its 
 advocates declared : earth has its tempests as well as the 
 ocean ; there are reserved without doubt in the destinies 
 of nature fearful epochs for the ravage of human races, 
 and there are times marked on the divine calendar for 
 the ruin of empires and for the periodic renewal of the 
 mundane features. 
 
 We return to the first factor, the first point of pres- 
 sure in the new line of cleavage. This was spontaneous 
 generation. Thatjueantbriefly that life is Inherent in 
 matter and under certain favorable conditions will 
 bursTTdrth into active being. This point was contro- 
 verted by the cautious Hitchcock, who declares that not 
 many years since the equivocal or casual production 
 of " animalculi," without any other parentage than 
 " law," was thought to be made out by a multitude 
 of facts ; but now the advocates of this ' ' law ' ' hypoth- 
 esis have been fairly driven from this stronghold of 
 their argument. This theory, he continues, was first 
 drawn out by the French zoologists, who endeavored to 
 show by the inherent vitality of some parts of matter, 
 how the first or lowest classes of animals and plants may 
 have been produced ; and how from these, by the theory 
 of development and the force of circumstances, all the 
 higher animals, with their instincts and intellects, may 
 have been evolved. 
 
 The second point of pressure was mutabilit y, or the 
 gradual transmutation of spe£ies....inta„-oae another 
 througH na_turai""caTr5e5."^his doctrine came very near 
 being reached by an early Princetonian. In his notable 
 Essay on the Causes of the Vanety of Complexion and 
 \Figurc in the Human Species, Stanhope Smith, as early 
 
THE FORERUNNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 179\ 
 
 as 1787, virtually accepted the Lamarckian prim-iplo of 
 the origin of variations from the factors of use and dis- 
 use, food, climate, or the etfort of the individual. The 
 varieties of human nature, he contends, are to he ex- 
 plained by the Imown operations of natural causes and 
 the necessary laws of the material world, such as climate, 
 the state of society, and the manner of living. Partiott-^ 
 lar differences are small. It is the example of the whole 
 that surprises us by its magnitude. The combined effect 
 of many minute varieties, like the product arising from 
 the multiplication of many small numbers, appears great 
 and unaccountable. . . . Human nature being much 
 more pliant than animal, and affected by the greater 
 variety of causes from food, clothing, lodging, and 
 manners, is still more easily susceptible to change, ac- 
 cording to any general standard, or idea, of the human 
 form. To this principle, as well as to the manner of 
 living, it may be in great part attributed that the Ger- 
 mans, the Swedes, and the French, in different parts of 
 the United States, who live chiefly among themselves, 
 and cultivate the habits and ideas of the countries from 
 which they emigrated, retain, even in our climate, a 
 strong resemblance to their primitive stock. Those, on 
 the other hand, who have not confined themselves to the 
 contracted circle of their countrymen, but have mingled 
 freely with the Anglo-Americans, entered into their 
 manners, and adopted their ideas, have assumed such a 
 likeness to them, that it is not easy now to distinguish 
 from one another people who sprung from such differont 
 origins. ... So, in proportion as tlie citizens of the 
 States approach the vicinity of the Indian tribes, simi- 
 larity of situation produces also a great approximation 
 of manners ; they decline the labors of agriculture as a 
 toil and prefer the fatigues of hunting to all other pleas- 
 
180 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 ures, and the charms of indolence and independence to 
 the refinements and attractions of civil society. 
 
 In Stanhope Smith there was a certain advance over 
 the old way of thinking : the old held that species were 
 adapted by the Creator, the new that they were created 
 adaptable. But while this adaptability is a step toward 
 a naturalistic view, unfortunately for the purely scien- 
 tific aspect of his acute observations the Princetonian 
 gives a supernaturalistic turn to his arguments. The 
 flexibility which he concedes is but fractional compared 
 with the fixity of the species; it is only a principle of 
 pliancy given to divinely endowed primitive man, in 
 order that he may be capable of accommodation to every 
 situation in the globe. 
 
 As an early American ethnologist Stanhope Smith 
 had great opportunities, but an unfettered doctrine of 
 mutability was impossible because of his prior belief in 
 special creation. Hence for a full quarter of a century 
 the doctrine of mutability lay undeveloped in native 
 thought. But in 1813 William Charles Wells wrote a 
 paper on the Formation of Faces, which had the dis- 
 tinction of being favorably spoken of by Charles Dar- 
 win in his Historical Sketch of his forerunners. Refer- 
 ring to man's selective action regarding domesticated 
 animals Wells gives this pregnant passage: " But what 
 is here done by art seems to be done with equal efficacy 
 though more slowly by nature, in the formation of 
 varieties of mankind fitted for the country which they 
 inhabit." The paper of Wells was so little known that 
 Morton, the Philadelphia craniologist, could declare that 
 nothing was done in ethnology in the United States be- 
 tween Stanhope Smith and himself. So Morton re- 
 counts how, at the commencement of his study in 1824, 
 he was taught that all mankind were derived from a 
 
THE FORERUXNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 181 
 
 single pair, and that diversity, now so remarkable, origi- 
 nated solely from the operations of climate, locality, 
 food, and other physical agents. Yet Morton is satisfied 
 with neither of these views — the old or the new — neither 
 the special creation of the literalist, nor the mutability 
 of the transformationist. The ordinary exposition of 
 Genesis is declared impossible : that all human races are 
 of some one species and one family is contradicted by 
 their present variations. Again that all mankind were 
 derived from a single pair, and that the diversities now 
 so remarkable originated soleh' from physical operations, 
 would demand indefinite periods, — those chiliads of 
 years which Prichard came to advocate. ... It cannot 
 be that chance, alone, has caused all the physical dis- 
 parity among men from the noblest Caucasian form to 
 the most degraded Australian and Hottentot. There- 
 fore one must conclude that these diversities are not 
 acquired, but have existed ah origine. 
 
 In attempting to avoid the difficulties both of uniform 
 creation and purely natural transmutation Morton takes 
 a mediating view. He favors a doctrine of primeval 
 diversities among men, — an original adaptation of the 
 several races to those varied circumstances of climate 
 and locality which, while congenial to the one, are de- 
 structive to the other. On the surface, this use of the 
 word adaptation might lead to the inference that ^lor- 
 ton advocates natural selection. Such is not the ease. 
 His adaptation is supernatural, not natural. It affirms 
 that diversity among animals is a fact determined by 
 the will of the Creator. It denies the competency of 
 physical causes to produce the effect alleged. It is, 
 therefore, not to be interpreted as approaching a theory 
 of mutation. It may be pointed out how close were these 
 views to those of Agassiz. In fact ^lorton's definition 
 
EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 pecies as primordial forms, prepared the way for 
 the promulgation of the kindred theory of the Swiss 
 naturalist, as he expressed it later in his introduc- 
 tion to Morton's own Types of ManMnd. Morton's 
 views were spread in the South through his pupil, 
 Knott of Mobile. They came to a curious use at the 
 hands of the politician, John C. Calhoun, who argues 
 that if all men had a common origin, whites and blacks 
 would be equal ; but there has been a plurality of origins, 
 and one of these primordial varieties was the negro,~wh(r" 
 was originally created the inferior of the Caucasian; 
 
 . therefore, between whites and blacks there is no real 
 
 ^- — equality. 
 
 In contrast with such special pleading and in logical 
 connection with the paper of Wells, are the conjectures 
 of Haldeman and Leidy on the possibilities of natural 
 variation. It was the former who declared : Although we 
 may not be able artificially to produce a change beyond 
 a given point, it would be a hasty inference to suppose 
 that a physical agent, acting gradually for ages, would 
 not carry the variation a step or two farther, so that 
 instead of the original (we will say) four vai'jeties, they 
 might amount to six, the sixth being sufficielitl}^ unlike 
 the earlier ones to induce a naturalist to consider it 
 distinct. This interesting conjecture was published in 
 Boston in 1843. One similar to it appeared in Phila- 
 delphia in 1850. Joseph Leidy, the paleontologist, as- 
 serted : The essential conditions of life are five in num- 
 ber, namely: a germ, nutritive matter, air, water, heat, 
 the four latter undoubtedly existing in the interior of 
 all animals. The result is that very slight modifica- 
 tions of these essential conditions of life are sufficient 
 to produce the vast variety of living beings upon the 
 globe. 
 
THE FORERUNNERS OF EVOLUTIONISM 183 
 
 There are none so blind as those who will not see. 
 Here were two fruitful suggestions which lay prac- 
 tically forgotten until the appearance of the Origin of 
 Species. This neglect was calamitous, yet the inability to 
 grasp the significance of these naturalistic arguments 
 was not without reason. The preformationists were iii — ^ 
 the majority and were still thinking in terms of the 
 Platonic archetypes. There still lingered in their mind 
 the Leibnizian conception of a great chain of being 
 which binds together into a single system the past and 
 present epochs of organic life. This doctrine of descent 
 according to the analogy of the chain, precluded that 
 of growth according to the analogy of the tree, the true 
 tree of evolution with its many collateral branches 
 springing from some single internal principle. And so 
 until the appearance of Asa Gray, defender of Darwin. 
 there was this great hindrance to the doctrine of organic 
 evolutionism, — a preference for transcendence over im- 
 manence. Just as the Aristotelian scale of being had 
 fallen in with the Puritanic doctrine of predestination, 
 so no\\^^_jma ftg the doe a<iiiilantsj3f Puritan s, there was a 
 difficulty in passing from, the conception...of special 
 creaIIon_ofj£eci£S^.Jxed_b^^^^ to that o^he_continu 
 ous manifestation of the dlviQe,actmtl£S as shown in an 
 ordPfTyninfolding of the universe. In fine, tradition's ^^^^^^ 
 rigid programme, an intellectualimposition upon matter h 
 
 of what should evolve from it, was opposed to nature's W 
 
 having any part in initiating variations, in originating ^: /^ 
 novelties. In a word, the fiat of the Creator is set over ^i;<i* 
 
 against any conception of creative evolution, in the V'- 
 sense of the self-sufficiency of the universe, and this 
 rendered difficult the reception of Darwinism. That 
 reception was now rendered doubly difficult by the in- 
 trusion of a foreign force. 
 
 :-^^ 
 
 i 
 
 > 
 
184 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 2. The Antagonism of Agassiz 
 
 The coming of Louis Agassiz in 1846 was hailed with 
 delight in the camp of the preformationists and super- 
 naturalists, because the revival of Lamarck's naturalism 
 threatened the old guard with defeat. But now as at 
 Waterloo help came from the East, and Agassiz, like an- 
 other Bliicher, turned the tide of battle. The reenforce- 
 ment consisted in the Swiss naturalist's importation of 
 his master's views, for it was from Cuvier that he had 
 derived the fixed ideas of immutability of species, 
 special creation, and cataclysmic destruction. And so 
 because he brought in these reenforcements from the 
 flank Agassiz received a warm welcome at the hands of 
 the reactionary scientists and likewise at the hands of 
 the populace. It was not only because of his sanguine 
 personality, that, to use his own phrase, he became " the 
 spoilt child of the countrj^," but because his convictions 
 fell in with those of an essentially conservative democ- 
 racy. Evolution in the sense of physical derivation was 
 identified with materialism, and materialism to the 
 groundlings meant atheism. To all this Agassiz fur- 
 nished an antidote. Believing that the order in the 
 cosmos depends upon intellectual coherence, not ma- 
 terial connections, he asked if the divisions of the animal 
 kingdom have not been instituted by the Divine Intelli- 
 gence as the categories of his mode of thinking, and, if 
 this be so, whether we do not find in this adaptability 
 of the human intellect to the facts of creation the most 
 conclusive proof of an affinity with the Divine Mind? 
 
 That which was put as a query became so fixed a 
 dogma that Agassiz could assure a committee of the 
 Massachusetts Legislature visiting his museum, that in 
 the future generations there would not be a child who 
 
THE ANTAGONISM OF AGASSIZ 185 
 
 would not liave the opportunity of understanding the 
 scheme of creation as thoroughly as he understood his 
 multiplication table. Now, the public liked such an as- 
 sertion. It pointed out aii easy road to learning. It also 
 fell in with their views of a benevolent Providence, who 
 from the very dawn of creation saw to it that this world 
 should be arranged for the benefit of man. Thus the 
 tenets of intelligibility and benevolence were two strings 
 with which Agassiz worked the public. The same tenets 
 were not without influence upon the conservative sci- 
 entists. These he utilized in that famous Essay on 
 Classification in his widely sold Xatural Ilhtonj of the 
 United States. He also utilized them in his persistent 
 attacks on Darwin. In his review of the Origin of 
 Species he repeats his favorite formula that order in the 
 organic world consists in intellectual coherence, not 
 material connection. Otherwise it would be impossible 
 to show that branches in the animal kingdom are founded 
 upon different plans of structure, patterns of form, 
 categories of thought existing in the divine mind and, 
 therefore, intelligently and methodically combined in 
 all parts. 
 
 At this point it may be interesting to inquire why the 
 arguments presented by Darwin in favor of a universal 
 derivation from one primary form, made, as Agassiz con- 
 fessed, not the slightest impression on his mind. The 
 reason may be discovered earlier in his life than his 
 biographers suggest. For many years back, he declared, 
 he "lost no opportunity of urging the idea that while 
 species have no material existence, they . yet exist as 
 categories of thought in the mind of the Creator. Now 
 what is the ultimate source of this belief? It is found 
 in Agassiz's defense of his old teacher Oken and tlie 
 physio-philosophical systems based on Schelling. So 
 
186 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 wlien it is recalled that in his youth Agassiz listened to 
 Schclling and that Schelling was a Platonizer, much of 
 the type of Emerson, one can understand the popularity 
 of such views when they were freshly imported into 
 America. It was not so much that Emerson knew some- 
 thing of the speculations of Schelling and Oken from 
 Coleridge, but that he was a constitutional Platonizer 
 who believed in the intelligibility of the world as due to 
 the essential identity of the operations of the human 
 and divine intellect. This transcendental opinion was 
 one of the medley held by Agassiz. From it he inferred 
 that the world is not due to the working of blind forces, 
 but is the creation of a reflective mind establishing de- 
 liberately all the categories we recognize in nature, and 
 combining them in that wonderful harmony which 
 unites all things into such a perfect system. In defense 
 of what he acknowledges to be a priori conceptions relat- 
 ing to nature, Agassiz falls back upon One Supreme 
 Intelligence, Author of all things, by whose almighty fiat 
 all animals, with all their peculiarities, were created upon 
 the general plan of structure of the great type to which 
 they belong. Here the Swiss zoologist talks like a Platon- 
 izing Puritan. He goes even further in his reaction 
 against naturalism. As to the origin of existing animals 
 and plants he presents for consideration three theories: 
 spontaneous generation; the action of the established 
 laws of matter; the immediate intervention of an in- 
 telligent Creator. Of these three Agassiz boldly advo- 
 cates the last because the first is not proven, and the 
 second would stultify his postulate and preclude design. 
 Granted that the four different plans of structure ex- 
 hibited in the animal kingdom illustrate four great 
 primordial ideas, then, unless the physical agents at 
 work in the early days of the existence of our globe 
 
THE ANTAGONISM OF AGASSIZ 187 
 
 could have devised such plans, and impressed them upon 
 the material world as the pattern upon which nature was 
 to build forever afterwards, no such general relations 
 as exist among all animals could ever have existed. 
 
 In his recoil from naturalism Agassiz has gone to such 
 an extreme of supernaturalism as to have lost those 
 very arguments for design in the constituted laws of na- 
 ture, so skillfully employed by the deists. At the hands 
 of such a reactionary the earlier arguments, therefore, 
 fall to the ground. Intelligibility and intervention are 
 mutually exclusive. One makes the world comprehen- 
 sible, the other incomprehensible. "When the rational 
 conceptions fail, it is necessary to call in the help of the 
 deity. The argument is again put in the form of a 
 querj^ : There are certain extraordinary changes which 
 one and the same animal may undergo during different 
 periods of its life; — does not this prove directly the 
 immediate intervention of a power capable of control- 
 ling all these external conditions, as well as regulating 
 the course of life of every being? To attack such a posi- 
 tion those who would deny the intervention in nature of 
 a creative mind must show that the cause to which they 
 refer the origin of finite beings is by its nature a pos- 
 sible cause, which cannot be denied of a being endowed 
 with the attributes which we recognize in God. 
 
 With such an outward creed Agassiz came into a 
 country where the deists had won the day in behalf of 
 the rationality of the constituted laws of nature. It is 
 little wonder that, when the master repudiated his 
 primary principles, his followers should go over to the 
 new views. This explains why Agassiz 's pupils sur- 
 rendered in a body to Darwinism. In the first place, thoy 
 found their leader's immutable classifications constantly 
 changing; then they discovered that he did not under- 
 
188 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 stand the bearing of his own laws ; and lastly they found 
 that these laws fitted into the new scheme better than 
 into the old. Agassiz's great idea of the identity of 
 the three series — structural, individual, racial — really 
 favored naturalism at the expense of supernaturalism. 
 To neglect second causes and refer organic changes di- 
 rectly to a first cause— the plans of the Creator— made 
 this triple identity unnatural, unreasonable, dependent 
 on the mere whim of the Almighty. It was an impossible 
 position that Agassiz took that, since species exist as 
 thoughts, and individuals as facts, there was no material 
 connection between the latter. To base common descent 
 on formal grounds and at the same time to exclude a 
 physical differentiation of the objects themselves, was 
 merely to make a plan of a picture and never to use the 
 actual pigments. Indeed Agassiz seemed incapable of 
 filling in the figures, of blending the whole into a con- 
 tinuous canvas. He postulates his four plans of struc- 
 ture, but denies that they are transmutable the one into 
 the other. In a word, his was a static, not a dynamic 
 conception; his cosmos a prearranged programme, not 
 a spontaneous growth. So he inveighs against natural 
 selection as a misnomer, since selection implies design 
 and the powers to which Darwin refers the orders of 
 species can design nothing. 
 
 It was this insistence on the ancient form of the argu- 
 ment for design that enabled Asa Gray to turn some of 
 Agassiz's own guns against him. Those natural divisions 
 which to the latter existed only as categories of thought 
 in the supreme intelligence, and were of an independent 
 existence and unvarying as thought itself. Gray put into 
 the ordering processes of the universe. In other words, 
 that which had been a static, transcendent postulate now 
 becomes a dynamic, immanent principle. To Gray this 
 
THE ANTAGONISM OF AGASSIZ 189 
 
 was not the exclusion of the superaatural, but its inclu- 
 sion in the natural. No longer do species endure in a 
 subjective and ideal sense, but they are interrelated by 
 an objective inheritance from a common stock. In short, 
 the adamantine chain of foreordination is replaced by 
 the living tree of genetic descent. In this way the ma- 
 terial, against which Agassiz inveighed, is turned inside 
 out and shown to be interwoven with purpose. Thus 
 Gray criticises Agassiz 's review of Darwin and contends 
 that the Origin of Species is not atheistic, since a ma- 
 terial connection between the members of a series of 
 organized beings is not inconsistent with the idea of their 
 being intellectually connected with one another through 
 the deity. Agassiz is theistic to excess because the 
 Creator is put so supremely above his creation. The way 
 out of the apparent difficulty of lack of design is, there- 
 fore, to regard the intenamtion of the deity " not so 
 much as done for all time, as doing through all time." 
 
 Whether such an interpretation was a proper imma- 
 nent theism, or a perilous approach to pantheism, may 
 be judged better when we take up other of Danvin's 
 reviewers. Meanwhile it remains to be shown how the 
 appearance of the Origin of Species, instead of modify- 
 ing Agassiz 's beliefs, tended to fix them. A favorite 
 disciple acknowledged that it was a special characteristic 
 of Agassiz 's mind, intensified by the teaching of his 
 great master Cuvier, seldom to acknowledge an error, 
 but, on the contrary, to try by all means to maintain his 
 position. That characteristic now became prominont. 
 At the meetings of the American Acadomy of Science and 
 of the Natural History Society of Boston in 1860. he 
 raised the sharpest objections against the acceptance of 
 Darwin's theorv', which he considered a " mania to be 
 outlived." This was before the scientists. Before the 
 
190 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 public he again brought his views in his Methods of Study 
 in Natural Uistory, declaring that there was a repulsive 
 poverty in this material explanation that is contradicted 
 by the intellectual grandeur of the universe. Finally, in 
 a posthumous article appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, 
 he left a scientific last will and testament in which he 
 reiterated the convictions which he had brought into the 
 country. In this document there are three salient sec- 
 tions : First, that the law of evolution keeps types within 
 appointed cycles of growth which revolve forever upon 
 themselves; second, that the argument of Darwin is 
 purely negative, resting upon the assumption that transi- 
 tion types have dropped out from the geological record ; 
 and lastly, that Darwinians are reluctant to grant inter- 
 vention of an intellectual power in the diversity which 
 obtains in nature, under the plea that such an admission 
 implies distinct creative acts for every species. 
 
 In the first of these tenets Agassiz goes back to the 
 nature-philosophy of his youth, takes evolution in the 
 literal sense of an unrolling of an absolute, and sug- 
 gests, if he does not borrow, the cyclic processes of Vico. 
 This is historically consistent, for the doctrine of a recur- 
 ring cosmic process has often been bound up "with the 
 scheme of preformation. That the argument of Darwin 
 is negative is not so well taken. Agassiz indeed insisted 
 on the interrelations of the three series — structural, em- 
 bryonic, geologic — for the sake of the light that each 
 sheds on the other. Now, the first of these series presumes 
 the existence of the third, for embryonic growth was a 
 positive suggestion that the geologic succession w^as not 
 discontinuous, and this Agassiz 's immediate successors 
 discovered. In the last objection there was more weight. 
 The young and ardent spirits of the day were reluctant 
 to grant intervention, as it seemed to carry the doctrine 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 191 
 
 of design to an extreme. Tluis Agassiz's colleague, Asa 
 Gray, reported the Lowell Lectures as being planned 
 upon high ground and yet with a certain animus against 
 Lamarck and the Vestiges. Likewise Agassiz's pupil, 
 Joseph Le Conte, interpreted the master's writings as 
 aimed to uphold a designed development, and yet one not 
 by organic forces within, but according to an intelligent 
 plan without, — an evolution not by transmutation of 
 species, but by substitution of one species by another. 
 
 We leave Agassiz with his last will and testament. — 
 a stumbling-block in the path of philosophical progress. 
 We turn to his colleague and counterpart, Asa Gray, who 
 did more than any single native writer to hasten the re- 
 ception of Darwinism. 
 
 3. The Reception of Darwinism 
 
 In Asa Gray we have the New World's most efficient 
 defender of Darwinism after the appearance of the 
 Origiii of Species in 1859. The Harvard botanist con- 
 fesses himself a convinced theist with no prepossession in 
 favor of naturalistic theories. Nevertheless he says that 
 within half a generation it can be affirmed that the gen- 
 eral doctrine of the derivation of species has prevailed 
 over that of specific creation, and this in spite of the 
 fact that so many of the reviewers attack the Origin as 
 pantheistic, if not atheistic. In his first review of 
 March, 1860, he writes that " this book is exciting much 
 attention "and that already two American editions are 
 announced. He foresees a spirited conflict among opin- 
 ions of every grade,— a struggle for existence in which 
 natural selection itself will destroy tho weaker and allow 
 the stronger to survive. Such conflicting opinions are 
 those of Dana of Yale, whose idealistic Thoughts upon 
 
192 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 Species will not readily harmonize with the naturalistic 
 scheme, and those of Agassiz, who widely diverges from 
 Darwinism. 
 
 Gray now draws an instructive parallel between the 
 views of the Swiss- American and those of the English- 
 man in order to bring out the main features of the theory 
 of the origination of species by means of natural selec- 
 tion. While Agassiz discards the idea of common de- 
 scent as the real bond of union among the individuals 
 and holds that each species originated at the same time 
 over the whole geographical area it occupies, Darwin 
 holds the orthodox view of the descent of all the indi- 
 viduals of a species not only from a local birthplace, but 
 from a single ancestor or pair. He adds that each species 
 has extended and established itself, through natural 
 agencies, wherever it could ; so that the actual geo- 
 graphical distribution of any species is by no means a 
 primordial arrangement, but a natural result. 
 
 By the " orthodox " rule of descent. Gray evidently 
 meant the Bible view, since the theory of a plurality of 
 centers of origin lent itself to the common American be- 
 lief in the possibility of special creation in order to 
 repair the ravages of cataclysms. If, now, we substitute 
 for the word orthodox the word current, we see that 
 Agassiz had the people on his side. His theory, con- 
 tinues Gray, referring the phenomena both of origin 
 and distribution directly to the divine will, both being 
 equally primordial, equally supernatural, and also up- 
 holding that every adaptation of species to climate and 
 of species to species, is as aboriginal and, therefore, inex- 
 plicable as are the organic forms themselves, — this theory- 
 is theistic to excess. The opposite theory is not open 
 to this objection. The question of primordial origin may 
 be left in abeyance, but geographical distribution is not 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 193 
 
 a primordial arrangement but a natural result. More- 
 over, adaptation is a phenomenon aecordin.ir to which 
 plants and animals are subject from their birth to phys- 
 ical influences, to which they have to accommodate them- 
 selves as they can. Is it not possible to harmonize these 
 two theories, if the former makes the unity of plan only 
 intellectual, and the latter makes inheritance material? 
 In other words, is it not most presumable that an intel- 
 lectual conception realized in nature would be realized 
 through physical agencies? To Gray the compromise 
 between theological views and physical causation seems 
 not impossible. When Agassiz refers the whole to the 
 agency of intellect as its first cause and when Darwin 
 does not deny an intellectual connection between species 
 — as related to a supreme intelligence — Gray dimly ap- 
 prehends a probable combination of these divergent 
 theories, and in that combination the ground for a strong 
 stand against " mere naturalism." 
 
 In this last phrase the compromiser is really not one- 
 sided. The proof that he does not take a stand against 
 the natural is that he is opposed to the exclusively super- 
 natural. Thus he adds that substantive proof of specific 
 creation is not attainable, but that of derivation or trans- 
 mutation of species may be. The propounders of the 
 latter view are bound to do one of two things : either to 
 assign real and adequate causes, the natural or necessarA- 
 result of which must be to produce the present diversity 
 of species and their actual relations; or, to show the 
 general conformity of the whole body of facts to such 
 assumption through its competency to harmonize all the 
 facts. Lamarck mainly undertook the first line, but his 
 doctrine of appetencies and habits of animals reacting 
 upon their structure met with a somewhat undeserved 
 ridicule. The shadowy author of the Vestiges of the 
 
194 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 Natural History of Creation can hardly be said to have 
 undertaken either line, in a scientific way. He would 
 explain the whole progressive evolution of nature by 
 virtue of an inherent tendency to develop, thus giving 
 us an idea or a word in place of a natural cause, a 
 restatement of the proposition instead of an explana- 
 tion. Darwin attempts both lines of proof and in a 
 strictly scientific spirit. 
 
 Nothing could have been more fortunate than this 
 presentation of the case. It disarmed criticism of the 
 naturalistic hypothesis by throwing the burden of proof 
 upon the propounder. It allowed for a sufficient margin 
 of deistie interpretation to satisfy the supernaturalists. 
 Darwin, in proposing a theory which suggests a method 
 that harmonizes these facts, into a system we may trust, 
 implies that all was done wisely, in the largest sense 
 designedly, and by an intelligent First Cause. Gray 
 expressed trust in Darwin's deistie drift through the lat- 
 ter 's allowing Paley 's argument a further extension, and 
 through his changing the meaning of the intervention of 
 the Creator as done for all time, to an intervention as 
 doing through all time. 
 
 It is possible that Gray strains a point in trying to ac- 
 commodate Darwinism to the traditional Anglo-American 
 philosophy. Yet he makes full allowance for the diffi- 
 culties in the way of the acceptance of the new theory. 
 The first difficulty is the imperfection of the geological 
 records. Of the records of fossil lithography all but the 
 last volume is out of print, and of its pages only local 
 glimpses have been obtained. But, for these gaps, we 
 need not '' invoke cataclysm to involve the world," for 
 the theory of uniformity will account for all geological 
 changes in a quiet and easy way. The second difficulty 
 is that of the " missing link." Wide is the gap between 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 195 
 
 the highest quadnimana and man ; but where is there the 
 slightest evidence of a common progenitor? In evolution 
 the prospect of the future is encouraging ; but the back- 
 ward glance alarming. There may be a closer associa- 
 tion of our ancestors of the olden time with " our poor 
 relations " of the quadnimanous family than we like to 
 acknowledge. But the whole argument in natural theol- 
 ogj'- for a final cause, say in the structure of the hand, is 
 just as good on the supposition of the descent of men 
 from chimpanzees and gorillas as it would have been in 
 the case of the first man supernaturally created. Mean- 
 while intermediate links between the two-handed and the 
 four-handed are lacking altogether, so we must needs 
 believe in the separate and special creation of man. 
 
 A third difficulty is that of sterility. Danvin labors 
 to show that sterility is not a special endowment, to pre- 
 vent the confusion of species by mingling, but an inci- 
 dental acquirement. But this arrangement to keep apart 
 those forms which have, or have acquired, a certain 
 moderate amount of difference, looks to us as much 
 designed for the purpose as does a ratchet to prevent 
 reverse motion in a wheel. A fourth and a most formi- 
 dable difficulty is that of the production and specializa- 
 tion of organs. All organic beings have been formed on 
 two great laws: unity of type, and adaptation to the 
 conditions of existence. The special teleolngists, such 
 as Paley, occupy themselves with the latter only, refer- 
 ring particular facts to special design, but leaving an 
 overwhelming array of the widest facts inexplicable. The 
 morphologists build on unity of type, which requires 
 each individual "to go through a certain formality." 
 and to accept, at least for a time, certain organs, whether 
 they are of any use to him or not. If philosophers seek 
 to harmonize these two views theoretically, Darwin har- 
 
196 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 raonizes them naturally: adaptation is the result of 
 natural selection; unity of type, of unity of reason. 
 
 In this summary statement Gray has given due weight 
 to both sides of the controversy. He confessed that at 
 first he had no prepossession in favor of naturalistic 
 theories and that the evidence presented by Darwin had 
 been so strong that he could not but give his studies the 
 name of Darwiniana. 
 
 In turning from the college at Cambridge to the col- 
 lege at New Haven we find an illustration of the sarcastic 
 saying that where Harvard leads Yale follows — at a dis- 
 tance. In James Dwight Dana, the geologist, we have 
 a preformationist who through his unifonnitarian views 
 came to a gradual but grudging acknowledgment of 
 Darwinism. As early as 1848 Dana writes to Gray that 
 the view which he had favored of late was one suggested 
 by Professor Henry of Washington, who considered the 
 forces in animate nature chemical forces, but also that 
 there was a directrix behind all, modifying or govern- 
 ing the results. He compared it to a steam engine whose 
 forces within were directed in their operation by the 
 engineer. Here was a sort of deistic dynamism, the raw 
 material which Dana worked over for thirty years and 
 left in this finished law of development: *' Unity evolv- 
 ing multiplicity of parts, to successive individualization, 
 proceeding from the more fundamental onwards." 
 
 The first modification of this suggested transcendent 
 dynamism was to make it partially immanent. In his 
 idea of species as certain amounts or kinds of concen- 
 trated force, Gray told Dana that he fell back upon the 
 broadest and most fundamental views, and developed 
 them with great ability and cogency. The praise is 
 just. Dana's Thoughts on Species is a clearly reasoned 
 study of the comprehensive principles that pervade the 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 197 
 
 universe, with the purpose of finding out the meaning 
 of permanency, and the basis of variations in species. 
 In this study of 1857 the author hopes to illumine a 
 subject as yet involved in doubts and diflficulties, by 
 reasoning from central principles to circumferential. 
 From the study of the inorganic world we learn that 
 each element is represented by a specific amount or law 
 of force. The essential idea of species thus deduced is 
 this: a species corresponds to a specific amount or con- 
 dition of force, defined in the act or law of creation. But 
 in organic beings, unlike the inorganic, there is a cycle 
 of progress involving growth and decline. The oxygen 
 molecule may be eternal as far as anything in its nature 
 goes. But the germ-cell is but an incipient stage in a 
 cycle of changes, and is not the same for two successive 
 instants. Thus an indefinite perpetuation of the germ-cell 
 is in fact effected ; yet it is not mere endless being, but 
 like evolving like in an unlimited round. Hence when 
 individuals multiply from generation to generation, it 
 is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea, and the 
 true notion of species is not in the resulting group, but 
 in the idea or potential element which is at the basis 
 of every individual of the group. 
 
 In Dana's elaborate series of definitions we have sev- 
 eral points of attachment with his fellow-scientists. 
 The cyclic conception is that of Agassiz, while the defini- 
 tion of the primordial type-idea is acknowledged to be 
 nearly the same as that of ^Morton, when he described a 
 species as a primordial organic force. But there is yet 
 a difference. "With Dana there is greater emphasis upon 
 the immanent element in the evolutionary process. Each 
 species, he continues, has its own special mode of de- 
 velopraont as well as ultimate form or result, — its serial 
 unfolding, inworking, and outflowing. The precise na- 
 
198 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 lure ol' {he potentiality in each species is expressed by 
 tlie line of historical progress from the germ to the full 
 expansion of its power. We comprehend the type-idea 
 only when we understand the cycle of evolution through 
 all its laws of progress, both as regards the living struc- 
 ture under development within, and its successive rela- 
 tions to the external world. 
 
 Thus far there is much that is significant in Dana's 
 essay. It has an air of novelty. In its reference to the 
 influence of the external world it appears to lean to- 
 ward the environmental influences of Darwin. Mean- 
 while the Origin of Species had appeared and the doe- 
 trine of variation through natural selection was rife. 
 But as Dana wrote to Darwin in 1863, geology has not 
 afforded facts that sustain the view that the system of 
 life has been evolved through a method of development 
 from species to species. Darwin, in turn, admits that 
 his correspondent's objections are perfectly valid, but he 
 adds this demurrer : " As my book has been lately some- 
 how attended to, perhaps it would have been better if, 
 when you condemned all such views, you had stated that 
 you had not been able yet to read it. But pray do not 
 suppose that I think for one instant that, with your 
 strong and slowly acquired convictions and immense 
 knowledge, you could have been converted. The utmost 
 that I could have hoped would have been that you might 
 possibly have been here or there staggered. Indeed, I 
 should not much value any sudden conversion, for I re- 
 member well how many years I fought against my pres- 
 ent belief." 
 
 The conversion of Dana to Darwinism — if such it may 
 be called — was indeed slow. A dozen years after this 
 letter he insists that the transition between species, in 
 the system of progress, has not yet proved to be gradual 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 199 
 
 and that man is not of nature's making, but owes his 
 existence to the special act of the Infinite Beinpr whose 
 image he beai*s. But the tide at last turned, and. twenty 
 years later, naturalism and supernaturalism came to a 
 compromise in his mind. As he wrote in the last and 
 revised edition of his Manual of Geologif, the former 
 speculative conclusions are not all in accord with the 
 author's present judgment. In giving up the general 
 principles with regard to the progress in the earth's 
 life — such as progress from the aquatic to the terrestrial, 
 from the simple to the complex — he states that all these 
 principles are in accord with a theory of evolution, and, 
 through the added facts of later years, they favor the 
 view of evolution by natural variation. Such added 
 facts are that Arctic America contained in tertiary- time 
 plants so much like species existing in the forests of both 
 temperate North America and Japan, that the former 
 have been pronounced the undoubted progenitors of the 
 latter. Also along the Pacific Coast and Gulf Coast of 
 Central America there are so many identical and nearly 
 related species of aquatic animals that migration during 
 a time of submergence of the narrow strip of land, with 
 subsequent variation, is regarded as the only reason- 
 able explanation. 
 
 Dana's old preformationism with its fixed types now 
 gives place to great plasticity in organic structures under 
 variant agencies. A telling proof here is a fossil collec- 
 tion of Dana's pupil. Marsh, exhibiting the descent of the 
 horse from the primitive five-toed species to the present 
 one-toed variety. This collection was a palpable proof 
 to Huxley, yet Dana was never entirely won over to 
 naturalism. The causes of variation mentioned by Dar- 
 win are acknowledged to be real causes, but they are 
 held to act directlv, after the Lamarckian method, with- 
 
•200 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 out dependence for success upon the principle of natural 
 selection. This theory is not essential to evolution be- 
 cause it is based on the assumption that variations come 
 singly or nearly so, and that the selected are, therefore, 
 few compared with the multitudes that disappear. The 
 idea is derived from facts recorded of domestic or culti- 
 vated races whose structures are in a strained or artificial 
 state and deteriorate when care ceases. But in wild na- 
 ture variations are, in general, the slow and sure results 
 of the conditions. When, therefore, a variation appears 
 that admits of augmentation by continued inbreeding, 
 progress should be general, and the unadaptable few 
 .should disappear, not the multitude. Man affords an ex- 
 ample. The gradual gain of some races in lands and 
 supremacy and the disappearance of the inferior races is 
 one example of the survival of the fittest, or natural selec- 
 tion. But the superior races derived the power which 
 led to their survival and preeminent position through 
 favoring conditions in environments, that is, in geo- 
 graphical, geological, and biological conditions and re- 
 sources ; through the powers of endurance, and courage, 
 and mind power, and will power, which conflict with na- 
 ture and other races of men in the w^orld is fitted to 
 develop ; and through the power of self-assurance which 
 comes of a high moral sense. Hence victory, survival. 
 The survival of the fittest is a fact ; and the fact accounts 
 in part for the geographical distribution of the races of 
 men now existing and still in progress ; but not for the 
 existence of the fittest nor for the power that has deter- 
 mined survival. 
 
 In this half-hearted avowal of Darwinism the Yale 
 geologist betrays a certain confusion on the subject. 
 Asa Gray suggested such a confusion or lack of compre- 
 hension when he wrote to Dana: " Every now and then 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 201 
 
 something you write makes me doul)t if you quite get 
 hold of Darwinian natural selection. . . . Suppose the 
 term be a personification, as, no doubt, strictly it is. One 
 so fond as you are of personification ought not to object 
 to what seems to me a happy term." 
 
 The reception of Darwinism at Yale College was 
 lukewarm. A similar state of affairs existed at Prince- 
 ton. In President McCosh we have a treatment clear, 
 candid, and incisive, but a method of approach ominous 
 to scientific naturalism. The new college head tells us 
 that he was not a week in Princeton till he let it be known 
 to the upper classes of the college that he was in favor 
 of evolution — properly limited and explained. This 
 qualification is in harmony with the speaker's previous 
 words. In his first published volume. The Method of the 
 Divine Government, he sought to unfold the plan by 
 which God governs the world. He concedes that he 
 found it in an orderly manner— that is, by law. He is 
 now prepared to believe that there might be a like method 
 in the organic kingdoms and to listen to Darwin when he 
 showed that there was a regular instrumentality in the 
 descent of plants and animals. In place, then, of undis- 
 criminating denunciation of evolution from so many 
 pulpits, periodicals, and seminaries, a denunciation 
 which assumes evolution and Christianity incompatible, 
 the Princetonian propounds a definition to harmonize the 
 two : Evolution is the drawing of one thing out of an- 
 other; it proceeds from causation which is universal, for 
 in the world things are so connected that every one 
 thing proceeds from some other, and all things from 
 God. This is the dogma. Can it be proved ? Darwin is 
 constantly making the distinction between natural selec- 
 tion and supernatural design, between natural law and 
 special creation. Now, the difference between the two 
 
202 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 opposing theories as thus put is misleading, since the 
 supernatural power is to be recognized in the natural 
 law, the Creator's power being executed by the creature's 
 action, the design seen in the mechanism. Chance is 
 obliged to vanish because we see contrivance. There 
 is purpose when we see a beneficent end accomplished. 
 
 iSo much for the preamble. Apparently the newly 
 imported Scottish divine is back in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, the age of reason, which saw in all things benevo- 
 lence and design. That attitude was more fully ex- 
 pressed in McCosh's joint work on Typical Forms and 
 Special Ends in Creation. But he now recognizes that 
 the matter is not so easy of solution. It will not do to 
 Platonize. The types of the animal kingdom have been 
 fondly contemplated and admired by our profounder 
 minds. They have been identified with the grand ideas 
 which, according to Plato, have been in or before the 
 divine mind from all eternity. Pious minds like Cuvier 
 have ascribed them to God, whose thoughts are embodied 
 in them. On the other hand, the great rival of Cuvier, 
 St. Ililaire, ascribed the types to a common descent, and 
 used language which sounded as if the animal by its 
 Avishes could add to its organs; could call forth fins to 
 swim with, and wings to fly. The controversy came to 
 a head when Goethe declared that it was of more 
 importance than the French Revolution. 
 
 There is undoubtedly a difference between the two 
 views; but McCosh asks if there may not be a recon- 
 ciliation? It may be by descent that types are 
 formed, and yet all be done by a plan in the 
 divine wisdom which is thus manifested. The two 
 great Swiss-American naturalists, Agassiz and Guyot, 
 delighted to perceive clearly that there w^as a 
 system in the descent of animals which they were 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 203 
 
 sure was conceived in the divine mind, but doubted 
 whether it could have been produced by natural 
 law or material agency. But surely, in analogy with 
 divine procedure in all other parts of nature, we may 
 discover a divine plan, and at the same time a creature 
 agency to carry it out, which agency makes known God's 
 plan to us. We may see that the relations which con- 
 stitute types are genetic, and as we perceive in them 
 wisdom and beauty, we can also perceive that they are 
 instituted by God. This view gives to classes a con- 
 nection in the very nature of things, and makes species 
 intelligible to human intelligence, which thereby rises to 
 some comprehension of divine intelligence, in the image 
 of which human intelligence is formed. 
 
 The ground is gone over again and the same conclu- 
 sion reached, — the comfortable conclusion of benevo- 
 lence, design, and the human capacity to comprehend the 
 cosmic purposes. Anything the scientist brings for- 
 ward may be clearly beheld in this bright light of optim- 
 ism. When the geologist points out the scries of changes 
 in the horse tribe from the five- to the one-toed varieties, 
 the writer holds that it is all for the best : God has pro- 
 vided the horse wnth its hard hoof for man, who to 
 make it harder adds a shoe. " I hold that there are as 
 clear proofs of design in the hoof as in the shoe upon 
 it." Against this complacent supematuralism the new 
 doctrines make but little headway. McCo.sh mentions 
 among the causes of variation the one to which Darwin 
 has given such prominence. It is natural selection, 
 which to McCosh seems a not very happy phrase, as it 
 is apt to leave the impression that there is a choice on 
 the part of nature, whereas it is all produced by the 
 arrangements made by the Creator. This is the doctrine 
 of final cause, a doctrine of natural religion. Neverthe- 
 
204 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 less it is not opposed to the absolute mutability of 
 species, which in its turn has become almost a religious 
 doctrine, around which has gathered a sacred feeling 
 which it is thought dangerous to disturb. With this 
 opinion McCosh has little patience. It is a question for 
 science to settle and not religion. 
 
 To science, then, the author turns to trace the geo- 
 logical history of the earth. His data he draws chiefly 
 from Dana of Yale and Guyot of Princeton — both 
 " reconcilers " of Genesis and geology. From these 
 data he argues that that which the scientists call a sys- 
 tem is what Platonists call an idea, and theologians de- 
 sign or purpose in the history of organic life. Of course 
 in all this there is the universal law, established by a 
 wide and uncontradicted experience that nature is uni- 
 form. This much against the anti-evolutionists. But 
 at this point also extreme evolutionists are to be met, by 
 showing that there are other powers which have modi- 
 fied evolution such as light, life, sensation, instinct, in- 
 telligence, morality ! 
 
 The Princetonian has missed the chief point made by 
 naturalism. When he claims that none of these agents 
 are producible by the power of nature, he shows him- 
 self incapable of grasping the doctrine of immanence, the 
 belief in a universal principle inclusive of these mani- 
 fold agencies and all to be put under the name of nature. 
 The old-fashioned dualism of this thinker is again ex- 
 posed. As evolution by physical causes cannot produce 
 life with all its variations, he infers that God does it by an 
 immediate fiat, even as he created matter and the forces 
 tliat act in matter. All that can be allowed in restating 
 the problem is that Darwinism has modified design only 
 to this extent : by making these high agencies an act of 
 Providence instead of an act of creation. It is not neces- 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 205 
 
 sarj' to go much further in exposition of the views of Mc- 
 Cosh, They are more fully set forth in another book — 
 Development : What It Can Do, and What It Cannot Do. 
 But a word more is needed on the attitude of the man 
 toward the whole movement. He has been held to have 
 welcomed Darwinism, and to have set evolutionism on its 
 legs in a conservative community. The truth of the mat- 
 ter is quite the contrary. Evolution might be discussed 
 in the college, but in the eighteenth, not the nineteenth 
 century meaning of the term. Defined originally as the 
 drawing of one thing out of another the conclusions 
 drawn from it were didactic. The college head hence- 
 forth shall do the thinking for his pupils. Darwinism 
 never teaches that nature is red in tooth and claw, but 
 that the survival of the fittest is a beneficial law. Just as 
 the common soldier did not discover all the wisdom of 
 Napoleon, so this, McCosh concludes, should be our posi- 
 tion in regard to God's works: we discover enough of the 
 arc to calculate th-e rest ; and as we see so much wisdom in 
 the little that we know, we argue that there is vastly 
 more in the much that is beyond. 
 
 The compromising deist of the previous century speaks 
 in the Scottish- American divine. He fully admits that 
 there are results following from the laws of God which 
 it is not easy to reconcile with the omniscience and 
 benevolence of the deity, yet since " by a higher arrange- 
 ment of nature, or rather, the God of nature, the organic 
 world is progressing. . . . There are cereals when before 
 there were only heaths and mosses, and man himself is 
 further removed from the savage state. . . . We have 
 thus a promise that the earth may become a perfect abode 
 for a perfected humanity." 
 
 IMcCosh has been considered by some Princetonians an 
 advocate of Darwinism. But as Alexander Ormond has 
 
L'0(J EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 pointed out, lie never became an evolutionist in his 
 fundamental thought, and was never able to enter into 
 tiie new theoiy because his age was a period of transition. 
 The same may be said of McCosh's learned pupil, 
 Charles Woodruff Shields. The latter asserts, in his 
 Philosophia Ultiina, that his master from the first had led 
 the creationists into alignment with the evolutionists and 
 adds that from present signs it would seem that the tide 
 of controversy has turned in favor of evolution, in some 
 form and degree as logically consistent with the strictest 
 creationalism. Shields makes this assertion, despite the 
 fact that there are two rival schools which have arisen in 
 the attempt to solve the great metaphysical problem, the 
 development of absolute being. According to the former, 
 he explains, the whole universe, both spiritual and ma- 
 terial, has proceeded from deity, by successive acts of 
 creation. According to the opposite school of thinkers, 
 the totality of existence proceeds from some creative sub- 
 stance or principle, under physical laws of evolution, em- 
 bracing all mental as well as material phenomena. This 
 is a fair generalization. So is the next to the effect that 
 while German thinkers attempt chiefly the problem of 
 harmonizing the physical with the logical development 
 of the universe as projected by science and philosophy, 
 English and American writers deal largely with the more 
 practical task of reconciling evolution with morality, re- 
 ligion, and orthodoxy. 
 
 The latter point of view is peculiarly that of Shields. 
 The great aim of his Fhwl Philosophy is to give a survey 
 of the sciences wherein rational and revealed are ulti- 
 mately brought into reconciliation. The method of recon- 
 ciliation in the case of evolution is somewhat strained. 
 It consists in giving high praise to the supernaturalists 
 and faint praise to the naturalists. For example, in the 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 207 
 
 case of the anthropological science concerning the doc- 
 trine of human evolution, " distinguished " biologists 
 have maintained that the foetal development of man, so 
 far from proving his animal pedigree, merely reflects 
 that unity of plan which has pervaded the organic world 
 from the beginning. Likewise, " leading " ethnologists 
 hold that there is a profound gulf without connection or 
 passage, separating the human species from every other. 
 On the other hand, the " so-called " areha?o-geologists 
 have also been met upon their own ground, Dawson, for 
 instance, maintaining that the famous Neanderthal skull 
 is simply exceptional. ... In short, if the " notion " 
 of transmutation be separated from that of progression, 
 we can readily imagine the scale of civilized and savage 
 humanity descending as well as ascending from the 
 image of a God and the image of an ape. 
 
 The animus of Shields' voluminous work is finally laid 
 bare by such statements as these, — that Joseph Vandyke 
 has argued elaborately that both theism and revelation 
 are required to explain the origin of man ; and that al- 
 though the Presbyterian Professor Woodrow, of South 
 Carolina, has been deprived of his theological chair for 
 teaching a partial evolution, yet President Patton has 
 stated the theory as still a hopeful problem in apologetics. 
 
 Shields made a valiant attempt to be a balance-wheel 
 between two opposite forces, but the dead weight of 
 dogma pulled him back. Thus while he can assert that 
 George Ticknor Curtis has " judicially " tested the theory 
 of evolution and found it not proven, Charles Darwin 
 remains for him a mere " speculative " naturalist. In 
 fine. Shields, like his master McCosh, was in an age of 
 transition and unable to grasp the significance of the 
 new movement. 
 
 We now turn from the apologist of Princeton to an- 
 
20S EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 other thinker in a neighboring university, who, although 
 a transitionalist, was also a transrautationist. Edward 
 Cope of Philadelphia has the distinction of having 
 founded an " American school of biology " which at- 
 tempted to go beyond Darwin 's natural selection. Cope 's 
 evolutionar}" philosophy was expressed in his chief work, 
 The Origin of the Fittest. This work was notable coming 
 at the time it did. In Philadelphia the tradition of free- 
 thought had run into a narrow channel, but it was still 
 partially preserved in the University and in those scien- 
 tific societies fathered by Franklin. But the public in 
 general had lost that tradition of liberalism, and the 
 town which had once been so hospitable to all comers had 
 now closed its doors to foreign thought. Therefore, Cope 
 expostulates, let those excellent people in whose minds 
 there is considerable repugnance to the acceptance, or 
 even consideration of the hypothesis of development, 
 restrain their condemnation. They may object that the 
 human species is certainly involved and man's ascent 
 from the ape asserted ; and also that the scheme in gen- 
 eral seems to conflict with that presented by the IMosaic 
 account of creation ; but it now behooves those interested 
 to explain the events and to look any consequent neces- 
 sary modification of their metaphysical or theological 
 views squarely in the face. 
 
 Of the two main consequences above portrayed, the 
 first seemed the more distasteful. If the hypothesis here 
 maintained be true, explains the naturalist, man is the 
 descendant of some preexistent generic type, the which, 
 if it were now living, we would probably call an ape. It 
 would be an objection of little weight could it be truly 
 urged that there have as yet been discovered no remains 
 of ape-like men, for we have frequently been called upon 
 in the course of paleontological discovery to bridge 
 
THE RECEPTION OF DARWINISM 209 
 
 greater gaps than this, and greater remain, which we ex- 
 pect to fill. But we have ape-like characters exhibited by 
 more than one race of men yet existing. We all admit 
 the existence of higher and lower races, the latter being 
 those which we now find to present greater or less ap- 
 proximations to the apes. The peculiar structural char- 
 acters that belong to the negro in his most typical form 
 are of that kind, however great may be the distance of 
 his remove therefrom. The flattening of the nose and 
 prolongation of the jaws constitute such a resemblance; 
 so do the deficiency of the calf of the leg, and the ob- 
 liquity of the pelvis, which approaches more the horizon- 
 tal position than it does in the Caucasian. The investi- 
 gations made at Washington during the war, with refer- 
 ence to the physical characteristics of the soldiei-s, show 
 that the arms of the negro are from one to two inches 
 longer than those of the whites: another approximation 
 to the ape. In fact, this race is a species of the genus 
 Homo as distinct in character from the Caucasian as 
 those we are accustomed to recognize in other depart- 
 ments of the animal kingdom ; but he is not distinct by 
 isolation, since intermediate forms between him and the 
 other species can be abundantly found. 
 
 The second objection as to the conflict between the 
 ]Mosaic account of creation and the Darwinian is to be 
 met in the same way. " Believe in the expert " and the 
 old view goes by the board. The modern theory of 
 evolution has met with remarkably rapid acceptance by 
 those best qualified to judge of its merits, namely, the 
 zoologists and botanists, while probably the majority of 
 the public, in this region at least, profess to reject it. 
 This inconsistency is due to two causes. In the first 
 place, Darwin's demonstration contained in the Origin 
 cf Species proves little more than that the species 
 
210 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 of the same genus have had common origin, and 
 also his theory of natural selection is incomplete as an 
 explanation of their origin. In the second place, the 
 unscientific world is unreasonable, little knowing the 
 slow steps and laborious effort by which any general 
 truth is reached. Hence they find in incompleteness 
 ground of condemnation of the whole. Now Science is 
 glad if she can prove that the earth stands on an ele- 
 phant, and gladder if she can demonstrate that the ele- 
 phant stands on a turtle; but if she cannot show the 
 support of the turtle she is not discouraged, but labors 
 patiently, trusting that the future of discovery will 
 justify the experience of the past. 
 
 Cope's appeal to the higher court of the expert is not 
 an appeal to authority, nor a mere substitute of present 
 for past dogma. If some of the people find Darwin's 
 argument incomplete, or in some points weak, it may be 
 answered so do the student classes, who, nevertheless, be- 
 lieve it. This is largely because Darwin's facts and 
 thoughts repeat a vast multiplicity of experiences of 
 every student, which are of as much significance as those 
 cited by him, and which only required a courageous 
 officer to marshal them into line, a mighty host, conquer- 
 ing and to conquer. These will slowly find their way 
 into print, some in one country and some in another. 
 
 In distinguishing between the fact of evolution and the 
 various views of evolution. Cope effectively meets the ob- 
 jections of the old school against the new theory. The 
 evidence in favor of evolution, he explains, is abundant ; 
 much less has been done in explanation of the law of 
 evolution. Darwin and his immediate followers have 
 brought out the law of natural selection; Spencer has 
 endeavored to express them in terms of force; while, 
 among Americans, Hyatt, Packard, and Cope himself 
 
COSMIC PHILOSOPHY: JOHN FISKE 211 
 
 advanced the law of acceleration and retardation. It is 
 this latter group, headed by Cope, that has been called 
 the American biological school. Out of this school we 
 shall take up later one notable living representative, 
 James ]\[ark Baldwin. iMeauwhile we must turn from the 
 philosophy of the chair to that of the rostrum, and con- 
 sider a popular representative of the movement. 
 
 4. Cosmic Philosophy: John Fiske 
 
 As a summarizer of the controversy between special 
 creation and derivation John Fiske has given us the 
 clearest contemporary account. This account, as Josiah 
 Royce has pointed out, is somewhat rancorous, because 
 at that time Agassiz still dominated the current teach- 
 ing, and the Darwinian theory was still on trial before 
 the public. That public was given its choice. Was it to 
 be special creation or derivation? The pedigree of the 
 two theories has something to do with the decision. The 
 former hypothesis, says' Fiske, originated in the crude 
 mythological conceptions of the ancient Hebrews and was 
 imcritically accepted until the time of Lamarck and 
 Goethe. The latter hypothesis originated in the method- 
 ical studies of the phendmenon of organic life, and has 
 been held by a large number of biologists during the first 
 half of the nineteenth century. Now, while the Hebrew 
 writer presents us with a concrete picture of the crea- 
 tion of man, a homogeneous clay model of the human form 
 at once transmuted into a heterogeneous combination of 
 organs and ti.ssues — the few naturalists who still make a 
 show of upliolding the special creation hypothe.sis care- 
 fully refrain from specification. When challenged they 
 take refuge in grandiloquent phrases about " Creative 
 Will " and " free action of an Intelligent Power," — 
 
212 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 very niucli as the cuttlefish extricates itself from a dis- 
 agreeable predicament by hiding in a shower of its own 
 ink. When translated, however, from the dialect of 
 mythology into the dialect of science, the special crea- 
 tion hypothesis falls flat. It asserts that untold millions 
 of molecules rushed together at some appointed instant 
 from divers quarters and grouped themselves into an 
 adult mammal. . . . Such an hypothesis, which involves 
 such an assumption, is at once excluded from the pale of 
 science. 
 
 The opposite hypothesis, that of derivation, has four 
 kinds of arguments in its favor. The first of these is 
 classification. This is not the scheme of Agassiz, who at- 
 tempted to explain the four distinct types of animal 
 structure by resuscitating from its moss-covered tomb the 
 Platonic theory of ideas. Hardly ! The scientific scheme 
 of classification is a complex arrangement of organisms 
 in groups within groups, resembling each other at the 
 bottom of the scale and differing most widely at the 
 top. Now, if each species has been separately created, no 
 reason can be assigned for such an arrangement, — unless 
 perchance someone can be found hardy enough to main- 
 tain that it was intended as a snare and a delusion for 
 human intelligence. The old opponents of geology, who 
 strove to maintain at whatever cost the scientific credit of 
 the Mosaic myth of the creation, asserted that fossil 
 plants and animals were created already dead and pet- 
 rified, just for the fun of the thing. Manifestly those 
 persons take a quite similar position who pretend that 
 God created separately the horse, ass, zebra, and quagga, 
 having previously created a beast enough like all of 
 them to be their common grandfather. Now, the true 
 thcorj' of classification depends not upon special creation, 
 but common origin, a given family being capable of ar- 
 
COSMIC PHILOSOPHY: JOHN FISKE 213 
 
 rangement iu clivcrging groups ami sub-groups, along 
 lines which ramify like branches, branchlets, and twigs 
 of a tree. 
 
 An equally powerful argument is furnished by the 
 embryonic development of organisms. Why does a mam- 
 mal begin to develop as if it were going to become a 
 fish, and then, changing its course, act as if it were going 
 to become a reptile or bird, and only after much delay 
 assume the peculiar characteristics of mammals? On 
 the evolutionary theory, these phenomena are explicable 
 as due to the integration or summing-up of adaptive 
 processes by which modifications, slowly acquired through 
 generations of ancestral organisms, are more and more 
 rapidly repeated in the embryo. On the hypothesis that 
 each species of organisms was independently built up by 
 a divine architect, how are we to explain these circuitous 
 proceedings? Unless it were due to recapitulation, the 
 process would be as futile as the work of an architect who 
 could not erect a palace, except by first using his ma- 
 terials in the shape of a hut, and then rebuilding the hut 
 as a cottage, and finally as a palace. Again there are 
 the equally significant facts of morphology. Why, unless 
 through common inheritance, should all vertebrates be 
 constructed on the same type? It is a familiar fact that 
 the arms of men and apes, the forelegs of quadrupeds, 
 the wings of birds, and the breast fins of fishes are 
 structurally identical, being developed from the same 
 embryonal rudiments. Why is this so? But two an- 
 swers are possible. We may either say, with the Mussul- 
 man, "it so pleased Allah, whose name be exalted "; 
 or we may honestly aclaiowledge the scientific implica- 
 tion that such community of structure is strong evidence 
 in favor of community of origin. Finally, the facts of 
 geographical distribution and geological succession are in 
 
214 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 complete harmony with the development theory. On the 
 hypothesis of special creations, no good reason can be 
 given why the extinct animals found in any geographical 
 area should resemble, both in general structure and in 
 special modifications, the animals which now live in the 
 same area. It has indeed been urged, by upholders of 
 the special creation hypothesis, that these striking re- 
 semblances may be explained by supposing each species 
 to have been created in strict adaptation to the condi- 
 tions of life surrounding it. But there is no appreciable 
 difference, for example, between the conditions of 
 existence in the seas east and west of the Isthmus of 
 Panama ; yet, according to the assumption of the special- 
 creationists, their marine faunas ought to be almost 
 exactly alike, which they are not. The presumption 
 raised at the outset against the doctrine of special crea- 
 tion is even superfluously confirmed by the testimony of 
 facts. Not only is this doctrine discredited by its bar- 
 baric origin, and by the absurd or impossible assump- 
 tions which it would require us to make, but it utterly 
 fails to explain a single one of the phenomena of the 
 classification, embryology, morphology, and distribution 
 of extinct and living organisms. While, on the other 
 hand, the doctrine of derivation is not only accredited by 
 its scientific origin, and by its appealing to none but veri- 
 fiable processes and agencies, but it affords an explana- 
 tion for each and all of the above-mentioned phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 Such is the contrast drawn up by Fiske between what 
 he comes to call anthropomorphism and cosmism. The 
 latter term is a favorite with its author. He applies it to 
 his voluminous work from which this discussion of Dar- 
 winism is taken. That work, on Cosmic Philosophy, is 
 in large measure an interpretation to the American pub- 
 
COSMIC PHILOSOPHY: JOHN FISKE 215 
 
 lie of the system of Herbert Spencer, which, it is hardly 
 needful to say, clashed with the old conservative view. 
 To those who sought design and purpose in the universe 
 the Spencerian Unknowable was like the House of 
 Lords, — " it did nothing in particular and did it very 
 well." Now, this Spencerian vagueness failed to satisfy 
 even the ardent disciple, Fiske. He therefore proceeded 
 to modify that system. He is opposed to any anthropo- 
 morphic theism, because personality and infinity are 
 terms expressive of ideas which are mutually incom- 
 patible. Nevertheless, the phenomenal universe is the 
 manifestation of some definite power. Here the older 
 forms of design are unconvincing. The Infinite does not 
 contrive, because the doctrine of evolution shows us that 
 the universe is not a contrivance, but an organism with 
 an indwelling principle of life. It was not made, but 
 has gro\Mi. In a word, the teleology of nature is an all- 
 pervading harmony. 
 
 Fiske as philosopher has at last been forced into the 
 problem of the relation of Darwinism and design. A 
 compromise which Asa Gray attempted, he seeks to effect. 
 The conclusion is interesting, it is the old Stoic solu- 
 tion, the solution which requires an immanent principle. 
 To this view of Fiske 's, Joseph Cook, the Boston ^londay 
 lecturer, attached a name, remarkable in its anticipation 
 of a famous modern work. Cook cites several theories of 
 the origin of species, beginning with Cope's self-elevation 
 by appetency, and ending with Dana's adjustment of 
 natural forces with breaks of special intervention. But 
 of all the views he gives fullest definition to this : Imma- 
 nent action and direction of divine power, working by the 
 purposive collocation and adjustment of natural forces, 
 acting without breaks, — or the theory of creative evolu- 
 tion. 
 
216 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 With this anticipation of the Bergsonian phrase, we 
 pass on to a prominent living exponent of genetic evolu- 
 tionism. 
 
 5. Genetic Evolutionism: James Mark Baldwin 
 
 Out of a controversy with Cope has arisen one of the 
 most fruitful enlargements of Darwinism. We refer to the 
 theory of James Mark Baldwin called '' Organic Selec- 
 tion " as opening a sphere for the application of the 
 principle of natural selection. Cope as a neo-Lamarck- 
 ian had emphasized use-inheritance and growth-force. 
 Baldwin as a neo-Darwinian claims that these are meta- 
 physical assumptions for which there is only an arti- 
 ficial need. As the Darwinian principle of natural selec- 
 tion supplanted the special-creation theory, so will the 
 new factor of organic selection supplant Cope's theory 
 of accommodation by consciousness. After years of study 
 and experiment with children the writer is convinced 
 that organic selection is a direct substitute for Lamarck- 
 ian heredity. It avoids the occultism of physical trans- 
 mission and puts in its place social heredity, the ac- 
 quisition of functions from the social environment. Thus 
 as soon as animals can use their native impulses in an 
 imitative way they begin to learn directly, by what may 
 be called *' cross cuts " to a desirable goal, the tradi- 
 tional habits of their species. The chick which imitates 
 the hen in drinking does not have to wait for a happy ac- 
 cident, nor to make a series of experiments, to find out 
 that water is to be drunk. All the remarkable accom- 
 modations of an imitative sort, so conspicuous in the 
 higher animals, enable them to acquire the habits and 
 behavior of their kind without running the risks of trial 
 and error. Calling this store of habits of whatever kind 
 " tradition," and calling the individual's absorption 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 217 
 
 of them and his consequent education in tradition his 
 " social heredity," we have a more or less independent 
 determining factor in evolution. 
 
 Organic selection becomes, accordingly, a universal 
 principle in so far as accommodation is universal. This 
 meets the view of the Lamarckiaus that evolution does 
 somehow reflect individual progress ; but it meets it with- 
 out adopting the principle of Lamarckian inheritance. 
 Indeed it would seem that high intellectual and moral 
 progress are matters of social accommodation rather than 
 that of direct natural inheritance on the part of indi- 
 viduals. Galton has shown how rare a thing it is for 
 artistic, literary, or other marked talent to maintain its 
 strength in later generations. Instead, we find such en- 
 dowments showing themselves in many individuals at 
 about the same time, in the same communities, and 
 under common social conditions. Groups of artists, 
 musicians, literary men, appeared together, constituting, 
 as it were, a social outburst. 
 
 Baldwin's view of the predominance of the social fac- 
 tor may throw some light even on the obscure subject 
 of the origin of the genius. It is much more effective 
 in the case of the normal child. In his first volume on 
 Mental Development it is shown that the child's life his- 
 torically is a faithful reproduction of his social condi- 
 tion. He is, from childhood up, excessively receptive 
 to social suggestion; his entire learning is a process of 
 conforming to social patterns. The essential to this, in 
 his heredity, is very great plasticity, cerebral balance 
 and equilibrium, a readiness to overflow into the new 
 channels which his social environment dictates. He has 
 to learn everything for himself, and in order to do this 
 he must begin in a state of great plasticity and mobility. 
 These social lessons which he learns for himself take the 
 
218 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 place largely of the heredity of particular paternal ac- 
 quisitions. The father must have been plastic to learn, 
 and this plasticity is, so far as the evidence goes, the 
 nervous condition of consciousness; thus the father 
 learned, through his consciousness, from his social en- 
 vironment. The child does the same. What he inherits 
 is the nervous plasticity and the consciousness. He 
 learns particular acts for himself ; and what he learns is, 
 in its main lines, what his father learned. So he is just 
 as well off, the child of Darwinism, as if he were physi- 
 cal heir to the acquisitions which his father made. 
 
 By his emphasis on the social, Baldwin has raised the 
 problem of evolution to a higher plane. Adaptation by 
 intelligent selection makes the Lamarckian factor un- 
 necessary. All the resources of " social transmission " — 
 the handing down of intelligent acquisitions by paternal 
 instruction, imitation, gregarious life, come indirectly to 
 take the place of the physical inheritance of such adap- 
 tations. This is the proof positive. The proof negative 
 lies in the fact that most of the psychologists are not 
 appealed to by the extreme facility and ease of the 
 Lamarckian solution. If experience is inherited, why 
 have not racial psychological experiences of the most 
 ancient and uniform order — such as those of space per- 
 ception, time estimation, verbal speech, the rudiments of 
 the three " r's," drilled into every child and used with 
 absolute uniformity throughout life — why have not such 
 functions become congenital ? 
 
 As with the human so with the animal race. The 
 variations which are not adequate at first, or are only 
 partially correlated, are supplemented by the accom- 
 modations which the creature makes, and so the species 
 has the time to perfect its inadequate congenital mechan- 
 ism. Thus the swans of Lake Geneva show relatively dif- 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 219 
 
 forent length of neck. Those with longer necks can feed 
 under water over a greater area of the bottom. Constant 
 stretching of tlie neck not only develops each swan, but 
 may be supposed to have encouraged variations in the 
 direction of longer neck, that is, variations coincident in 
 direction with their active accommodative processes. So 
 the long neck has been evolved. 
 
 Darwinism has been defended through organic selec- 
 tion as a substitute for use-inheritance. For example, 
 the more trivial experiences of the individual, such as 
 body mutilations, which it is not desirable to perpetuate, 
 would not be taken up in the evolution of the race. Or- 
 ganic selection would set a premium only on the varia- 
 tions which were important enough to be of some material 
 use, just as the new science of eugenics is founded upon 
 the possibility of carrying further in a systematic way 
 the intentional improvement of the race. In regard to the 
 exclusive production of reflexes, as would be the case 
 under use-inheritance, organic selection is adverse. In- 
 stead of the rigidity of inherited instincts we have the 
 plasticity possible under the minimum of instinctive 
 equipment. A chick, for example, is bound down by a 
 mass of inherited reflexes. The child, though at first help- 
 loss from its lack of instinctive tendencies, has an enor- 
 mous advantage in being able to pick and choose by 
 means of intelligence. It is intelligence which secures 
 the widest possible range of personal adjustments, and 
 ])y so doing widens the sphere of organic selection, so 
 that the creature which thinks has a general screen 
 from the action of natural selection. The .struggle for 
 existence, depending upon the physical qualities on 
 which the animals rely, is in some degree done away 
 with. 
 
 Organic selection has now reached an interesting 
 
220 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 speculative position. In protesting against rigid in- 
 heritance it brings in accommodation. In emphasizing 
 intelligence it brings in educability. The old dualism is 
 breaking down. By rendering the physical plastic, the 
 physical becomes permeable to intellect. Out of this 
 emerges a new phase of freedom. Instead of the deter- 
 minism either of the old preformism or that of mere 
 mechanical natural selection we have a case where natu- 
 ral selection operates to preserve creatures, because they 
 adapt themselves to their environment. The directive 
 factor is now largely self-directive, since the intelligence 
 represents the highest and most specialized form of 
 accommodation. In a word, organic selection has sup- 
 plemented and enlarged the old natural selection by 
 bringing in the doctrine of the survival of the accom- 
 modating. Organic selection, then, has this summary 
 advantage: It opens a great sphere for the application 
 of the principle of natural selection upon organisms, 
 that is, selection on the basis of what they do, rather 
 than of what they are; of the new use they make 
 of their functions, rather than of the mere possession of 
 certain congenital characters. A premium is set on 
 plasticity and adaptability of function rather than on 
 congenital fixity of structure; and this adaptability 
 reaches its highest level in the intelligence. 
 
 With the entrance of consciousness as the vehicle of 
 accommodation we are ready to consider the place of 
 individual purpose in evolution. As supplemented by 
 organic selection natural selection is now seen to be not 
 unteleological. The charge made against Darwinism 
 was that, with its emphasis on ** chance " and on the 
 " fortuitous," its workings were blind and capricious. 
 This charge can be met, answers Baldwin: It has been 
 found that biological phenomena — variations in particu- 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 221 
 
 lar — follow the definite law of probability; ia short, 
 that there is no such thing in nature as tlie really fortu- 
 itous or unpredictable. Natural selection, therefore, 
 ■svorks upon variations which are themselves subject to 
 law. If this be true, then natural selection may be the 
 method of realizing a cosmic design, if such exists, the 
 law of variation guaranteeing the presence of a fixed 
 proportional number of individuals which are " fit " 
 with reference to a preestablished end. ... A good 
 illustration may be seen in the use made of vital statis- 
 tics in life insurance. We pay a premium rate based on 
 the calculation of the probability of life, and thus by 
 observing this law realize the teleological purpose of 
 providing for our children; and we do it more effect- 
 ively, though indirectly, than if we carried our money in 
 bags around our necks, and gradually added our sav- 
 ings to it. Furthermore, the insurance company is a 
 great teleological agency, both for us and for itself ; for 
 it also secures dividends for its stockholders on the basis 
 of charges adjusted to the " chances " of life, drawn 
 from the mortality tables. Why is it not a reasonable 
 view that cosmic Purpose — if we may call it so — works 
 by similar, but more adequate, knowledge of the whole 
 and so secures its results — whether in conformity to or 
 in contravention of our individual striving ? 
 
 In raising these questions the author disavows any 
 attempt to carry them out into a philosophical view of 
 reality, a theoretical doctrine of metaphysics. Neverthe- 
 less in a series of illuminating figures he does suggest 
 a metaphysics of the most stimulating sort. Genetic 
 science, he explains, in the presence of an exact and 
 numerical science must make the reservation that it is a 
 cross-section, not a longitudinal section to which the 
 quantitative and analytical formulas apply. But keep- 
 
2'22 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 ing ill mind the old Greek antithesis between being and 
 becoming, genetic science, as a science of development 
 and evolution, must preserve the prospective attitude. 
 This, then, is the chief postulate of the theory of genetic 
 modes, that that series of events only is truly genetic 
 which cannot be constructed before it has happened, and 
 which cannot be exliausted by reading backward after 
 it has happened. As between the purely mechanical or 
 mathematical sciences and that of the next ascending set 
 of phenomena, biologj^, recent discussion is full of il- 
 luminating matter which might be cited in support of 
 these principles. That the synthesis which is called life 
 is different in some respects from that of chemistry is 
 not only the contention of the vitalists, but also the ad- 
 mission of the adherents of a physico-chemical theory 
 of life. In reply to those who think not only that living 
 matter is a chemical compound, but also that there is 
 nothing to add to this chemical formula — when once it 
 is discovered — in order to attain a final explanation of 
 life, we have only to put to them the further problem 
 of genesis, as over and above that of analysis — that is, 
 to ask not only for the analytic formula, the chemical 
 formula, for protoplasm, but also for the laws of repro- 
 duction and growth, which always characterize life. The 
 cross-section formula must be supplemented by the 
 longitudinal-section formula. Here we discover the fact 
 that the development is by a series of syntheses, each 
 chemical, but each, so far as we know, producing some- 
 thing new — a new genetic mode. If this be denied, 
 then we have to ask the chemist to reproduce the series ; 
 and if he claim that this might be done if he knew how, 
 we ask him to reproduce the series bacJ^ivards. What 
 the biologists need to do is to recognize the limitations 
 of one method, and the justification of the other in its 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 223 
 
 own province. In the life processes there seems to be a 
 real genetic series, an irreversible series. Each stage 
 exhibits a new form of organization. After it has hap- 
 pened, it is quite competent to show, by the formulas of 
 chemistry and physics, that the organization is pos- 
 sible and legitimate. Yet it is only by actual observa- 
 tion and description of the facts in the development of 
 the organism, that the progress of the life principle can 
 be made out. The former is quantitative and analytic 
 science; the latter is genetic science. 
 
 We leave Baldwin's Development and Evolution 
 at that informing doctrine of irreversibility which has 
 been expressly utilized by the author of Creative Evo- 
 lution. This utilization is significant, yet the Ameri- 
 can's work is valuable not only as furnishing a link be- 
 tween the English and French conceptions of evolu- 
 tion, but also as a refutation of the charge of the deca- 
 dence of Darwinism. That refutation is carried on more 
 fully in the subsequent book entitled Darwin atid the 
 Humanities. Originating as a contribution to the Dar- 
 winian celebration of the American Philosophical As- 
 sociation in 1909, this work traces the influence of Dar- 
 win in the science of mind, the humanities broadly 
 defined. As the result of his labors for twenty-five 
 years the author comes to the conclusion that natural 
 selection is in principle the universal law of genetic 
 organization and progress in nature. As applied to the 
 first of the sciences of the mind, psychology, the Dar- 
 winian factors are found most effective. If, that is, a 
 selection of processes and habits goes on within the 
 organism — a functional selection resulting in a real 
 molding of the individual— there may be at cver>' stage 
 of growth a combination of genetic characters with ac- 
 quired modifications. Then, natural selection would 
 
224 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 fall in each case upon this joint or correlated result. 
 The organisms showing the most effective combinations 
 would survive. Put in psychological terms this means: 
 Give the animal a little sense — a grain of the capacity 
 to profit by experience, to imitate, to cooperate, to de- 
 ceive, to remember and distinguish what is good for it 
 from what is bad — a bit of intelligence, broadly under- 
 stood, and he is started on the career of learning in 
 comparison with which his earlier achievements become 
 quite insignificant. If, in short, we are to allow that 
 accommodative or learning processes of whatever kind do 
 have any infiuence, however indirect, on the course of 
 evolution, then that prime, that superb weapon of learn- 
 ing, mind, comes to its own and starts upon its splendid 
 career. But if this be so, if mind be natural and also 
 useful, then we are still of course within the Darwin- 
 ian circle of ideas. "Why are not mental faculties and 
 functions to be considered characters which have been 
 evolved by selection for their utility? Darwin held 
 this in his Descent of Man. But instead of the desul- 
 tory recognition of the place and effectiveness of mental 
 states in a theory dealing mainly with the physical, we 
 now see the universal principle of the relation of mental 
 to organic evolution. Mind is correlated with plasticity, 
 its evolution with that of brain and nerves. The his- 
 tory of the evolution of these organs is also that of the 
 evolution of mind. In this we have the next great step 
 in which biology and psychology join hands in a safe 
 and accomplished generalization: that of the correla- 
 tion of nervous plasticity with mind, of " educability " 
 with " sense." 
 
 The force of this, for our present purpose, is this: 
 plasticity is a real character, a character the opposite 
 of fixity. It is opposed even to the potential sort of 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 225 
 
 fixity assumed by preformism — the theory that all sub- 
 sequent adjustments are already present potentially in 
 the germ. It leaves to the organism genuine alterna- 
 tives ; genuine novelties of adjustment are possible. And 
 consciousness, intelligence, is also a real character, cor- 
 related with plasticity. Both are present together, how- 
 ever we may account for it; and both have been advanced 
 for their utility, as Darwin's hypothesis requires. This 
 is especially seen in the " new " logic, where the theory 
 of truth becomes either one of extreme " Pragmatism " 
 or one merely of " Instrumentalism." Instrumentalism 
 holds that all truth is tentatively arrived at and experi- 
 mentally verified. The method of knowledge is the now 
 familiar Darwinian procedure of " trial and error." 
 The thinker, wiiether working in the laboratory with 
 things or among the products of his own imaginative 
 thought, tries out liypothcses; and only by trying out 
 hypotheses does he establish truth. The knowledge al- 
 ready possessed is used " instrumentally " in the form 
 of a hypothesis or conjecture, for the discovery of fur- 
 ther facts or truths. This reinstates in the sphere of 
 thinking the method of Darwinian selection. 
 
 It is in his application to philosophy that Baldwin 
 brings out some of the most telling results of Darwinism. 
 He illustrates this in that summary chapter which be- 
 gins with psychology and ends with religion. Psychol- 
 ogy, he tells us, has always been the vestibule, as it were, 
 to philosophy, and advance in the latter never gets far 
 beyond that of the former. So when psychology adopted 
 seriously a naturalistic and positivistic method — the 
 method, that is, of the positive sciences of nature — 
 philosophy had also to recognize the generality' of these 
 points of view. Philosophical truth, like all other truth, 
 must be looked upon as truth about nature — the nature 
 
226 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 ol" the world and the nature of man — and its progress is 
 secured through reflection exercised under the control 
 of the positive instruments and methods emploj^ed in 
 those subjects. Purely deductive, speculative and per- 
 sonal systems of philosophy may be useful as gymnastics 
 and profitable as sources of individual fame ; but the 
 genuine progress of philosophy is to be looked for only 
 through those methods of confirmation and proof which 
 control the imagination and permanently satisfy the 
 logical and other demands of common reflection. There 
 may be different philosophies, but, like rival scientific 
 hypotheses, each must show the array of facts, aims, 
 motives, values, that it can explain better than any 
 other. Philosophy is not an exercise of preference, but 
 an exercise of reason ! 
 
 In these directions, continues the author, Darwin has 
 strongly influenced modern philosophical thought ; so 
 strong!}'- that the historical issues of philosophy have 
 taken on new forms, which, in the new names now in 
 vogue to describe them, are unfamiliar to the old-school 
 philosophers. Instead of the problem of " design," we 
 now have the discussions of " teleology "; instead of 
 the doctrine of " chance," we now have the " theory 
 of probabilities "; instead of " fatalism " and " free- 
 dom," we now have " determininism " and " indeter- 
 minism," variously qualified; instead of " God," we 
 hear of "absolute experience"; instead of "Provi- 
 dence," of " order " and " law " ; instead of " mind 
 and body," of " dualism or monism." Not that all this 
 shifting of emphasis and change of terms are due to 
 Darwin ; but that they are incidents of the newer antith- 
 eses current since the mind has been considered as sub- 
 ject to " natural law," and the world, including God 
 and man, as common material for science to investi- 
 
GENETIC EVOLUTIONISM 227 
 
 gate. Scientific naturalism and positivism are methods 
 of unlimited scope; and the question of philosophy is. 
 what does the whole system of things, of external facts 
 and of human values alike — when thus investigated — 
 really turn out to mean? So design may be illustrated 
 by considering more fully a central problem — one com- 
 mon to biologj' and psychology alike, and one whose 
 answer colors the whole of one's philosophy. It is the 
 old problem of " design," giving rise in biology to 
 theories of " special creation " and " chance," and now 
 discussed, alike in biologj' and psychology, in the form 
 of questions of " vitalism " and " teleology." In what 
 sense, if any, is the world — and in it, life and mind — 
 an ordered, progressive, and intelligible whole? And 
 if it is such in any sense, how did it become so? Is it 
 due to intelligence ? — and if so, whose intelligence ? The 
 most violent controversies aroused by the publication 
 of the Origin of Species were let loose about this ques- 
 tion. To Darwin's opponents " chance," " fortuitous 
 or spontaneous variation," was to take the place of 
 intelligent creation. Providence, God. If there be no 
 rule of selection and survival save that of utility, and no 
 source of the useful save the overproduction of chance 
 cases, where is the Guiding Hand? Does not Natural 
 Selection dispense with a ruling Intelligence altogether? 
 We have only to understand the present-day statement 
 of this problem, explains Baldwin, to see the enonnous 
 concession to naturalism which the theory- of Darwin has 
 forced. Instead of " chance " in the sense of uncaused 
 accident, we now have the notion of " probability," a 
 mathematically exact interpretation of what is only to 
 superficial observation fortuitous and capricious; instead 
 of an interfering Providence, we have universal order 
 bom of natural law. And it is within such conceptions 
 
228 EVOLUTIONISM 
 
 as these, )ww taJxcn as common ground of argument, that 
 the discussion of teleology is conducted. The world is 
 no longer thought of as a piece of mosaic work put to- 
 gether by a skillful artificer — as the old design theory 
 looked upon it — but as a whole, a cosmos, of law-abiding 
 and progressive change. A philosopher who knows his 
 calling to-day seeks to interpret natural law, not to dis- 
 cover violations of it. The violations, if they came, 
 would reduce the world to caprice, chance, and chaos, 
 instead of providing a relief from these things. 
 
 So Darwin's view, argues the author, while adminis- 
 tering a coup de grace to theories of chance and special 
 creation, both equally desultory, capricious, and lawless, 
 replaced them once for all with law. It indicated the 
 method of operation by which the progressive forms of 
 nature are evolved in stages more and more ordered and 
 fit. The operation of such a law is no less and no more 
 " rational," no less and no more " fatalistic," no less 
 and no more " atheistic," than is that of any other 
 law, physical or mental. What law — meaning simply 
 what regular method of change — is operative in nature ? 
 and what is its range, as compared with other such laws ? 
 — these are questions entirely of fact, to be determined 
 by scientific investigation. And how far the method 
 or law called by Darwin " natural selection " goes, what 
 its range really is, we are now beginning to see in its 
 varied applications in the sciences of life and mind. It 
 seems to be — unless future investigations set positive 
 limits to its application — a universal principle ; for the 
 intelligence itself, in its procedure of tentative experi- 
 mentation, or " trial and error," appears to operate 
 in accordance with it. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 1. The German Influences 
 
 It is hard to measure the intangible and to weigh the 
 immaterial, yet it may safely be said tha t the G erman 
 influence s on American th ough t hMvp.m Gim— the most 
 significan t and the most weighty j3i_-al L the f oreign 
 forces. In the words~6f one ofour German- American 
 lecturers this state of affairs is due, in large measure, 
 to the after-effect of that great epoch of German human- y 
 
 ism signalized by the names of Goethe and Kant, Schiller^ 
 and Fichte. The very substance of the life-work of 
 these men and their compeers consisted in this, that they 
 replaced th e ecc lesiastical doctrine of atonejnent by the'j 
 belfefTn the saving quaTTtyof restless striving. Never 
 in the wEole'history oFthe world has there been held up 
 to man an ideal of life more exalted, more inspiring, 
 freer from unworthy or belittling motives than their 
 teachings. They trusted in the essential goodness of all 
 life ; they conceived of the gunivers e as a great spiritual 
 beingj,iingag€d-i» -een&tantrs?l|:^^l?ti^^^~^'"^ ^° ^ ^°°" 
 staiit struggle toward higher forms of existence. JEligy 
 beli eved tha t man, as a^part of- this spiigtual universe, 
 was in imroe^ate and instinctive communication with 
 its imiefmiQsilfissence; and they saw the great office of 
 nian in helping the spirit toward its fullest self-realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 The German humanism, as thus described by Kuno 
 229 
 
230 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 Francke, has indeed had great influence upon our ways 
 of thinking. The proof of that lies in the very famil- 
 iarity of its doctrines. But that influence and that 
 familiarity were not matters of an instant. It took 
 many years and many men to accomplish the result. 
 There were in the way great difficulties, due to race, so- 
 cial conditions, and language. The first flight of Teu- 
 tonic immigrants began with the wretched refugees of 
 the Thirty Years' War, and ended about the time of 
 the adoption of our Constitution. Previous to 1789 it 
 was predominantly the peasant classes that came into 
 the country. But among such farmers as were repre- 
 sented by the Pennsylvania " Dutch " one could not 
 hope to find regular philosophers. There were indeed 
 mystics like Conrad Beissel and his Ephrata community, 
 but their theosophy had slight influence and remained 
 as little appreciated as did the architecture of the 
 brotherhood buildings and the music of its inmates. 
 
 Except for a slight infiltration of Protestant sectaries 
 'like the Lutherans, with one or two scholars of local 
 note, the next flight of immigrants was delayed for over 
 half a century. But with the Refugees of '48 there came 
 in both blood and brains. Men like Hecker and Koerner, 
 Schurz and Sigel, fleeing from the reactionary militar- 
 ism of the Fatherland, sought to found a new Germany 
 in the new West. This group, and others of Germanic 
 origin, made possible the St. Louis school and furnished 
 the nucleus of those audiences which listened to the 
 diluted transcendentalism of Emerson and Alcott. 
 
 That transcendentalism was indeed diluted, for it was 
 a very much modified German philosophy which first 
 excited attention in the country. James Murdock 
 of Yale College, the neglected historian of the move- 
 ment, explains how Coleridge, being a poet more than a 
 
THE GERMAN INFLUENCES 231 
 
 philosopher, obscured, if ho did not pervert understand- 
 ing of the genuine tenets of Kant. Tiic Aids io Keflcc- 
 iion were indeed republished in New England as early 
 as 1829, but they were an aid to the rhapsodists ratlier 
 than to the cautious thinkers. Now, most Americans at 
 this time were of the latter conservative type. While they 
 belonged to the empirical school and were " slow, cau- 
 tious, dubitating, and modest," the Germans belonged 
 to the metaphysical and were " daring, bold, and self- 
 confident." Besides these temperamental differences 
 there were other difficulties. Such was the novelty of 
 the principles of Kant and so strange was the termin- 
 ology that another writer speaks of the absurdity of 
 offering for the edification of sober, matter-of-fact Anglo- 
 Saxons the unintelligible idealism of Kant, Fichte, and 
 Schelling. 
 
 To the hostile mental attitude there were added ma- 
 terial difficulties. George Ticknor, wishing to prepare 
 himself for his trip to Goettingen, had to send to New 
 Hampshire for a German dictionary, while a Geniian 
 grammar was hard to find in all New England. But — ; 
 perhaps the greatest obstruction to the free importation 
 of foreign ideas was the servile deference to English 
 judgment and the consequent embargo upon the intel- 
 lectual goods of other nations. Intellectually New Eng-_ 
 land was as yet a colony of Old England, and the per- 
 nicious interdiction of metaphysical trade with other 
 countries still obtained. This can be illustrated by the 
 early native accounts of the Kantian philosophy. Dis- 
 regarding some hack-writer's version in the first Ameri- 
 can reprint of that Noah's Ark of all knowledge — the 
 Encydopcedia Britannica — we turn to the notice given 
 by Samuel Miller in his Retrospect of the Eighteenth 
 Century. This is not so much a notice as a slander, and 
 
232 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 yet the author is hardly liable, since he obtained his 
 information at third hand. Miller quotes from a London 
 reviewer of an English translation of a German criticism 
 of the critical philosophy. With no direct knowledge 
 of the original he repeats the stale strictures upon the 
 great thinker of Koenigsberg: Kant is guilty of indefi- 
 nite evasions because his system is neither deism nor 
 materialism, libertinism nor fatalism; he has studied to 
 envelop his system in an enigmatic language because that 
 system tends to undermine all religion and morals; — 
 in short, the famous Prussian's theoretical jargon, in- 
 stead of being calculated to advance science, or to for- 
 ward human improvements, has rather a tendency to 
 delude, to bewilder, and to shed a baneful influence on 
 the true interests of man. 
 
 This so-called first notice of the Kantian philosophy 
 in America has been styled by the Germans a piece of 
 comical naivete. Nevertheless that naivete can be under- 
 stood. Miller in his Retrospect was merely a watch-dog 
 of orthodoxy. When other dogs barked he joined in 
 the cry of alarm. To him, as a follower of the Scotch 
 philosophy, realism was the most rational, idealism the 
 most absurd of schemes. A more sympathetic attitude 
 towards the Continental system is found in Philadelphia 
 and among certain Pennsylvanians of German origin. 
 In the Philadelphia Monthly Magazine of 1798 we find 
 the earliest discovered notice of Kant on this side of 
 the water. Taken largely from Lange it has some sensible 
 and sympathetic remarks on the new philosophy. As 
 this philosophy has considerably excited the curiosity 
 of the learned in Europe, the compiler hopes that his 
 sketch will prove acceptable to his readers. The gist of 
 this sketch is as follows: It forms the chief business of 
 the Criterion of Pure Reason, by measuring and ascer- 
 
THE GERMAN INFLUENCES 233 
 
 taining the limits of our different faculties, to exhibit 
 a complete and distinct system of all our means of ac- 
 quiring knowledge. Now, since it is only by apprehen- 
 sion in this our pure form, that anything becomes an 
 object of science, knowledge thus acquired is the only 
 kind of knowledge which can properly be called ob- 
 jective; while knowledge of every other kind is called 
 subjective. To show the value of the former is the aim 
 of the Criterion of Pure Reason. Kant, as has been said, 
 distinguishes between 2^"''c and practical Self. That 
 part of our idea which does not proceed from the thing 
 observed, but from accidental association subsisting in 
 our mind, is referred to the practical Self; and it is 
 precisely this part of our idea which is subjective. 
 When we have once learnt what portion of the idea is 
 objective, it requires only to separate that \vith accu- 
 racy, and whatever remains is subjective. In this way 
 we get clear of that portion of our subjective knowledge 
 which is occasioned by incorrect observations and con- 
 elusions. It is true, that inasmuch as the nature of the 
 affection of the mind depends upon the constitution of 
 our organs of perception, it is practical or subjective 
 appearance which we cannot separate, but this will not 
 deceive such as understand the rules of philosophizing. 
 The tolerant tone of this article is remarkable. ^lore 
 remarkable is the conclusion added by the compiler. 
 Though the account was taken from a mere note which 
 Lange appended to his German translation of Stewart 's 
 Elements, the American editor catches the drift of the 
 critical philosophy. This much at least, he adds, will 
 appear from this account, that Kant's great doctrine 
 is, that a knowledge of the human mind is not to be ob- 
 tained by imagining changes in the mind itself, but by 
 studying the various phenomena which it exhibits. The 
 
234 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 author himself compares his discovery to that of Coper- 
 nicus, by which he showed that the phenomena of the 
 heavenly bodies did not entitle us to attribute to them 
 the various cyclar and epicyclar motions of the Ptolemaic 
 system; that in truth we could be assured of nothing 
 more than the existence of those bodies; and that the 
 different changes in their appearance might as well be 
 explained by supposing a change in our situation as by 
 supposing any alteration in theirs. 
 
 It is a decided surprise to discover the famous 
 Copernican comparison noticed amongst us only a few 
 years after the appearance of the Critique of Pure Rea- 
 son. It is, however, unfortunate that it appeared in an 
 ephemeral journal, in a place about to lose its intellec- 
 tual supremacy, and at a time when men were not yet 
 ready to shift their philosophical point of view, — to con- 
 sider themselves not as satellites but as suns, from whom 
 might come considerable rays of wisdom. It was left for 
 the New England transcendentalists of a generation 
 later to do this, for Pennsylvanians of German origin 
 were not in a position to effect the Copernican revolu- 
 tion in thought. In our republic of letters the Penn- 
 sylvania " Dutch " were little affected by the literature 
 of the storm and stress period and remained remote, un- 
 friended, melancholy, slow. Moreover, the scholars of 
 German origin had their limitations. Men like 
 Schmucker, professor in a Gettysburg college, and 
 Kauch, president of Marshall College, were not much 
 known outside of their local Lutheran circles. And so 
 when the literary leadership was shifted from Phila- 
 delphia and the South to Boston and the North, that 
 frigid air of condescension characteristic of New Eng- 
 land nipped the growth of the foreign plants. The head 
 of Yale College referred to Kantianism as subversive 
 
THE GERMAN INFLUENCES 235 
 
 of morality; and Harvard, althougli acecptin<]; a present 
 of books from Goethe himself, feared the Germans even 
 bearing gifts. 
 
 There was, however, one voice crying in tliis wilderness 
 of exclusiveness. We refer again to James Murdock 
 and his Sketches of Modern Philosophy, especially 
 among the Germans. Here he claims that the confound- 
 ing of reason with understanding, and of ideas with 
 conceptions by Locke and by most of the English, 
 Scotch, and American writers since (though it was a 
 natural consequence of supposing all human knowledge 
 to be derived from sensations and reflections on them) 
 has spread much obscurity and confusion — and con- 
 tributed not a little to render the English language unfit 
 for clear and conclusive reasoning on metaphysical 
 subjects. This is one great reason why so many among 
 us cannot understand and appreciate the writings of the 
 German philosophers. Their clear, precise, and definite 
 thoughts, the moment they are translated into English, 
 become obscure, indefinite, and vague; because the lan- 
 guage into which they are translated is so. It is true 
 that the Germans have introduced a multitude of new 
 technical terms into philosophy which sound veiy 
 strange in our ears ; and Kant in particular has been cen- 
 sured, even by his own countrj-men, for his excessive 
 coinage : but if our language had appropriate terms for 
 expressing the more necessary distinctions of thought, we 
 might contrive some way to avoid the use of German 
 technics, and yet convey to English minds the real views 
 of the German writers. 
 
 A notorious instance of the confusion of technical 
 philosophic terms in the English language is given by 
 Murdock in his description of the New England move- 
 ment. He says that that species of German philosophy 
 
236 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 which has sprung up among the Unitarian clergy of 
 Massachusetts, and which is advocated especially in a 
 recent periodical called the Dial, is known by the appel- 
 lation Transcendentalism. The propriety, however, of 
 the appellation may be questioned. Kant would certainly 
 not apply it to this or to any similar system. He would 
 denominate it transcendent, not transcendental. The 
 difference according to his views is immense. Both 
 terms indeed denote the surpassing or transcending of 
 certain limits; but the limits surpassed are entirely dif- 
 ferent. That is called transcendental which surpasses 
 the limits of sensible or empirical knowledge and ex- 
 patiates in the region of pure thought or absolute sci- 
 ence. It is, therefore, truly scientific ; and it serves to 
 explain empirical truths, so far as they are explicable. 
 On the other hand, that is called transcendent which not 
 only goes beyond empiricism, but surpasses the bound- 
 aries of human knowledge. It expatiates in the shad- 
 owy region of imaginary truth. It is, therefore, falsely 
 called science ; it is the opposite of true philosophy. A 
 balloon sent up by a besieging army to overlook the 
 ramparts of a fortification, if moored by cables whereby 
 its elevation, its movements, and its safe return into 
 camp are secured, is a transcendental thing; but if cut 
 loose from its moorings and left to the mercy of the 
 winds, it is transcendent; it has no connection with 
 anything stable, no regulator; it rises or descends, 
 moves this way or that way at haphazard, and it will 
 land no one knows where or when. Now, according to 
 the critical philosophy, all speculations in physical sci- 
 ence that attempt to go beyond phenomena, and all 
 speculations on supersensible things which attempt to 
 explain their essential nature, are transcendent ; that is, 
 they overleap the boundaries of human knowledge. In 
 
THE GERMAN INFLUENCES 237 
 
 violation of these cautions, Ficlite, Schclling, and Ilcgel 
 plunged headlong into sueh speculations, and yet called 
 them transcendental ; and the new German philosophers 
 of Massachusetts follow their example. 
 
 We bring forward these criticisms for a purpose. It 
 is to show that the current confusion of technical terms 
 displayed an ignorance of German philosophy at first 
 hand. In other words, the influence of that philosophy 
 had so far been indirect rather than direct, literary 
 rather than historical. From abroad, Coleridge and 
 Cousin had brought in the romantic stimulus, but it was 
 couched in anything but exact terms. At home, mem- 
 bers of the Transcendentalist Club and the Brook Farm- 
 ers cared more for free thinking than for precise think- 
 ing. Even Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Standard 
 Literature were utilized more for the ferment of reform 
 than for accurate information. As Ripley himself de- 
 clared: We need a philosophy like this to purify and 
 enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to 
 cheer and elevate society. 
 
 We now come to the question of the time of transition 
 from the indirect to the direct study of Kant and his 
 followers. Some have held that the direct study began 
 with the return of the young American scholars from 
 Goettingen in the '20s. We believe that the change came 
 much later. It was prepared for by the various ad- 
 dresses, translations, and anthologies of the third decade 
 of the century; but that decade did not emancipate the 
 New England mind, nor open it to the freedom of for- 
 eign thought. Indeed the year 1839 put a black mark 
 in the history of Harvard. In that year came Emerson 's 
 Divinity School Address, which was denounced by An- 
 drews Norton, " the pope of Unitarianism," as " the last 
 form of infidelity." But worse followed. In reproba- 
 
238 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 tioii of the views expressed in this address Emerson 
 himself was exiled from his own college for fully a gen- 
 eration. 
 
 Now, that generation was one of preparation, not of 
 full understanding. In the '40s, for example, a transla- 
 tion of Fichte's Vocation of the Scholar was reprinted in 
 Boston, but this, as Frothingham ironically observed, 
 excited an interest among people who had neither sym- 
 pathy with his philosophy nor intelligence to comprehend 
 it. For such a lack of sympathy and of intelligence we 
 have not far to seek. It was due in a great measure to 
 what Santaya na so ap tly callsthe_^enl££l tradition, a 
 tradition due to the_ jinion ofchurch-and -college, to 
 S^he belief that the teacher must come to the-defense of 
 the faith,- Armstrong has pointed out the peculiar 
 function of philosophy in the ' ' old American college ' ' : 
 After the student had been trained in the time-honored 
 classics and mathematics, after he had learned his modi- 
 cum of rhetoric and history and natural science, there 
 remained the " higher branches," which were held not 
 only to train, him. in. scholarship but to fit him for prac- 
 tical life. Political science would make him S good citi- 
 zeiT; the evidences of Christianity would ground his re- 
 ligious faith. Now, these evidences were bolstered up 
 by correlated courses in natural theology, in mental and 
 moral philosophy, and only occasionally in the history 
 of philosophy. . . . Moreover, these courses were always 
 prescribed and generally given by the clerical heads of 
 the colleges. 
 
 But the era of dogmatic soundness was at last suc- 
 (feeded by the day of the impartial discussion of meta- 
 physics. Then came the transition from the old order to 
 \ the new. The centennial of our political independence 
 marked the beginnings of our academic independence. 
 
 J ma 
 
THE GERMAN INFLUENCES 239 
 
 B^^ that time philosophy began to be studied as an clcct- 
 ive^and f orTts own sake. Several causes were contribu- 
 tory, — the general advance in higher education, the em- 
 pirical conclusions poured in upon us by the scientists, 
 and especially the influence of the progress of psycho- 
 logical science. "With us that science was distinctly »ft-^ 
 importation from Germany, and with the founding of / 
 our first psychological laboratory in 1876 there comes / 
 a definite date for direct German influence — in the East, / 
 at least. 
 
 "We make this qualification because of a forgotten fac- 
 tor in our intellectual history. Two decades before 
 German philosophy, diluted with dogma, was being 
 taught at Harvard by Bowen, at Yale by Porter, at 
 Princeton by iMcCosh, and at the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania by Krauth, — long befo re jthis, the pure doctrines of 
 Kant and his followers were being made familiar in the 
 West. This is one of the characteristic surprises in thc*^ ' 
 history^of our culture, that out of the new land comeij 
 the new knowledge. It was in St. Louis that there cam 
 into being the first Kant class in America, the first na 
 tive translations of Fichte and Schelling, the first sys 
 tematic study of Hegel. Indeed at the very period when 
 the Massachusetts transcendentalists were largely out- 
 side of the pale of the church, largely out of sympathy 
 with the colleges, there was being trained in Missouri a 
 group of idealists who, by their freedom of thinking and 
 philosophic knowledge, m ade th e Concord__school of 
 philosophy.,£OssililiL— IJi-iifl^,-that later idealism, whose 
 origin has been usually a.ttributed _to_New England, had 
 its impetus elsewhere. It was a paradoxical phenomenon. 
 It was like one of our storms which, blowing from the 
 northeast, has its real beginning in the southwest. To 
 that quarter of the compass we now turn. 
 
240 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 2. The St. Louis School: William T. Harris 
 
 It has been declared a remarkable fact that in a boom- 
 ing Western city — almost on the borders of civilization — 
 apparently almost wholly occupied with material things, 
 there should have arisen one of the leading schools of 
 idealism in America. This was the St. Louis school, 
 which initiated our first systematic study of German 
 thought, and led to the publication of our first meta- 
 physical journal, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 
 
 I The movement can best be studied through the men who 
 made it. These were three : Brockmeyer the oracle, Har- 
 
 I ris the interpreter, and Snider the historian of the 
 Tiiovement. 
 
 Of this triumvirate Brockmeyer is the most pic- 
 turesque figure. Born in Germany, coming to this coun- 
 try at the age of sixteen, he was expelled from a fresh- 
 water Western college because of his free-thinking, and 
 left for the East, where he became imbued with the New 
 England teachings. But the fixed social order not suiting 
 him he determined to become another Thoreau, to leave 
 society and seek solitude. In this plan, he tells us, he 
 had taken to heart the advice of Parmenides to the young 
 Socrates : " Be sure to educate and practice yourself 
 in the so-called useless metaphysical hair-splitting while 
 you are still young, lest the truth should escape you." 
 So Brockmeyer went West to the old hunting-ground of 
 Daniel Boone, there built himself a log cabin, and with 
 his dog as his sole companion, lived for several years 
 supporting himself by hunting. He did this because 
 with his gun he could procure in an hour enough food 
 for the day, and have the rest of the time for working 
 out the thoughts in his head. This Utopian scheme could 
 not last. Therefore, resolving to provide himself with 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 241 
 
 a competency for his old age, ho came to St. Louis. It 
 was there in the year 1858 that he accidentally met 
 Harris, who describes this unconventional backwoodsj 
 philosopher as even at that time a thinker of the 
 same order of mind as Hegel, for even before reading 
 much nf-tha groat idealis t he had d iyjncd his chief 
 ideas and the position of his system. On my first ac- 
 quaintance with him, continues Harris, he informed me 
 that Hegel was the great man among modem philoso- 
 phers and that his larger Logic was the work to get. I 
 sent immediately to Germany for it, and it arrived lato 
 in the year. Mr. Brockmeyer's deep insights and his 
 poetic power of setting them forth with symbols and 
 imagery furnished me and my friends of those early 
 years all of our outside stimulus in the study of Ger- 
 man philosophy. He impressed us with the practicality 
 of philosophy, inasmuch as he could flash into the ques- 
 tions of the day, and even into the questions of the mo- 
 ment, the highest insight of philosophy and solve their 
 problems. Even the hunting of wild turkeys or squirrels 
 was the occasion for the use of philosophy. Philosophy 
 came to mean with us. therefore, the most practical of 
 all species of knowledge. ... We studied the dialectic 
 of politics and political parties and understood how 
 measures and men might be combined by this light. 
 But our chief application of philosophy was to literature 
 and art. 
 
 To turn to Harris, the second of the triumvirate. 
 Brockmeyer recounts how he met his foremost disciple 
 at a chance meeting where those present were discussing 
 Oriental theosophy, spiritualism, or something of that 
 sort. The secretary of that meeting, he narrates, was a 
 young man named Harris, who seemed to me to be the 
 one sane person of the gathering. After tiic meeting I 
 
242 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 accosted him and began to question him as we walked 
 along. He seemed surprised that such a common work- 
 ingman, as I appeared to be, should talk in this way, and 
 we got into a discussion. He made some quotation from 
 Cousin, and I remarked that Cousin contradicted him- 
 self on every page. On his challenging this statement I 
 accompanied him to his room to prove it from Cousin's 
 works. This was the beginning of our friendship, and 
 the nucleus of the group of students that soon gathered 
 together. 
 
 Here was the beginning of the first systematic study 
 of Hegel in the country. Brockmeyer tells how Harris 
 and two other enthusiastic young men wished him to 
 cease working in the foundry and give his time to in- 
 structing them and to translating the great works of 
 German thought. But the commencement of the Civil 
 War, of which the first storm center was Missouri, inter- 
 fered with this arrangement and broke up the little band 
 of philosophers. Six months after Appomattox the 
 philosophers met again. It was then that the third of 
 the triumvirate appears upon the scene and gives his 
 impressions of the other two: There was Brockmeyer, 
 dishevelled and ragged in his working clothes, the un- 
 doubted oracle of the meeting, who would forcibly de- 
 liver his response as one having authority and could even 
 re-create Hegel by poetizing the latter 's dry, colorless 
 abstractions. There was Harris, the active worker of the 
 philosophic set, the eager propagandist, who with his 
 sharp face, and rather pointed nose, could prick keenly 
 and deeply into things. The two men were in themselves 
 an illustration of the Hegelian dialectic, a contrast and 
 at the same time complementary to each other, — one the 
 man of genius, but rather indolent; the other the man 
 of talent and very industrious. 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WH.LIAM T. HARRIS 213 
 
 The man of talent may now speak for liimself. In 
 one of our best philosophic autobiographies, Harris, tlie 
 editor of Hegel's Logic, sees in himself an illustration of 
 that logic. In the unfolding of his life there were three 
 ' ' moments ' ' ; the first a phase of positivism ; next, a | 
 conversion to transcendentalism ; and lastly, a tran- 
 scending of that transcendentalism. While a student 
 Yale College, Harris had taken up with phrenology- and 
 the eclecticism of Cousin. This was what he called his 
 " saurian " period, when he was mixed up with that vast 
 swarm of isms which had broken loose in New England, 
 and, as Snider says, descended upon the \Vest in count- 
 less flights like Kansas grasshoppers. But just as Harris 
 rebelled against the formalism of the college so did he 
 rebel against this " nibbling at the little end of things." 
 ' ' The -lo ng-hairo d """^^i nnd shnrt-liairpd women ' ' who 
 wished to refoniLllie -world-offlwmd-were not to his-taste. 
 He wished for a guide out of the maze. He found it in 
 idealism. He declares that he obtained his first insight 
 into the new philosophy in studying Kant's Critique of 
 Pure Reason. Seeing the necessity of the logical in- 
 ference that the unity of time and space presupposes one 
 absolute Reason, — God, freedom, and immortality seemed 
 to him to be demonstrable ever since that December even- 
 ing in 1858 when he obtained his first insight into the 
 true inference from the transcendental aesthetic. 
 
 This conversion to transcendentalism took place in the 
 very year in which Harris met Brockmeyer. The latter 
 now began to declare to his followers that they must go 
 beyond transcendentalism ; that there was a greater than 
 Kant; and that it was Hegel who was the culmination 
 of the Gennan philosophical movoment. The practical 
 Yankee took Brockmeyer at his word ; sent to Germany 
 for the Logic and, with Brockmeyer as oracle and ex- 
 
 
 <n^ 
 
 -5. 
 
244 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 pounder, made a definite beginning of the St. Louis 
 movement. The city furnished good soil for the teach- 
 ings of the great encyclopasdist. At least in the eyes of 
 _the local thin kers it wa s an illustration_af the Hegelian 
 philosophy of histoiy. First, the time was propitious. 
 After the civil strife between North and South the recon- 
 struction period offered an example of the harmonizing 
 of opposing forces. Next, the place was likewise propi- 
 tious. It was counted co§;nopolitan and seemed altogether 
 different from any other city of the land, — more for- 
 eign, more un-American in its conception of freedom. 
 In it were descend ants, of the early French families that 
 had settled there under Spanish and French rule, still 
 retaining strong traces of the ancestral character. By 
 the side of these was the very strong element of the 
 Southerners, who possessed wealth, culture, and polish 
 of manner, perhaps the most aristocratic element of the 
 city. . . . The third class came frouL-tJew England and 
 the Middle States, and had brought with them culture, 
 energy, perseverance, and indomitable will-power. ]\Iany 
 of them were professional and business men who had 
 come westward to better themselves financially. Finally, 
 political trouble in the various German statesJiQd sent 
 tens of thousands into the Mississippi Valley, and St. 
 Louis received her full quota of them, making her, con- 
 cludes the historian of the movement, a Teutonic city 
 of the radical type. 
 
 In spite of these favoring circumstances, the movement 
 as a whole, continues the same author, led to disappoint- 
 ing results. The Philosophical Society was intended by 
 Brockmeyer as a means for publishing his translation of 
 Hegel's larger Logic. But politics drew him aside and 
 it was only long after his death that the task was 
 completed by others. The same society was intended by 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 245 
 
 Harris as a means for working up his Journal of Specu- 
 lative Philosophy. In this periodical Brockmoyer's writ- 
 ings proved a disappointment. The manuscript of the 
 log-cabin thinker required a vast deal of correction ; that 
 which seemed the utterance of genius to his followers 
 suffered from a kind of evaporation in print. The 
 Letters on Faust which sought to philosophize litera- 
 ture were neither philosophy nor literature. Brock- 
 meyer could never get himself nor his writings into 
 shape. Yet the oracle of the school had a mission in 
 inspiring the mind of the school, — Harris. How that 
 mind developed is told by one of our Hegelians of the 
 right wing in true Teutonic fashion. Harris's philo- 
 sophical study in St. Louis from 1858 to 1867, says 
 Sterrett, might be styled his Lehrjahre or Genesis; 
 his editing the Journal of Speculative Philosophy and 
 his work in the Concord school of philosophy for the 
 second period, his Wanderjahre or Exodus, though his 
 work in both of these spheres ran well into the period of 
 his mastership, which culminated in his critical exposi- 
 tion of his great master's greatest work, the Logic 
 of Hegel. Of this first stage mention has been made. 
 It began with the study of philosophy on tlie low level 
 of phrenology, and ended with the emergence from the 
 toils of materialism and agnosticism in Harris's criti- 
 cism of Herbert Spencer. This criticism was sent to 
 the North American Review and rejected as unreadable. 
 The rejection had results. It led Harris to found his 
 own Journal and to strive, and with no little success, to 
 make his exposition of Hegel readable. 
 
 With the founding of the Journal we have an emerg- 
 ence into an intense idealism, together witli an attempt 
 to Americanize that idealism. The Journal's motto, 
 taken from Novalis, was this: " Philosophy can bake no 
 
 
246 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, and 
 Immortality." The Journal's preface was a call to 
 found a true " American " type of speculative philos- 
 ophy. We, as a people, declared the editor, buy im- 
 mense editions of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, 
 Comte, Hamilton, Cousin, and others; one can trace the 
 appropriation and digestion of their thoughts in all 
 the leading articles of our reviews, magazines, and books 
 of a thoughtful character. If this is American philos- 
 ophy, the editor thinks it may be very much elevated 
 by absorbing and digesting more refined aliment. It is 
 said that of Herbert Spencer's works nearly twenty 
 thousand have been sold in this country, while in Eng- 
 land scarcely the first edition has been bought. This is 
 encouraging for the American thinker : what lofty spirit- 
 ual culture may not become broadly and firmly rooted 
 here where thoughtful minds are so numerous ! Let this 
 spirit of inquiry once extend to thinkers like Plato and 
 Aristotle, Sehelling and Hegel — let these be digested 
 and organically reproduced — and what a phalanx of 
 American thinkers we may have to boast of! For, after 
 all, it is not " American thought " so much as American 
 thinkers that we want. To think, in the highest sense, is 
 to transcend all natural limits — such, for example, as na- 
 tional peculiarities, defects in culture, distinctions in 
 race, habits, and modes of living — ^to be universal, so 
 that one can dissolve away the external hull and seize 
 the substance itself. The peculiarities stand in the way ; 
 were it not for these, we should find in Greek or German 
 philosophy just the forms we ourselves need. Our prov- 
 ince as Americans is to rise to purer forms than have 
 hitherto been attained, and thus speak a " solvent 
 word ' ' of more potency than those already uttered. If 
 this be the goal we aim at, it is evident that we can find 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 247 
 
 no other means so well adapted to rid us of our o\\ti 
 idiosj'ncrasies as the study of the greatest thinkers of all 
 ages and all times. May this Journal aid such a con- 
 summation ! 
 
 This declaration has a trace of the flamboyancy of the 
 Middle West. It led, however, to certain valuable results. 
 The Journal served as a medium for the first appearance -, 
 in English of a large number of German productions, 
 from Fichte 's Science of Ilistory and Hegel 's Philosophy 
 of Art, to original contributions from Von Hartmann 
 and Michelet. It also served as a forcing-bed for native '; 
 philosophers, from idealists like Howison and Royce, 
 to Peirce, the father of pragmatism, and James its chief 
 expositor. But the main function of the early numbers / 
 of the Journal was as a vehicle of Harris's own specula- / 
 tions. These are embodied in his Introduction to^ 
 Philosophy, wherein he has answered, in the Hegelian I 
 way, the question asked by the reader of the Journal: 
 " What is this speculative knowledge of which you 
 speak? " And he has done more; he has re-defined the 
 objects of the St. Louis Society and laid out the pro- 
 gramme for the Journars contributors. The Society, he 
 explains, was not founded for the especial purpose of 
 studying Gecoian phijosopliy'trom ICant fo~ncgel. but 
 to encourage the study_and development of speculative 
 philosophy, to foster an application of its results to ait, 
 science,' an(Lxeligien;.. and to establish a philosophical 
 basis tqfihe professions oFIawTiue^icine, divinity, poli- 
 tics, education, and literature. . . . This is"a large pro- 
 gramme. It reads like the inflated catalogue of one of 
 our Western " universities." Yet in this very inflation 
 there lay concealed one^^x^aydffiftloditu^^zcathoHcity. 
 Harris himself was an apostle of this spirit. Caught 
 from the encyclopaedic Hegel, he applied it to American 
 
MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 IS and thereby became one of the clearest in- 
 fs of our national consciousness, 
 ras the time when men's souls were tried. It 
 f was a period of reconstruction, not only in the state 
 1 but also in the church. How then should the philosopher 
 I handle these paramount issues of polities and religion? 
 Harris does it in the Hegelian way, by considering both 
 sides, recognizing the opposing phases and aiming at 
 totality. The national consciousness, he explains, has 
 moved forward on to a new platform during the last 
 few years. The idea underlying our form of government 
 ^ had hitherto developed only one of its essential phases — 
 f • U^Tihat^ of brittle individualism — in wlilch national unity 
 ^i^ seemed~^'ext"ernaTTnech"amsm, soon to be entirely dis- 
 vfe*f i- ^^pensed with, and the enterprise of the private man or of 
 .^iy^ the corporation substituted for it. Now we have arrived 
 at the consciousness of the other essential phase, and 
 each individual recognizes his substantial side to be 
 , the state as such. The freedom of the citizen does not 
 I consist in the mere arbitrary, but in the realization of 
 the rational conviction which finds expression in estab- 
 lished law. That this new phase of national life demands 
 be digested and comprehended, is a further occasion 
 for the cultivation of the speculative. 
 
 So much for politics. In regard to religion Harris 
 sees an immense movement going on in this country. The 
 tendency to break with the traditional, and to accept 
 only what bears for the soul its own justification, is 
 widely active, and can end only in the demand that rea- 
 son shall find and establish a philosophical basis for 
 all those great ideas which are taught as religious 
 dogmas. Thus it is that side by side with the naturalism 
 of such men as Renan, a school of mystics is beginning 
 to spring up who prefer to ignore utterly all historical 
 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 219 
 
 wrappages, and cleave only to the speculative kernel 
 itself. The vortex between the traditional faith and 
 the intellectual conviction cannot be closed by renounc- 
 ing the latter, but only by deepening it to speculative 
 insight. 
 
 The speculative insight for which Harris longed was 
 given, in fullest measure, by that traveling priest of Neo- 
 Platonic transcendentalism — Bronson Alcott, who was 
 now invited to St. Louis, his farthest limit west. Al- 
 cott 's influence in philosophy, declares Harris, was great, 
 and his presence a powerful influence to stir into activity 
 whatever philosophical thought there might be in a place. 
 All people entering upon the stage of the " clearing up," 
 or the intellectual declaration of independence, felt 
 something congenial in the atmosphere of such a " con- 
 versation " as he conducted. The idea of Neo-PlatonisT! 
 is so negative to our civilization that Mr. Alcott could 
 hospitably entertain the thoughts of any come-outer, and 
 offer him, in return, very surprising viewspth«t flowed 
 naturally enough from the theory of " lapse," but were 
 found altogether " occult " by the modern sense that 
 holds to the doctrines of evolution and progress. It 
 was perhaps difficult for those who attended the convei 
 sations to name any one valuable idea or insight which 
 they had gained there, but they felt harmoniously at- 
 tracted to free-thinking, and there was a feeling that 
 great stores of insight lay beyond what they had already 
 attained. That a person has within him the power of 
 growth in insight, is the most valuable conviction that 
 he can acquire. Certainly this was the fruit of Mr. 
 Alcott 's labors in the West. Ordinarily a person looks 
 upon his ovm wit as a fixed quantity, and does not try 
 a second time to understand anything found too <lifficult 
 on the first trial. Alcott set people to reading Emerson 
 
250 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 and Thorcau. He familiarized them with the names of 
 Plato and Pythagoras as great thinkers whose ideas are 
 valid now and to remain valid throughout the ages. The 
 shallowness of the American is due to the hard-and-fast 
 hold he has upon his knowledge of material or ph^'sical 
 ways and means. He is engaged primarily in the con- 
 quest of nature for the uses of civilization, and his in- 
 tellectual energies are so fully occupied with this busi- 
 ness that he has not explored the width and depth of 
 the civilization for which he is producing the wealth. 
 Thus it happens that American thought has for other 
 nations a flavor of Philistinism. It is narrow and shal- 
 low. The spiritual heavens are shrunk to the dimensions 
 of a single horizon. There is no intimation that the 
 American Philistine ever heard of any other point of 
 view than his own. He has heard of different manners 
 and customs, but all these are for him utterl}^ irrational 
 and without adequate motives. He believes that his 
 form of democracy is the only form of government fitted 
 for all mankind, and he wonders that all people do not 
 at once adopt it, just as he has done. . . . Failing to un- 
 derstand contemporary peoples, as the average American 
 consciousness does, it is not surprising that there is 
 a still w^orse defect in regard to the views of the world 
 formed by the Greeks and Romans, the Persians and 
 the Brahmins. It has been, therefore, a thing needed 
 that we should have reproduced among us, after a hot- 
 house mode, the ideas of other times and peoples that 
 have performed their part in the long march of civiliza- 
 tion. We have to learn the embrj^ology of our civiliza- 
 tion, and see the necessity for those stages which have 
 been outworn, and comprehend what was of value, and 
 what is still of value in them. The East Indian litera- 
 ture, the Chinese, the Persian, and especially the Egyp- 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 251 
 
 tian, all shall ho l)rou<?ht near to ns;. and our minds 
 endlessly enriched by their lessons. Instead of our little 
 barred window, which lets in a glimmer of light at the 
 top of our cell, we shall then pro forth into the free air, 
 and contemplate the entire sky and all its light. We shall 
 then for the first time see the real significance of our 
 own work as founders of a new nation in a new world. 
 We have given this remarkable passage at length for 
 two reasons. In the first place, it illustrates Harris's 
 skillful use of the Hegelian necessity of negativity. In 
 his OrpJiic Sayings Alcott presented, as we have seen, 
 the Neo-Platonic view of the world, and thus gave to his 
 contemporaries the shock they needed. This is evident 
 by the uproar of ridicule and indignation which ensued. 
 American common-sense and Fourth-of-July democracy 
 liad never considered the possibility of any other view 
 of the world than its own. In the next place, the pas- 
 sage illustrates Harris's understanding of what he calls 
 the morphology of our civilization and the significance 
 of the embryology of the transcendental movement. 
 W^hile the most of the men of our time, he continues, 
 despise the '' embryons " which had developed into 
 their present life, to one man — the wisest of his genera- 
 tion — this was an opportunity not to be neglected. That 
 man was Emerson. He could find much sympathy with 
 any and all idealistic views — whether European or 
 Asiatic. Even the unrelenting theory of the Brahmins, 
 which makes all existence an illusion, had its poetic uses 
 for him. . , . Emerson kept this stalwart form of 
 idealism as a sort of medicine which he could produce 
 on occasions when confronted with the Gorgon of ma- 
 terialism in any new .shape : What do I care, he exclaims, 
 for the iron mills, or the slums of cities, or the cholera, 
 or the Fugitive Slave Law, or some traveling crank. 
 
252 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 when I can see that all in time and space is only may a, 
 or illusion? 
 
 From these passages we are justified in putting a 
 high estimate upon the head of the St. Louis school. As 
 Emerson was the interpreter of nature, so may we claim 
 for Harris the title of the interpreter of the thought of 
 his country, whether East or AVest. At this point we 
 return to a previous suggestion regarding that confluence 
 of currents which resulted in the Concord school. In 
 that school Harris was a notable figure. To it he brought 
 two things, enthusiasm and executive ability. The 
 '* philosophic fury " of his youth had not yet died down ; 
 in addition he possessed what he liked to consider a 
 marked characteristic of the American — " directive 
 force." Through these two factors there was now 
 brought together a notable gathering of native philoso- 
 phers. The dean of the school was the fiery-eyed Alcott, 
 through whom had come the day of some really radical 
 thinking. The secretary of the school was Sanborn, 
 who was to give us our first brief glimpse of the history 
 of speculation in America. This included the Puritanic 
 philosophy of Edwards, the philanthropic philosophy 
 of Franklin, the negation of philosophy (the period of 
 deadening realistic dogmatism), and the ideal or vital 
 philosophy of Emerson. Now, Emerson, though still 
 living, was practically canonized as the Sage of Con- 
 cord. Men really looked upon him as the great repre- 
 ,, sentative of our early national period, when, as Sanborn 
 i says, philosophy indicated the guide of life, the exponent 
 • and directress of national existence, rather than a cer- 
 yjj j tain metaphysical insight, fruitful of speculation, even 
 ^ jA\_.^^^^ barren of results. 
 
 V.V ' But the times had changed. ..After the Civil War there 
 
 f ^U ^^'^ivecT a speculative stage. The interest in abolition 
 
 f ■'~~- ~ ■ 
 
 r 
 
THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL: WILLIAM T. HARRIS 253 
 
 was supplanted by an interest in the Absolute. Under J ^ / 
 the German influenees there arose the aim of thought for ^ ■ i 
 thought's sake; the new generation was enamored of l^ -^^ 
 metaphysical subtlety and cultivated an air of detach- ^iJJ^ 
 meut. The change was one both of method and of spirit * J 
 and the programme of the Concord school is an index of 
 that change. For example, Harris offers four lectures 
 on Elementary Insights in Philosophy and four more on 
 Space and Time; Causality and Self-Cause; Faith and 
 Freedom ; and Categories of Being. Nevertheless an audi-" 
 ence from the land of practicality could not give itself 
 entirely uplb such abstract speculations, nor make an un- 
 conditional surrender to the unconditioned. So alongside 
 of Harris's special subjects, such as The Absolute as a 
 Personal Reason, and The World as Revelation of the 
 Divine First Cause, we find those of another complexion. 
 If Harris aimed toward monism, Ilowison represented the 
 other wing of Kantian idealism; while James's lectures 
 on psychology contained certain pluralistic germs which 
 were bound to upset any system liroas ting of -it^ stability. 
 Indeed it would appear that idealism already contained 
 in its body certain anti-bodies, by-products leading to a 
 kind of auto-intoxication which intense transcendental- 
 ism seems ever destined to develop. But full develop- , _^ 
 ment had not yet come. It is a fact that, in the very\ o^.'i"' 
 year of the founding of the Concord school, Charles 1 ^ 
 Peifce suggested r/*^ Tjeff ain incapacities of human ) / 
 thought " which led to the disintegrating skeptieisni of 
 pragmatism. In the meanwhile, before that disintegrat- 
 ing skepticism could be reached, there arose two forms of 
 involved monism which we shall have to consider. These 
 are what we shall call Royce's system of romantic ideal- 
 ism and Ladd's system of science and idealism. To these 
 two masters, at Plarvard and at Yale, we now tuni. 
 
254 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 3. Romantic Idealism: Josiah Royce 
 
 Josiah Royce represents the romantic side of our 
 modem thinking. He is the Ulysses of an idealistic 
 epic, — ' ' many are the men whose towns he has seen and 
 whose minds he has learnt." By birth he stands for 
 the adventurous spirit of the California pioneer; by 
 training, for the learning of the Eastern seaboard as it 
 was brought from Europe. A student in Baltimore, his 
 early articles appeared in the St. Louis Journal; a 
 teacher for many years at Harvard, he has been called 
 to lecture at Aberdeen and at Oxford. From the variety 
 and amplitude of his studies in metaphysics and mathe- 
 matics, in psychology and religion, he is peculiarly quali- 
 fied to interpret "the spirit of modern philosophy." 
 That spirit may be summed up in one word, — romanti- 
 cism. This has as its chief activities the cultivation of 
 the inner life ; an enlargement of the powers of per- 
 sonality; and a cosmic imagination which strives to 
 express all phenomena in terms of the Infinite, the Abso- 
 lute. By the first activity, man learns to free his spirit 
 from the limitations of the body; to discover that the 
 true world is not made up of sense impressions. By the 
 next activity, he expands his mind until well-nigh the 
 whole world is at his feet, even time and space. By the 
 final activity, he finds that the finite world is a voluntary 
 limitation on the part of his infinite ego and that only 
 what is linked with the Infinite has meaning and value. 
 Such, briefly, is romanticism as interpreted hy Novalis 
 and Fichte and Schlegel. Of like mind is Royce, who 
 puts the matter in a less vague and more satisfactory 
 form because of the wealth of learning at his disposal. 
 He begins by showing that there are two aspects of ideal- 
 ism. The fii-st is an analysis which consists in pointin.g 
 
ROMANTIC IDEALISM: JOSIAH ROYCE 255 
 
 out that the world of your knowledge is through and 
 through such stuff as ideas are made of. Tlie other aspect 
 is the one which gives us our notion of the absolute 
 Self. To it the first is only pro[)aratory. for this world 
 which we interpret in terms of our ideas exists in and 
 for a standard, an universal mind whose system of 
 ideas constitutes the world. Now, all this may be mere 
 speculative boasting. I may believe that the infinite con- 
 scious Self is alone sure, but I have to give a reason for 
 this faith. Berkeley has made the method familiar when 
 he reasons that " this whole choir of heaven and furni- 
 ture of earth is nothing but a system of ideas." . . . 
 But I must state it in my own way, although one in vain 
 seeks novelty in illustrating so frequently described a 
 view. 
 
 Here, then, is our so real world of the senses, full of 
 light and warmth and sound. If anything could be 
 solid and external, surely, one at first will say, it is this 
 world. Hard facts, not mere ideas, meet us on every 
 hand. Ideas anyone can mold as he wishes. Not so 
 facts. In idea socialists can dream out Utopias, dis- 
 appointed lovers can imagine themselves successful, beg- 
 gars can ride horses, wanderers can enjoy the fireside 
 at home. In the realm of facts, society organizes itself 
 as it must, rejected lovers stand for the time def(>ated. 
 beggars are alone with their wishes, oceans roll drearily 
 between home and the wanderer. 
 
 Matter and mind may be similar in being stubliorn, 
 but does this make them essentially alike? "We raise 
 this question because idealists before this have been apt 
 to slip into the fallacy of putting a part for the whole, or 
 more precisely of confusing quality with totality. 
 Royce guards against all this. Much of the outer world, 
 he explains, is ideal : the coin or the jewel or the bank- 
 
256 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 r note or the bond has its value not alone in its physical 
 presence, but in the idea that it symbolizes to the be- 
 holder's mind, or to the relatively universal thought of 
 the commercial, world. So part of the properties of the 
 j i objects yonder in this bright sense-world of ours is ideal, 
 [L. for odors and tastes and temperatures do not exist in 
 I those objects in just the way in which they exist in us. 
 \ Thus for temperatures, a well-known experiment will 
 I show how the same water may seem cold to one hand 
 L^and warm to the other. So for colors, they are not in 
 ^TK^c things, since they change with the light, vanish in 
 the dark, and differ for different eyes. And as for 
 sounds they exist in nature only as voiceless sound- 
 waves trembling through the air. 
 
 These are familiar arguments and easy to accept. But 
 can we follow the idealist in his supposition that part 
 of the being of these properties is ideal, if not all of it ; 
 or, at the best, that such being is the embodiment of the 
 thought or purpose of some world-mind ? There are here 
 two forward steps, one of which appears doubtful, the 
 other dogmatic, unless the very dogma serve as a vindica- 
 tion of this train of reasoning. To explain : If we sup- 
 pose that the place of all sense qualities is in the world- 
 mind, then we have, as Royce suggests, a standard 
 thought of which ours is only the copy. If this be not 
 so, we are faced with this dilemma: Either your real 
 world yonder is through and through a world of ideas, 
 an outer world that you are more or less comprehending 
 through your experience, or else, in so far as it is real 
 and outer it is unknowable, an inscrutable x, an abso- 
 solute mystery. There is no third alternative. Either 
 a mind yonder, or else the unknowable; that is your 
 choice. 
 We confess that this dogma relieves the dilemma, but 
 
ROMANTIC IDEALISM: JOSIAH ROYCE 257 
 
 does it give one " the sensation of being an idealist "? 
 The author himself raises such a qui'stion as this: Is 
 not this result very disheartening? ]\Iy world is thus 
 a world of ideas, but alas ! how do I then ever reach those 
 ideas of the minds beyond me? This question is one 
 that has been called by one of the new realists the ego^ 
 centric predicament. It may be put in this way : I may 
 grant that knowledge is made up of ideas, but are they 
 not my ideas and, therefore, am I not shut up in the 
 magic circle of my own mind ? Royce faces the predica- 
 ment and seeks to solve it in this wise: The answer is 
 simple, but in one sense a very problematic one. You, 
 in one sense, never do or can get beyond your own ideas, 
 nor ought you to wish to do so, because in truth all those 
 other minds that constitute your outer and real world 
 are in essence one with your own self. This whole 
 world of ideas is essentially one world, is essentially the 
 world of one self and That art Thou. t^c »-■- 
 
 The answer here suggested is^made^b^ means of a tran- 
 sition froiiTlhe solipsistic to the social. Yet by what 
 right have we thus to pass from the individual to the 
 common consciousness? Ordinary judgment makes the 
 social or common consciousness merely the aggregate of 
 individual minds; just as the " population " of a coun-^ 
 try is merely the sum-total got by counting head?. The 
 statistician no more thinks that the adding together of 
 little minds makes one great mind, than the strict con- 
 structionist thinks that the addition of political states 
 makes an extra entity called " The Union." Jiut Uie 
 idealist reasons differently. He is neither statistician, 
 nor strict constructionist, "fo get out of tlie little circle 
 of the single self he is wont to call on a larger self,— 
 the social consciousness, tlie spirit of the times, the 
 World-Mind,— whatever may be the name given to tliis 
 
 \ 
 
258 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 mysterious One who " relieves us from dilemmas, and 
 saves us from predicaments." 
 
 We confess that we find it hard to follow this line of 
 argument, for it involves a kind of cosmic conceit, a con- 
 viction that in the evolution of the Absolute, the unfold- 
 ing of the Spirit, we mortals play a major part. Yet 
 Royce goes on to declare that such participation exists 
 in the very act of belief, for to believe anything is to 
 I stand in a real relation to truth, a relation which tran- 
 Vscends wholly my present, momentary self ; and this real 
 relation is of such a curious nature that only a larger 
 inclusive self which consciously reflected upon my mean- 
 ing and consciously possessed the object which I mean, 
 could Imow or grasp the reality of the relation. 
 yit we were to defend this idealistic analysis, we might 
 /say that the act ol- -knowing, being~~a_ relating process 
 I between the individual and the object, requires some con- 
 I necting medium. As no wireless message can be con- 
 j veyed between two points without the intangible ether, 
 so must the knower and the known be bathed in a cir- 
 cumambient Absolute. This, in a figure, is what the «iu- 
 ,thor may mean when he refers to " that larger Self 
 that includes you and your object." William James 
 has disposed of this assumption in the matter-of-fact 
 statement that a third party is not needed; that a cat 
 may look at a king directly, and without the interven- 
 tion of anything or anybody. But for the idealist this is 
 too flat and unprofitable. It may be possible to live along 
 on the easy path of simple awareness ; but for a specu- 
 lative system we require a more complicated scheme. 
 Between the self and objects no help may be needed 
 for a relating power from on high; jjut between self 
 and other selves there is a more mysterious relation. 
 The kinship of mind is due to a common origin and a 
 
ROMANTIC IDEALISM: JOSIAH ROYCE 259 
 
 common essence. Such may well be Royce's " one Self, 
 organically, reflectively, consriously inclusive of all the 
 selves, — the divine Logos which is absolutely the only 
 sure thing from the first about this world." 
 
 To Royce, as to Schelling, man is a menibcr of two 
 worlds; but unlike the German idealist, who sought to 
 preserve a perfect balance between the two, the Ameri- 
 can apparently thinks that by depreciating the world of 
 description he thereby appreciates, or adds in value to, 
 the world of appreciation, "Without the facts of appre- 
 ciation, he claims, there are no laws of description. 
 Destroy the organic and appreciable unity of the world 
 of appreciative beings, and the describable objects all 
 vanish, — atoms, brains, suns, and milk}- ways are naught. 
 ... Is this Roycean paradox an apparent reversal ot^ 
 judgment? At first it was stated that the universe of 
 appreciative feelings was isolated; that feelings- au'd 
 emotions were strictly privat^i and, therefore, non- 
 transferable. Now it is stated that objects in space and 
 time are isolated, but that spiritual states are enmeshed 
 in a common net of spiritual relationship. 
 
 Here is a return to the notion of a social conscioHis- 
 ness, the world of appreciation being, as the writer ex- 
 presses it, one of a sort of reflective publicity and 
 interconnectedness. "What is the value of this world ? As 
 minds are above molecules, so, it is argued, the world of 
 appreciation is the deeper reality, its rival, the world of 
 description, being a result of an essentially human and 
 finite outlook. At this juncture there appears a defect 
 in the system,— it is that of being a one-sided scheme. 
 The admirable balance preserved by Schelling between 
 the two worlds here gives way to the propondcrancc of 
 the one over the other. This being so. Royce is forced 
 to acknowledge that " the unity of the Logos is an ap- 
 
260 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 prceiablo, but not a describable unity." Certain un- 
 comfortable consequences arise from this distinction: 
 If the unity applies to but one world, it is not a total 
 unity ; it may apply to the higher part, but that is not 
 the whole. There remains the world of description, a 
 mass of intractable matter, and the final result is a dual- 
 ism. Man is a member of two worlds, but between the 
 two worlds there is no organic connection. The idealist 
 acknowledges as much in calling his scheme an applica- 
 tion of the double-aspect theory. Unlike other forms of 
 that theory which declares that there is a curious kind 
 of substance in the world, a substance mysterious and 
 essentially inscrutable that has two aspects, the mental 
 and the physical, this theory, contends the author, under- 
 takes to know what this substance is. It is the conscious 
 life of the Logos, whereof my friend is a finite instance. 
 What I see is the physical, phenomenal aspect of his 
 inner and appreciative life. 
 
 In using the word phenomenal Royce appears half 
 an agnostic. The body, he claims, is merely a very im- \ 
 perfect translation of the mind ; its laws belonging not ' 
 to the inner nature as such, but to the external show of 
 this nature; these laws being but symbols of deeper 
 truth. If the problem rested here we might contend 
 that the idealist has laid himself open to the inroads of 
 skepticism, the possibility of erroneous judgment in the 
 search for truth. His show might be considered a vain 
 show, his translation a mistranslation. For all that the 
 finite intelligence knows, the double aspect might be a 
 duplex aspect, or rather an aspect of duplicity. In 
 other words, if the two worlds are not in balance, be- 
 cause not coordinate, if the material and spiritual are 
 not of an equivalence, there might ensue a colossal 
 equivocation. The outward and visible signs might be 
 
ROMANTIC IDEALISM: JOSIAH ROYCE 2G1 
 
 misread, the symbols variously distorted according to 
 the personal equation of the observer. This, \ve hold, 
 is the danger run by the phcnomenalist ; but to the meta- 
 physical idealist, who strives to think things through, 
 there is a further refuge from doubt. The finite intelli- 
 gence must be wholly of an agnostic cast unless tlie indi- 
 vidual constructs something higher than himself. This 
 is the infinite intelligence. 
 
 Royce had once avowed that the idealist welcomed 
 the fullest agnosticism. We can now see the reason for 
 this. Agnosticism Is a spur to knowledge. Like a trav- 
 eler in a strange land, the idealist in this material world 
 is forced to learn the language of the country, to inter- 
 pret the gestures which nature makes to him. Behind 
 the signs, the symbols, the movements, there nuist be a 
 meaning. It is this confidence in the rationality of the 
 universe that constitutes the refuge of the high idealist. 
 Royce has perhaps seemed to beg the question in using 
 the term Logos, Reason. Now comes his vindication 
 of the use of that term : You have your choice of three 
 things. There is blank agnosticism, which makes the 
 universe irredeemably irrational, a mere bedlam of nerv- 
 ous jerks, of meaningless motions. There is also a partial 
 agnosticism, where the scientific observer is never sure 
 that his reading of signs is not a misreading, his trans- 
 lation of facts not a mistranslation. There is finally a 
 choice of a reasoned gnosticism, — not the universe of 
 the know-it-all, but the universe of the All-Knower. The 
 last is the choice of Royce. He allows that the world of 
 description may be a world of partial doubt, that there 
 may be a misreading of the mind of nature similar to a 
 misreading of the mind of a friend. For all that he 
 insists that the personal equation may be corrected, and. 
 by a process of trial and error, the errors largely elimi- 
 
262 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 nated. But this correction, this elimination, cannot 
 come of ourselves alone. The individual needs not only 
 the social consciousness but the world consciousness. 
 The problem, then, concerns a certain kind of truth, 
 of which there are three kinds. Having recognized our- 
 selves as finite beings, we become aware of our private 
 world of inner truth as distinguishable from the truth 
 as experienced by other men, and from the universal 
 ] truth of the all-knowing world-consciousness. A new 
 \ question then arises: How much of this private 
 "truth of ours is a revelation to us in our finitude of what 
 other finite selves can also know? Finally comes the 
 answer : So much as can be described to these other finite 
 selves, and then, in their experience, appreciatively veri- 
 fied, may be regarded as not our private content, but as 
 universal. 
 f fs,^j'^ We have at last reached a true transcendentalism; 
 
 ' t*. I a scale of truth which implies a scale of being, that is, 
 y</** a series of spheres in which the ardent soul may make 
 
 0** real progress. By this means the transcendentalist 
 ifJ* /J^breaks out of the magic circle of the self into the social 
 s/r consciousness, and then from the social consciousness 
 {J^ into the higher consciousness of the ' ' true World-Will. ' ' 
 
 Such is the process of development in the realm of 
 knowledge. There yet remains the problem of the rela- 
 tion of the organic world to our human consciousness. 
 Here the author is, in a measure, obliged to modify his 
 previous declarations. In his literal appreciation, or 
 increasing the value, of the world of appreciation he 
 had tended to depreciate the world of description. That 
 world he must now bring into his total scheme, and 
 thereby raise to a higher power. When, he explains, 
 I think of the stars and of matter, of space and of the 
 energj^ that appears forever to be dissipating itself 
 
 ■^ 
 
i.-^ 
 
 ROMANTIC IDEALISM: JOSIAH ROYCE 2G3 
 
 therein, I think of something real, or else of merely a 
 private experience of mine. If, now, the common expori- 
 ence of humanity is our sufficient warrant for assuming 
 some universal reality as actually embodied in these 
 hot stars and cold interspaces, of what sort must this 
 reality be? In and for itself, we now answer: It must 
 be an appreciable reality, the expression of what, in 
 Schopenhauer's sense of the word, may be called a 
 World-AVill ; as well as of what, in Hegel 's sense, may J 
 be called an Universal Self-Conscious Thought. 
 
 Given these two worlds, and there is suggested an an- 
 swer to the last and most difficult problem, — that of 
 personal freedom. The transcendentalist may have his (j^^„.^^: 
 feet in the mire of matter, but his head is in the free 
 air of the spirit. Such, in a figure, is Royce's answer, 
 and the answer, he admits, seems paradoxical. Granted 
 that the cause that relates to the world of description is 
 one of temporal sequences, and that the only cause that 
 you can seek in the world of appreciation is in a verj' 
 different sense a cause, namely, a justification for this 
 or that act, — does this relieve the situation ? The double 
 aspect theory has seemingly degenerated into an aspect 
 of duplicity, if not of equivocation. A word means one 
 thing here and another there. j\Ioreover it makes man 
 apparently a creature of caprice, constant to one thing 
 never ; one foot on the land of fixed necessity, the other 
 on the shifting sea of freedom. How sliall the idealist 
 escape such criticism ? He does it as have other roman- 
 ticists, by practically denying one kind of personal voli- 
 tion. He concedes that what the physical organism it-' 
 self will do, is physiologically determined by the whoh^ 
 order of nature and by the whole of past time, and that 
 the will moves no atom of this mechanism aside from 
 its predestined force. How explain such a paradox? 
 
264 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 The answer is the expected answer. Royee, as a strict 
 dualist, is a strict parallelist, and therefore allows no 
 interaction between mind and body in the world of de- 
 scription. 
 
 In like manner, in the world of appreciation, he 
 allows no interaction, in the way of control, between 
 the individual mind and other minds. As my will can- 
 not move the body below it, so a higher will cannot 
 move my will, unless I choose to follow, by an act 
 of appreciation, some thought emanating from that 
 higher Self. We conceive the answer to the problem of 
 freedom should stop here, with what is practically a 
 revival of the Platonic doctrine of participation. This 
 doctrine teaches that the lesser partakes ideally of the 
 greater, the ectype being of the same nature as the 
 archetype. Now, in attempting to bring our thoughts 
 into conformity with that of the supreme Self, we may 
 be in an ideal relation, which at any time we are at 
 liberty to break. Yet we are hardly, as Royce contends, 
 conscious bits of that Self, nor is our conscious volition 
 a fragment of the freedom of the World- Will. We raise 
 the objection that to identify an act of the individual 
 with that of the Absolute, is to make the individual lose 
 his personal identity. It is like an inventor working 
 for a corporation and thereby losing all patent rights to 
 his invention. Royce acknowledges as much in a final 
 rhetorical question: What then, though we are bound 
 in the temporal world, may we not indeed be free, — 
 yes, and in a non-temporal and transcendent sense ef- 
 fective, too, in the eternal world? May we not in fact, 
 as parts of an eternal order, be choosing not indeed this 
 or that thing in time, but helping to choose out and out 
 what world this fatal temporal world shall eternally 
 he and have heen? 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 265 
 
 With what he modestly calls a " dim suggt-stion " 
 Royce concludes the constructive part of this " first 
 sketch " of his system. The suggestion harks back to 
 the German romanticists as poets, makers, world-buildci-s. 
 It also points forward to the current doctrine of creative 
 evolution, where the luiiverse is still in the making, and 
 man a junior partner in the business. Or, to use a less 
 commercial figure, this final suggestion preserves the 
 Koycean system from the fate of absolutism. As in the 
 case of pliilosophy and politics, where absolute sov- 
 ereignty w'as forced to give way to personal sovereignty, 
 so in this case. The seemingly insidious inroad on the 
 liberties of the individual is prevented by the doctrine 
 of voluntary participation of the free agent. Just as 
 there may be a political union which conserves the re- 
 served rights of the state, so may there be organic 
 spiritual relations whereby " all the spirits are together 
 in one Spirit." 
 
 4. Idealism and Science : George Trumbull Ladd 
 
 The system of Royce is like a lofty palace with cloud- 
 capped pinnacles and lofty towers, but withal built upon 
 an insubstantial footing. The system of Ladd is a struc- 
 ture of a different sort. While Royce ' ' a stately pleas- 
 ure dome decrees," Ladd prosaically sets to work to 
 dig deep foundations. On the one hand is the romanti- 
 cist with high poetic imagination; on the other is the 
 engineer of metaphysics, who will erect no edifice, until 
 he has carefully examined the ground, who will make no 
 promises until he has calculated the stresses and strains. 
 The foundations of philosophy, according to Ladd. arc 
 wide and deep. Tlrey cover all the sciences and go down 
 as far as investigation has gone. It is, therefore, pre- 
 
266 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 sumptuous to call philosophy the science of the sciences ; 
 it should rather be considered a summation of the sci- 
 ences. Just as an immense modern business structure calls 
 in the geologist, the engineer, the architect, and a host of 
 allied agents, so that skyscraper called metaphysics is 
 impossible without the aid of all knowing men. Unless 
 it avail itself of their services and reach the rock bottom 
 of reality, it will be not only uninhabitable, but will 
 collapse of its own weight. Such, in a figure, is the im- 
 pression conveyed by Ladd's latest work. Knowledge, 
 Life, and Reality. The work is compact and well built, 
 but like the modern business structure the first glimpse 
 of it is not particularly alluring. Thus we are told 
 that philosophy should be taken seriously, and that re- 
 flective thinking is a duty. With this we beg to differ. 
 It is opposed to the very meaning of the word in ques- 
 tion. When the author points out that philosopher 
 means a lover of knowledge, that also means that he is 
 a lover of pleasure, — the pleasure of knowing. The 
 compelling curiosity of which Aristotle spoke is the real 
 motive behind speculation. The Greeks were right. 
 Philosophy is not so much a duty as a pleasure, and a 
 philosopher not so much an agonizing contestant, as a 
 spectator at the games. There is, of course, a serious 
 side to this. One's favorite may fail and the race be 
 lost, but this does not keep one away from the next 
 Olympiad. We, therefore, beg to maintain that men do 
 not enter into metaphysics *' discreetly and soberly," 
 but with curiosity and excitement. A prolegomenon to 
 metaphysics is like a prologue to a play, — it is a spur 
 to expectancy. A stranger in the land of speculation 
 is as one who enters by night into a foreign city and 
 wonders how it will look by daylight. 
 
 Although differing as to the spirit with which philos- 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 267 
 
 ophy should be approached, we can agree as to the 
 author's general conception of the subject. Ilis first 
 point is a disavowal of dogma. The pliilosopher wiio 
 knows his business, knows that the attempt to deduce 
 the facts and laws of the positive sciences from some 
 fonn of a theory of the Idea, or of the Absolute, must 
 be forever abandoned. lie also knows that philosophy 
 must take the world as science finds it, for it is the real 
 world, and not any merely conjectured world, which 
 philosophy desires to help science more profoundly to 
 interpret. The philosopher is, accordingly, not a domi- 
 nator but an adjudicator. He does not aspire to be the 
 president of a syndicate which shall have bought or 
 grabbed up all the separate mining claims. He tries 
 to straighten out the confusion in respect to these claims. 
 This is difficult because the confusion is cosmic. The 
 universe being a whole, of which each science presents 
 a part, every particular science finds itself confronted 
 with problems which belong to the domain of some other 
 science. Physics and chemistry cannot be kept wholly 
 apart; chemistry is part of biology; biologj- is compli- 
 cated with psychology, and so on. 
 
 Into this Wild West of conflicting claims enters the 
 philosopher. He himself has staked no claims and repre- 
 sents no company, but like a government expert he is 
 there to straighten out the tangle. He cannot satisfy 
 everj'body, yet he can send back a fairly clear report to 
 headquarters. The report is accompanied by a map, and 
 this map of metaphysics is now presented to us. There 
 are in the field two rival companies. One is realism, the 
 other idealism. How shall they be reconciled? By the 
 simple expedient of a hyphen are the rivals amalga- 
 mated. Like a British-American mining company, we 
 have, therefore, two parties— one furnishing the capital, 
 
2GS MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 the other the brains. Now, if this were a wild-eat com- 
 pany, we might have one party absconding with the 
 capital and the other left with — the experience! But 
 the company is legitimate and tries to do a legitimate 
 business. It may ultimately attempt to be absolute — 
 in that rosy future when it shall have absorbed all rivals. 
 At present it sticks to its territory and tries to dig ore. 
 In other words, the sources of philosophy are not chiefly 
 subjective. A synthesis of facts, not a printing of pro- 
 spectuses, is the task of the present-day philosopher, since 
 there lies before the thinker of modern type a whole new 
 world of discoveries. 
 
 In both methods and materials philosophy should then 
 be empirical. Conversely, the sciences should be theoret- 
 ical. Just as the sciences interpenetrate one another, so 
 philosophy should interpenetrate the sciences. Other- 
 wise we fall into the strange illusions of which Haeckel 
 complains, the illusion held by the physicists that they 
 can construct the edifice of natural science from facts 
 without a philosophical connection of the same. Ladd, 
 as is his wont, substantiates his opinions by German 
 thought. It might be supplemented by French views, 
 views such as those of Poincare, that science and hypoth- 
 esis go hand in hand, that the one cannot advance with- 
 out the instrumentality of the other. And yet the Ameri- 
 can author might have reached his conclusion without 
 any foreign aid, for his premises lead to the logical con- 
 clusion that specialization should be corrected by syn- 
 thesis, that the breaking up of the larger domain into 
 small allotments should not go on forever. " Divide 
 and rule " is held to be an excellent maxim for the 
 sake of concentration. Yet beside the intensive culti- 
 vation possible within the fenced lines of specialization 
 there is an extensive cultivation of which science itself 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 269 
 
 gives the hint every time it speaks of a Universe, or of a 
 World, which is in any manner or measure One. 
 
 With these distinctions in mind we may inquire to 
 what school we should assign the author. lie wishes 
 it to be understood that he belongs to none, and yet to 
 all. He sees that variety in philosophy is a sign of life, 
 just as variety in crops is a sign of fertility. In these 
 conclusions the cosmopolite speaks. Having taught in 
 Japan and India, as well as in different parts of America, 
 Ladd informs us that he has learned much from his o\vn 
 pupils, both Oriental and Occidental. But he is satisfied 
 neither with the mystical cry of the East, nor with the 
 scientific formulas of the West. The dissatisfaction 
 being profound, the crisis becomes acute. This crisis is 
 emphasized and with a purpose, namely, that the allevia- 
 tion may be the greater. It is by com promise, as a sort 
 of adhesive plaster, that the torn wound is at last brought 
 together. If neither a purely idealistic nor a purely 
 realistic system of philosophy can be maintained, yet 
 a combination of the two may hold. The combination 
 is found in what might be entitled a vitalizing of the 
 problem. In the body-mind controversy we have in 
 theory' two conflicting elements; but in the living self 
 we find the two united. Likewise in the larger contro- 
 versy respecting matter and spirit : Why should not ninn 
 interpret the universe as a totality, in terms of reality 
 as experienced by himself, that is to say, in terms of an 
 experience of the life of a self? In the Imowledge of 
 life we have a suggested solution of reality. We are 
 now enabled to go a step further. In vitalizing the 
 given elements we look from without upon a given whole 
 —bodies and minds brought together. In psychologizing 
 those elements we go deeper and look from within— 
 upon a rational whole. In a word, the principle of 
 
270 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 knowledge is personalism. As one knows his body 
 and mind united in a single self, so may one know 
 the body of nature as infused with one immanent 
 mind. 
 
 This is going too fast. Before we can approach the 
 philosophy of nature we must work out a philosophy 
 of human nature. In this field the first problem is what 
 kind of knowledge I have of myself. Is it illusory and 
 transitory, or actual and dependable? Ladd gives the 
 old realistic answer: I look within and find myself pos- 
 sessed of a self which is immediate and indubitable. 
 Such knowledge has this further advantage: it makes 
 me sure of myself. And so, for one thing, I am no 
 stream of consciousness, since, even as a figurative 
 watcher on the banks, I really do not separate myself 
 from that stream. Such are the arguments of the idealist 
 of Yale College. For the sake of the contrast let us 
 turn for a moment to representatives of the rival insti- 
 tution against which these contentions are evidently 
 directed. Against self-knowledge as immediate and in- 
 dubitable we can put the statements of Royce as to the 
 relativity and insecurity of such knowledge. To a path- 
 ological case how futile would be the advice " To thine 
 own self be true "! Moreover, against the substantial 
 identity of the self we can put the doctrine of James, 
 which substitutes for a self a so-called " stream of con- 
 sciousness." A favorite phrase of Ladd's is that " states 
 of consciousness do not constitute consciousness of 
 states." But suppose we add " — unless that conscious- 
 ness of states is one of the states of consciousness. ' ' The 
 problem is puzzling, but Royce in turn has given a 
 subtle answer to that very question of how the true mind 
 may find itself. It is by making its way through a med- 
 ley of parasitical ' ' minds, ' ' abnormal states of conscious- 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 271 
 
 ness, which are to the normal self what noxious germs 
 are to their host. And James in his doctrine of the 
 specious moment — that snapshot glimpse of the stream 
 of consciousness — has shown witli what baffling speed 
 the mind, so to speak, always keeps ahead of itself. 
 
 There is much food for thought in this controversy 
 regarding the self as aberrant and evanescent, over 
 against the self as indubitable and immediate. If the dis- 
 tinctions are too sharply drawn the issue becomes a 
 false one. There may be multiple states of conscious- 
 ness, yet out of these we may pick a single state and 
 call it the principle of self-identity, and even grant that 
 it is unique. Just as for practical purposes many politi- 
 cal states may constitute a federal union, so that pecu- 
 liar state called self-recognition, may be the bond of 
 psychological union. This does not preclude the times 
 and seasons in normal life when one is not " sure " of 
 one's self, nor the abnormal cases of almost complete 
 self-abnegation or forgetfulness. As there may be 
 " sick " moments in a healthy mind, so may there be a 
 healthy mind back of the sick moments. That at least 
 is the hope upon which the pathologist, as physician 
 of souls, carries on his work. He is not bothered with 
 figures of speech about streams of consciousness or the 
 futile flow of sensations ; he asks only for a single sane 
 moment of self-recognition upon which to crystallize 
 his cure. 
 
 We wish the author had sought to reach reality 
 through such a study of unreality. Ladd's interesting 
 studies in hypnotism might profitably have been car- 
 ried further to illuminate this problem. We may. how- 
 ever, suggest one way of escape out of the maze of 
 mentality. Suppose the patient has lost the conscious- 
 ness of self, or the sense of personality has temporarily 
 
272 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 disappeared. Suppose., again, that hypnotic suggestion 
 is applied to the subconscious or subliminal realm. 
 Now, until the submerged self has somehow been made 
 to rise to the surface of consciousness, it cannot be 
 dogmatically asserted that the true self is lost or non- 
 existent. We may hold with the author that there is 
 ever in man a rational principle, whether latent or 
 patent, but does it follow from this that there is one 
 immanent mind in nature ? In examining the pathologi- 
 cal doubt of self we have, as it were, been fighting for 
 our souls, but that is far from a warfare in behalf of the 
 world-soul. The individual may wish to remain master 
 of this little world of self. But to turn that microcosm 
 into a macrocosm, to undertake to run the universe after 
 the analogy of the self, is highly presumptuous, if noth- 
 ing else. 
 
 The realist, at this point, turns into the idealist. He 
 reads in the sky " huge cloudy symbols of a high ro- 
 mance." We follow him with difficulty. It is one thing 
 to say that we are sure of ourselves because we are di- 
 rectly aware of our states of consciousness. It is another 
 thing to imagine ourselves identical with even the small- 
 est part of that great soul which informs the mighty 
 mass. The mystic claims to do it by means of his inner 
 light ; the esthete by his supposition of ' ' empathy, ' ' of 
 a feeling one's self into an object of art. But we 
 confess that these very claims conflict with a true indi- 
 viduality. Individuality means that, being myself, I 
 am separate from other objects ; that I am neither a mere 
 spark of the divine fire, nor an imaginary state of mind 
 of some graven image. These are some of the difficulties 
 that we face as we enter upon Ladd's philosophy of na- 
 ture. It is easy to say that as there is a mind in my 
 body, so there is one immanent mind in the body of 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 273 
 
 nature, — but it is hard to grasp this " sense sublime 
 of something far more deeply interfused." 
 
 To obtain this high knowledge three avenues of ap- 
 proach are suggested : through the beliefs of the primi- 
 tive man; through the beliefs of the seientist; through 
 the beliefs of the philosopher. The primitive man be- 
 lieves in invisible spiritual agencies, — he has a simple, 
 childlike way of attributing souls to certain things. The 
 scientist believes in laws as modes of the behavior of 
 things, — he treats regular phenomena as if they were 
 regular habits. The philosopher believes in a system, 
 and a system implies central control and a realization of 
 ideal ends. Let us examine these three beliefs. Do the 
 savage and the seientist really support the philosopher? 
 At the most the scientist has little use for the savage, 
 except as a sort of interesting mental scandal. As 
 Fiske puts it : In the primitive hypothesis the forces of 
 nature must have been likened to human volition because 
 there was nothing else with which to compare them. 
 Again the scientist, of the positive type, objects to being 
 turned into a savage in having his " laws " personified. 
 There is human behavior and cosmic behavior, but the 
 two are by no means one. 
 
 The idealist is in a fix. Mythology will not help mon- 
 ism because it is too animistic. Mechanism will not 
 help monism because it refuses to be anthropomorphic, — 
 its god is not made in the image of man. What then? 
 Let us confine the savage in a mental reservation of igno- 
 rance, but keep the scientist and reexamine his beliefs. 
 Is mechanism tenable? Can science " purify the causal 
 concept of the elements contributed by emotion and 
 w^U"? No! responds Ladd, or else science reduces 
 explanation to a lifeless body of abstractions and empty 
 formulas which give no real account of anything. The 
 
274 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 solution has already been suggested. It is personalism. 
 Metaphysics, continues the idealist, interprets mecha- 
 nism in terms of personal experience. There are here 
 two grounds of reinterpretation. In general, causality 
 is no invisible bond which seizes hold upon things from 
 without and forces them into a semblance of unity. 
 Causal connection, when analyzed, appears not so much 
 like the external and merely visible connections of a 
 machine, but rather like the felt connections of a con- 
 scious self. In particular, the student of nature sees, 
 what the ordinary observer cannot see; he sees amoebas, 
 and bacteria, and white-blood corpuscles, and ova, and 
 cilia, and single cells or groups of cells, in all forms of 
 living tissue, behaving in a more or less self-like way. 
 Nor can he arrest his suspicions of something immanent 
 in the reality which, in some faint measure at least, cor- 
 responds to his own conscious life, when he minutely 
 observes the behavior of the different beings belonging 
 to the world of plants. For, in the first place, at the 
 lower limits of the two so-called kingdoms, it is difficult 
 or impossible for him to tell to which of the two certain 
 species should be assigned. And, second, many of those 
 species, about the plant-like nature of which there is 
 no doubt, show clearer evidences of a soulful existence 
 than do many forms, and these by no means the lowest, of 
 animal life. 
 
 Ladd is here approaching firmer ground. It is the 
 ground of neo-vitalism. In place of the older mechanism, 
 the Cartesian and Newtonian explanation of the world 
 as made up of masses and forces, there has arisen the 
 new biology. This grants, for example, to the ovum a 
 nature rich and wonderful, a capacity not only to make 
 itself behave as a being-in-itself, but also to make other 
 beings which behave like itself. There is also the new 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 275 
 
 astronomy which holds that all the planets in the solar 
 system behave " as though they knew " how they ought 
 to behave under all the circumstances, and taking into 
 account their actual relations to all other things. There 
 is finally the new physics which takes the forces of 
 gravity as implying between the atoms literal affinities, 
 or forces that have preferences, and thereby imports a 
 self into mere mechanism. 
 
 There now looms up another parting of the ways. 
 Some scientists would go on with the idealists, others 
 would not. To many mechanism seems sufficient, and 
 any attempt to personalize the phenomena of nature, 
 whether organic or inorganic, appears mere poetic li- 
 cense. Men of this stripe refuse to accompany the 
 idealist on the high a priori road. When he says that 
 the measurableness of material things implies mentality, 
 that concrete realities obey rational principles, that the 
 category^ of force is the outgrowth of personal experience, 
 they raise stout objections. For example, both those neo- 
 realists and pragmatists, who are radical empiricists, de- 
 mand that the tables be turned. They reason just the 
 other way, arguing that mentality is derived from meas- 
 urableness; that rational principles grow out of con- 
 crete realities; that personal experience is the out- 
 growth of the feeling of force in obstructing objects. 
 
 Is there any way in which to reconcile these divergent 
 views? We believe there is, for the reason that the two 
 schools have been looking at the same object from oppo- 
 site sides. That object is nature. The side the empiri- 
 cists look at is the outside, the environment. The stone 
 wall of hard facts against which I run,— that is what 
 gives me the rational principles I call empirical. Con- 
 trariwise, the side the idealist takes is the inside; he 
 looks at nature from within; he considers himself 
 
276 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 already over the wall, already in possession of the 
 key to the fortress of fact. And we ask again : 
 Can these two points of view be in the posses- 
 sion of the same person? Ladd's fellow-idealist Royce 
 gives an amusing illustration to show that the achieve- 
 ment is possible. He alleges that as selves we have 
 the paradoxical power of being both subjects and ob- 
 jects : I may be meditating in my study, yet I can run 
 out of the house and look in at the window and see myself 
 still sitting inside. Or we might cite the case of an 
 optical illusion, of a spherical figure which appears 
 at one moment convex, at the next concave. To the eye 
 that figure goes through alternating changes, yet com- 
 mon sense tells us that the figure itself does not change. 
 In other words, just as the so-called specious moment of 
 introspection may be explained by a shifting of the point 
 of view, so may the idealist's world be looked at from 
 two points of view. As an object by itself the world 
 may be mechanical ; but as known to man all things are 
 self-like, since the nature of anything is internal. This 
 is Ladd's solution of the paradox, a solution in close 
 agreement with Royce 's two worlds, — the scientific 
 world of description, the metaphysical of appreciation. 
 But the Yale thinker has perhaps gone a step further. 
 To put a line of Emerson in positive form, the World- 
 Ground might be held to say not only " I am the doubter 
 and the doubt," but also " I am the knower and the 
 known." Thus the absolute whole divides itself into 
 two parts, not separate and distinct halves of a total 
 sphere, but two aspects of the same totality ; on the one 
 side a system of things already formed, on the other a 
 universal life, a force formative and progressive accord- 
 ing to ideas. 
 With Ladd we have reached the climax of the later 
 
IDEALISM AND SCIENCE 277 
 
 idealism. Now, idealism has been called the most per- 
 sistent form of philosophizing in tlie course of American 
 thought. From Johnson and Edwards to Royce and 
 Ladd the current, whether above or below ground, has 
 had an unbroken flow. It had its sources in the Platon- 
 izing Puritans, gained impetus by the deistic evidences 
 of design, was swollen by the spring freshet of German 
 romanticism, and yet has ever been kept in bounds by 
 the " genteel tradition " of theism. But there are signs 
 that this stream is fatally diverging, if not drying up. 
 Other interests are becoming paramount. Pragmatism, 
 the new radical empiricism, abandons the absolute for 
 the relative, cares less for cosmic purpose than for in- 
 dividual achievement, and owes allegiance not so much 
 to the reign of law as to the reign of results. But be- 
 fore taking up with the paramount pragmatism let us 
 briefly consider certain reasons for its present vogue. 
 One cause lies in the contrast between the amateur and 
 the professional philosopher. The ordinary thinker is 1 
 content to study the three problems of man, nature, I 
 God, — as they run along side by side. The metaphysi- I 
 cian, on the other hand, is a monopolist who seeks to I 
 make a merger of the parallel lines. Like a railroad ( 
 magnate, to his mind all should be under a single man- \ 
 agement. But this merger may be held by many to be 1 
 logically illegal, a kind of conspiracy in restraint or 
 thought. Suppose the Absolute controls each and all, 
 where is there room for the liberty of the individual? 
 In this case, if liberty be granted, is it not specious, 
 because a mere manifestation of the divine activity? 
 Does not the same follow in respect to nature as the 
 present expositor of the divine mind? If nature be 
 granted an independent existence, is it not illusorj'. a 
 vain show, a phantasm of reality? Questions like these 
 
278 MODERN IDEALISM 
 
 are asked of the absolutist on the part of one who desires 
 independency. The monist is unable to substantiate an 
 Absolute, and the critic exclaims in desperation : Let us 
 leave good enough alone. Let us be pluralists, believers 
 in the existence of separate beings which follow their 
 own particular paths. Instead of an ordered universe 
 and an Absolute as " a seeing force which runs things," 
 let us have before us this rich medley of facts, this 
 world of buzzing confusion. Now, such a philosophy 
 of pluralism, at the present moment, seems the typical 
 American philosophy. The day of monopoly is passing. 
 In its stead we have the age of independence, individual- 
 ism, and competition, — the three marks of " trium- 
 phant " democracy. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 PRAGMATISM 
 
 1. PiLiGMATiSM : The Philosophy of Practic.vlitt 
 
 ** The Western Goth, so fiercely practical, so keen of 
 eye " has at last gotten himself a philosophy. It is 
 pragmatism, the philosophy of practicality, the gospel 
 of energ}', whose prime criterion is success. It has been 
 called a business philosophy which demands results; a 
 bread-and-butter view of life which aims at consequences. 
 
 I In short, pragmatism furnislies a sort of speculative . 
 
 l^ clearing-house which says that a philosophic theory must 
 Jiave cash value and be true if it works, and false if 
 it fails. Pragmatism is not a metaphysical system, but 
 a method of testing systems. Each one applies the test p 
 for himself and chooses that which best suits his own -J 
 particular case. 
 
 At the first glance and from a superficial view prag- j 
 matism seems a philosophy typical of the land of the/ 
 dollar. But it is more than that. Besides the materialj 
 factor it brings in the personal. As a doctrine of per- j 
 sonalism it is aggressive; it emphasizes self-sufficingness 
 as against self-surrender; pragmatists arc literally poets, 
 makers, they contribute to truth, enlarge metaphysi- 
 cal ^ealitJ^ This is the doctrine of dynamism which 
 lies at the bottom of the movement and explains the oon- 
 stanfrecurrence to the temperamental test, tlie formula 
 of feeling. Pragmatic truth is tnith with a thrill to it; 
 if we can fed that our theories work, we can have the 
 
 279 
 
280 PRAGMATISM 
 
 most intense of satisfactions, — that of personal asser- 
 tion. 
 / Personalism plus dynamism is the formula of ag- 
 y gressive pragmatism. As such it can almost be called 
 vAmericanism. It expresses the national worship of the 
 practical inventor, the pushing man of affairs. But here 
 the doctrine broadens into wider aspects. Besides the 
 confidence in the application of science to the conquering 
 of nature, the winning of the West by Yankee inventions, 
 there is the ideal of democracy as a reenforcing factor. 
 As we have a share in the making of our government, so 
 we have a share in the making of truth, and, provided 
 the principle of representation be given proper scope, 
 there arises the irresistible might of united personalities, 
 all having their say. And besides this sublimated nation- 
 / alism there is a still wider horizon. Pragmatism becomes 
 \ humanism. In his collective capacity man now finds 
 that his" fate is not wholly made for him either by 
 mechanical forces or by supreme powers. In the high 
 confidence that the strong will win, that nothing is 
 -impossible to the powerful, he comes to the conclusion 
 f not that he must adapt himself to environment, but that 
 \ environment must adapt itself to him. In a word, find- 
 V ing the world so plastic, he comes to believe himself no 
 ^longer man, but super-man. 
 
 As personal, dynamic, human and superhuman, prag- 
 matism has well-nigh broken bounds. Let us, therefore, 
 turn back and trace its rise in the land of its birth. 
 Hailed as a typical American philosophy, pragmatism 
 has had three phases in its native growth, — the primitive 
 of Charles Peirce, the developed of John Dewey, and 
 ' — 7 -the radical of William James. In this t riumvira te of 
 \ / pragmat ism Peirce tau ght that it was logical, — a method 
 A. to make our ideas clear; Dewey taught that it was^ 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICALITY 281 
 
 instrumental, — a useful tool for action; James taught \ 
 that it was temperamental, — a way to reach personal \ 
 satisfaction. Finally, these three varieties of prag-- 
 matism had different applications. The first tended 
 be solipsistic, to confine itself to the individual and his 
 dou"ljts7~the second to be_social^to pass over the bar- 
 riers of self; thg_third_ lo_be transc endenta l, to lea_B. 
 beyond human barriersj^ to reach^a pluralistic universe 
 of higher powers, earth-angels, world-souls, with which 
 man may have intercourse._ In order of time pragmatism 
 iFlprimitive, or developed, or radical. In its point of 
 view it is logical, or instrumental, or temperamental. 
 In its application it is solipsistic, or social, or tran- 
 scendental. Of these three varieties let us now take up 
 the fii*st. 
 
 Primitive pragmatism was started in 1878 by Charles 
 Peirce as a logical method teaching us how to make 
 our ideas clear. Taking, for example, the rival theories 
 of fatalism and free-will, he gave this as a maxim to 
 clear up metaphysics: " Consider what effects, that 
 might eon eeivably have practical bearings, we conceive 
 the object of our conceptions to have. Then, our con- 
 ception of these effects is the whole of the conception oi- 
 the object." Such is the mild doctrine which souglit 
 to induce reasonableness, as shown in becoming governed 
 by laws, becoming instinct with general ideas. This 
 doctrine lay neglected for twenty years, when it was 
 revived by William James in his notable California Ad- 
 dress of 1898. In this James added a personal note in 
 remarking: " I should prefer to express Peirce 's pri 
 ciple by saying that the effective meaning of any philo- 
 sophic proposition can always bo brought down to some 
 particular consequence in our future practical experi-_^, 
 ence." 
 
 (5^: 
 
282 PRAGMATISM 
 
 The pragmatic seed planted by Peirce and watered by 
 James grew rapidly in a congenial soil. The result was 
 the Chicago school, whereby Dewey and his followers 
 carried the doctrine into the wide fields of biological and 
 ^ocial adaptation. The primitive formula was discovered 
 [^ to be a fundamental law of growth, the vital principle 
 of evolution itself. The rule of logical method, inter- 
 preted as having practical bearings, was now enlarged 
 into a law of social success. The principle of Peirce in 
 the thirty years of its growth had gotten out of hand. 
 Such growth was not without reason. Transplanted 
 from the East, the principle flourished because of a 
 new atmosphere, the adventurous atmosphere of the 
 West. The seed and the soil were in perfect accord. The 
 new principle, interpreted as present and practical, ap- 
 pealed to the pioneer who sought instant success. Here 
 is a maxim which is made to mean simply that reason- 
 ableness or truth is due to practical adjustment, to the 
 choice of relations which work. 
 
 Besides practicality and workability a new quality is 
 to be added. It is that of risk. For the sake of suc- 
 TTess one is willing to take chances, provided he is left to 
 his own free choice. The old way was that of tradition. 
 The new is that of adventure. No dogma is accepted, 
 no teaching received at second hand. We must find out 
 the truth for ourselves. What will work for me, here 
 and now? — that is the question for me to decide. This 
 is the spirit of the pioneer who has the excitement of 
 exploring a land as yet uncharted, and it is this spirit 
 which brings out the difference between the old and 
 new philosophies. To the absolutist the world is like 
 a well-planned city, bound to develop according to 
 preconceived ideas. To the pragmatist the world.isja^ 
 world in the making; it is not the city of Washington, 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICALITY 283 
 
 but the wilderness itself. So the praginatist leaves the 
 (lull task of going over ground mapped out by another, 
 and seeks the pleasures of the unexplored. His is the 
 thrill of discovery. When he turns his canoe into the 
 unknown lake, will he find his way out by a cataract or 
 a carry? He does not want to know beforehand. He 
 prefers to test his skill and his strength as occasion may 
 arise. Hjsjth is spirit of t hejinexpectcd that gives point 
 to the pragmatic formula. An idea, a thing may~br may 
 not sueceednrnraynSe true, or it may be false. I may 
 be able to carry my canoe to the next water, or the XkIU \ 
 
 cataract may upset me. My plan of going out this way — J) / / 
 
 n 
 
 (' 
 
 may work, or it may not. However, I am paddling my / (^L^ 
 own canoe ; I am not being guided by another. No all- ' 
 knower is leading me by the blazed trail of preestaU- ' 
 lished harmony. 
 
 Such a defense is all very well, replies the anti- 
 pragmatic critic, but is the novice apt to succeed? Is 
 there not woodcraft and forest lore to be learned from 
 the guides? Can the pragmatist be a solipsist, a lone 
 traveler in the wilderness? Does he not need the knowl- 
 edge of others? . , . Questions like these led from primi- 
 tive to developed pragmatism, from the solipsistic to the t 
 social stage. Peirce talked like a pioneer, some Daniel f'^'^Iuu^ 
 Boone of metaphysics. But Dewey, and James after him, ^ ^f 
 acknowledged that the successful thinker cannot exist i' • 
 alone and unaided in his speculations. There is a treas- i yi/»^ • 
 ure of past experience, — the accumulated wisdom of his-* /y^^ 
 ancestors. Su£h_are the axioms which are accepted as 
 true because they have been ever found to work. Our 
 primitive predecessors did the first exploring in the un- 
 mapped maze of knowledge; they found that certain 
 human ways of thinking succeeded, and nature, prt-serva- 
 tive of all successful achievements, handed these down as 
 
284 PRAGMATISM 
 
 habits of action. These are not dogmatic first prin- 
 ciples, clear-cut innate ideas, but general tendencies, 
 natural promptings, instinctive leadings. Here the 
 hereditary transmissive factor of human knowledge ap- 
 pears. The solipsistic empiricist has developed into the 
 social inheritor of funded knowledge. 
 
 It is because of this sinking fund of the past that 
 Dewey, the evolutionist, gives a real cash value to in- 
 strumental truths. They pass current, not merely be- 
 cause of their face value, but because of their intrinsic 
 worth. The primitive pragmatist, like the early pioneer, 
 issued wild-cat currency; but with the developed prag- 
 matist a mere personal promissory note was not enough. 
 The collateral of continuity was demanded and this was 
 supplied by the evolutionist with his doctrine of inherited 
 tendencies. In a word the Bank of Truth was founded 
 long ago. 
 
 2. Primitive Pragmatism: Charles Peirce 
 
 In the very first of his essays called " Illustrations of 
 the Logic of Science," Peirce makes a statement which 
 contains implicitly the three phases in the history of prag- 
 matism, — the logical, the instrumental, the temperamen- 
 tal. Discussing the logic of science he says: Logicality 
 in regard to practical matters is the most useful quality 
 an animal can possess. ... It is certainly best for us 
 that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our 
 actions so as to satisfy our desires. 
 
 While this statement might have a threefold meaning, 
 might furnish grounds for all the later developments 
 of the movement, such is not its intent. The method of 
 science, continues Peirce, should be strictly logical, other- 
 wise we run off into false methods. The first of these 
 
PRIMITIVE PRAGMATISM: CHARLES PEIRCE 285 
 
 is the a priori method, to think as one is inclined to 
 think. The second is the method of tenacity where, as 
 soon as a firm belief is reached, we are entirely satisfied, 
 whether the belief be true or false. The third is the 
 method of authority where one does not think as one 
 is inclined, but because the state or some institution so 
 Avills. 
 
 But there is a method above all these, — it is that of 
 science. It is not the method of the individual for the 
 sake of comfortable conclusions. It is not the method 
 of tenacity held to by society. It is not the method of 
 authority, governing the mass of mankind and leading 
 to the path of peace. No, there is a method above all 
 these — above the individual, or society, or mankind it- 
 self. It is the method of science and its aim is the 
 growth of reasonableness, shown in becoming governed 
 by laws, becoming instinct with general ideas. . . . The 
 test of whether I am truly following the method is not 
 an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, 
 on the contrary, itself involves the application of 
 that method, which is to have a clear logical con- 
 science. 
 
 How is the latter obtained? The answer is given in 
 the second and best known of Peirce's papers, entitled 
 " How to Make our Ideas Clear." Before we attain to 
 the cardinal pragmatic principle, already quoted, there 
 are certain preliminary steps. The first of these is to 
 emerge from conceptions that are obscure to those that , 
 are clear, by means of belief. And what, then, is belief t ' 
 jtis _something that appeas£ S-Lh c irritation of (loui)t and 
 involves the estab l i shment in our nature o f th e rule of 
 a ction, o r habit. Now, since the essence of a belief is 
 the establishment of a habit, different beliefs are dis- 
 tinguished by the different modes of action to which they 
 
286 PRAGMATISM 
 
 give rise. For example, the question of free-will and 
 fate in its simplest form is this: I have done something 
 of which I am ashamed; could I, by an effort of the 
 will, have resisted the temptation and done otherwise? 
 The answer is that, if I had willed to do otherwise than 
 I did, I should have done otherwise, and that contradic- 
 tory results would follow from a contrary hypothesis. 
 Thus we come to the clearing up of our ideas by saying 
 that our > idea of anything is our idea ^ of its sen sible 
 effect, and thus, finally, we reach the rule for attaining 
 the final grade of clearness and apprehension, namely, 
 *' Consider what effects, that might conceivably have 
 //practical bearing, we conceive the object of our con- 
 \ ception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is 
 the whole of our conception of the object." 
 
 Again we have the famous principle of Peirce around 
 which so much controversy has raged. It^ is rightly in^ 
 terpreted to m ean a maxim for clearing up metaph ysic s. 
 It is wrongly interpreted to mean a mere rule of action. 
 Against this misinterpretation of the principle its origi^ 
 nator protested. He held that the principle had been 
 carried too far when it was changed from one of 
 methodology to one of practicality. In criticism of 
 James, who asserted that beliefs are nothing but rules 
 of action, Peirce contended that such doctrine assumes 
 that the end of man is action. -He added that this stoical 
 axiom did not recommend itself so forcibly to him at 
 the age of sixty as it did at thirty. If it be admitted, 
 on the contrary, that action wants an end, and that that 
 end must be something of a general description, then 
 the spirit of the maxim itself, which is that we must look 
 to the upshot of our concept in order rightly to appre- 
 hend them, would direct us towards something different 
 from practical facts, namely, to general ideas, as the 
 
PRIMITIVE PRAGMATISM: CIIAKLKS I'KIKCK 2S7 
 
 true interprctoi-s of our thought. . . . This niaxiiu Kiuls 
 to clearness of thought, furtlicrs the dcvclopmeut of cou- 
 erete reasonableness so that the meaning of a concept 
 does not lie in any individual reactions at all, but in the 
 manner in which those reactions contribute to that de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Few interpreters of primitive pragmatism have gone 
 back to these sources and shown the real doctrine of 
 Peirce. It was more general than is ordinarily thought, 
 and also far less selfish. The doctrine is one called by 
 its author pragmaticism. It is more than immediate 
 empiricism ; it is a game of consequences and those con- 
 sequences the most remote. In a word, the pragmatist is 
 willing to take risks in order to attain truth. All this 
 is brought out in the third of Peirce 's essays, " The 
 Doctrine of Chances." In this it is held that a man con- 
 not be logical so long as he is concerned (inly with his 
 own fate, for the chances are against him in a .short 
 series of probabilities. Therefore, only that man wlio 
 should care equally for what was to happen in all pos- 
 sible cases could act logically, — sure succcess comes only 
 in the long run. It may seem strange, concludes Peirce, 
 that I should put forward three sentiments, namely, 
 interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the 
 possibility of this interest being madt^ supreme, and 
 hope in the unlimited continuance of intellectual activity, 
 as indispensable requirements jof logic. Yet, when we | hy-^ 
 consider thaUogic d£penclsjin_a_-Diere .struggle taescape / ^u- 
 
 .J 
 
 dojubtj whieh_ gs it. terminates in action. mustj )egin 
 i n emotion, and that, furt hermore , the gnjy_cause 7>T 
 our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods 
 of escaping (foubF fail on^cj^iiunt of tlie social impulse. . 
 why should vvi" wonder to find social sentiment presup-^ 
 posed in reasoning? 
 
 
288 PRAGMATISM 
 
 Such is primitive pragmatism, quite different from 
 what has been generally thought. Its aim is less selfish 
 than social, its spirit less practical than general. For 
 this interpretation we have the word of Peirce when he 
 further insists that his maxim is a clarifying maxim; 
 and that even reasonableness is not a good in itself but 
 only an aid in the evolutionary process. But the primi- 
 tive principle, as the author complains, has become 
 " transmogrified," (Reality, according to present prag- 
 jnatism, is to be tested by immediacy ; truth to be found 
 
 ^ in the exigencies of practical life. The search, then, is 
 
 I for what is needed and useful. In a word the test of 
 
 \ truth is success. 
 
 \ For this interpretation James and Dewey are jointly 
 \ responsible. The former enlarges his modification of 
 reirce's principle when he says: ^n methodology it is 
 certain that to trace and compare their respective con- 
 sequences is an admirable way of establishing the differ- 
 ing meanings of different conceptions. . , . The mean- 
 ing of a conception expresses itself in practical con- 
 sequences, either in the shape of conduct to be 
 recommended, or in that of experience to be expected^ 
 In like manner Dewey enlarges the primitive principle. 
 At first his problem is how to make our ideas clear to 
 ourselves and how to get out of them their cash value; 
 at the last he socializes the problem and turns from 
 commercialism to humanism. So we have next to show 
 how this broadening of the initial principle was left to 
 the Chicago school, and how that fine air of adventure 
 was applied to social ethics, — to the search for practical 
 principles destined to bring the greatest good to the 
 greatest number. 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 289 
 3. The Chicago School: John Dewey 
 
 In the beginning of his first essay on " Thought and its 
 Subject-Matter" Dewey follows in the footsteps of 
 Peirce. The latter had advocated that sort of logic 
 which would appease the irritation of doubt and clear 
 up our ideas. So Dewey holds that reflective thought 
 has as the measure of its success the degree in which 
 the thinking disposes of the difficulty. This is applied 
 logic. Against it the advocates of pure logic bring the ) 
 charge that it cleals merely with hindcaB<ieSi.and with^ 
 the devices for overcoming them. Now, the absolutists 
 disparage such considerations of utility, because they 
 prefer " universal forms and principles of thought which 
 hold good everywhere irrespective of any difference 
 in the objects." By such disparagement the reader will 
 readily see the absolutists cut out the entire procedure 
 of practical deliberation and of concrete scientific re- 
 search. And in their preference for abstractions, with- 
 out possible reference or bearing, they expose the weak- 
 ness of mere metaphysics in the sense of a metaphysics 
 which makes a gulf between itself and science. The 
 pragmatic method is different. "What we have to reckon 
 with is not the problem of, How can I think at large ?\ 
 but, How shall I think right here and now ? The various 
 modes of conceding, judging, and inferring arc to be , 
 treated, not as qualifications of thought at large, but of/ 
 thought engaged in its specific, most economic, effective' 
 response to its own particular occasion. 
 
 We have here reached the instrumental type of think- 
 ing. It has two advantages. Negatively, it wipes out 
 the distinction between thought and fact, the bypothet- 
 ical chasm between pure and applied logic which a false 
 metaphysics created. Positively, it falls in line with the 
 
290 PRAGMATISM 
 
 evolutionary process, wherein biology and social history 
 disclose the fact that every distinct organ, structure, or 
 formation, every grouping of cells or elements, has to be 
 treated as an instrument of adaptation to a particular 
 environing situation. 
 
 Dewey thus boldly lays down the platform of instru- 
 mentalism. In pointing out its negative and positive 
 sides we may suggest that it is finalh^ to be judged by 
 the rule of Leibniz, that philosophers are not so much 
 true in what they deny, as in what they affirm. This 
 explains why the absolutists have been up in arms 
 against Dewey's denials. They do not relish his bald 
 dilemma, namely, that we have no choice, save either 
 to conceive of thinking as a response to a specific 
 stimulus, or else to regard it as something " in it- 
 self." But are we left to this bare dilemma be- 
 tween Ci^sar or nobody? When Dewey protests 
 against the diremption between thought and things, he 
 is protesting against a false transcendentalism which 
 would put a line of cleavage between the world of fancy 
 and the world of fact. His own solution actually ap- 
 proaches a true transcendentalism, being a species of 
 immanence, a marrying of thought to things. Thus he 
 explains: As we submit each characteristic situation of 
 experience to our gaze we find it has a dual aspect. In 
 the course of changing experience we keep our balance, 
 because, wherever there is thinking, there is material in 
 question. Now the old-style logician sets the agent over 
 against the externality of the fact, but the new does not 
 keep " thought in itself " apart from the limits of the 
 special work it has to do. This leads to the value of 
 the logic of experience. Philosophy, defined as such a 
 logic, makes no pretense to be an account of a closed and 
 finished universe; its business is not to secure or guar- 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 291 
 
 antee any particular reality or value. Ou the contrary, 
 it gets the significance of a method. The right relation- 
 ship, the adjustment of the various typical phases of 
 experience to one another, is a problem felt in every de- 
 partment of life. Intellectual control of these adjust- 
 ments cannot fail to reflect itself in an added clearness 
 and security on the practical side. . . . The value of 
 research for social progress; the bearing of psychology 
 upon educational procedure; the mutual relations of 
 fine and industrial art; the question of the extent and 
 nature of specialization in science in comparison with 
 the claims of applied science; the adjustment of religious 
 aspirations to scientific statements — such are a few of 
 the many social questions jwhose„^jaZ_ans>ver ^depends 
 upon the possession and_use of a general logic of experi- 
 ence as a method of inquiiy and of interpretation. 
 
 Of all~these^suggested reforms Dewey has earrieil out 
 most successfully a combination of the first two, namely, 
 social progress and educational procedure. Through his 
 work in connection with the Laboratory School, exist- 
 ing in Chicago between 1896 and 1003. his ideas attained 
 such concreteness as comes from embodiment and testing 
 in practice. The problem is considered to be one of 
 instrumental logic, the application of thought to things. 
 The usual school has been so set apart, he explains, so 
 isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of 
 life, that the place where children are sent for discipline 
 is the one place in the world where it is most difficult 
 to get such experience. Contrast with this the old days 
 when the household was practically the center in which 
 were carried on all the typical forms of industrial occu- 
 pation. The clothing worn was not only n>ade in the 
 house, but the members of the household were generally 
 familiar with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and 
 
292 PRAGMATISM 
 
 spinning of the wool, and the plying of the loom. In 
 short, the entire industrial process stood revealed, from 
 the production on the farm of the raw materials, till 
 the finished article was actually put into use. Not only 
 this, but practically every member of the household had 
 his o\Mi share in the work. The children, as they gained 
 in strength and capacity, were gradually initiated into 
 the mysteries of the several processes. It was a matter 
 of immediate and personal concern even to the point 
 of actual participation. Such was the old household 
 sj^stem which furnished an intimate acquaintance with 
 nature at first hand, with real things and materials, with 
 the actual processes of their manipulation, and the 
 knowledge of their social necessities and uses. 
 
 In contrast j with this, consider the school of the pre s- 
 ent d ayywhich appeals,fmLlh£jti^^ simply to the 
 intellectual aspect of our natures, ^our desire to learn, to 
 a ccumu late information , and to get control^f the syin- 
 bols of learning j^o^jo^urj mpulses and t£nde ncies to 
 make, to do, to create, to produce, jyhether in tjie_fgrm 
 of utility or of art. Against this conventional mod- 
 ern conception,^ which is merely a survival of a false 
 medievalism, the age revolts. One of the most striking 
 tendencies at present is toward the introduction of so- 
 called manual " training," shop-work, and the house- 
 hold arts — sewing and cooking. This has not been doiie 
 ' ' on purpose, ' ' with a full consciousness that the school 
 must now supply that factor of training formerly taken 
 care of in the home, but rather by instinct, by experi- 
 menting and finding that such work takes a vital hold 
 of pupils and gives them something which was not to 
 be got in any other way. Consciousness of its real im- 
 port is still so weak that the w^ork is often done in a 
 half-hearted, confused, and unrelated way. The rea- 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 293 
 
 sons assigned to justify it are painfully inadequate or 
 sometimes even positively wrong. 
 
 Can we give actual reasons for what rouj^'hly may 
 be termed the " new " education? It is useless to be- 
 moan the departure of the good old days of children's 
 modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience, if we expect 
 merely by bemoaning and by exhortation To bring them 
 back. It is radical conditions which have changed, and 
 only an equally radical change in education suffices. In 
 the centurj' of changes between the household and 
 factory systems one can hardly believe there has been a 
 revolution in all history so rapid, so extensive, so com- 
 plete. Through it the face of the earth is making over, 
 even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are 
 wiped out and moved about, as if they were indeed only 
 lines on a paper map; population is hurriedly gathered 
 into cities from the ends of the earth; habits of living 
 are altered with startling abruptness and thoroughness ; 
 the search for the truths of nature is infinit»'ly stimu- 
 lated and facilitated and their application to life made 
 not only practicable, but commercially necessarj'. 
 
 Such conditions, continues Dewey, mean much to the 
 city-bred child of to-day. For example, the now geog- 
 raphy is not merely the study of metes and bounds, 
 but the earth as the great field, the great mine, the great 
 source of the energies of heat, light, and electricity ; the 
 great scene of ocean, stream, mountain, and plain, of 
 which all our agricultural and mining and lumbering, 
 all our manufacturing and distributing agencies, too, 
 are but the partial elements and factors. So. too, the new 
 manual training is not merely utilitarian like sewing on 
 buttons or making patches. Looked at from the proper 
 genetic point of view, we find that this work gives the 
 point of departure from whi<-h tln' ehild can begin to 
 
294 PRAGMATISM 
 
 follow the progress of mankind in history, getting an 
 insight also into the materials he is using and the 
 mechanical principles involved. In connection with 
 these occupations, the historic development of man is 
 recapitulated. For example, the children are first given 
 the raw material — the flax, the cotton plant, the wool 
 as it comes from the back of the sheep. . . . Then a 
 study is made of these materials from the standpoint 
 of their adaptation to the uses to which they may be 
 put. For instance, a comparison of the cotton fiber 
 with wool fiber is made. I did not know until the chil- 
 dren told me, that the reason for the late development 
 of the cotton industry as compared with the woolen is, 
 that the cotton fiber is so very difficult to free by hand 
 from the seeds. The children in one group worked thirty 
 minutes freeing cotton fibers from the boll and the seeds 
 and succeeded in getting out less than one ounce. They 
 could easily believe that one person could only gin one 
 pound a day by hand, and could understand why their 
 ancestors wore woolen instead of cotton clothing. . . . 
 They then followed the processes necessary' for working 
 the fibers up into cloth. They re-invented the first frame 
 for carding the wool — a couple of boards with sharp 
 pins in them for scratching it out. They redevised the 
 simplest process for spinning the wool — a pierced stone 
 or some other weight through which the wool is passed, 
 and which as it is twirled draws out the fiber, next the 
 top, which was spun on the floor, while the children 
 kept the wool in their hands until it was gradually dra^vn 
 out and wound upon it. Then the children are intro- 
 duced to the invention next in historic order, working 
 it out experimentally, thus seeing its necessity, and 
 tracing its effects, not only upon that particular indus- 
 try, but upon modes of social life — in this way passing 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 295 
 
 in review the entire process up to the present complete 
 loom, and all that goes with the application of science in 
 the use of our present available powers. I need not 
 speak of the science involved in this — the study of the 
 fibers, of geographical features, the conditions under 
 which raw materials are grown, the great centers of 
 manufacture and distribution, the physics involved in 
 the machinery of production; nor, again, of the his- 
 torical side — the influence which these inventions have 
 had upon humanity. . . . Now, what is true of this one 
 instance of fibers used in fabrics, is true in its measure 
 of every material used in every occupation, and of the 
 processes employed. The occupation supplies the child 
 with a genuine motive; it gives him experience at first 
 hand ; it brings him into contact with realities. It does 
 all this, but in addition it is liberalized throughout by 
 translation into its historic values and scientific equiva- 
 lences. It ceases with the growth of the child's mind 
 in power and knowledge to be a pleasant occupation 
 merely, and becomes more and more a medium, an in- 
 strument, an organ — and is thereby transformed. 
 
 From the accomplishments of Dewey's Laboratory' 
 School we may deduce the platform of the Chicago 
 grotrp. 'XrEe a literal platform it may be looked at 
 from four sides. First, it is genetic: it does not recog- 
 nize " an object of thought in itself," but only a scries 
 of values, which vary with the varj'ing functions to 
 which they belong. Next, it is instrumental : it looks 
 upon the notion of thought as an immanent tool, as a 
 scaffolding which is an integral part to the very opera- 
 tion of building. Again, it is .social: it seeks for a 
 clear and comprehensive consensus of public conviction, 
 and a consequent concentrated and economical direction 
 of effort. Finally, it is empirical: there is no pure 
 
296 PRAGMATISM 
 
 thought as such, nothing real which is not a direct matter 
 of experience. 
 
 Let us see what these four points are worth. As usual 
 the positive are strongest. First, as genetic, pragmatism 
 allies itself with evolutionism and has behind it all the 
 force of that movement; its cardinal doctrine is adapta- 
 tion to environment, for knowing is a function in the 
 process of adjustment. Next, as instrumental, it allies 
 itself with the new methods of science, it adapts tool 
 to material, reconstructs conflicting experiences. The 
 thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimulated and 
 checked in every stage of his procedure by the particular 
 situation which confronts him ; materials, price of labor, 
 credit at the bank — all are varying factors demanding 
 constant readjustment. This instrumental adaptability 
 seems the stronger of the positive points. As scientific 
 it passes over from the pure to the applied, by showing 
 the relation of the two. As James interprets it : .In 
 ins trum ent alism a ^Jact an.d -a. theory have not different^ 
 natures, as is usually supposed^the-OJie, Jbeing objective,. 
 ■ ^ the other subjective ; they are both made of the same 
 /^v. material, ex£erience-material_^amely, and their differ- 
 ence ^relates to their way of functioning solelyx i-t-is 
 "fact" when it functions steadily; it is *' theory!' 
 when we hesitatj., 
 
 Again, as social, pragmatism allies itself with the 
 broader movement known as humanism: The individual 
 and immediate are marks of ordinary human endeavor; 
 whereas the general and remote are marks of abstract 
 speculators dwelling apart from the mass of mankind. 
 . . . These statements are rather vague and indefijiite ; 
 so is the social programme of the pragmatist. Indeed 
 Dewey has overloaded his platform and has practically 
 carried out only the first of his proposals, — the appliea- 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEl '^ 
 
 tion of genetic psychology to odiieational pn 
 But if this side of the phitform remains unfinis 
 last does not. As immediately empirical, praj 
 puts a strong barrier against absolutism. Uptjn t„ir, 
 barrier Dewey has lavished his greatest labor: Prag- 
 matism, empiricism, humanism, functionalism, call it 
 what you will, needs no unknowable, no ab.solute, behind 
 it or around the finite world ; no absolute, cither, in the 
 sense of anything eternally constant, for no term is 
 static, but cverj'thing in process and change. In like 
 spirit Dewey has carried out the controversy in his more 
 recent essays. The reason, he explains, that pragmatism 
 has no use for a perfect, absolute, complete, finished 
 thought is that the facts of life arc crude, raw, unor- / 
 ganized, brute. / 
 
 We take this to be the crux of the matter. Truth does 
 not consist in conformity or correspondence with an 
 externally f ixed archetype or model, but is in process of 
 formationUke all other things. In a worTT " Truth ^^ 
 is not somet h ing in the heavens, apart from man , mys- ^ 
 te rious and i ncomprehensibl e save to the inspired ; 
 
 but _ rather a n empirical reality give n to ever^'^ ma p. 
 Such, at least, seems to be the import of the cryptic 
 saying, " Anything, everything, are what they arc ex- 
 perienced as." This is the postulate of mere empiricism 
 as expanded in the first of the essays after the Chicago 
 studies. The empiricist, continues the author, when he 
 talks of experience does not mean .some grandiose, re- 
 mote affair that is cast like a net around a succession of, 
 fleeting experiences; he doca. jiot .mean an indefinite, 
 total, comprehensive .cxpe-ri^aw whi(»h-9omehow engir- 
 dle^an endless flux; he means that thingf: are what they 
 are experienced to be, and that every experience is some 
 thing. . . . From this postulate of empiricism, as a 
 
 ,'\<\X( 
 
 
 c\^ 
 
298 PRAGMATISM 
 
 general concept, nothing can be deduced, not a single 
 philosophic proposition. But the real significance of 
 the principle is that of a method of philosophical an- 
 alysis — a method identical in kind (but differing in 
 problem and hence in operation) with that of the scien- 
 p'tists. If you wish to find out what subjective, objective, 
 \ physical, mental, cosmic, psychic — any philosophic term, 
 in short — means, go to experience and see what the thing 
 vt_4s experienced as. Such a method is not spectacular; 
 it permits of no offhand demonstrations of God, free- 
 dom, immortality, nor of the exclusive reality of mat- 
 ter, or ideas, or consciousness. But it supplies a way 
 I of telling what all these terms mean. It may seem in- 
 fSignlBcant, or chillingly disappointing, but only to one 
 i who will not try it. ' Philosophic concepts have outlived 
 A I their usefulness considered as stimulants to emotion, or 
 \p^ I as a species of sanctions ; and a larger, more fruitful, and 
 \ more valuable career awaits them considered as specific- 
 \ally experienced meanings. 
 
 We notice at this juncture how Dewey has outdone 
 '•^^ Peirce; how the principle of cool reasonableness has 
 
 developed into the cultivation of cold reason. //But in 
 adding that all existence is direct and vital, we may 
 ask if the author has not carried the matter to extremes. 
 ^ j^v /Phil osophic principles, especi ally the great triad of God, 
 ''\^ J freedom, and immortalit y, are wont to be .expM£rienced as 
 : emotional and thus we" find them interpreted by William 
 James.;/ It is the mystic strain in the temperamental 
 pragmatist of Cambridge that makes him follow the old 
 saying that the heart has reasons that the reason knows 
 ^not of. It_ would be a more generous view of life to 
 utilize the sanctions ^'sentiment. But for such sanc- 
 tions the Chicago pragmatist has little use. He is an 
 iconoclast of beliefs that transcend his method. The 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHX DEWF.Y 299 
 
 contrast is clear. James is the proiiioti r of tlio will to^ 
 believe, Dewey of the reason to believe. He holds that 
 knowledge as science is the outcome of systematically 
 directed inquiry, not submissive aoceptanee of " reality " 
 as ready-made, fixed, and of finished form. 
 
 This was the position taken in 1905 when the war was 
 carried into the enemy's countrj'. In Emerson Hall it- 
 self, in the very building dedicated to the chief of our 
 absolutists, Dewey, as President of the American Philo- 
 sophical Association, delivered his Cambridge address 
 on " Beliefs and Existences." In general tiie address 
 w^as an attack on conventionalism, and an assertion of 
 personalism. There was about it a Western air of inde- 
 pendence and the whole w^is bathed in the atraosplu'rc 
 of the adventurous. The modern age, it explained, is 
 marked by a refusal to be satisfied with the postpone- 
 ment of the exercise and function of reason to another 
 and supernatural sphere, and by a resolve to practice 
 itself upon its present object, nature, with all its joys. 
 Instead of taking an oath of allegiance to Reality, ob- 
 jective, universal, complete, it prefers home rule, the 
 gallantry of adventure, the genuineness of the incom- 
 plete. Instead of the prevalent academic philosophy of 
 passionless imperturbability, absolute detachment, it 
 prefers need, uncertainty, choice, novelty, strife. Now 
 beliefs are personal affairs and personal alfairs are ad- 
 ventures ; for the world has meaning as somebody 's. some- 
 body 's at a juncture taken for better or worse, and you 
 shall not have completed your metaphysics till yoii have 
 told whose world is meant and how and what for— in 
 what bias and to what effect. 
 
 It is strange how this call to independency, this chal- 
 lenge to originality resembles the first address of Emer- 
 son, in this very spot, a generation before. " Why 
 
 
300 PRAGMATISM 
 
 should not we also enjoy an original relation to the 
 universe? " asks the transcendentalist. " Why should 
 not we have a philosophy of insight and not of tradition ? 
 Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past 
 when nature's floods of life stream around and through 
 us? " Here is one of those curious points of resem- 
 blance at the beginnings of important movements of 
 thought. Emerson was addressing the younger genera- 
 tion, protesting against the dominance of the dogmatic 
 realism of the Scotch school with its short cut of common 
 fv $ sense. And so, in turn, the pragmatist protests against 
 
 f Kv tJie continuance of that ancient tradition which lasted on 
 
 y&iii' 
 
 
 • V D^ the Greek influence upon our local architecture. 
 
 jM!^ *^ Thus is the classic spirit again met with the romantic, 
 
 ^^jiiM ' the conventions and unities with unconventional 
 
 pluralism; universals, axioms, and a priori truths 
 
 i. with the trials and errors of struggling human 
 
 beings. 
 
 While the old conflict is repeated, the effective forces 
 are new. Modern biology, psychology, and the social 
 sciences, continues Dewey, proffer an imposing body of 
 concrete facts that point to the interpretation of knowl- 
 edge as a human and practical outgrowth of personal 
 belief. The testimony of biology is that the organic 
 instrument of the whole intellectual life, the sense or- 
 gans and brain and their connections, have been de- 
 veloped on a definitely practical basis and for practical 
 aims, for the purpose of such control over conditions 
 as will sustain and vary the meanings of life. The testi- 
 mony of psychology is that sensation and perception, 
 have a motor, not a static meaning. The testimony of 
 the historic sciences is that knowledge as a system of 
 information and instruction is a cooperative social 
 achievement, and that logical thinking is a reweaving 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DKWKV 'Ml 
 
 tlirougli individual activity t)t' the social lahric at such 
 points as are indicated by prevailing need and aims. 
 
 In this, his Presidential Address, Dewey gives us the 
 clearest statement of his creed; at the same time he 
 leaves us with an unanswered problem which James 
 previously designated as the gap in the Chicago system. 
 There is no cosmolog5^ Granted that logical thinking 
 is a reweaviug through individual activity of the social 
 fabric, can the same be said of the cosmic fabric? In 
 social advancement, such as the making of a state con- 
 stitution or the improving of a city, we may acknowledge 
 that the web is woven as we go. But does this hold good 
 of the ampler life, especially of that shining appari- 
 tion we call nature? If thought, as Dewey elsewhere 
 says, is a reorganizing power because it is a vital func- 
 tion, — of what, we ma}^ ask, is it a function? "We may 
 dismiss the account of the static absolutist that there ii> 
 some eternal pattern after which the daily pattern is 
 woven. But does this mean that the only process is one 
 of a stitch at a time, and that the resulting fabric has 
 often to be unraveled because faulty and imperfoct? 
 At times the pragmatist seems content with such a nar- 
 row empiricism. He appeals to " plain, ordinary, ever}'- 
 day empirical reflections, operating as centers of inquiry, 
 of suggestion, of experimentation." At otlier times he 
 seems inclined towards the wider sweep of rationalism; 
 not the wholly at large view of the absolutist, but " regu- 
 lation " in an " auspicious " direction, tested ideas 
 which perform a " recurrent " function. These admi.s- 
 sions appear to furnish what James calls the real safe- 
 guard against the caprice of statement and indetermina- 
 tion of belief, that " grain " in things against which we 
 cannot practically go. It is doubtful if Dewey acknowl- 
 edges this grain, for in a further essay on " Experience 
 
302 PRAGMATISM 
 
 and Objective Idealism " he distinctly favors subjective 
 experience. Of human arrangements and institutional- 
 izations he claims that their value is experimental, not 
 fixedly ontological; law and order are good things, but 
 not when they become rigidity and create mechanical 
 uniformity or routine. 
 
 In these passages there is raised the old controversy be- 
 tween the doctrines of being and becoming, of fate and 
 free-will, of fixity and chance. The controversy is diffi- 
 cult, yet in its discussion it is clear that there are two 
 positions which Dewey does not take. He is opposed to 
 the Humean skepticism which regards experience as a 
 chance association, by merely psychic connections, of in- 
 dividualistic states of consciousness. He is also opposed 
 to that objective idealism which gives the semblance of 
 order, system, connection, mutual reference, to sensory 
 data that without its assistance are mere subjective 
 flux. He stands, then, between two extremes, — solip- 
 sism, or that form of individualism which makes one 
 man's meat another man's poison; and absolutism, which 
 cramps humanity into the procrustean bed of precon- 
 ceived ideas. No, Dewey leaves humanity to make its 
 own bed, and if it is uncomfortable, to make it over 
 again. 
 
 But if life is not a mere kaleidoscope of shifting 
 events, how far can we count on any teleological ele- 
 ment, any plan or purpose in it ? To this question Dewey 
 gives a twofold answer. As to immediate empiricism 
 he asserts that it is not solipsistic, because that would 
 put all error in the individual consciousness; nor is it 
 absolutistic, because that would put all truth in the su- 
 preme consciousness; but it is humanistic because it 
 puts both error and truth in human knowledge. This 
 answer is safe and sane, but is it satisfactory? Not to 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 303 
 
 the metaphysician who would go beyond liuinan con- 
 sciousness for a deeper answer to the problem. I'rag- 
 matism claims to be naturalistic. So it is, provided the 
 word nature be confined to human nature. But what 
 of that immensely wider environment in which man is 
 set? Is there a " grain " in things against which we 
 cannot go, a " system " in the cosmic game of chance 
 against which we cannot win? Of the two main mean- 
 ings of chance Dewey avoids the one, but does not grap- 
 ple with the other. There is the popular sense in. which 
 chance means a capricious and incomprehensible con- 
 tingency. There is another sense ; namely, that of a hid- 
 den but discoverable thread of connection. To the 
 Greek it is the thread which the Fates spin; to the 
 gambler it is the " system " by which he tries to break 
 the bank; to the scientist it is the mathematical, pre- 
 dictable element in the flux of events, that function 
 which appears as a constant, provided the series be suffi- 
 ciently prolonged. Blind chance, the scientist hates it ; 
 like Galileo he exclaims: " Vanish, ye dark vaults of 
 heaven! " 
 
 Even here there is a distressing dilemma. Shall we 
 say that there is a plan, but it passes man's understand- 
 ing ; or that there is no plan, but the nature of things is 
 a purposeless flux? As to the former view the prag- 
 matist demurs. Like a good Yankee he " wants to 
 know." As to the latter view there is some uncer- 
 tainty. Primitive pragmatism has been interpreted by 
 Bakewell and others as a latter-day flowing philosophy, 
 a revival of the ancient doctrine of Iloraclcitus. that man 
 cannot dip into the same river twice. Such interpreters 
 also give us the choice between Protagoras and Plato; 
 between man as the measure of all things, and man 
 as the interpreter of nature in the .sense of read- 
 
304 PRAGMATISM 
 
 ing its secrets. Of the latter school is Emerson, while 
 Royce continues the talc in the World and the Indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 What is the broader relation of these two views ? We 
 fail to see that Dewey has grappled with the problem. 
 Given functional empiricism and thought as the vital 
 function, what is the immanent principle at work? Is 
 it humanistic or cosmic? Is it confined to civic com- 
 munities, or can a Greater Chicago school take in the 
 cosmos as a suburb ? The answer is not yet given. In a 
 strictly up-to-date simile Dewey, as upholder of the voli- 
 tional, disparages Absolute Reason. Did purpose ride 
 in a cosmic automobile toward a predestined goal, he 
 exclaims, it would not cease to be physical and mechani- 
 cal because labeled Divine Idea, or Perfect Reason. 
 However, we may query whether human reason is the 
 immanent motor or whether it is merely the speed indi- 
 cator in the great machine. 
 
 Let us point mit plainly what Dewey has accomplished 
 and what remains to be done. In place of the old- 
 fashioned objective, idealism, svdiich has grown somewhat 
 stiff in the joints, he has put a volitional, experimental 
 spirit which is willing to take risks, ready to adapt itself 
 to new environments. For such a volitional, experi- 
 mental teleology he claims a higher ideality than is pos- 
 sessed by idealism itself. Values, he insists, cannot be 
 both ideal and given, and their " given " character is 
 emphasized, not transformed when they are called eter- 
 nal and absolute. But natural values become ideal the 
 moment their maintenance is dependent upon the inten- 
 tional activities of an empirical agent. 
 
 To uphold this view of his Dewey has final recourse to 
 Darwinism. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of 
 absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 305 
 
 been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as ori^'i- 
 nating and passing away, the Origin of Species, he tells 
 us, introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was 
 bound to transform the logic of knowledge and hence 
 the treatment of morals, politics, and religion. Here 
 the touchstone was the old problem of design versus 
 chance, mind versus matter, as the causal explanation, 
 tirst or final, of things. The classic notion was that 
 within natural sensible events there is contained a spirit- 
 ual causal force which as spiritual escapes perception, 
 but is apprehended by an enlightened reason. The Dar- 
 ^vinian principle of natural selection cuts straight under 
 this philosophy. If all organic adaptations are due sim- 
 ply to constant variation and elimination of those varia- 
 tions harmful in that struggle for existence that is 
 brought about by excessive reproduction, there is no call 
 for a prior intelligent causal force to plan and pre- 
 ordain them. 
 
 "We have here the familiar antithetical treatment of 
 the problem of purpose. Darwinism and design are 
 looked at as if they were oil and water, and would not 
 mix. Hence Dewey undervalues any attempts at recon- 
 ciliation or mediation. He mentions Asa Gray as favor- 
 ing the Darwinian principle and, at the same time, at- 
 tempting to reconcile it with design. He calls Gray 's view 
 " design on the installment plan ": if we conceive the 
 " stream of variations " to be itself independent, we may 
 suppose that each successive variation was designed from 
 the first to be selected. Now, this view of Gray's was 
 based on Darwin's assertion that it was " impossible to 
 conceive this immense and wonderful universe, including 
 man with his capacity of looking far backwards and 
 far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or neces- 
 sity." Yet Dewey in tuni claims Danvin's refusal to be 
 
306 PRAGMATISM 
 
 offset by the great evolutionist's conviction that, since 
 variations are in useless as well as in useful directions, 
 and since the latter are sifted out simply by the stress 
 of the conditions for the struggle for existence, the 
 design argument as applied to living beings is unjusti- 
 fiable, and its lack of support there deprives it of scien- 
 tific value. 
 
 Dewey concludes that the impossibility of assigning 
 the world to chance as a whole, and to design in its parts, 
 indicates the insolubility of the question. For this in- 
 solubility he offers two reasons : one is that the problem 
 is too high for intelligence; the other is that the ques- 
 tion, in its very asking, makes assumptions that render 
 the question meaningless. Once admit that the sole 
 verifiable or fruitful object of knowledge is the particu- 
 lar set of changes that generate the object of study, to- 
 gether with the consequences that then flow from it, and 
 no intelligible question can be asked about what, by as- 
 sumption, lies outside. 
 
 Here is a maze of objections which needs to be ex- 
 plored. We make bold to suggest that the problem is 
 not fairly stated. Possibly the maze does not end in a 
 blind alley. There may be a way out. If the cause of 
 the evolutionary flux lies outside, of course the prob- 
 lem is insoluble, or, what amounts to the same thing, the 
 problem is too high for intelligence. But suppose we 
 go back to the classic notion so excellently restated by the 
 writer. By assuming a spiritual causal force and mak- 
 ing it immanent, we may have a suggestion of a solution. 
 The prime cause in this case might be an internal per- 
 fecting principle, a force that here and now is coming to 
 fruition. This is Aristotle's entelechy, enlarged to cos- 
 mic dimensions. As rational it may, after all, be appre- 
 hended by an enlightened reason. If we insist on the 
 
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL: JOHN DEWEY 307 
 
 distinction that it may be apprehended, not coinpre- 
 hcnded, we escape, on the one hand. al)solute afrnosticism, 
 and, on the other, an absolute all-knower. Granted, then, 
 an immanent spiritual principle, working itself out ilay 
 by day, we have that clew which Asa Gray used so 
 effectively. It is not design " on the installment plan," 
 as if some designer were hard put in his payments. 
 What Gray sought was that internal, immanent, ra- 
 tional principle which made natural selection select, 
 which sifted out the useless, and which, in the long run, 
 has brought a gradual complexity, and, at the same time, 
 a gradual improvement. 
 
 If this suggested sketch of ours may be called ab- 
 solutism, it is not the kind that Dewey disparages ; it does 
 not pretend to know it all ; it does not assume some far-off 
 divine event toward which the whole creation moves. 
 For all his strictures upon " inclusive first causes " and 
 " exhaustive final goals " we believe that Dewey is not 
 Avithout sympathy with this interpretation, which is that 
 of the " mild-tempered rationalist." At any rate, he 
 concludes that the influence of Darwinism upon philos- 
 ophy was to force upon it modesty and responsibility, for 
 it has shifted its interest from an intelligence that shaped 
 things once for all, to the particular intelligences which 
 things are even now shaping ; from an ultimate goal of 
 good to the direct increments of justice and happiness 
 that intelligent administration of existent conditionsi. 
 may beget. 
 
 This is the creed of the Chicago school. Beginning 
 with the principle of Peirce as a method to clear up our 
 ideas, to settle metaphysical puzzjgs. it drvflftps into in- 
 stmmen talism. or the view that all our t heories are men- 
 tnl jTin dp'i of arlni^tion t"^ realjtv. This insmime ntalism, 
 in turn , approaches humanism , yet not so as ti> make the 
 
308 PRAGMATISM 
 
 " "^inan or personal an ultimate, but only a tool in gen etic 
 uevelopment, a function in social improvement. This is 
 DeweyT^stimat6 6i lllS own position and, at the same 
 
 ^ time, a forecast of what his successor was to do. The 
 moment the complicity of the personal factor in our 
 philosophic valuation is recognized fully, frankly, and 
 generally, he concludes, that moment a new era in 
 philosophy will begin. 
 
 4. The Cambridge School : William James 
 
 The new era predicted by Dewey was inaugurated by 
 "William James of Harvard. Pragmatism, he tells us in 
 his Lowell Lectures of 1906, has rather suddenly pre- 
 cipitated itself out of the air, because in thehistory of 
 philosop hy we are begin ning to recognize t he__clash of 
 humaja_ tempera ments^ 
 
 ^hus begins the third phase in the pragmatic move- 
 ment, — the temperamental. The change is significant. 
 It is a change Irom the logical to the psychological, a 
 process which re duces t he cognitionjof trutiL_tQ_the satis- 
 facticgLfif felt needs, to~tFe emotlonaljthrill. Now, while 
 /ey has warned us against the surrender to the emo- 
 tional, James accepts it as a prime criteri on whereby 
 first^ to judge past philoso phy, "then to form~the philos- 
 ophy Qlthe_ future. ' ■ ~ 
 
 ' The professional philosopher, he observes, has hitherto 
 urged impersonal reasons for his conclusion. Yet all the 
 time he has been following that view of the universe 
 which best suits his temperament; that he trusts, that 
 is the potentest of all his premises. If distinctive tem- 
 'peraments have been recognized in other branches of 
 activity, why not in philosophy? In government there 
 has been authoritarian and anarchist; in literature pu- 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: WILLIAM JAMES 309 
 
 rists and realists; in art classics and romantics. So in 
 philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in 
 the pair of terms " rationalists " and " empiricists; " — 
 " empiricist " meaning your lover of facts in all their 
 crude variety, " rationalist " your devotee to abstract 
 and eternal principles. In fine, the two types of mental 
 make-up may have their characteristics written down in 
 two columns. On the one side is the rationalist, who 
 is idealistic, optimistic, religious, frec-willist, monistic, 
 dogmatical. On the other side is the empiricist, who 
 is materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, plural- 
 istic, skeptical. 
 
 At the first glance the drawing up of this table of 
 contrast between the " tough-minded " empiricist and 
 the ** tender-minded " rationalist seems to commit the 
 same fault as that with which the absolutists were 
 charged. It postulates theses, assumes their antitheses 
 or logical opposites, and concludes that nuin must belong 
 either to one set or the other. It is the same sort of 
 artificial depiction of character that was committed by 
 Macaulay in his contrasted portraits of Cavalier and 
 Roundhead. But the deadly parallel column is one 
 thing, live people another. In fact, James confesses 
 that most of us have a hankering for the good tilings 
 on both sides of the line. Let us, therefore, adopt a 
 sort of pluralistic monism (for both facts and prin- 
 ciples are good). Let us combine practical pessimism 
 with metaphysical optimism (for though the evil of the 
 parts is undeniable, the whole cannot be e\il). Finally, 
 let our scientific spirit be devout, othens'ise we will 
 find an empirical philosophy wliich is not religious 
 enough, and a religious philosophy that is not em- 
 pirical enough. . . . Thus may pratrniatism be a media- 
 tion botwppn ton^Mi-miruTeftn' ss TmTT tt iiMrr-iininlriTness. 
 
310 PRAGMATISM 
 
 thus may tenderfoot Bostonians mingle with Rocky- 
 Mountain toughs. 
 
 This is the Cambridge solution of ' ' the present 
 
 I dilemma in philosophy." It is the opposite of that of 
 
 I the Chicago school. It is not a logical rejection of 
 
 I alternatives, but a psychological adaptation of one to the 
 
 / other. It offers a true humanism, for humanity in its 
 
 I ch^cesjises~its~T5ea^]as_w^ Now, all this 
 
 [ seems quite UTogieal unless it ^_gi:antedj;hat there is 
 
 ^a logjc_o f the emot ion^ based_u£on grounds of personal 
 
 preference. Such grounds James brings forward in his 
 
 lecture on " Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically 
 
 Considered." In this he assumes his role as a mediator. 
 
 This was made possible by his personality, combining 
 
 as it did a genial hospitality to all forms of thought 
 
 ^swith a marked boldness in undertaking difficult tasks. 
 
 VHis pragmatism becomes to philosophy, then, what a 
 court of arbitration is to capital and labor, — an organ 
 of mediation between arrogant rationalism and com- 
 placent common sense. The new system, like its author, 
 fe} essentially independent; it follows neither the pro- 
 fessional philosopher on his high a priori road, nor the 
 man in the street with his cocksure notions of truth. 
 Rat her does it strive to t read a path between the two, 
 a via media from which may~be~obtained jhe_ideal out- 
 lookl)f tlie one and the^oncrete practicality of the^other. 
 ( In this role of mediation prag^matism exhibits its adapt- 
 \ ability to modern demands. Finding the world sick of 
 ' abstractions and, at the same time, uninspired by the 
 / current beliefs, it offers itself as a tonic for tired minds, 
 ( a pungent compound which will restore the jaded appe- 
 1 tite for the speculative life. 
 
 Such a mediating part James had once hoped the 
 Chicago school would undertake. That school, however, 
 
THE CA^IBRIDGE SCHOOL: WILLIAM JAMES 311 
 
 left the impression of being hostile to the abstract, the 
 a priori. Coming from a new part of the country it was 
 typically averse to the old culture. It is not so with 
 the Eastern philosopher, who offers pragmatism as a 
 means of satisfying both kinds of dt-inand, remaining 
 religious like the rationalisms, but, like the empiricisms, 
 preserving the richest intimacy with facts. This is again 
 a recourse to the pragmatic method as primarily one 
 of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might 
 be interminable. Is the world one or many? — fated or 
 free? — material or spiritual? Disputes over such no- 
 tions are unending, unless we try to interpret each no- 
 tion by tracing its respective consequences. 
 
 Thus does James ingeniously escape the dilemma of 
 Dewey. Instead of a process of mutual cancellation be- 
 tween different alternatives, he holds that alternatives 
 with no practical consequences are not really differences. 
 Thus science and metaphysics come together, for thj£Drie*>- 
 
 hpjflg ingtrnnipntg^-tml fln<;wprg tn pjiigwaft- prftginatiou. 
 
 unstiffen^ all our ^hcor ies, limbers them up and_sets 
 each one at work. . . . Here is temperamental philosophy 
 "of^ffiFMghest kincr James calls it democratic, but we 
 should prefer to call it urbane. It does not accentuate 
 local differences, but accepts cues from all quarters. 
 Such pragmatism, as its author explains, is willing to 
 take anj^liing, to follow either logic or the senses and to 
 count as proof the humblest and most personal experi- 
 ences; she is completely genial; she will entertain any 
 hypothesis ; she will consider any evidence. 
 
 James shows in this the enthusiastic urbanity of a 
 man of wide and varied activities. The artist in him 
 comes out in the contrasted portraits of rationalist and 
 empiricist, where he strives to give an impression by 
 constant minute touches, and thus to let us see the mas- 
 
312 PRAGMATISM 
 
 terpiece in the making. The physiologist is evident in 
 the emphasis on the bodily, realistic side of life, where 
 he shows his preference for warm vitality and thus al- 
 lows us to catch the essential personal flavor. The 
 psychologist we see in the stress on the emotions, in the 
 emphasis on the conative side of life. Here James asks 
 us: How does the world feel to you? What are the 
 thoughts that thrill you? Finally, the religionist ap- 
 pears in the use of the Absolute as a source of spiritual 
 comfort. As the author of the Varieties of Religious 
 Experience James draws on his immense stores of knowl- 
 edge, — from the strange cases of psychic-research, to 
 the mysticism of William Penn, landed proprietor, and 
 of John Bunyan, tinker. 
 
 An enthusiastic urbanity, a many-sided personality 
 furnish the equipment of James, the mediator in meta- 
 physics. So equipped he turns to some metaphysical 
 problems which are to be pragmatically considered. 
 Here pragmatism means not the bare presentation of ab- 
 stract outlines, but a helpful method of tracing specific 
 consequences of any given hypothesis. Assuming the 
 empiricist attitude, it turns toward concreteness and 
 adequacy, toward fact, toward action, and toward power. 
 How is one to choose, say, between optimism and pessi- 
 mism? By its effects on practical living, responds the 
 pragmatist; one naturally accepts the former doctrine 
 because it gives a happier view of the world. Or, again, 
 what practical difference does it make now that the world 
 should be thought to be run by spirit or by matter? In 
 the one case there would be the hypothesis of an eternal 
 perfect edition of the universe coexisting with our finite 
 experience, in the other the hypothesis of blind physical 
 forces, bits of brute matter unconsciously following their 
 particular laws. Between theism and materialism, thus 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: WH.LIAM JAMES 313 
 
 presented, it is impossible to choose hypothotically, Init 
 apply the principle of practical results and there is vital 
 difference. The one hypothesis is pessimistic, its sun 
 sets in a sea of disappointment ; the other is melioristic 
 and means the preservation of our ultimate hopes, since 
 it is not blind force, but a seemg force, which runs this 
 universe. So likewise with the controversy between 
 detenninism and free-will ; pragmatism rids one of Puri- 
 tanism, drives away the vapors of a bilious conscience, 
 and puts man, if not on the road to perfectibility, at 
 least into the fresh fields of independent action. 
 
 Thus briefly does James settle metaphysical problems 
 by the pragmatic method. Using the test of tempera- 
 mental likings he has been accused of confusing the tnie 
 with the pleasant and of making the ground of prefer- 
 ence merely personal. The first charge is that of hedon- 
 ism, the second that of solipsism. Neither charge is 
 wholly warranted. Pragmatism takes account of evil /k/v/l/''^'*^ 
 and will accept a God who " lives in the very dirt of .^ 
 private fact." Again pragmatism is not a narrow indi — '\^ lI 
 vidualism. It_holds_tMt_tnith_i s made b y^sQciciXj^i^Dd. jj'^'^^^ 
 i ^ only a c ollective name for v erificati on. Being a 
 social product it may, therefore, be called a species of 
 higher hedonism. Thereby is it relieved of the accusa- 
 tion of keeping its eyes bent on the immediate practical 
 foreground, for it dwells just as much upon the world's 
 remotest perspectives. In this defense James, the medi- 
 ator and smoother-over of transitions, gains a certain^ 
 
 likeness to the absolutist, for he adds that the absolute 1 
 things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the / 
 truly philosophic concerns. Biit_we__should_intt'rpret f 
 this as dnr not nn rrmrli hi llir~rTtTTTThT44^tif as to the I 
 aesthetic motive, the artisL 's interest in -Vji- n ii. hinp rpoint.s I 
 and disappearing lines. And along with it wc must put A 
 
314 PRAGMATISM 
 
 the pragmatic check. James speaks of the vast drifting 
 of the cosmic weather, yet he does not imply that there 
 is such a thing as a meteorology of metaphysics. lie 
 argues that we cannot by any possibility comprehend the 
 character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully 
 revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils that 
 we find in this world's particulars. Apparently an aas- 
 thetic union obtains among things; they tell a story; 
 their parts hang together so as to work out a climax. 
 But absolute gesthetic union is another barely abstract 
 idea; until we can affirm one sovereign purpose, sys- 
 tem, story, the world appears as something more epic 
 than dramatic. 
 
 The Cambridge pragmatist now reaches another of his 
 mediations. It is in epistemology, the problem of knowl- 
 edge, and concerns the choice between absolutism and 
 agnosticism. When he affirms that in this world there 
 are as many disjunctions as conjunctions, and hence there 
 can be no one knower, no all-enveloping, noetic unity, 
 we are forced into that modern form of skepticism re- 
 garding a universal substance. If there be such a cosmic 
 connective tissue, the human observer has not yet learned 
 to stain it — such seems to be his conclusion. In the same 
 way we may interpret the allied problem of cosmology, 
 the ancient puzzle of " the one and the many." 
 Accepting design, free-will, the absolute mind, spirit in- 
 stead of matter, because they have for their sole mean- 
 ing a better promise as to this world 's outcome, pragmat- 
 ism suddenly abandons this monistic point of view and 
 takes up with a pluralistic. This at first appears un- 
 natural ; it is as if an American of the strict construc- 
 tionist type should suddenly give up the idea of the 
 paramountcy of the federal government and become a 
 violent advocate of States' rights. And yet this ap- 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: WILLIAM JAMES 315 
 
 parent reversal of judginent has its reasons; namely, the 
 tcmperaniental preferences of the autlior for that rieli 
 medley of facts called the world, rather than for that 
 rislcy dogma of an absolutely perfect universe. Here 
 the monist might be compared to the protectionist, who 
 argues that if one break be allowed in the sacrosanct 
 tariff sj'stem the whole will fall to the ground. To this 
 philosophic stand-patter comes pragmatism unstifTening 
 his theories, showing that this is no more the best of all 
 possible worlds than that the present is the best of all 
 possible administrations, and that pluralism, like States' 
 rights, is necessary to the free play of parts so conducive 
 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Pragmat- 
 ism, then, it is said, pending the final empirical ascer- 
 tainment of just what the balance of union and dis- 
 union among things may be, must obviously range itself 
 upon the pluralistic side and sincerely entertain the 
 hypothesis of a world imperfectly unified still. Hence*^ 
 the actual world, instead of being complete " eternally," / 
 as the monists assure us, may be eternally incomplete// 
 and at all times subject to addition or liable to loss. / 
 The adoption of the temperamental test has led to 
 pluralism. Its later application to religion is made in a 
 startling form of polytheism. Meanwhile James takes 
 up the discussion of tnith, first in its relations to com- 
 mon sense, and then in its higher scientific and social 
 aspects. The former discussion is one of the least satis- 
 factory in the book. It defends noetic pluralism on the 
 ground that we can know the parts and some of their 
 combinations, but not the whole. It defends this view 
 by a figure of speech, holding that the universe is not 
 a final dc luxe edition, but a volume in the makia2»r:rit 
 might well have been said a loose-leaf ledger. It finally 
 gives, as a basis of common sense. Herbert Spencer's 
 
316 
 
 PRAGMATISM 
 
 *' .L>*veri 
 
 /W 
 
 /. 
 
 J^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 /■ 
 
 V- I 
 
 « 
 
 shallow hypothesis that our fundamental ways of think- 
 ing about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote 
 ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves 
 throughout the experience of all subsequent time. These 
 are the funded truths squeezed from the past, which ap- 
 pear natural to us because they were once so fruitful. 
 
 We may grant that such common-sense principles are 
 survivals of the fittest, but that does not answer the qucs- 
 /tion why they are fit. This problem of the agreement of 
 tnith and reality, whether there exist principles of 
 erity in the very constitution of the cosmos, is left 
 to the most crucial and the most difficult chapter of this 
 work. In regard to the ' * Notion of Truth ' ' pragmatists 
 and intellectualists are both said to accept the dictionary 
 definition of truth as agreement of ideas with reality. 
 They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as 
 to what may precisely be meant by the term " agree- 
 ment," and what by the term " reality," when reality 
 is taken as something for our ideas to agree with. On 
 the one hand, the idealists seem to say that ourideas are 
 
 true wheneverTEey are what God means that we ought 
 to think about that object; whenever they approach to 
 being copies of the Absolute's eternal way of thinking. 
 This is the great assumption of the intellectualists that 
 truth means essentkJly^j,n_inert^static^ Prag- 
 
 other 
 
 matism, on The other hand, asks its usual question. 
 r*" Grant an idea or belief to be true, what concrete dif- 
 I ference will its bein g true make in anyone's a T;tual be- 
 11 li^T? How willthe^ruth be realized? What experi- 
 jf en'ces will be diHerentfronTtlTose' which would obtain if 
 / the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's 
 ^^^ash-value in the experientiarferms? " 
 
 At this hypothetical question the defense is up in 
 arms. Practical differences ! Cash-values ! Such phrases 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: WILLIAM JAMES 317 
 
 pervert the principle of Pciree into a transaetion of tju' 
 Chicago clearing-house. Here one critic, adopting a sort 
 of slang which pragmatism does not disdain to use, has 
 defined truth as " x\ny old thing that works! " 
 
 That pragmatism as a gospel of success is utilitarian 
 James frankly grants. The true, he continues, is only 
 the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the <. 
 right is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. ^ . 
 
 The first meaning of truth is, therefore, that of a method. | fv^*^ 
 Prim arily it^ mean's ^ Teadtng that is worth while. Tiie 
 discovery of a working hypothesis is usedby the prag- r*-^ 
 matist in just the way a path is followed by a wanderer, ''^ 
 because it looks as if it might lead out of the woo<ls. j^^ 
 
 Besides being a method of utility, pragmatic truth is a 7 ^^ 
 theory of reality. Toii can say of it, then, either that ' ' it 
 
 r 
 
 .W"> 
 
 is useful because it is true," or that " it is true because 
 
 it is useful." 
 
 In this statement we charge the author \aW\ making a 
 
 ,__ — ■ — , , ^ '^ U 
 
 false conversion of a proposition, in othor_ words of ini- ^ ,^jiM 
 
 plying That it is a poor rulc ^that does not work i)oth 
 wa};^;_Jlt is easy to concede the last half of the proposi- 
 tion, for that is only saying that true thoughts are 
 invaluable instruments of action. But in changing tho. 
 proposition "it is true because it works " into " it 
 works because it is true " we change from an object, a 
 successful result, to a notion of some standard upon 
 which the workability, the success, depends. Now^ tliis, 
 notion of a standard would imply some fixed reality like 
 PlatUTiiu arcll(5iypes, which exist eternally and outside 
 human minds. IBut th i^ ir nriV-infT tnit)i static and de-"^ 
 humanizing it. thcrcfo £e_£Uch^ a vijiW-is condemned, bo- / 
 cause pragmatism is dynamic and humanistii'. Trutli-is,/ 
 not a fixed standard but a flying goal, and the world we 
 know is detennincd by the human faculties. 
 
318 PRAGMATISM 
 
 Platonism and pragmatism are thus at opposite poles. 
 The former says our ideas are true if they are ectypes of 
 archetypes, shadows or copies of the absolute and eter- 
 nal forms of thought. Pragmatism says, truths are not 
 copies but consistencies ; truths emerge from facts ; they 
 are not once and forever true but always in the making, 
 humanity being the constant creator of working hypothe- 
 ses, of tentative theories. By these it adapts itself to 
 changing circumstances as does a marching army to the 
 rise and fall of the road. This sharp contrast be- 
 tween the static and the absolute, between the dynamic 
 and relative, is easy to draw because of the current re- 
 vival of the ancient Greek conception of cosmic fluxility, 
 of a plastic principle in nature. Conventional monism, 
 with its insistence on eternal principles and fixed arche- 
 types, will be hard pressed to explain away that mutabil- 
 ity in nature, that changing pageantry in earth and sky, 
 from which writers like Emerson and Whitman drew 
 their philosophies. This being the day of the " rushing 
 metamorphosis," the notion of a finished world is as hard 
 to grasp as the notion of a finished waterfall; or, to 
 carry out the figure, instead of being immutable, a 
 frozen river of reality, truth is ever in mutation, ever 
 carried forward on tlie flowing stream of consciousness. 
 
 This conclusion strikes many as nihilistic. According 
 to James the pragmatic theory of reality holds that be- 
 hind the bare phenomenal facts there is — nothing. Is 
 not this an exaggeration? Though the flowing stream 
 of consciousness has no bottom, it has banks and these 
 we take to be the human factors, the guiding principles 
 furnished by men's minds. For, as James concedes, 
 instead of reality as such, ready-made from all eternity, 
 we have a man-made reality. " It is we who create true 
 principles, in i(5 reality is in the making and owr descrip- 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: WILLIAM JAMES 319 
 
 tions are metaphysical additions to facts," Again in- 
 stead of the abstract worship of timeless reality, a pre- 
 tense that the eternal is unrolling, we prefer a loose 
 universe, truth growing up inside of all the finite experi- 
 ences, " we men adding our fiats to the fiat of the 
 Creator." 
 
 This is the Cambridge theor>' of reality. It is a 
 bold doctrine. It is not merely humanism, but the wor- 
 ship of humanity. James recognizes this, and in his 
 last chapter, " Pragmatism and Religion," reaches his 
 final view of truth. Truth is not only a method to gain 
 successful results, or a theory of reality as fluxility, but a 
 temper of mind, an emotional belief which gives pcnional 
 satisfaction. This satisfaction may be so intense as 
 to be justly called a religion, not in the monistic, mystical 
 way of pure cosmic emotion, but in the humanistic 
 way, — a universe with such as us contributing to create 
 its truth, a world delivered to our opportunities and 
 our private judgments, where God is viewed as but one 
 helper, in the midst of all the shapers of the world's 
 fate. 
 
 At this turn in the road, we have come back to that 
 temperamental test with which the book began, namelv: 
 The whfje fii mr-tiQn of philosophyo ught t o be to filuTj 
 
 it what d efinite difference it 'wiTrma ke to you and me, 
 at deHnite instants ~ of~o u,r life, if this wofld-fomuila 
 or that world-formula be the Irne-ofleT The formula 
 which James reaches is thatof_fMing^_ofJnstinet, of-^ 
 intuition, for in tIiC~Tn4-lIe'^oncludes : " It is our faith 
 and not our logic that decides such questions, — the 
 human imagination which lives in a moralistic and epic 
 kind of universe, and avoids the two extremes of crude 
 naturalism on the one hand, and transcendental abso 
 lutism on the other." 
 
 
320 PRAGMATISM 
 
 Here ends the pragmatism of James, — carried fur- 
 ther, but not essentially changed, in his subsequent 
 works, A Pluralistic Universe and The Meaning of Truth. 
 But without recourse to these other volumes of delight 
 let us summarize the system as James has left it ; go back 
 to its sources or affiliations, and, finally, attempt to give 
 its probable place in the history of American thought. 
 
 5. The Sources of Pragmatism 
 
 To call the Cambridge pragmatism a system is ap- 
 parently a misnomer. At the outset, protests James, it 
 stands for no particular results ; it has no doctrine save 
 its methods. As the young Italian pragmatist, Papini, 
 has well said, it lies in the midst of our theories, like a 
 corridor in a hotel. Let us grant that pragmatism is this 
 corridor, and not a metaphysical roof to cover all; it 
 still furnishes a scheme, if not a system. In the case of 
 James this scheme is determined by temperamental tests, 
 by personal preferences. As a mediator, a man of pacific 
 disposition, he is primarily opposed to dogmas. Against 
 the must be of the intellectualist he puts the may be 
 of the empiricist. Thus the philosophical trinity of the 
 absolute idealist would be interpreted as follows : God, — 
 a good working hypothesis; immortality, — a vague con- 
 fidence in the future; freedom, — a melioristic doctrine 
 whereby improvement at least is possible. To abso- 
 lutists this may seem like giving up strong meat for 
 modified milk, but the Cambridge scheme is not entirely 
 negative, does not wholly agree with another dictum of 
 Papini 's that " pragmatism is really less a philosophy 
 than a method of doing without one." The American 
 species is not invertebrate, it has an historic backbone. 
 James says that it agrees with nominalism in appealing 
 
THE SOURCES OF PRAGMATISM 321 
 
 to particulars; ^Yith utilitarianism in oniphasiziug prac- 
 tical aspects; with positivism in its disdain for meta- 
 physical abstractions. In these confessed resemblances 
 the author is but carrying out the full title of his book — 
 Pragmatism, a New Name for Same Old ^Yays of 
 Thinking. 
 
 We may go further. Recalling the title of a quaint 
 deistic work — Christianity as Old as the Creation — we 
 may speak of " Pragmatism as Old as Speculation." 
 From the Greeks to modern days the pragmatic stream 
 has flowed unbroken. Dewey may disparage the past, 
 but the continuity of kindred thought is a fact. We take 
 the long leap backward and begin with TIeracleitus. His 
 doctrine we have already noticed. That all tlows, that 
 reality is fluxility, that there is no finality in truth — is 
 the very soul of the latter-day flowing philosophy. Next, 
 the sophistic doctrine, that man is the measure of all 
 things, is revived in the modern individualism, where 
 there are many men of many minds, and as many kinds 
 of reality as there are pragmatists. Schiller of Oxford 
 has defended this ancient sophistic doctrine as explain- 
 ing the bewildering variety of human customs and be- 
 liefs, and enabling men to conceive objective " truth," 
 not as an initial gift of the gods, but as a practical and 
 social problem. The choice then favors Protagoras 
 rather than Plato, for the latter 's ideal theory explained 
 nothing, just becau.se, by being elevated above the flux, it 
 had lost all touch with humanity. 
 
 So much for the agreement with Hellenic tiiought. 
 For the medieval, James has this single word — that prag- 
 matism agrees with nominalism in its app(>al to particu- 
 lars. This means that a name is nothing but a summation 
 of experiences, a short cut to reality, not a reality it.self. 
 This is diametrically opposed to that form of Platouism 
 
322 PRAGMATISM 
 
 revived in scholastic realism which held that back of 
 every name there is a reality, a supersensible essence ex- 
 isting independent of particulars. 
 
 As pragmatism agrees with empiricism and is opposed 
 to transcendentalism ancient and medieval, so does it 
 stand in relation to modern empiricism and transcenden- 
 talism. In these connections we may take the Western na- 
 tions briefly one by one. Among the English we find Lord 
 Bacon, — the father of empiricism, — with his saying that 
 knowledge is power ; John Locke with his habit of testing 
 abstract ideas, like substance, in terms of experience; 
 David Hume with his attack on intellectualism and his 
 advice to throw metaphysics to the flames. As to Hume 
 the resemblance between the arch-skeptic and the modem 
 sophist is strong. Just as James uses theories as short- 
 cuts to reality and advises us to act as if this and that 
 were true, so Hume uses belief to bridge over difficulties 
 and asks us to invent such a notion as causality as a sort 
 of fictitious glue to bind the cosmos together. 
 
 These are the earlier English empiricists. Among the 
 later stand forth Darwin and Mill. The parallels with 
 the former are obvious : the familiar phrases — adaptation 
 to environment, struggle for existence, survival of the 
 fittest — are the very watchwords of the modern practical- 
 ism. And so is it with John Stuart Mill, to whom James 
 dedicates his volume as the one '' From whom I first 
 learned the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my 
 fancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive to- 
 day." 
 
 So much for the British empiricists. The affinities are 
 so strong that pragmatism might almost be called Anglo- 
 Americanism, As for the Germans there are few affinities 
 acknowledged by the pragmatists themselves. With a 
 practical working treaty between the two English-speak- 
 
THE SOURCES OF PRAGMATISM 323 
 
 ing countries it niiglit be expected that the Germans 
 should be left out. It is worse than that. Against the 
 whole tribe of Teutonic idealists there is a chorus of 
 objections, strictures, taunts, and vilifications. Thus 
 Dewey holds that Kant never emerges from his fallacies, 
 and James holds up to derision the " hollow god " of 
 Hegel. But in spite of James's protestations that he has 
 never received a single clear idea from Kant, there are 
 marked resemblances between the philosopher of Koenigs- 
 berg and that of Cambridge. Kant's doctrine of postu- 
 lates has a family likeness to James's Will to Believe. 
 " I will that there be a God, in order to the living of 
 my moral life " sounds much like James's exhortations to 
 act as if there were a seeing force that runs things. 
 Further resemblances have been brought out by Arthur 
 McGiffert. In addition to this faith in God as an heroic 
 deed, not a passive acquiescence, there is the doctrine of 
 meliorism — " that the world as a whole is always im- 
 proving." And besides the primacy of the will, the 
 recognition of its activity in forming the truth, there is 
 the doctrine of humanism, — that man is a factor in the 
 making of reality, that there is a pla.stic world to whicii 
 he gives meaning and value. 
 
 All this sounds, and is very pragmatic. The unprag- 
 matic part arises in the monism of Post-Kantian idealism, 
 that transcendcntalizing of his teachings against which 
 the master warned his disciples. In this regard Hegel 
 was the chief offender, for he did turn theolog}- into 
 theosophy, the postulate of deity as an " idea made by 
 ourselves with a practical purpose " into an assumption 
 that by mere thinking man can find out God. Against 
 such a perversion the pragmatists have grounds for pro- 
 test. They especially dread that Franken.stein deity, — 
 an absolute being derived by the dialectical process of the 
 
324 PRAGMATISM 
 
 unfolding of the Idea. We do not pretend to solve the 
 secret of Hegel, but we can understand how such formula 
 would drive James mad. This rigid doctrine of " becom- 
 ing " according to preconceived plans would irritate an 
 independent American much as might the rules and 
 regulations of a bureaucratic police. 
 
 There remains a third German idealist to be reckoned 
 wdth, Schopenhauer's World as Will might appear akin 
 to the Chicago civic motto * ' I Will ' ' and all the implica- 
 tions of the strenuous life. In a measure the tran- 
 scendental energism does seem like the transatlantic rest- 
 lessness. But with the apparent likeness there is a 
 fundamental difference. The German's will is a cosmic 
 principle, a hidden fatal force which carries mankind 
 irresistibly onward. The American's will is individual, 
 each man is the architect of his own fortune. Now, while 
 the false identification of the two schools of energism can- 
 not be attributed to Dewey, it might be to James. Some 
 take his appeal to the subliminal to be an appeal to the 
 transcendental. This is a misinterpretation. The energies 
 of men which he bids us use are not beyond experience, 
 but only beneath the threshold of consciousness. Fur- 
 thermore, there is a confusion of temperaments. To put 
 James among the pessimists is an absurdity to one fa- 
 miliar with his personality. The will to believe, as his 
 compatriots take it, is a will to believe in the better, 
 and upon this temperamental quality is based the doe- 
 trine of meliorism. The Cambridge thinker would be 
 the last to say that there is a final futility in the will, 
 and an ultimate necessity for self-denial and self-anni- 
 hilation. 
 
 It is easy to see that the resemblances between the 
 Teutonic and transatlantic philosophers are less than the 
 differences. The same cannot be said of the French. 
 
THE SOURCES OF TRAGMATISM 32.'> 
 
 Pragmatism has been charged with lieing a rovaiupi'd 
 positivism. The resemblances are striking. Both make 
 much of science, and in place of absolute causes put rela- 
 tive laws. Both emphasize nature and prefer the ()l)ser- 
 vatiou of phenomena to metaphysical abstractions. Both 
 are enamored of humanity and consider man's needs 
 the ultimate aim of knowledge. In short, both are scien- 
 tific, naturalistic, humanistic, and also — somewhat skep- 
 tical. They do not care for supersensible realities, like 
 first grounds and ultimate principles, but are satisfied 
 with the horizon of level experience. They do not seek 
 for intellectual unification of all sciences, but are con- 
 tent to employ the same metiiod in all cases. 
 
 Is pragmatism, then, a revival of positivism, the 
 Cambridge scholar a reincarnation of the Parisian? 
 James objected to this implication. Through his early 
 education in France he had come into intimate relations 
 Avith the positive point of view, but his return to America 
 l)rought him under different influences. A French critic, 
 Abel Key, has exposed the difference between positivists 
 and pragmatists. The former, he explains, are guilty of 
 tlic dogmatism of the idea; pure thought, the correct 
 formula is deemed entirely sufficient. The latter are 
 guilty of the dogmatism of the act ; cognition follows the 
 necessities of action. There is no scientific truth, but 
 only truths, valuable not in themselves, but only as 
 instruments. 
 
 We may make the line of cleavage even sharper. WHtTi j , c 
 Comtc there is a worship of reason, and the immutability 
 of natural law is fundamental. With James the formula 
 of feeling supplements logic, and the neglected emotions 
 are given their proper functions of motive forces 
 James's pragmatism, then, has two focal points different 
 from positivism: it is opposed to immutability; it is i 
 
32G PRAGMATISM 
 
 favor of emotionality. While the latter of these points 
 is to be sought in James's native environment, yet the 
 former is still French. When James spoke of all our 
 scientific laws being only approximations, our theories 
 only conceptual shorthand reports of nature, he was re- 
 flecting the views of Poincare. The method of science, 
 says that mathematician, is that a theory is only a trial 
 and error scheme; there are thousands of theories, but 
 only a few of them fit the facts. The meaning of hy- 
 pothesis is then only a working hypothesis, a tool which 
 serves to-day, but to-morrow will be throwTi on the 
 scrap-heap. Such a view is congruous to both the schools 
 of Chicago and of Cambridge. It is evolutionary. It is 
 another instance of the prodigality of nature. The 
 theories thrown out by the human mind are like the 
 wasted spawn of which only a fraction comes to maturity. 
 This view also fits the latter-day flowing philosophy. It 
 tends to fluidity of thought rather than to finality of 
 truth. There is nothing absolutely true; not even this 
 
 r statement. 
 All this upholds the contention of James that prag- 
 matism is not a revival of the outworn positivism of 
 Comte, Kenan, and Taine. Positivism is unpragmatic 
 in its insistency on the supremacy of reason, and its 
 founder maintained that the human spirit should pro- 
 ceed to theoretical researches, completely abstracting it- 
 self from every practical consideration. On the other 
 hand, pragmatism is non-positive in that second point we 
 noticed, — emotionality. But positivism is opposed to 
 feeling, especially religious feeling. No Comtean would 
 put on the same level the experiences of science, of meta- 
 hysics, and of religion. But this is what the pragmatists 
 do; they reverse the positive formula of development — 
 the necessary successive phases ; theological ; metaphysi- 
 
THE SOURCES OF PRAGMATISM M 327 
 
 cal ; positive — when they assert tliat pragmatism can 
 utilize all experiences, from the clearest to the most 
 obscure, from the clarities of science to the mysteries of 
 the subconscious. 
 
 We have gone through the forerunners of pragmatism, 
 ancient, medieval, and modern, and have discovered that 
 the pragmatists, although contemners of tlie past, have 
 had numerous predecessors. With the sophistic doc- 
 trine the afl&nities are more than superficial, with the 
 nominalistic more than nominal. But with the modern 
 the perspective is closer and distinctions loom into dilYe j:-^ 
 ences. Although pragmatism is so largely Anglo-Amer- | 
 ican, the American movement is not entirely a revival 
 of British empiricism. To Bacon's knowledge is power, 
 James adds, knowledge is also satisfaction. To Locke's 
 two inlets of knowledge, sensation and reflt^etion. lie adds 
 volition. Against Hume's conception of religion as an 
 outworn superstition, an invention of priests, he puts 
 religious experience as an outcome of the passional needs 
 of humanity. James is the brother of the British em^ 
 piricists; he is likewise their older brother, — older in 
 time and with a wider outlook. As Dickinson Miller has 
 pointed out, they asked — whence it came; he asks — 
 whither it goes ; they asked — what were the originals of 
 the conception; he asks— what is to be the effect upon 
 future practical experience. 
 
 Pragmatism is not merely an Anglo-Saxon plant, nor 
 does it grow solely from Continental roots. The alleged 
 affinities disappear on closer .scrutiny. The pragmatic 
 principle cannot be identified with Kant's practical pos- 
 tulate in either of its two senses. It is not constitutive, 
 like a constitution which determines the very growth of 
 the body politic. It is not regulative, like the governor 
 of an engine which controls the safety-valve. It is 
 
328 PRAGMATISM 
 
 merely heuristic, — a means of finding one's way out of 
 a maze of difficulties. Again the pragmatic principle 
 is an individual rule, which can be made and remade to 
 suit changing demands. Hence it is opposed to Hegel's 
 dialectic. His scheme of evolution is like the unwinding 
 of a ball of string, previously wound up by a machine — 
 the machine in this case being formal logic. Finally, 
 there is opposition to the spirit of Schopenhauer. To 
 the pessimist the world as will comes to consciousness, 
 only to discover the futility of that will. To the prag- 
 matist there is no cosmic consciousness, but only a so- 
 cial consciousness, driving the more powerful on to 
 become lords of this earth. If there were an essential 
 affinity between the pragmatists and the Germans it 
 would be through Nietzsche. Those overlords of the 
 American business world, whose motto is " success at all 
 hazards," are first-cousins to the Teutonic superman, 
 who works in a realm " beyond good and evil." 
 
 So the rise of pragmatism is not to be sought in the 
 Fatherland either through the Anglo-Hegelians or 
 through the St. Louis school, except in the way of a re- 
 coil against their transcendentalism. Fichte, indeed, 
 taught in his Vocation of Man that things in them- 
 selves are as we make them. But the few Fichtean in- 
 dividualists in the Middle West were swallowed up by 
 the Hegelian absolutists. If we may say that the im- 
 pulse to pragmatism did not come from Germany, the 
 case is not so clear as to France. The unpracticality of 
 positivism is a forgotten phase of that Gallic cult which, 
 at one time, had such a vogue in America. So is the 
 mysticism of Comte's later days. Unpracticality is, of 
 course, unpragmatie, but mysticism is not, unless the 
 scheme of James be counted a form of perverted prag- 
 matism. Consequently there is a curious resemblance 
 
THE SOURCES OF PRAGMATISM 329 
 
 between the French and American thinkers. We find 
 Comte's love of humanity taking: a mystic turn, only 
 after he had exhausted the possibilities of the sciences. 
 Facts were one thing, feelings another. Hence positivism 
 had as its supplement that religion which worsliips hu- 
 manity itself as Ic grand etre. Of this worship Comte 
 considered himself the high priest, as shown in his Posi- 
 tive Catechism, or Summanj Exposition of the Universal 
 Religion. But such documents came forth a generation 
 before they could have directly influenced "William 
 James. For the latter 's mysticism we must therefore 
 seek, not a foreign, but a native and more intimate 
 source. Henry James, Sr., was the leader of American 
 Swedenborgianism, and to this fact we may trace the 
 son's inherited interest in a cult which taught the 
 primacy of the emotional imagination. This reversion 
 to a youthful form of thought goes far to explain the 
 motives that turned James the scientist into James the 
 religionist. Among the Varieties of Religious Experi- 
 ence we find many cases like those of the seer of Stock- 
 holm. In the Will to Believe there is also advocated the 
 " right to believe " in the celestial world. Finally in the 
 riuralistic Universe there is presented that hierarchy of 
 superhuman beings, which have a family likeness to the 
 Swedenborgian conception of the world as a progressive 
 spiral of perfectibility. To read the chapter " Concern- 
 ing Fechner," with its earth-soul and its multi-verses, is 
 like reading the Eartlis in the Universe and the Heavenly 
 Arcana. 
 
 All this has been called the logic of irrationalism. It 
 should rather be called a reversion to a type of tran- 
 scendentalism. The "faith ventures" and "over- 
 beliefs " which James advocat<>d. were much like the 
 supersensible faculties and Over-Soul to which Emerson 
 
330 PRAGMATISM 
 
 appealed. In short, the philosophers of Concord and 
 of Cambridge both utilized the celestial. One said 
 " Hitch your wagon to a star "; the other — " Hitch 
 your star to a wagon," that is, accept, for the time be- 
 ing, any sort of a creed, provided it will furnish you 
 with motive power. 
 
 In this very emotional resemblance there nevertheless 
 lurks a deeper difference. With transcendentalism the 
 notion of truth is unconditional, it is a copy of a higher 
 reality. With pragmatism truth is not a copy but a 
 consistency; there is nothing in your mind to condition 
 it except certain racial inclinations. According to tran- 
 scendentalism, truth is received from on high. According 
 to pragmatism, truth happens to an idea; it becomes 
 true, is made true by events. In fine, pragmatism as 
 radical empiricism means simply truth as you go along. 
 
 This casual view of truth may be called the hall-mark 
 of pragmatism. It is that which differentiates it from 
 previous movements native and foreign. It is that which 
 puts it in the stream of present tendencies, the rapid 
 current of modernism, which washes away the banks of 
 tradition. As with " new " art, or " new " music, 
 pragmatism is a movement opposed to the dogmatic, the 
 absolute. As soon as a notion is fixed, a scheme sys- 
 tematized, it moves restlessly on. The spur of dissatis- 
 faction of Peirce leads on to the test of satisfaction of 
 Dewey, and this in turn to the fresh emotional responses 
 of James. To picture pragmatism is to picture a rapid 
 stream, eating away the fixed landmarks of custom and 
 convention. A radical upholder of pragmatism has gone 
 so far as to compare it to an evolutionary Niagara, whose 
 being is doing, whose end is action. 
 
 To judge of the movement by one's emotional response, 
 it gives one first a feeling of ease, of floating with that 
 
THE CRITICS OF PRAG^IATISM 331 
 
 current of modernism wliich is no longer confined by the 
 canons of art, or literature, or religion. It next gives one 
 a feeling of being lost, of being carried on in a waste of 
 waters, not only without bottom but without banks. This 
 is a mixed feeling and it leads to a mixed conclusion, 
 and that is that pragmatism is not a conclusive philos- 
 ophy, but only a transitional era in thought. Witli 
 Peirce it is a mere method ; with Dewey a useful tool ; 
 while with James it leads not to a system but a scheme, 
 which may contain such inconsistencies as a pluralistic 
 monism, and free-willist determinism, 
 
 6. The Critics of Pragmatism 
 
 "Whether pragmatism is merely a transitional era, a 
 transfonnation phase, a form of Protagoreanism wliich 
 presages another Plato — is hard for an American to 
 decide. The s\\nmmer in the flood is apt to lose his bear- 
 ings. This being the case, let us turn to fon-ign opinions 
 for a decision. We have the picture of pragmatism ; let 
 us hang it in the international gallerj' and obtain the ver- 
 dict of an impartial jury. From this juiy we must ex- 
 clude the English pragmatists, because they are too much 
 of a single philosophic family, although we should par- 
 ticularly like to accept the opinion of Schiller of Oxford 
 when he calls "William James " the last great emanci- 
 pator of the human spirit." 
 
 The Germans wo must exclude for the opposite rea- 
 son. They have been violent detractors of pragmatism, 
 possibly because they have for once been caught napping 
 in the speculative race. Even the urbane James cannot 
 stand their strictures, and accuses them of being misin- 
 terpreters of the movement. With the other Continental 
 critics it is different. It is the Latins who are especially 
 
332 PRAGMATISM 
 
 fitted to interpret our ways of thinking — ^the French for 
 their clarity of style and luminous vision, the Italians 
 for their penetrating practicality and social instincts. 
 We begin with the Gauls because they, in a sort of liter- 
 ary revenge for the material partition of their country, 
 have become adepts in the intellectual delimitation of 
 other realms. Many of these critical Cffisars are known 
 for their commentaries, but not all. We are familiar 
 with the conquerors and classifiers of the dark continent 
 of Kant, but not with those of the land of James. Here 
 is a new race, they exclaim; no one has understood it; 
 let us, therefore, undertake the task of setting in order 
 these transatlantic barbarians. When, says Marcel 
 Hebert, I first heard the word pragmatism, I fancied it 
 was a sort of American slang — a useful practical formula 
 to put truth at the service of men of affairs and men of 
 action, men not particular as to the point of view of logic 
 and criticism. But the interest with which their books 
 have been welcomed in Latin countries has undeceived 
 me. It appears that there are so many excellences and 
 also so many paradoxes in the system that it would be 
 useful to explain them in their broad outline. 
 
 In the same manner J. Bourdeau refers to pragmatism 
 as a system to be expected of Yankees, because it is a 
 philosophy of results, a philosophy of action, a philos- 
 ophy of profits. It is in harmony with the American 
 attitude towards science, which puts Edison and Morse 
 in the first rank, Ampere and Fresnel in the second. 
 Nevertheless, for all its insistence on the practical, it 
 has its good points. One may expect from a semi-bar- 
 barous race only a philosophy of engineers, merchants, 
 brokers; yet that philosophy is an excellent antidote to 
 an aristocratic intelleetualism, disdainful of conse- 
 quences. In France the prestige of ideas has been 
 
THE CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM 333 
 
 abused, the people have become soft, the classes over- 
 civilized. Hence the value of the pragmatist as an 
 apostle of energy, a philosopher who proves his ideas not 
 by dreaming them, but by acting them. In short, prag- 
 matism is a practical matter, obvious to men of affairs, 
 " business men," plutocrats by economic power and the 
 conquest of material comfort. Now, while there is to be 
 recognized in pragmatism the Anglo-Saxon instinct with 
 its skepticism of pure ideas and its disregard of general 
 notions, its love of empiricism and its aversion to com- 
 plexity of thought, yet there are in France men not 
 without affinities with James and Pcirce. Thus Bergson 
 attacks the so-called general truths of science, and traces 
 the hypothesis to a personal source. So, too, Maurice 
 Blondel advocates a method which would confront the 
 various systems of intellectualism, from Descartes to 
 Taine, from the point of view of practical consequences. 
 This attitude of gleaning the practical factors from 
 rationalistic systems is what Abel Roy designates as the 
 new tone in philosophy. It is not an eclectic positivism, 
 for positivism lays too much stress on pure science, and 
 tends to disregard the emotional and passional side of 
 life. Nor is it the French neo-criticism which piously 
 hands down the traditions of absolutism from Descartes 
 to Hegel. The latter group of thinkers is a mere sur\-ival 
 of the past; somewhat fossilized, it has not taken ac- 
 count of the anti-intellectual and mystical current, which 
 starts with Schelling and Schopenhauer in their re- 
 habilitation of the indeterminate, the unconscious, the 
 irrational. Hence it is that recourse should be had to 
 the aspirations of the heart, to the obscurer instincts of 
 humanity. True knowledge is, in fine, to be sought not 
 from positivistic science, not from proud intellectualism, 
 but in the intuitions of sentiment, in moral ideas, in re- 
 
334 PRAGMATISM 
 
 ligious beliefs. ... Of all these pragmatism is the 
 synthesis. 
 
 From the French critics thus far cited it is evident 
 that the western Goth is, after all, not so barbarous, but 
 well in the vanguard of progress. At the last Interna- 
 tional Congress of Philosophy Emile Boutroux showed 
 how, of the two dominant groups of thought, the prag- 
 matists have assumed the most advanced position. On 
 the one hand are the intelleetualists who, completely 
 satisfied with science, believe that there is little knowl- 
 edge outside its boundaries. On the other are the anti- 
 intellectualists, who, going beyond the present limits of 
 science, honor certain irrational powers of the human 
 soul, such as instinct, intuition, the sense of action. 
 Berthelot stands for the former group ; inheritor of the 
 doctrines of the eighteenth century, successor of the 
 Encyclopaedists, he makes a religion of science and be- 
 lieves that it is the sole irrefragable foundation for the 
 morality of races as well as of individuals. Up to 1890, 
 continues Andre Chaumeix, such a role was held by sci- 
 ence in philosophy, sociology, and morality. But in 
 1893 Emile Boutroux maintained against the mechanism 
 and materialism of the scientists the notions of liberty 
 and spirituality. Next, Ferdinand Brunetiere followed 
 with his attack on the fallacies of science, and showed 
 that phenomena are always in formation and that opin- 
 ions must be modified by new experiences. Finally, 
 Henri Poincare, criticising the values of the sciences, 
 showed that, in place of the fixity of general ideas, we 
 must hold to the relativity of hypotheses, that the sim- 
 plicity of nature is but a convenient convention, and 
 that scientific formulae are but approximate accommoda- 
 tions to reality. 
 
 Such are the Franco-American affiliations, the points 
 
THE CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM 335 
 
 of sympathy which have brought about a philosophic 
 entente cordiale between the two republics, and have led 
 to the visits to our shores of two such distinguished 
 thinkers as Emilc Boutroux, head of the Fondation 
 Thiers, and Henri Bergson, author of Creative Evolution. 
 These are the affiliations; naturally there are accompany- 
 ing differences. Briefly there are two, — one of them re- 
 specting learning, the other religion. The contempt for 
 culture strikes all the French observers as an earmark of 
 the Anglo-American movement. Bourdeau shows how 
 the hostility to rationalism makes a tabula rasa of all that 
 is not English or American. Descartes, Leibniz, and 
 Kant do not exist for the pragmatist ; with him, as with 
 Herbert Spencer and Lord Bacon, there is manifest a 
 positive disdain for past thought. Chaumeix has noticed 
 the same thing; Rey devotes a chapter to the pragmatic 
 disregard for the traditional solutions of the problems 
 of truth ; while Hebert neatly turns the tables by asking 
 if these contemners of the past have not, in fact, had 
 numerous predecessors. The latter 's search for sources 
 is perhaps carried to excess; he has made too many of 
 the historic figures pragmatists unconscious of their 
 pragmatism. But the historical comparison is the only 
 way to get the correct perspective, the relative point of 
 view so often forgotten by transitionalists. 
 
 The second point of difference concerns religion. In 
 this there are two opinions, one of recoil, the other of 
 ridicule. Hebert estimates American pragmatism from 
 the cautious Catholic point of view. In regard to the 
 theistic conception he agrees with James that, a.s an over- 
 belief, it is true because it is so useful ; but he reeoils from 
 the representation of the relation between man and the 
 higher spirits as that of dogs and cats towards their 
 masters. This sort of Pickwickian humor, which has 
 
336 PRAGMATISM 
 
 attracted other Gallic writers, does not appeal to one who 
 holds that the deity is an object of worship, not merely 
 because he is primus inter pares, but because he is the 
 possessor of infinite perfections. To this modern scholas- 
 tic, then, God is to be estimated not solely ex conse- 
 quentiis, but rather as an objective reality raised far 
 above the level of probability. In fine, since human na- 
 ture is capable of seeing for the sake of seeing, of 
 knowing for the sake of knowing, it is necessary, over 
 and above such an utilitarian pragmatism, to affirm the 
 excellence of pure disinterestedness. 
 
 In regard to mysticism it seems to Bourdeau a para- 
 dox that a Yankee philosophy should lead to such a result. 
 While the French critic refers this to a reaction against 
 scientific snobbism, tracing it through the pragmatic ap- 
 peal from the intellect to the emotions, in the case of 
 James an American might prefer to trace the latter 's 
 mystic leanings to a directly inherited interest in 
 Swedenborgianism. But, whatever the source, it is a 
 veritable paradox that Occidental thought is approxi- 
 mating Oriental. The American mind-cure has no his- 
 toric connections, as Bourdeau would hold, with the 
 spiritual exercises of Ignatius de Loyola. Except for 
 the Quakers, mystic manuals have had little vogue among 
 the cultivated classes in our land. Rather should this 
 so-called auto-imperialism, this revived Yoga system, be 
 traced to the Platonic element in New England Puritan- 
 ism, and more especially to Emerson's interest in the 
 sacred books of the East. It is, therefore, not untrue to 
 say that the most ingenious of the modern remedies 
 against the evils which assail us was discovered in 
 America in the mind-cure, the gospel of relaxation, the 
 " don't worry " movement. And an American, cog- 
 nizant of this degraded form of New England transcen- 
 
THE CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM 337 
 
 dentalism, this perversion of the Emersonian doctrines of 
 self-reliance and compensation, can agree with tiu' witty 
 Gaul when he compares the mind-cure to the grindiu«j 
 of the soul, like a hand-organ, for the sake of those opti- 
 mistic previsions: " Fata viam inveniant ; tout s'arraii- 
 gera, parbleu! parfait! bravo! " 
 
 In pointing out the deficiency of the current prag- 
 matism from the point of view of theology the French 
 criticism has reached its highest point. We may, there- 
 fore, turn to the Italian attitude towards this subject. 
 It is Alessandro Chiapelli who has most successfully ox- 
 posed the insufficiency of opportunism for the deeper 
 problems of thought and life. To him the recent 
 renaissance of philosophy in America and France lias 
 shown a veritable originality of the speculative spirit, a 
 new restlessness against the older forms of thought. The 
 very revolt against the great dogmatic systems has in- 
 cluded a revolt against science itself. Pragmatism is a 
 proof of this. Its very discontent with intellectualism 
 betokens a wider vision. In giving play to the emo- 
 tional and the passional, in empha.sizing the primacy of 
 will, it tends towards an idealism transcending mere 
 utilitarianism. 
 
 Chiapelli here brings to notice the latent idealism in 
 the American nature with which the primitive prag- 
 matist, the Yankee exponent of mere success, is bound to 
 reckon. The principle of Peirce, which resolves our 
 choice of speculative systems into a game of pitching 
 pennies, cannot hold indefinitely in a land which ha.s 
 k-nown Emerson and harbored Berkeley. The hitter's 
 subjective idealism Chiapelli considers to be revived in 
 James's humanism. Whether such idealism can be ren- 
 dered objective, and therefore serve as a check to the 
 radical pragmatic empiricism, is problematic. 
 
338 PRAGMATISM 
 
 Italian modernism as a partial reflection of the new 
 humanism furnishes a suggestive hint as to the theologic 
 fate of American pragmatism. The Italian clergy at 
 first eagerly grasped a doctrine which would rehabilitate 
 a waning faith. The first work in James's trilogy 
 gave to religious beliefs a new vogue. But the second 
 of these works burned the fingers of the orthodox. The 
 Fechnerian hierarchy of world-souls advocated in 
 A Pluralistic Universe could scarcely be understood, 
 much less accepted, outside of Swedenborgian and pos- 
 sibly Mormon circles! The Italian critic is, therefore, 
 right in presaging little success amongst us for this re- 
 vival of animism and polytheism. If he had known the 
 rigors of monotheism in America, he might justly have 
 called James a sort of Yankee Julian the Apostate. In 
 all this an essential weakness of pragmatism is implied. 
 As a cosmology it is an historic retrogression. As Chia- 
 pelli observes, the religious conscience has reached the 
 highest point of its evolution in monotheism. So while 
 a pluralistic conception may be just, as a natural protest 
 against a too abstract absolutism, yet ultimately that 
 pluralism is nothing but an empirical and provisional 
 view, an atomistic form like that of the cell in a monad- 
 ology. 
 
 How, then, can pragmatism and rationalism be recon- 
 ciled ? In the modern renaissance of spiritual values, in 
 the attempts to complete science, justify religion, and 
 ennoble life, there is, as Chiapelli declares, something 
 really solemn. In the rise of American pragmatism there 
 is, therefore, more than a grandiose manifestation of 
 energy brought out in a young civilization greedy of 
 imperialism. Eather is it a new philosophy of faith and 
 feeling necessary to establish the human equilibrium 
 after the negations of agnosticism and the limitations of 
 
THE CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM 339 
 
 criticism. For these words from a foreign observer an 
 American may be grateful. But is it possible to bring 
 about that suggested reconciliation between pragmatism 
 and rationalism? Hebert had expressed a pious wish 
 for that result, in his hope that the twentieth century 
 would see a closer union of positive science and specula- 
 tive philosophy. And while Chiapelli believes that the 
 contrast between the new radical empiricism of the 
 pragmatists and the rationalism of the idealists is not an 
 irreducible antinomy, yet he confesses that their approxi- 
 mation may be indefinitely prolonged. He aspires to a 
 cooperation between natural science and metaphysics, 
 but that is as far as he gets. The difficulties of the co- 
 operation are too great. These difficulties are brought 
 out by one of our compatriots, to whom we may return 
 as a final critic of the meaning of this movement. In 
 his article on the " Emancipation of Intelligence," 
 Wendell Bush holds that the idea that pragmatism was 
 an apology for theism has seriously interfered with the 
 profitable discussion of pragmatism itself. The aim of 
 pragmatism has been to show that much of the current 
 subject-matter in philosophy is thoroughly artificial. 
 This does not mean that guiding philosophy has ceased 
 to exist, but only that it has changed its name and fled 
 into other departments of our universities, where chairs 
 are not maintained for either saving the supernatural, 
 or threshing the husks of idealism. Under the present 
 pragmatic conditions, then, what a catalogue of problems 
 disappears! There is that whole list of animistic sur- 
 vivals—such as God, the soul, and the universe — con- 
 cerning which idealism has given certain a.ssurances. 
 But these are merely imaginary problems, bound to dis- 
 appear just as other imaginary problems have di.sap- 
 peared. The work of the pa.st generation is now bearing 
 
340 PRAGMATISM 
 
 fruit. Darwin's Origin of Species, Tyler's Primitive 
 Culture, Frazcr's Golden Bough have brought about a 
 condition of affairs similar to that at the beginnings of 
 modem philosophy. Pragmatism is indeed but a new 
 name for some old ways of thinking. . . , The thing has 
 happened before. Just as the orthodox metaphysicians 
 must have thought that Descartes ignored most of the 
 important problems, and just as the Cartesians had to 
 break away from the metaphysics of the Roman Catholic 
 institution, so we have to cut loose from the metaphysics 
 of Protestant speculation and from whatever is simply 
 incidental to it! 
 
CHAPTER X 
 NOTES ON THE NEW KEALISM 
 
 In going from the old to the new realism we leave 
 the slow, conservative caravan and forge ahead into the 
 twentieth century. It is a leap of nearly two generations 
 to catch up with this, the most modern of movements. 
 In this long interval much has taken place. In the eyes 
 of the present generation transcendentalism with its 
 gorgeous coloring has come and gone like autumnal 
 foliage. Absolute idealism with its cloud-capped pin- 
 nacles has likewise faded away. In their stead has arisen 
 prosaic pragmatism, the philosophy of practicality, the 
 creed of the man in the street, a working hypothesis 
 which makes truth to be that which succeeds. 
 
 It is out of this atmosphere of the actual that the 
 new plant had sprung; that will be plain later. Now, 
 we must turn back in order to effect a junction between 
 the two allied forces. It is safe to say that the new real- 
 ism is a movement purged of the faults of the old and in- 
 vigorated by the struggle with its rivals. Because of its 
 undisputed sway, the old grew dogmatic, then weak and 
 senile, but the new has been strengthened by a struggle 
 with powerful rivals. Between the old and the new 
 realism lay the tortuous road of various idealisms; by 
 traveling along this road and grappling with these giants 
 the youngest of the philosophies has gained its vigor. 
 
 The story of the rise of neo-realism is interesting. Its 
 prophet was Frederick Woodbridgo, who in his presiden- 
 tial address before the Western Philosophical Associa- 
 
 841 
 
342 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 tion suggested some of the lessons to be learned from the 
 historical method of handling the problem of meta- 
 physics. Such was the futility of the distinction be- 
 tween appearance and reality; the necessity of an inde- 
 pendent metaphysics; the need of a logic of definition. 
 . . . This was in 1903. Six years later, at the New Haven 
 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, six 
 of the younger members happened to find themselves in 
 agreement on certain points raised in the daily discus- 
 sion. Five of them represented the old colonial founda- 
 tions, from Harvard southward to Princeton. They 
 were familiar with the former traditions of the Atlantic 
 seaboard, but with these traditions they found they were 
 out of sympath3^ The abstract, the a priori, from Kant 
 to Lotze, had, been dinned into their ears until they 
 longed for a change in the tune. They decided to change 
 it for themselves. The first task was to get rid of the 
 everlasting epistemology, the constant resolving of all 
 problems into the problem of knowledge. How do I 
 know? What do I know? Do I really know? — such 
 questions had resulted in sterile quibbles, and yet all this 
 time the scientists, whether sociologists, psychologists, or 
 biologists, were digging up rich raw material with no- 
 body to turn it into the finished philosophical product. 
 
 The richness of reality, direct awareness of the world 
 — these are the prime marks of the new philosophy. In- 
 stead of thin abstraction, our eyes — if we will only look 
 — may see a thick crust of facts, constantly growing 
 thicker. Science, law, politics, religion — these are the 
 rivers which are bringing down the rich alluvial de- 
 posits. The absolutists, the high idealists, directed our 
 gaze to the mountain peaks; but those arid regions of 
 pure abstraction are to us, they say, not half so worth- 
 while as the lower levels of concrete reality. Here are 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 343 
 
 valleys of decision where problems must be solved, prob- \ 
 lems of actual life. Let us. tliorcfore, cut up this land, \ 
 pick out our patches, and cultivate our own gardens. 
 
 As is natural with any fresh movement, the new real- 
 ism declares itself against tradition. Like the ver>' tran- 
 scendentalism against which it is a protest, it starts with 
 a polemic. But the protest and the polemic are not 
 expressed in a tone of irritation. A marked excellence 
 of the school is its very knowledge of tlie schools. It 
 has now reached a class-consciousness and seeks to relate 
 itself to other forms of thought. The relation of the 
 new realism to Kant is best seen in its attitude towards 
 the philosophers after Kant. With them it abandons 
 the thing-in-itself. But there the agreement stops. Let 
 us put the matter in this way. There are certain castles 
 on the Rhine which the Hegelians built and from which 
 they looked down as overlords over the valley of reality. 
 With the legislative powers conferred by Kant some of 
 them went so far as to view consciousness as the source 
 not only of the a priori forms of relations, but of all 
 relations whatsoever. This overlordship was carried even 
 further. The little lords were swallowed up in a su- 
 preme lord. The result was that our various empirical 
 selves and the objects of their experience were all re- 
 garded as the manifestations or fragments of a single, 
 perfect, all-inclusive, and eternal self. 
 
 Idealistic absolutism ! The successors of the cautious 
 philosopher of Koenigsberg talk at times as if they had 
 come into possession of a Holy Roman Empire. But 
 the road which leads to Rome splits into two. From 
 absolutism there arises the dilemma of dualism, a new 
 dualism of the finite and a])solute. Eitjier the experi- 
 ence of the fragment embraces the cxperienc£L oL.the 
 "absolute or it does not. If the former, then the abso- 
 
344 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 lute becomes knowable only at the cost of losing its 
 absoluteness and being reduced to a mere " state " of 
 the alleged fragment. The existence of the absolute will 
 then be known by its own fragments and each frag- 
 mentary self will have to assume that its own experience 
 constitutes the entire universe. This is solipsism or 
 subjectivism. If the other horn of the dTlerama be 
 chosen and the independent reality of the absolute be 
 insisted upon, then it is at the cost of making the abso- 
 lute unknowable. This is agnosticism or phenomenalism. 
 
 The road has ended, but only in two blind alleys — 
 solipsism and agnosticism. And now enter upon this 
 troubled scene the new realists, offering ways of escape. 
 The escape from solipsism is to go back to that pri- 
 mordial common sense which believes in a world that 
 exists independently of the knowing of it. The escape 
 from agnosticism is to believe that that same independ- 
 ent world can be directly presented in consciousness and 
 not merely represented or copied by " ideas." 
 
 The impression gained from this general confession 
 of the realistic faith is one of healthy objectivism. The 
 younger realists look upon the world with no jaundiced 
 eye of solipsism. To them the world is no eject of 
 the subject, no piece of human imagery, but its texture is 
 made of other stuff than mere thought. It is this that 
 leads to a new proclamation of emancipation. The 
 emancipation of metaphysics from epistemology is neces- 
 sary because of the latter 's dogmatic claims. The a 
 priori philosopher who made metaphysics to be the sci- 
 ence of the possibility of knowledge has considered that 
 he alone can spy out the promised land. The truth of 
 the matter is that there are things not dreamt of in his 
 philosophy — all the startling discoveries and inventions 
 of the modern age from wireless telegraphy to X-ray 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 345 
 
 photography. Indeed there is no discipline that can lay 
 down for all time to eonic the main outlines of the world 
 as the possible object of scientific research. Even logical 
 propositions do not come into being or get created by 
 the student that first learns that they arc true. They 
 are discovered and not made, as truly as was the Ameri- 
 can continent discovered and not made by the explorers 
 of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Furthermore, 
 by its very claims to certainty episteinology has betrayed 
 its limitations. It has sought a kind of metaphysical 
 trust which maps out the territory and will brook no 
 rivals. 
 
 Now, under the new regime, continues Marvin, the 
 a priori must give way to the a posteriori, preconception 
 to conception, as the ultimate crucial test. Indeed it is 
 asserted that not only is the theory of knowledge sub- 
 sequent to logic, but it is subsequent also to some of the 
 special sciences, such as physics and biology. As to what 
 knowledge is possible man has never succeeded in getting 
 trustworthy information except empirically. In case 
 after case man has been able to discover what scholars 
 in another age pronounced unknowable. We have been 
 able to study the chemistry and temperature of the 
 stars, we can weigh the planets, we can tell w'ith com- 
 plete accuracy the area of curved figures whose sides 
 stretch out to infinity. The place, then, of the science 
 of knowledge among the other sciences is humble. It is 
 not the head of the hierarchy, inasmuch as it does not 
 give, but presupposes, the theory of knowledge. The 
 weakness of that discipline is that in claiming to be both 
 the beginning and the end of the various forms of knowl- 
 edge it works in a vicious circle. Instead of being funda- 
 mental it is in many cases superficial, being saturated 
 with the scientific prejudices of the day and generation 
 
346 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 of its author. Thus there is good reason to believe tliat 
 the great Kant himself could not escape the Newtonian 
 conception in drawing many of his conclusions. In 
 short, it is impossible for the a priori philosopher to jump 
 out of his environment and vain for him to write pro- 
 legomena to any future metaphysic. 
 
 The author here compares the old epistemology to a 
 " salted " mine in which the most valued ore has been 
 put not by nature, but by human hands. But such a 
 hardened " promoter " will continue to promote in- 
 tellectual distrust so long as he tries to tease out a 
 world hypothesis by dialectic rather than to devote him- 
 self to a modest, open-minded, and industrious study of 
 the cognitive facts. So the old-fashioned rationalist 
 must give way to the neo-realist, for no careful philoso- 
 pher would offer mankind to-day the amount of a priori 
 information Kant claimed to derive by means of his 
 transcendentalism. And yet we are learning much from 
 the sciences to-day regarding subjects that were once 
 merely presumptive knowledge — the nature of the 
 heavenly world, the nature of matter, the nature of life, 
 and the nature of mind. 
 
 We can put this in another way. Appeal to the prag- 
 matic test, the verdict of history, and ask to what dis- 
 coveries or doctrines of the past two hundred years is 
 our present-day metaphysics especially indebted, to 
 epistemology or to the progress of the natural sciences ? 
 We can go even further, take one of the oldest of the 
 metaphysical problems, the nature of matter. In the last 
 few years we seem to be learning more concerning the 
 make-up of matter than man succeeded in discovering 
 in the preceding two thousand years. Even such a hoary 
 conviction as that mass is an absolute constant is now 
 contradicted. What could be more startling than to be 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 347 
 
 told that electricity is an all but fundamental concept in 
 the new philosophy of nature? A thousand years of 
 transcendentalism or of any other theory as to what mat- 
 ter must be, in order to be a possible experience, could 
 not have revealed to us such truths. For these reasons 
 we claim that metaphysics should be emancipated from 
 epistemology, for the growth of science can again revo- 
 lutionize metaphysical sciences as it did in the days of 
 Galileo. 
 
 Marvin's emancipation of metaphysics from epistemol- 
 ogy is a negative or rather a privative aspect of the new 
 realist. A positive defense is offered in^erjy's theory 
 of independence. In emphasizing their emancipation the 
 new thinkers declare themselves freed from their previ- 
 ous condition of servitude to the old idealism. Moreover, 
 in making a declaration of independence they draw up 
 a bill of particulars against that despot, the Absolute. 
 No longer do they look to an all-knower, an universal 
 consciousness in order to learn what to do. They do 
 not even make an humble remonstrance, but boldly de- 
 clare that both the absolute consciousness and the indi- 
 vidual consciousness are unnecessary for the fact of exist- 
 ence. Things are independent of being known. "Whether 
 as a matter of fact they are known or unknown, the rela- 
 tion of awareness is merely accidental; it is not essential. 
 
 Spaulding next takes up analysis as the discovery in 
 a whole of elements or parts which exist independently 
 of the analysis and discovery. This is not the prag- 
 matic analysis which is simply an intellectual instru- 
 ment, a mode of adaptation, with an emphasis on the 
 humanistic interpretation and its tendency towards .sub- 
 jective idealism. Nor is it the analysis of the type of 
 Bergson, who arrives at the position that everything is 
 change, flux, evolution, with such an interpenetration 
 
348 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 of parts that there are no lines of separation, but only 
 one great viscous or mobile fluid, the whole being a con- 
 tinuous, flowing, trembling jelly. Such a view, with its 
 tendency toward monism, serves to make analysis iden- 
 tical with falsification, for such analysis would make 
 the finding, or inventing, or constructing of the parts to 
 be in contradiction of the whole. For Bergson anything 
 short of one all-inclusive, interpenetrated, evolving whole 
 is contradictory and so false and not real. The creative 
 evolutionist has proceeded on the view that analysis is 
 destructive, that to articulate the skeleton is to kill the 
 animal. But the neo-realist holds that such is not neces- 
 sarily the case, since the actual world of physical, chem- 
 ical, and physiological facts is discontinuous at certain 
 points. It may be that one kind of experience finds, in a 
 given situation, that the body, the time, and the posi- 
 tions, are fused and interpenetrated so as to form mie 
 whole. But this kinetoscopic view of reality which makes 
 every entity analyzed to be continuous, is not the only 
 view. There is the whole atomic world in which analysis 
 reveals many separate existential facts. Yet this division 
 into parts does not mean a wild discreteness. Certain 
 substances combine in more than one proportion, and 
 these proportions are rational. Furthermore, at the 
 present stage in the development of science, molecules, 
 atoms, electrons, and the relations between them, must 
 be accepted as existing in quite the same sense as do the 
 entities which they explain. 
 
 As Perry's theory of independence led to Spaulding's 
 defense and analysis, so the two combined fit into Mon- 
 tague's relational theory of consciousness, a theory 
 worked out several years prior to its appearance here. 
 Objects as independent need no consciousness for their 
 existence. Yet objects as analyzed disclose a network of 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 349 
 
 relationships between objects and the subject consider- 
 ing them. This suggests an hypothesis which avoids the 
 crudities of naive realism and escapes the difficulties 
 of subjective idealism. The fact of error is the crucial 
 test in all these theories. The old realism was weak 
 because it could not account for such vagaries a.s the 
 events of a dream. The common-sense theory held to 
 a world of objects and consciousness like a searchlight 
 playing upon those objects ; not creating them, but sim- 
 ply revealing them. But dreams demolished this theory, 
 for it could give no account of events outside of a world 
 of beings interacting in space and time. So the pen- 
 dulum swung to the other extreme of subjectivism ac- 
 cording to which the world in which we live is conceived 
 as a product, fashioned by consciousness from the raw 
 materials of its own states. The searchlight becomes 
 a projecting camera, consciousness being a creative 
 cause of that which it beholds or is pleased to 
 behold. 
 
 At this point arises the need of a corrective and sup- 
 plementary hypothesis. The old realism emphasized ob- 
 jective truths and suppressed subjective errors. The 
 old idealism found it hard to distinguish between truth 
 and error. The world of the romantic idealist, for all 
 his fine words, remains but a world of shadow pictures 
 on the screen of consciousness. The true and the false, 
 •what are they? To the neo-realist they are respectively 
 the real and the unreal considered as objects of a pos- 
 sible belief or judgment. There is, that is to say, the 
 same difference between what is real and what is true, 
 as between George Washington and President George 
 Washington. President George Wa.shington refers to 
 Washington in a certain relation to our government. 
 George Washington denotes precisely the same indi- 
 
350 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 vidua! without calling attention to the presidential rela- 
 tion. 
 
 This is the first example given in the relational theory 
 of consciousness. It does not concern itself with mere 
 objects or mere subjects, but with what are usually 
 called existential propositions. To it the real universe 
 consists of the space-time system of existents, together 
 with all that is presupposed by that system. Examples 
 of such relations and propositions are such as these: 
 Caesar lived before Napoleon; orange resembles yellow 
 more than green. All this may seem commonplace and 
 obvious. But a distinction is to be made, a distinction 
 which will clear up the confusion between truth and 
 falsity. Truth and falsity never attach to judgments 
 as acts, but to propositions as objects. There would be 
 no sense in calling an act of belief as such either true or 
 false. If we wished to know whether certain beliefs that 
 we held about the properties of triangles were true or 
 false, whom should we consult? The psychologist? 
 Certainly not. We should go to the mathematician. 
 But why ? The psychologist is supposed to be an expert 
 on mental processes, and if the adjectives true and false 
 were to apply to beliefs as mental processes, he would 
 be the one to settle our difficulties. We should go to the 
 mathematician, however, because our desire to know 
 whether our beliefs about triangles were true or false 
 could be satisfied only by one who knew about triangles. 
 So with all cases of doubt as to truth and falsity, we 
 go to the person who knows about the things believed 
 rather than to him who knows about the processes or 
 acts of believing. 
 
 In connection with the subject of error and as the 
 result of his varied psychological experiments, Edwin 
 Holt seeks to find the place of illusion in a realistic 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 351 
 
 world. Illusion, hallucination, and erroneous experience 
 in general, we are told, can have no place in a universe 
 where everything is non-mental or real ; and they cannot 
 be satisfactorily accounted for by a realistic philosophy. 
 This is the challenge throughout from tiie idealist to the 
 realist camp. It has to be met not by a general denial, 
 but by specific analysis. First come errors of space. 
 For example, the person squinting his eyes sees double, 
 that is, what is not there ; hence, reasons the idealist, the 
 illusory object is essentially mental and subjective. 
 Nothing of the sort, responds the realist, it is only a case 
 of mechanical manipulation of the eyes. The stereo- 
 scopic camera also sees double. So with the case of 
 errors of time. The idealists' hallowed illustration of 
 seeing some distant star some millions of years behind 
 time, or millions of years after it may bo said to exist, 
 does not make the image merely mental. The camera 
 does the same thing ; every image there lags in strikingly 
 the same way behind its real physical prototype. The 
 ease of seeing the known existing sun does not raise the 
 issue between reality and unreality, or between the 
 material and the mental, nor does the case of secondary 
 qualities. The colors of the landscape may change, yet 
 the chemical properties of the hill and wood that one 
 looks out upon, are practically invariable in their chemi- 
 cal properties. Luminous properties may change, but 
 this is due to the incident illumination which brings 
 the perpetual variety of light, shade, and hue. The 
 orthochromatic moving film will record this diurnal 
 flux in an entirely parallel way. In short, we may 
 overthrow the idealist's contention as to a remarkable 
 creative function inherent in mental processes, by 
 pointing out parallel phenomena in the material world. 
 The last of the chapters of the composite work on new 
 
352 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 realism is remarkable in disclosing a sort of civil war, 
 an internecine struggle between the scientists themselves. 
 The strongest influences against realism to-day, says Pit- 
 kin, emanate from the biological sciences. Only a few 
 years ago it was physics and mathematics which made 
 the natural world-view seem untenable ; and before them 
 it was logic and psychology. But from a new quarter 
 there rises a host of adversaries, declaring that the un- 
 answerable disproof of realism is found in simple life 
 processes. Driesch is the modem leader of this move- 
 ment in his systematic attempt to establish idealistic 
 vitalism on biological evidences. So, too, Bergson pro- 
 ceeds from psychology to biology. The immediate data 
 of consciousness afford a new basis for interpreting life 
 processes, for the latter reveal a cosmos not composed 
 of distinct characters, but a flux wherein everything in- 
 terpenetrates everything else. All distinctions are 
 products of a " vital force ' ' and serve only for organic 
 controls. Driesch concludes that the entire content of 
 experience is created by the ego, in the same manner as 
 Kant held; Bergson that there is an objective flux that 
 constitutes the environment of the vital force. 
 
 Against the vitalism of the German and the creative 
 evolution of the Frenchman, Pitkin holds that recon- 
 struction must begin. Both systems contain the old, dis- 
 credited categories of idealistic psychology. The former 
 reverts to the ancient Aristotelian entelechy, or internal 
 perfecting principle; the latter maintains that knowl- 
 edge can never give us the " real thing," inasmuch as 
 it gives us only a few of its selected characters. Hence 
 there is need of a formal analysis of the biological situa- 
 tion, an analysis free of the faults of hunting for an 
 unknown something behind the organism, or of making 
 the environment a hazy entity. Therefore naturally in- 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 353 
 
 specting animals and their circumstances of life we 
 find : — that they exist in a world larger than themselves ; 
 that this world sets for them certain difliculties; tiiat 
 some individuals overcome these difficulties; that those 
 which signally overcome the difficulties differ, in some 
 observable respects, from those which do not. 
 
 We have here the two familiar evolutionary factors — 
 organism and environment. Shall we call one sub- 
 jective, the other objective, and draw a line of division 
 between the two? The realist replies — No! The reac- 
 tion of the organism and the stimulus of a-nvironnn'iit 
 are simply two phases of one unitary process, as are the 
 two poles of a magnet. Just as the positive pole does not 
 take something from nor add something to the negative 
 pole, so the reaction does not consist in selecting some- 
 thing from the stimulus or adding to it. Each gets its 
 character from its relation to the other. Both the struc- 
 ture and function of an organ vary with some variations 
 in the external stimulus, but this variation should not be 
 called a qualitative transformation. There is merely a 
 change from behavior of one character to belinvinr of 
 another character. For instance, a dog is frequently 
 docile when at large and vicious only when tethered. 
 Would anybody say, though, that in turning the dog 
 loose we change his quality ? Hardly : for the new cir- 
 cumstances bring the dog into new relations ; and it is in 
 response to the latter that it now behaves differently. 
 Now, are these new relations real, in the objective sense, 
 or merely creations of the mind ? Are we to dig a colos- 
 sal chasm between phenomenal and noumenal, between 
 things as thought and things in themselves, to explain 
 such behavior? The task is unnecessary. When ani- 
 mals, including man, adjust themselves to their environ- 
 ments, it is because there are resistances and positions 
 
354 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 of which they must take account. Every living creature 
 finds itself in a world full of things distant from it and 
 from one another in space and in time. Some of these 
 things it seeks, others it shuns; and the precise rela- 
 tion of particular things to its body in space and in time 
 is a life-or-death matter. We conclude, therefore, that 
 geometrical, mathematical, and other relations are genu- 
 ine stimuli in the very sense that material complexes 
 are. They are not products of the cognitive reaction 
 but the producers of it. 
 
 Such is radical realism, a system hardly held before 
 save by Aristotle and the materialists. Pitkin con- 
 fesses that he is quite aware that in asserting planes, 
 angles, numbers, ratios, to be stimuli in precisely the 
 same sense that the ether waves are, he is exposing him- 
 self to ridicule. But suppose we take an alternative 
 hypothesis and, with nearly everybody except the new 
 realists, describe the mathematical-geometrical relations 
 as " intellectual abstractions," " constructs," " short- 
 hand expressions," what does that lead to? To the old 
 idealism which, starting with space and time as crea- 
 tions of the mind, subjective principles, led on to para- 
 doxes which can be solved only by pronouncing the whole 
 situation '* unreal." Of course there are certain ad- 
 vantages in this parallelistic hypothesis which puts a 
 phenomenal world alongside a noumenal. It avoids the 
 ego-centric predicament which holds that a tree may seem 
 to be unmodified by being perceived; but that is only 
 because I know not all that is happening to it. Con- 
 trariwise it accepts certain processes as not being con- 
 stituted by the cognitive process but as merely running 
 alongside that process. Take the adaptation of the flat- 
 fish to the sea bottom. We would be setting up a one-to- 
 one correspondence between the phenomenal and nou- 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 355 
 
 menal orders if we were to declare that each disccmihlc 
 pculiarity in tlie fish's adaptive reaction resulted from 
 some peculiarity in its noumenal environment. That is, 
 when the flatfish, having a certain hlue-gray checker 
 pattern on its back as a consequence of resting upon a 
 blue-gray checker sea bottom, shifts to a gray-l)rown sea 
 bottom of irregular design and there soon develops on 
 its back a gray-brown pattern of irregular design, the 
 difference between the former and the latter noumenal 
 situation is of the same type as that between the blue- 
 gray checker and the irregular gray-brown pattern of 
 the sea bottom. Nevertheless, the noumenal difference is 
 not a difference between colors and space forms, for 
 these are only phenomenal. Now, according to the 
 idealistic biologj', you may take any case of reaction 
 and describe it in this manner. "With Driesch you may 
 say that space is phenomenal, that is, a form of experi- 
 ence, and not a form of the physical world independent 
 of experience. With Bergson you may say that mathe- 
 matical-geometrical characters are static artifacts created 
 by the vital force. The scheme is plausible but it has 
 its difficulties. Chief of these is the identity of indis- 
 cemibles. If there be a one-to-one correspondence there 
 is no means of distinguishing the noumenal order from 
 the phenomenal. The old epistemology made two sys- 
 tems. The new biology of animal behavior cannot dis- 
 tinguish the two systems. On the contrary- it identifies 
 tlie pair, reduces it to a single system. In fine, the sup- 
 position that there is a system beyond that which we 
 perceive is gratuitous. There are no phenomena and 
 no noumena, but only things, events, conditions, cir- 
 cumstances — all in a universe which no mind has split 
 into two realms. 
 
 From this reduction of the old dualism there arises a 
 
356 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 sense of relief. The uncomfortable sense of a double- 
 dealing world is made to disappear. No longer have we 
 one leg on the noumenal and the other on the prenomenal, 
 but both are planted in reality. No longer is the knower 
 a twofold being, — in one aspect transcendental, in an- 
 other empirical. The advantage of this view to epis- 
 temology is patent. For example, in accepting the full 
 reality of space, it does away with the supposed para- 
 doxes of distance from Zeno to Bergson. It also does 
 aAvay with the difficulties of considering space as either 
 an idea or a mere form of apprehension. But besides 
 seeking the facts of geometry in the world order the 
 author might have gone further and applied his reason- 
 ings to ethics. There stands that irritating neo-Hegelian 
 doctrine of conduct. To say, as do Royce and Miinster- 
 berg, that we are bound in the sphere of the phenomenal, 
 but free in the noumenal, is to make us neither bond nor 
 free, but morally paralyzed because pulled in two direc- 
 tions at once. Now by doing away with these two worlds 
 the sense of freedom is restored and this is a second 
 advantage of the new realism. 
 
 A third advantage is the possibility of making modern 
 philosophy less anthropocentric. It appears that a 
 new Galileo is needed formally to analyze the broader 
 features of the world in which the individual organism 
 exists. Now, according to the new realism and in de- 
 cided contrast to the old realism, introspection is not 
 fundamental. Outward reality is far richer than inward 
 meditation. All that consciousness does is to pick out 
 one strand of the complex cosmic net. In a word, 
 thought is not creative but selective, and at times even 
 negative in its results. As Pitkin summarizes it, thought 
 is only one phase in the much more comprehensive or- 
 ganic process, and presumably bears pretty much the 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 357 
 
 same relation to this latter that the cross-sectional mo- 
 tions in some one plane of chcmism bear to the total 
 chemism. Suppose one might peer into a constellation 
 of corpuscles with a microscope of transcendent power. 
 One would there see, from any one given point of \'iew, 
 a vast tangle of motions, and yet discover nothing that 
 would betray the peculiar character of the chemism ; for 
 all the motions that were significant might occur in 
 planes parallel to the obscn'er's line of vision, and their 
 bearings might furthermore lie wholly beyond the micro- 
 scopic field. 
 
 A sense of relief, a feeling of freedom, an impression 
 of reserve, — these are three valuable qualities of the 
 new realism. With them go corresponding difficulties. 
 It is easy to demolish the high towers of the ambitious 
 idealist, in so far as they are projections of the pure in- 
 tellect. It is not so easy to bring that intellect do\N-n to 
 the level of mere experience. Cognition may not be 
 creative, yet is it only one of the bodily activities? Can 
 we reduce its activities to the same order as the extra- 
 cognitive conditions, such as blood temperature, conduc- 
 tion currents, colloids, and all the host of material fac- 
 tors which never figure discretely in the natural opera- 
 tions of cognizing the environment and reacting to 
 it ? In raising these questions the writer appears to favor 
 an affirmative answer. He goes further and says that 
 the organism in "mental activity" throws selected 
 objects upon the cognitive field no less physically tlian 
 it throws them upon the retinas. :Moreover, " attend- 
 ing " is defined as a stretching out toward something; 
 not a feeling nor a knowing nor a thinking, but a going 
 to meet or to find some environmental character. Indeed, 
 the author adds, it would conduce to clarity both in 
 biology and psychology, if attention were admitted to be 
 
358 NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 
 
 a general organic attitude and not a specialized func- 
 tion like cognizing. We might then speak of the 
 phagocytes as attending to bacteria without our falling 
 into grotesque panpsychism or idealism. 
 
 Pitkin further supposes that what a man does is not 
 determined primarily by something which philosophers 
 call vital force, psychoid, or ego, but that behaviors and 
 attitudes may be assumed by the blood, or by some group 
 of cortical cells. Now, if the realistic biologist has 
 escaped idealism by this supposition, has he not fallen 
 into materialism? He admits his wish to escape the 
 suspicion of subjectivism, but has he not committed the 
 equal crime of rank objectivism — reduced the psychic to 
 the merely physical? The question is hypothetical and 
 so is the answer. If we agree to define the physical 
 world as the spatio-temporal system exclusively, then 
 consciousness is not physical, for the projection field, or 
 the field of consciousness, is, in the strict logical sense 
 of the adjective, transverse to the objects projected upon 
 it. But though consciousness be not physical this does 
 not imply that the objects of consciousness are not physi- 
 cal. Nor does it even implj' that cognitive relations are 
 not relations between physical things. 
 
 This conclusion seems commonplace, a return to the 
 old-fashioned realism where common sense saw in the 
 world merely minds and bodies and the relations between 
 those bodies. And yet this is not a complete statement 
 of the content of the new realism. Since the day of 
 Reid and Beattie there has been an immense enrichment 
 of the world both on the subjective and objective sides. 
 Consciousness, contends the biologist, as soon as it is in- 
 vestigated, appears as a feature of a *' big situation." 
 This situation involves not only feeling and thinking, but 
 also the organism, — blood and sinew and nerves and 
 
NOTES ON THE NEW REALISM 359 
 
 impulses and appetites, — and finally physical things, — 
 electricity, light, matter. This is the final word of the 
 last of the new realists. It is indeed a " big situation," 
 containing a host of entities which are, at present, 
 projectively indiscernible, because we do not possess all 
 the possible angles of vision. How many such projective 
 constants there are nobody knows, but geometry, physics, 
 and psychology bring forward facts indicating that the 
 variety of types is exceedingly great. 
 
 We leave the new realism in this its hopeful state. Its 
 motto might be this: New worlds for old. In place of 
 a disheartening idealism, which makes things in them- 
 selves andiscoverable, unless by the aid of an Absolute, 
 it puts a world of actuality. In place of those specu- 
 lative mountain peaks covered with the fogs of the 
 phenomenal it points to valleys of decision whose soil 
 is deep and whose crops are rich. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRArHY 
 
 (Chief authorities are starred) 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Becelaere, J, L. Van. La Philosophic en AmCriquc, dcpnis 
 les origines jusqu'd nos jours. 1904. 
 
 Curtis, M. M. In the Western Reserve University Bulletin. 
 1896. 
 
 Jones, Adam L. Early American Philosophers. 1898. 
 
 Riley, Woodbridge. American Philosophy: The Early 
 Schools. 1907. 
 
 Santatana, George, Winds of Doctrine. 1913. 
 
 Tyler, M. C. A History of American Literature. 1878. 
 
 Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. 1905. 
 
 I. PURITANISM 
 
 1. Philosophy and Politics 
 
 Borgeaud, Charles. The Rise of Modern Democracy. 1S94. 
 Friedenwald, H. The Declaration of Independence. 1904. 
 * Merrlam, C. E. American Political Theories. 1903. 
 WiLLOUGHBY, W. W. The Nature of the State. 1896. 
 
 2. The New England Fathers 
 
 Ellis, G. E. The Puritan Age. 1888. 
 Foster, F. H. A Genetic History of the New England 
 Theology. 1907. 
 Uhden, F. II. The New Englmd Theocracy. IS^S. 
 Walker, Williston. Ten New England Leaders. 1901. 
 
 m 
 
362 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 3. The Revolt Against Puritanism 
 
 * Allen, Ethan. Reason the only Oracle of Man, or A 
 Compenduous System of Natural Religion. 1784. 
 
 II. EARLY IDEALISM 
 1. Samuel Johnson 
 
 Beardsley, E. E. Life and Correspondence of Rev. Samuel 
 Johnson, D.D. 1874. 
 
 Colden, Cadwallader. The Principles of Action in 
 Matter. 1751. 
 
 * Johnson, Samuel. Elementa Philosophica. 1753. 
 Porter, Noah. Bishop Berkeley. 1885. 
 
 2. Jonathan Edwards 
 Allen, Alexander V. G. Jonathan Edwards. 1890. 
 
 * Gardiner, H. N. Jonathan Edwards: a Retrospect. 1901. 
 
 3. Mysticism. From Quakerism to Christian Science 
 Friends' Library. (Ed. Evans.) 1837-1850. 
 Penn, William. No Cross, No Crown. 1668. 
 
 * Riley, Woodbridge. The Personal Sources of Christian 
 Science. Psychological Review. 1903. 
 
 Woolman, John. Journal. {Ed. Whittier.) 1871. 
 
 IIL DEISM 
 
 1. The English Influences 
 
 Cobb, S. H. Pioneers of Religious Liberty in America. 
 1903. 
 
 ScHERGER, G. L. The Evolution of Modern Liberty. 1904. 
 
 2. The Colonial Colleges 
 
 * Chauncy, Charles. Benevolence of the Deity. 1784. 
 Dexter, F. B. The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles. 1901. 
 Mather, Cotton. Essay for the Recording of Illustrious 
 
 Providences. 1684. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 363 
 
 * Mather, Cotton. Reasonable Religion. 1713. 
 
 * Mather, Cotton. The Christian Philosopher. 1721. 
 
 3. Phh^delphia and Franklin 
 
 Ford, P. L. Franklin Bibliography. 1889. 
 •Franklin, Benjamin. Works. {Eds. Bigelow, Ford, 
 Smyth.) 
 
 4. Virginia and Jefferson 
 
 Foley, J. P. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia. 1900. 
 
 * Jefferson^ Thomas. Works. {Eds. Ford, Lipscomb, 
 Bergh.) 
 
 Tompkins, H. B. Bibliotheca Jeffersoniana. 1887. 
 
 5. Thomas Paine 
 •Paine, Thomas. Works. {Ed. Conway.) 
 
 TV. MATERIALISM 
 1. The French Influences 
 
 BOUTMT, Emile. Elements d'une Psychologic politique du 
 Peuple americain. 1902. 
 
 Dabney, Robert L. The Sensualistic Philosophy of the 
 Nineteenth Century. 1875. 
 
 Tocqueville, Axexis de. Democracy in America. 1898. 
 
 2. Joseph Priestley 
 
 Brougham, Henry. Lives of Men of Letters and Science. 
 1845. 
 
 Martineau, James. Miscellanies. 1852. 
 
 3. Benjamin Rush 
 
 * Rush, Benjamin. Diseases of the Mind. 1812. 
 
 4. The Minor Materialists 
 
 * Buchanan, Joseph. Philosophy of Human Nature. 1812. 
 
364 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 V. REALISM 
 1. The Scottish Influences 
 
 * McCoSH, James. The Scottish Philosophy. 1874. 
 
 2. The Princeton School 
 
 * Miller, Samuel. Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. 
 1803. 
 
 WiTHERSPOON, John. Lectures on Moral Philosophy. 1810. 
 (American Philosophical Association reprint.) 
 
 3. The Lesser Realists 
 
 * Beasley, Frederick. A Search of Truth in the Science 
 of the Human Mind. 1822. 
 
 McCoSH, James. Realistic Philosophy. 1887. 
 
 VI. TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 1. The New England Movement 
 
 Frothingham, 0. B. Transcendentalism in New England. 
 1903. 
 
 * GoDDARD, H. C. Studies in New England Transcendental- 
 ism. 1908. 
 
 2, Emerson 
 
 * Emerson, R. W. Works. {Riverside Ed.) 
 
 Sanborn, Frank B., and Harris, W. T. The Genius and 
 Character of Emerson. 1885. 
 
 VII. EVOLUTIONISM 
 1. The Forerunners of Evolutionism 
 
 Hitchcock, Edward. The Religion of Geology. 1851. 
 
 * Smith, Samuel Stanhope. Essay on the Causes of the 
 Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. 
 1810. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAl'IlY 305 
 
 2. The Antagonism of Agassiz 
 
 * Agassiz, Louis. An Essay on Classification. 1S57. 
 Agassiz, Mks. E. C. Louis Agassi::, His Life and Corre- 
 spondence. 1SS5. 
 
 Le Conte, Joseph. Evolution, Its Evidences and Its Rela- 
 tion to Religious Thought. 1S91. 
 
 3. The Reception of Darvstinism 
 
 Cope, E. D. The Origin of the Fittest. 1887. 
 Dana, James Dwight. Manual of Geology. 1891. 
 GHiMAN, D. C. Life of James Dwight Dana. 1899. 
 
 * Gray, As.a. Darwininana. 1878. 
 
 McCoSH, James. The Development Hypothesis : Is It Suf- 
 ficent? 1876. 
 
 McCoSH, James. Development; What It Can Do and 
 What It Cannot Do. 1883. 
 
 * McCoSH, James. The Religious Aspect of Evolution. 
 1890. 
 
 Rankin, IL W. The Philosophy of Charles Woodruff 
 Shields. 1905. 
 
 * Shields, Charles W. Philosophia Ultima. 1905. 
 
 4. John Fiske 
 
 Fiske, John. Darwinism, and Other Essays. 1885. 
 
 * Fiske, John. Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy. 1902. 
 
 5. J. Mark Baldwin 
 Baldwin, James Mark. Mental Development in the Child 
 and the Race. 1895. 
 
 * Baldwin, James Mark. Development and Evolution. 
 
 1902. 
 Baldwin, James Mark. Fragments in Philosophy and 
 
 Science. 1902. 
 
 •Baldwin, James Hark. Daruin and the Humanities. 
 
 1909. 
 
366 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 VIII. MODERN IDEALISM 
 1. The German Influences 
 
 * MuRDOCK, James. Sketches of Modern Philosophy, Es- 
 pecially Among the Germans. 1842. 
 
 2. William T. Harris 
 Harris, W. T. Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 1867- 
 1893. 
 
 * Harris, W. T. Introduction to the Study of Philosophy. 
 1889. 
 
 Harris, W. T. Exposition of Hegel's Logic. 1895. 
 
 * Snider, Denton J. A Writer of Books. 1910. 
 
 3. JosiAH Royce 
 
 * Royce, Josiah. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 1892. 
 Royce, Josiah. The World and the Individual. 1901. 
 
 The Problem of Christianity. 1913. 
 
 4. George Trumbull Ladd 
 Ladd, George T. A Theory of Reality. 1899. 
 
 * Ladd, George T. Knowledge, Life and Reality. 1909. 
 
 IX. PRAGMATISM 
 1. The Philosophy of Practicality 
 Bawden, H. H. The Principles of Pragmatism. 
 
 * Pratt, J. B. What is Pragmatism? 1909. 
 Schiller, F. C. S. Studies in Humanism. 1907. 
 
 2. Charles Peirce 
 
 * Peirce, Charles. Illustrations of the Logic of Science. 
 {Popular Science Monthly, 1878.) 
 
 3. John Dewey 
 Dewey, John. School and Society. 1899. 
 
 * Dewey, John. Studies in Logical Theory. 1903. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 367 
 
 * Dewey, John. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy. 
 1910. 
 
 4. William James 
 
 * James, William. Pragmatism. 1907. 
 James, William. A Pluralistic Universe. 1909. 
 JameS; William. The Meaning of Truth. 1910. 
 
 5. The Sources of Pragmatism 
 
 See articles in the Journal of Philosophy, Monist, Philo- 
 sophical Review by 
 FuLLERTON, George. 
 Hume, J. G. 
 LovEJOY, Arthur 0. 
 Miller, Dickinson S. 
 Montague, W. P. 
 Riley, Woodbridge. 
 woodbridge, f. j. e. 
 
 6. The Critics of Pragmatism 
 
 Aliotta, a. II pragmatismo anglo-americano. 1909. 
 
 * Bourdeau, J. Pragmatisms et Modernisme. 1909. 
 Flournoy, H. La Philosophic de William James. 1911, 
 
 * Hebert, Marcel. La Pragm-atisme. 1909. 
 Jacoby, Guenther. Der Pragmatismus. 1907. 
 
 Riley, Woodbridge. Continental Critics of Pragmatism. 
 [Journal of Philosophy, 1911.) 
 ROYCE, JosiAH. William James and Other Essays. 1911. 
 SCHINZ, A. Anti-Pragmatisme. 1909. 
 
 X. THE NEW REALISM 
 
 The New Realism. Cooperative Studies in Philosophy. 
 1912. (See also current philosophical journals.) 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams. John, 76, 82, 83, 84, 
 
 92, 126 
 Agassiz, Louis, 181, 184-191, 
 
 192, 193, 197, 202, 211, 212, 
 
 365 
 Agassiz, Airs. E. C, 365 
 Alcott, Bronson, 44, 48, 145, 
 
 249, 251 
 Alembert, d'. 80 
 Aliotta, A.. 307 
 Allen, A. V. G.. 3G2 
 Allen, Ethan, 12-17, 87, 90, 3G2 
 Ames, 65 
 Amp&re, 332 
 Aristotle, 59, 173, 246, 266, 
 
 306, 352, 354 
 Armstrong, 238 
 Athanasius, G7 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 166, 174, 322, 327, 
 
 335 
 Baldwin, J. Mark, 211, 216- 
 
 228, 305 
 Bancroft, George. 159 
 Barclay, Robert, 41 
 Bawden, H. H., 306 
 Bearsdley, E. E.. 302 
 Beasley, Frederick, 112, 135, 
 
 364 
 Beattie, 121, 358 
 Becelaere, J. E. van, 301 
 B^court, 99 
 
 Beissel, Conrad. 40, 41, 230 
 Bellamy, 64, 131 
 Bergson, Henri, 216, 333, 335, 
 
 348, 352. 354. 355 
 Berkeley, George, 19-22, 25, 27, 
 
 28, 63, 66, 113, 120, 121, 123, 
 
 124, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 
 
 136. 160, 165, 168, 169, 337 
 Berthelot. 334 
 Blackmore, 70 
 Blondel, Maurice, 333 
 
 Blount, 12, 102 
 Boehme, Jacob, 42 
 Boone, Daniel, 240, 283 
 l?orgeaud, Charles, 361 
 Bourdeau.^332, 335. 336, 367 
 Boutmy, Em lie. 303 
 Boutroux, Eniile, 334, 335 
 Bowen, Francis, 238 
 Boyle, 68 
 
 Bradford. Ebenezer, 130 
 Brissot. 110 
 Brockmeycr 240-243 
 Brougham, Henry, 363 
 Broussais. 102 
 Brown. Thomas, 119 
 Bruneti^re, Ferdinand, 334 
 Bruno, Giordano 107 
 Buchanan, Joseph, 123, 363 
 Buffon, 98 
 Bunvan, John, 312 
 Bush, Wendell T., 339 
 
 Cabanis, 80, 98 
 
 Caldwell, Charles, 93 
 
 Calhoun. John C, 182 
 
 Calvin, 4, 11 
 
 Cambrav, Archbishop, 70 
 
 Carlyle,' Thomas. 120. 159, 170 
 
 Channing. Edward, 37 
 
 Chastellux. 98 
 
 Chaumoix. Anilr<5, 334. 335 
 
 Chauncv. Charles, 57, 58, 166, 
 
 175, 302 
 Chiapelli, Alessandro, 337-339 
 Chubb. 88 
 
 Clap. Thomas. 62. 64 
 Clarke. Samuel. 63, 163 
 Cobb. S. IL. 302 
 Colden. Cadwullador, 20, 73, 
 
 122. 302 
 Coleridge. 144. 160. Ifil. 164. 
 
 100, 109. 170, ISO, 230, 237 
 Collier, 101 
 
 869 
 
370 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Collins, 88 
 
 Collins, Lansing, 129 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 172, 246, 325, 
 
 326, 328, 329 
 Condillac, 98 
 Condorcet, 70, 98 
 Cooper, Thomas, 94, 102-104, 
 
 122, 123 
 Cope, Edward, 208-211, 216, 365 
 Copernicus, 234 
 Cousin, 237, 242, 243, 246 
 Crashaw, 167 
 Cr6vec(Eur, 98 
 Cudworth, 47, 113, 161, 163, 
 
 167 
 Curtis, G. T., 207 
 Curtis, M. M., 361 
 Cuvier, 184, 189, 202 
 
 Dabney, R. L., 363 
 
 Dana, James, 93 
 
 Dana, James Dwight, 191, 196- 
 201, 204, 215, 365 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 77, 183, 185, 
 187, 188-190, 192, 194, 196, 
 198, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205, 
 207-211, 214, 215, 218, 220, 
 224-228, 304, 305, 307, 322, 
 340 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 77, 96, 113, 
 124 
 
 Dawson, 207 
 
 Descartes, 19, 66, 102, 274, 
 333, 335 
 
 Dewey, John, 280, 282-284, 
 288, 289-308, 318, 321, 323, 
 324, 330, 331, 366, 367 
 
 Dexter, F. B., 362 
 
 Dick, 92 
 
 Diderot, 80 
 
 Dobson, Thomas, 176 
 
 Donne, 167 
 
 Driesch, 352 
 
 Du Pont de Nemours, 98 
 
 Durant, 116 
 
 Dwight, Timothy, 17, 90, 91, 
 99, 122 
 
 Eddy, Mary Baker, 44, 47, 48, 
 49 
 
 Edison, 332 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 7, 8, 28-35, 
 37, 40, 47, 113, 116, 130, 
 173, 252, 257 
 
 Ellis, G. E., 361 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 6, 18, 43, 
 46-49, 58, 61, 62, 95, 102, 
 117, 140-154, 154-171, 173, 
 175, 230, 237, 249, 251, 252, 
 276, 300, 304, 329, 336, 337, 
 364 
 
 Epicurus, 59, 61, 97, 98 
 
 Everett, Edward, 159, 162 
 
 Faraday, 167 
 
 Faust, 245 
 
 Fechner, 329, 338 
 
 F^nelon, 41 
 
 Fichte, 159, 163, 229, 231, 237, 
 
 239, 247, 254, 328 
 Fiske, John, 211-216, 365 
 Flournoy, H., 367 
 Foley, J. P., 363 
 Ford, P. L., 363 
 Foster, F. H., 361 
 Francke, Kuno, 230 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 12, 26, 
 
 42, 47, 52, 55, 66, 68-77, 80, 
 
 87, 94, 97, 101, 114, 115, 176, 
 
 208, 252, 363 
 Freneau, 91 
 Fresnel, 332 
 Friedenwald, H., 361 
 Frothingham, O. B., 48, 238, 
 
 364 
 Fuller, Margaret, 50 
 Fullerton, George, 367 
 
 Galileo, 345 
 
 Gardiner, H. N., 362 
 
 Genet, 91 
 
 Gilman, D. C, 365 
 
 Goadard, H. C, 364 
 
 Goethe, 159, 170, 202, 211, 229, 
 
 234 
 Gray, Asa, 170, 183, 188, 189, 
 
 191-194, 196, 200, 215, 305, 
 
 307, 365 
 Green, Ashbel, 125, 127 
 Grimes, 116 
 
INDEX 
 
 371 
 
 Grimm, 80 
 
 Guyot, Arnold, 173, 202, 204 
 
 Haldeman, 182 
 
 Hamilton. Sir William, 118, 
 
 119, 121, 246 
 Harris, W. T., 240-253, 364, 366 
 Hartley, 112, 124 
 Hartmann. von, 247 
 Hubert, Marcel, 332, 335, 339, 
 
 367 
 Hecker, 230 
 
 Hegel, 159, 237, 239, 241-248, 
 263. 323, 324, 328, 333, 343 
 Helv4tius, 80, 97 
 Henry, 196 
 Henry, Joseph, 135 
 Henry, Patrick, 86 
 Heracleitus, 136, 304, 321 
 Herbert, George, 160, 165, 167, 
 
 168 
 Herbert, Lord, 69 
 Herschel, 167 
 Hicks, Elias, 39 
 Hitchcock, 173, 177, 178, 364 
 Hobbes, 90, 112, 113, 114, 120, 
 
 156 
 Holbach, d', 80 
 Holyoke, Edward, 59 
 Homer, 159 
 Houston, George, 88 
 Hudson, 117 
 
 Hume, 61, 63, 90, 118, 120, 
 123, 124, 130, 156, 163, 302, 
 322, 327 
 Hume, J. G., 367 
 Hunter, 167 
 Hutcheson, 78 
 Hutchinson, Anne, 37 
 Huxley, 200 
 Hyatt, 210 
 
 Jacobi. Guenther, 367 
 
 James, Henry, Sr., 329 
 
 James, William, 33, 50. 117, 
 
 161 247, 253, 258, 270, 271, 
 
 280-283. 288. 296. 299, 301. 
 
 303, 320, 322-333, 336-338, 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas. 11, 47, 66. 
 77-85, 87, 97-102, 116, 122, 
 363 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 19-28, 66, 68, 
 
 130, 277. 362 
 Jones, A. L., 361 
 
 Kames, Lord, 78 
 
 Kant, 93, 123, 137, 156. 159, 
 161-163, 170, 229, 231-238, 
 243 247, 253. 323, 327, 332, 
 335! 342, 343, 345, 352 
 
 Knott, 182 
 
 Knox, John, 120 
 
 Koerner, 230 
 
 Krauth, 239 
 
 Ladd, G. T., 253, 265-278, 368 
 
 Lafayette, 98, 99 
 
 Lamarck. 104, 107, 179. 191, 
 
 193, 199, 211, 217, 218 
 Lange, 232, 233 
 Laplace, 167 
 Lavoisier, 98 
 
 Le Conte, Joseph, 191, 365 
 Lee, Anne. 44 
 
 Leibniz, 166, 171, 183, 290, 335 
 Leidy, Joseph, 109, 182 
 Lewis, Taylor, 173 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 89 
 Linnseus, 176 
 
 Livingstone, William, 4, 66 
 Locke, John. 5, M, 124. 133, 
 
 156, 163, 169, 235, 322 
 Lotze, 342 
 
 Lovejoy, Arthur, 161, 367 
 Loyala, Ignatius de, 336 
 Lyell, 167 
 
 Macaulay, 309 
 
 McCosh. James, 118, 123, 201- 
 
 207, 237, 304, 365 
 McGiffert, Arthur, 323 
 Madison, 86 
 Maeterlinck, 50 
 Marbois. de, 76 
 Marsh, 170, 200 
 Martineau, Harriet. 94 
 Martineau. James, 363 
 Marvin, 345 
 Mather. Cotton, 8. 11. 55, 57, 
 
 62, 150, 166, 173, 175, 362, 
 
 363 
 Mather, Increase, 37 
 
372 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meade, Bishop, 93 
 
 Merriam, C. E., 361 
 
 Mesmer, 48, 52, 114-116 
 
 Micholet, 247 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 246, 322 
 
 Miller, Dickinson, 327, 367 
 
 Miller, Hugh, 177 
 
 Miller, Samuel, 118, 133, 134, 
 
 221, 222, 364 
 Milton, 73 
 
 Montague, W. P., 348, 367 
 More, 47, 161 
 Morgan, 88 
 Morse, 332 
 
 Morton, Samuel, 180-182, 197 
 Miinsterberg, Hugo, 356 
 Murdock, James, 170, 230, 235, 
 
 366 
 
 Napoleon, 205 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 14, 65, 66, 
 
 99, 167, 224 
 Nietzsche, 328 
 Nisbet, Charles, 136 
 Norris, Charles, 47, 113, 161 
 Norton, Andrews, 237 
 Novalis, 254 
 
 Odell, Jonathan, 126 
 Oken, 185, 186 
 Ormond, Alexander, 205 
 Owen, 167 
 
 Packard, 210 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 4, 55, 66, 74, 
 
 76, 84, 86-95, 363 
 Paley, 195 
 Palmer, Elihu, 89 
 Papini, 320 
 Parmenides, 240 
 Pascal, 29 
 Peirce, Charles, 247, 253, 280- 
 
 284, 288, 289, 298, 307, 317, 
 
 330, 331, 333, 337, 366 
 Penn, William, 38, 40, 42, 212, 
 
 362 
 Periam, Joseph, 130-132 
 Perry, R. B., 345 
 Pitkin, 352, 354, 368 
 Plato, 59, 73, 113, 146, 155, 
 
 161-164, 166, 169, 183, 202, 
 
 212, 250, 264, 304, 317, 318, 
 
 331, 336 
 Plutarch, 163 
 
 Poincar§, Henri, 268, 326, 334 
 Pope, Alexander, 11 
 Porter, Noah, 239, 362 
 Poyen, Charles, 115 
 Pratt, J. B., 366 
 Prichard, 181 
 Priestley, Joseph, 73, 78, 97, 
 
 98, 100-108, 113, 122, 123 
 Protagoras, 304, 321, 331 
 Prout, 92 
 
 Quarles, 160 
 Quesnay, 98 
 Quimby, 44, 48 
 
 Rankin, H. W., 365 
 
 Ranch, 234 
 
 Ray, 70 
 
 Reid, Thomas, 118, 119, 121, 
 
 127, 129, 137, 169, 358 
 Renan, 248, 326 
 Rey, Abel, 325, 333, 335 
 Riley, Woodbridge, 361, 362, 
 
 367 
 Ripley, Ezra, 93, 237 
 Rochefoucauld, 98 
 Romaine, 64 
 Royce, Josiah, 211, 247, 253- 
 
 265, 270, 276, 277, 304, 356, 
 
 366, 367 
 Rush, Benjamin, 82, 104-117, 
 
 122, 127, 135, 363 
 
 Sacheverel, 5 
 Sanborn, F. B., 364 
 Santayana, George, 361 
 Schelling, 159, 171, 185, 186, 
 
 231, 237, 239, 246, 259, 333 
 Scherger, G. L., 362 
 Schiller, 229 
 
 Schiller, F. C. S., 321, 331, 366 
 Schinz, A., 367 
 Schmucker, 234 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 63 
 Shields, Charles W., 206-207, 
 
 365 
 Smith, Samuel Stanhope, 130- 
 
 133, 178, 180, 364 
 
INDEX 
 
 373 
 
 Smith, William, 26, 77 
 
 Snider, D. J., 240, 243. 305 
 
 Socrates, 73, 140, 24S 
 
 Solon, 70 
 
 Sophocles, 70 
 
 Sparks, Jared, 12, 17 
 
 Spinoza, 02. 140 
 
 Sterrett, J. M.. 245 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 92, 119, 121 
 
 St. Hilaire, 202 
 
 Stiles, Ezra, 62-65, 73, 120, 
 
 129 
 Swedenborg, 100, 329, 330, 338 
 
 Taine, 326, 333 
 
 Taylor, Thomas, 166 
 
 Tonncman, 170 
 
 Thoroau, 149, 240 
 
 Ticknor, George, 159, 102, 231 
 
 Tindal, 88 
 
 Tocqueville, 98, 363 
 
 Tompkins, II. B., 303 
 
 Turgot, 98 
 
 Tjier, M. C, 301 
 
 Uhden, F. 11.. 301 
 Upham, 43 
 
 Valdes, Juan do, 41 
 Vandyke, Joseph, 207 
 Vaughan, 106, 167 
 Vico, 190 
 
 N'olnev, 89, 98 
 
 Voltaire, 70, 77, 89-91, 119 
 
 Walker, Williston. 301 
 Washington, 17, 125 
 Watts. 77 
 Webster, Noah. 90 
 Wells. W. C, ISO, 182 
 Wendell. Barrett. 301 
 Whitotield, 04 
 Whitman. Walt. 318 
 Wliittier, J. CJ.. 42 
 Willard, Samuel, 10 
 Williams, Roger, 37 
 Willoughby, W. W., 361 
 Witherspoon, John, 125-133, 
 
 304 
 Woltr. 159 
 \Nollaston, 69, 73 
 Woodbridge, Frederick, 341, 
 
 307 
 Woodrow, 207 
 
 Woolman, John. 38, 40, 42, 302 
 Woolston, 88 
 Wordsworth. 144. 104 
 Wright, Fanny, 88 
 
 Xenophanes, 107 
 
 Zeno. 356 
 Zinzendorf, 43 
 Zoroaster, 140 
 
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