This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http : //books . google . com/
I
2044 010 406 098
-i^K^
T-LU ■mo. £-!.$■
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
<^xf ^ . ^t^ . -i T
|
'P^f^ |
Y'' |
0 |
V ^^ Y |
|
fA r' |
5-f 0 |
f |
Ki^r |
|
;A |
V |
2 |
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
K:. TONALITY
J"3
I
i&
//H/
THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY
BY
WILLIAM JAMES
Reprinted from
' THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSATS IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY''
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
91 AND 93 HFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOMBAY
1905
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
X^i-i ''0 '^'^ 'i' ^ "^^ ^-^ '•- ^ ^;
C
Copyright^ 2896, By William James.
First Edition, February, 1897
Reprinted, May, 1897, September, 1897, and March, 1898, August, 1899, June, 1902, January, 1903, May, 1904, June, 1905
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
PREFACE.
AT most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students devoted to particular branches of learning ; and these clubs have the laud- able custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my dis- course printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as they shed explana- tory light upon each other, and taken together express a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very un- technical way.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiri- cisiHy in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say * empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience ; and I say * radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and.
Digitized by
viii Preface.
unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically af- firm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. Primd facie ihe world is a pluralism ; as we find it, its unity seems to be that of any collection ; and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an effort to redeem it from that first crude form. Postulating more unity than the first experi- ences yield, we also discover more. But absolute unity, in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction, still remains undiscovered, still remains a Grenzbegriff, " Ever not quite " must be the rationalistic philosopher's last con- fession concerning it. After all that reason can do has been done, there still remains the opacity of the finite facts as merely given, with most of their pecu- liarities mutually unmediated and unexplained. To the very last, there are the various * points of view' which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing the world ; and what is inwardly clear from one point remains a bare externality and datum to the other. The negative, the alogical, is never wholly banished. Something — "call it fate, chance, freedom, sponta- neity, the devil, what you will " — is still wrong and other and outside and unincluded, from your point of view, even though you be the greatest of philosophers. Something is always mere fact and givenness ; and there may be in the whole universe no one point of view extant from which this would not be found to be the case. '* Reason," as a gifted writer says, " is
Digitized by
Preface. ix
but one item in the mystery ; and behind the proud- est consciousness that ever reigned, reason and won- der blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is wild, — game-flavored as a hawk*s wing. Nature is miracle all ; the same returns not save to bring the different. The slow round of the engrav- er's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the whole curve, never an instant true, — ever not quite." ^
This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically ex- pressed. He who takes for his hypothesis the no- tion that it is the permanent form of the world is what I call a radical empiricist. For him the crudity of experience remains an eternal element thereof. There is no possible point of view from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact. Real pos- sibilities, real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real evil, real crises, catastrophes, and escapes, a real God, and a real moral life, just as common- sense conceives these things, may remain in empiri- cism as conceptions which that philosophy gives up the attempt either to * overcome * or to reinterpret in monistic form.
Many of my professionally trained confreres will smile at the irrationalism of this view, and at the artlessness of my essays in point of technical form. But they should be taken as illustrations of the radi- cally empiricist attitude rather than as argumenta- tions for its validity. That admits meanwhile of be-
1 B. P. Blood : The Flaw in Supremacy : Published by the Author, Amsterdam, N. Y., 1893.
Digitized by
X Preface.
ing argued in as technical a shape as any one can desire, and possibly I may be spared to do later a share of that work. Meanwhile these essays seem to light up with a certain dramatic reality the atti- tude itself, and make it visible alongside of the higher and lower dogmatisms between which in the pages of philosophic history it has generally remained eclipsed from sight.
The first four essays are largely concerned with defending the legitimacy of religious faith. To some rationalizing readers such advocacy will seem a sad misuse of one's professional position. Mankind, they will say, is only too prone to follow faith unreason- ingly, and needs no preaching nor encouragement in that direction. I quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith. Its cardinal weakness is to let belief follow recklessly upon lively conception, especially when the conception has instinctive liking at its back. I admit, then, that were I addressing the Salvation Army or a miscella- neous popular crowd it would be a misuse of oppor- tunity to preach the liberty of believing as I have in these pages preached it. What such audiences most need is that their faiths should be broken up and ven- tilated, that the northwest wind of science should get into them and blow their sickliness and barbarism away. But academic audiences, fed already on sci- ence, have a very different need. Paralysis of their native capacity for faith and timorous abulia in the religious field are their special forms of mental weak- ness, brought about by the notion, carefully instilled, that there is something called scientific evidence by
Digitized by
Preface. xi
waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in regard to truth. But there is really no scientific or other method by which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or of believing too much. To face such dangers is apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel between them is the measure of our wisdom as men. It does not follow, because recklessness may be a vice in soldiers, that courage ought never to be preached to them. What should be preached is courage weighted with responsibility, — such courage as the Nelsons and Washingtons never failed to show after they had taken everything into account that might tell against their success, and made every pro- vision to minimize disaster in case they met defeat. I do not think that any one can accuse me of preach- ing reckless faith. I have preached the right of the individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal risk. I have discussed the kinds of risk ; I have con- tended that none of us escape all of them; and I have only pleaded that it is better to face them open- eyed than to act as if we did not know them to be there.
After all, though, you will say. Why such an ado about a matter concerning which, however we may theoretically differ, we all practically agree ? In this age of toleration, no scientist will ever try actively to interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy it quietly with our friends and dp not make a pub- lic nuisance of it in the market-place. But it is just on this matter of the market-place that I think the utility of such essays as mine may turn. If reli-
Digitized by
xii Preface.
gious hypotheses about the universe be in order at all, then the active faiths of individuals in them, freely expressing themselves in life, are the experi- mental tests by which they are verified, and the only means by which their truth or falsehood can be wrought out. The truest scientific hypothesis is that which, as we say, * works ' best ; and it can be no otherwise with religious hypotheses. Religious his- tory proves that one hypothesis after another has worked ill, has crumbled at contact with a widening knowledge of the world, and has lapsed from the minds of men. Some articles of faith, however, have maintained themselves through every vicissi- tude, and possess even more vitality to-day than ever before : it is for the * science of religions ' to tell us just which hypotheses these are. Meanwhile the free- est competition of the various faiths with one another, and their openest application to life by their several champions, are the most favorable conditions under which tlie survival of the fittest can proceed. They ought therefore not to lie hid each under its bushel, indulged-in quietly with friends. They ought to live in publicity, vying with each other ; and it seems to me that (the regime of tolerance once granted, and a fair field shown) the scientist has nothing to fear for his own interests from the liveliest possible state of fermentation m the religious world of his time. Those faiths will best stand the test which adopt also his hy- potheses, and make them integral elements of their own. He should welcome therefore every species of religious agitation and discussion, so long as he is will- ing to allow that some religious hypothesis may be
Digitized by
Preface.
Xlll
true. Of course there are plenty of scientists who would deny that dogmatically, maintaining that science has already ruled all possible religious hypotheses out of court. Such scientists ought, I agree, to aim at im- posing privacy on religious faiths, the public mani- festation of which could only be a nuisance in their eyes. With all such scientists, as well as with their allies outside of science, my quarrel openly lies ; and I hope that my book may do something to persuade the reader of their crudity, and range him on my side. Religious fermentation is always a symptom of the in- tellectual vigor of a society ; and it is only when they forget that they are hypotheses and put on rational- istic and authoritative pretensions, that our faiths do harm. The most interesting and valuable things about a man are his ideals and over-beliefs. The same is true of nations and historic epochs ; and the excesses of which the particular individuals and epochs are guilty are compensated in the total, and become pro- fitable to mankind in the long run.
The essay * On some Hegelisms ' doubtless needs an apology for the superficiality with which it treats a serious subject. It was written as a squib, to be read in a college-seminary in Hegel's logic, several of whose members,' mature men, were devout champions of the dialectical method. My blows therefore were aimed almost entirely at that. I reprint the paper here (albeit with some misgivings), partly because I believe the dialectical method to be wholly abominable when worked by concepts alone, and partly because the essay casts some positive light on the pluralist-em- piricist point of view.
Digitized by
xiv Preface.
The paper on Psychical Research is added to the volume for convenience and utility. Attracted to this study some years ago by my love of sportsmanlike fair play in science, I have seen enough to convince me of its great importance, and I wish to gain for it what interest I can. The American Branch of the Society is in need of more support, and if my article draws some new associates thereto, it will have served its turn.
Apology is also needed for the repetition of the same passage in two essays (pp. 59-61 and 96-7, loo-i). My excuse is that one cannot always ex- press the same thought in two ways that seem equally forcible, so one has to copy one's former words.
The Crillon-quotation on page 62 is due to Mr. W. M. Salter (who employed it in a similar manner in the * Index' for August 24, 1882), and the dream- metaphor on p. 1 74 is a reminiscence from some novel of George Sand's — I forget which — read by me thirty years ago.
Finally, the revision of the essays has consisted almost entirely in excisions. Probably less than a page and a half in all of new matter has been added.
Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, December, 1896.
Digitized by
CONTENTS.
PAGS
The Will to Believe i
Hypotheses and options, i. Pascal*s wager, 5. Clifford's veto, 8. Psychological causes of belief, 9. Thesis of the Essay, 11. Empiricism and absolutism, 12. Objective certi- tude and its unattainability, 13. Two different sorts of risks in believing, 17. Some risk unavoidable, 19. Faith may bring forth its own verification, 22. Logical conditions of religjgus^ Jbelief, 25. '
Temperamental Optimism and Pessimism, 33. How reconcile with life one bent on suicide ? 38. Religious melancholy and its cure, 39. Decay of Natural Theology, 43. Instinctive antidotes to pessimism, 46. Religion involves belief in an unseen exten- sion of the wqrW, 51. Scientific positivism, 52. Doubt actuates conduct as much as belief does, 54. To deny certain faiths is logically absurd, for they make their objects true, 56. Conclu- sion, 61.
The Sentiment of Rationality 63
Rationality means fluent thinking, 63. Simplification, 65. Clearness, 66. Their antagonism, 66. Inadequacy of the ab- stract, 68. The thought of nonentity, 71. Mysticism, 74. Pure theory cannot banish wonder, 75. The passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality, 75. Familiarity and expect- ancy, 76. * Substance,' 80. A rational world must appear con-
Digitized by
xvi Contents.
gruous with our powers, 82. But these differ from man to man, 88. Faith is one of them, 90. Inseparable from doubt, 95. May verify itself, 96. Its r61e in ethics, 98. Optimism and pes- simism, loi. Is this a moral universe ? — what does the problem mean ? 103. Anaesthesia versus energy, 107. Active assumption necessary, 107. Conclusion, no.
Reflex Action and Theism iii
Prestige of Physiology, 112. Plan of neural action, 113. God the mind*s adequate object, 116. Contrast between world as perceived and as conceived, 118. God, 120. The mind's three departments, 123. Science due to a subjective demand, 129. Theism a mean between two extremes, 134. Gnosticism, 137. No intellection except for practical ends, 140. Conclusion, 142.
The Dilemma of Determinism 145
Philosophies seek a rational world, 146. Determinism and Indeterminism defined, 149. Both are postulates of ration- ality, 152. Objections to chance considered, 153. Determinism involves pessimism, 159. Escape via Subjectivism, 164. Sub- jectivism leads to corruption, 170. A world with chance in it is morally the less irrational alternative, 176. Chance not incom- patible with an ultimate Providence, 180.
The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . 184
The moral philosopher postulates a unified system, 185. Ori- gin of moral judgments, 185. Goods and ills are created by judgments, 189. Obligations are created by demands, 192. The conflict of ideals, 198. Its solution, 205. Impossibility of an abstract system of Ethics, 208. The easy-going and the strenu- ous mood, 211. Connection between Ethics and Religion, 212.
Great Men and their Environment 216
Solidarity of causes in the world, 216. The human mind ab- stracts in order to explain, 219. Different cycles of operation in Nature, 220. Darwin's distinction between causes that produce and causes that preserve a variation, 221. Physiological causes produce, the environment only adopts or preserves, great men, 225. When adopted they become social ferments, 226. Messrs.
Digitized by
Contents. xvii
Spencer and Allen criticised, 232. Messrs. Wallace and Gry- zanowski quoted, 239. The laws of history, 244. Mental evo- lution, 245. Analogy between original ideas and Darwin's accidental variations, 247. Criticism of Spencer's views, 251.
The Importance of iNDivrouALS 255
Small differences may be important, 256. Individual differ- ences are important because they are the causes of social change, 259. Hero-worship justified, 261.
On some Hegeusms 263
The world appears as a pluralism, 264. Elements of unity in the pluralism, 268. Hegel's excessive claims, 272. He makes of negation a bond of union, 273. The principle of totality, 277. Monism and pluralism, 279. The fallacy of accident in Hegel, 280. The good and the bad infinite, 284. Negation, 286. Con- clusion, 292. — Note on the Anaesthetic revelation, 294.
What Psychical Research has Accompushed . . 299 The unclassified residuum, 299. The Society for Psychical Research and its history, 303. Thought-transference, 308. Gumey's work, 309. The census of hallucinations, 312. Me- diumship, 313. The 'subliminal self,' 315. 'Science* and her counter-presumptions, 317. The scientific character of Mr. Myers's work, 320. The mechanical-impersonal view of life versus the personal-romantic view, 324.
Index 329
Digitized by
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 63
THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY.^
WHAT is the task which philosophers set them- selves to perform ; and why do they philos- ophize at all? Almost every one will immediately reply: They desire to attain a conception of the frame of things which shall on the whole be more ra- tional than that somewhat chaotic view which every one by nature carries about with him under his hat. But suppose this rational conception attained, how is the philosopher to recognize it for what it is, and not let it slip through ignorance ? The only answer can be that he will recognize its rationality as he recog- nizes everything else, by certain subjective marks with which it affects him. , When he gets the marks, he may know that he has got the rationality.
What, then, are the marks? A strong feeling of ease, peace, rest, is one of them. The transition from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational com- prehension is full of lively relief and pleasure.
But this relief seems to be a negative rather than a positive character. Shall we then say that the feel- ing of rationality is constituted merely by the absence
1 This essay as far as page 75 consists of extracts from an article printed in Mind for July, 1879. Thereafter it is a reprint of an address to the Harvard Philosophical Club, delivered in 1880, and published in the Princeton Review, July, 1882.
Digitized by
i
64 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
of any feeling of irrationality? I think there are very good grounds for upholding such a view. All feel- ing whatever, in the light of certain recent psy- chological speculations, seems to depend for its physical condition not on simple discharge of nerve- xurrents, but on their discharge under arrest, impedi- ment, or resistance. Just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are prevented, — so any unobstructed tendency to action discharges itself without the production of much /cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly fluent ( course of thought awakens but little feeling; but \ when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought s meets with difficulties, we experience distress. It is only when the distress is upon us that we can be said [to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which •we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say janything about ourselves at such times, " I am suffi- (cient as I am." This feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, of its absoluteness, — this absence of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it, — is what I call the. Sentiment of Rationality. As soon, in short, as we are enabled from any cause whatever
<to think with perfect fluency, the thing we think of seems to us pro tanto rational.
Whatever modes of conceiving the cosmos facili- tate this fluency, produce the sentiment of rationality. Conceived in such modes, being vouches for itself and needs no further philosophic formulation. But this fluency may be obtained in various ways ; and first I will take up the theoretic way.
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 6^
The facts of the world in their sensible diversity- are always before us, but our theoretic need is that they should be conceived in a way that reduces their manifoldness to simplicity. Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of a single underlying fact is Hke the relief of the musician at resolving a confused n;iass of sound into ipelodic or harmonic order. The simplified result is handled with far less mental effort than the original data ; and a philosophic conception of nature is thus in no metaphorical sense a labor-saving contrivance. The passion for parsimony, for economy of means in thought, is the philosophic passion par excellence ; and any character or aspect of the world's phenom- ena which gathers up their diversity into monotony will gratify that passion, and in the philosopher's mind stand for that essence of things compared with which all their other determinations may by him be overlooked.
More universality or extensiveness is, then, one mark which the philosopher's conceptions must pos- sess. Unless they apply to an enormous 'number of cases they will not bring him relief. The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless to him unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects.* The more multiple then are the instances, the more flowingly does his mind rove from fact to fact. The phenomenal transitions are no real transitions ; each item is the same old friend with a slightly altered dress.
Who does not feel the charm of thinking that the moon and the apple are, as far as their relation to the
5
Digitized by
66 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
earth goes, identical; of knowing respiration and combustion to be one; of understanding that the balloon rises by the same law whereby the stone sinks ; of feeling that the warmth in one's palm when one rubs one's sleeve is identical with the motion which the friction checks ; of recognizing the differ- ence between beast and fish to be only a higher degree of that between human father and son ; of believing our strength when we climb the mountain or fell the tree to be no other than the strength of the sun's rays which made the corn grow out of which we got our morning meal?
But alongside of this passion for simplification there exists a sister passion, which in some minds — though they perhaps form the^minority — is its rival. This is thej)assion for distingui^hiAg,; it is the im- pulse toTJe acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. Loyalty to clearness and integrity of perception, dislike of blurred outlines, of vague identifications, are its characteristics. It loves to recognize particulars in their full completeness, and the more of these it can carry the happier it is. It prefers any amount of incoherence, abruptness, and fragmentariness (so long as the literal details of the separate facts are saved) to an abstract way of con- ceiving things that, while it simplifies them, dissolves away at the same time their concrete fulness. Clear-
fness and simplicity thus set up rival claims, and make a real dilemma for the thinker.
A man's philosophic attitude is determined by the balance in him of these two cravings. No system of philosophy can hope to be universally accepted among men which grossly violates either need, or
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 67
entirely subordinates the one to the other. The fate of Spinosa, with his barren union of all things in one substance, on the one hand; that of Hume, with his equally barren 'looseness and separateness ' of everything, on the other, — neither philosopher own- ing any strict and systematic disciples to-day, each being to posterity a warning as well as a stimulus, — show us that the only possible philosophy must be a compromise between an abstract monotony and a concrete heterogeneity. But the only way to mediate^ between diversity and unity is to class the diverse/ items as cases of a common essence which you disy cover in them. Classification of things into exten-j sive * kinds ' is thus the first step ; and classification] of their relations and conduct into extensive * laws *j is the last step, in their philosophic unification. A completed theoretic philosophy can thus never be an3^thing more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients; and its results must always be abstract, since the basis of every classification is ^ the abstract essence embedded in the living fact, — ^ the rest of the living fact being for the time ignored by the classifier. This means that none of our explanations are complete. They subsume things under heads wider or more familiar; but the last heads, whether of things or of their connections, are mere abstract genera, data which we just find in things and write down. ^
When, for example, we think that we have rationally explained the connection of the facts A and B by classing both under their common attribute jt, it is obvious that we have really explained only so much of these items as is x. To explain the connection of choke-damp and suffocation by the lack of oxygen is
Digitized by
68 Essays In Popular Philosophy.
to leave untouched all the other peculiarities both of choke-damp and of suffocation, — such as convulsions and agony on the one hand, density and explosibility on the other. In a word, so far as A and B contain /, My Hy and Oy py ^, rcspectivcly , in addition to Xy they are not explained by x. Each additional particu- larity makes its distinct appeal. A single explana- tion of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. The entire fact is not accounted for until each and all of its characters have been classed with their likes elsewhere. To apply this now to the case of the universe, we see that the explanation of the world by molecular movements explains it only so far as it actually is such movements. To invoke the * Unknowable ' explains only so much as is unknow- able, * Thought ' only so much as is thought, * God ' only so much as is God, Which thought? Which God? — are questions that have to be answered by bringing in again the residual data from which the /'^general term was abstracted. All those data that \ cannot be analytically identified with the attribute invoked as universal principle, remain as independent kinds or natures, associated empirically with the said \attribute but devoid of rational kinship with it.
(^^ Hence the unsatisfactoriness of all our specula- tions. On the one hand, so far as they retain any multiplicity in their terms, they fail to get us out of <^^ empirical sand-heap world; on the other, so far -y^as they eliminate multiplicity the practical man des- / pises their empty barrenness. The most they can say \ is that the elements of the world are such and such, and that each is identical with itself wherever found ; but the question Where is it found? the practical man is left to answer by his own wit. Which, of all the
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 69
essences, shall here and now be held the essence of this concrete thing, the fundamental philosophy never attempts to decide. We are thus led to the con- clusion that the simple classification of things is, on the one hand, the best possible theoretic philosophy, but is, on the other, a most miserable and inadequate substitute for the fulness of the truth. It is a mon- strous abridgment of life, which, like all abridgments is got by the absolute loss and casting out of real matter. This is why so few human beings truly care for philosophy. The particular determinations which she ignores are the real matter exciting needs, quite as potent and authoritative as hers. What does the ) moral enthusiast care for philosophical ethics? Why c- does the JEsthetik of every German philosopher ap- pear to the artist an abomination of desolation ?
Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum.
The entire man, who feels all needs by turns, will take nothing as an equivalent for life but the fulness of ' Hving itself. Since the essences of things are as a matter of fact disseminated through the whole extent of time and space, it is in their spread-outness'and alternation that he will enjoy them. When weary of the concrete clash and dust and pettiness, he will refresh himself by a bath in the eternal springs, or fortify himself by a look at the immutable natures. But he will only be a visitor, not a dweller in the region; he will never carry the philosophic yoke upon his shoulders, and when tired of the gray mono- tony of her problems and insipid spaciousness of her results, will always escape gleefully into the teeming and dramatic richness of the concrete world.
Digitized by
yo Essays in Popular Philosophy.
So our study turns back here to its beginning. Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of ""handling it for some particular purpose, ^oncep- tinn'ii * Hndfi/ nrft tHrnln£Jr.g] i"<^<-«-""^f^"<-<^. No ah- stract concept can be a valid substitute for a_cQncrete reality except with reference to' a partifiilar interest in the conceiver. The interest of theoretic rationality, the relief of identification, is but one of a thousand human purposes. When others rear their heads, it must pack up its little bundle and retire till its turn recurs. The exaggerated dignity and value that philosophers have claimed for their solutions is thus greatly reduced. The only virtue their theoretic con- ception need have is simplicity, and a simple concep- tion is an equivalent for the world only so far as the world is simple, — the world meanwhile, whatever simplicity it may harbor, being also a mightily com- plex affair. Enough simplicity remains, however, and enough urgency in our craving to reach it, to make the theoretic function one of the most invincible of human impulses. The quest of the fewest ele- ments of things is an ideal that some will follow, as long as there are men to think at all.
But suppose the goal attained. Suppose that at last we have a system unified in the sense that has been explained. Our world can now be conceived simply, and our mind enjoys the relief. Our univer- sal concept has made the concrete chaos rational. But now I ask, Can that which is the ground of ra- tionality" in all else be itself properly called rational? It would seem at first sight that it might. One is tempted at any rate to say that, since the craving for rationality is appeased by the identification of one
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 71
thing with another, a datum which left nothing else outstanding might quench that craving definitively, or be rational in se. No otherness being left to annoy us, we should sit down at peace. In other words, as the theoretic tranquillity of the boor results from his spinning no further considerations about his chaotic universe, so any datum whatever (provided it were simple, clear, and ultimate) ought to banish puzzle from the universe of the philosopher and confer peace, inasmuch as there would then be for him absolutely no further considerations to spin.
This in fact is what some persons think. Professor Bain says, —
" A difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled, when it can be shown to resemble something else ; to be an example of a fact already known. Mystery is isolation^ exception, or it may be apparent contradiction : the resolution of the mystery is found in assimilation, identity, fraternity. When all things are assimilated, so far as assimilation can go, so far as like- ness holds, there is an end to explanation ; there is an end to what the mind can do, or can intelligently desire. . . . The path of science as exhibited in modern ages is toward generality, wider and wider, until we reach the higliest, the widest laws of every department of things ; there explanation is finished, mystery ends, perfect vision is gained."
But, unfortunately, this first answer will not hold. Our mind is so wedded to the process of seeing an~ 7^- other beside every item of its experience, that when ^ • the notion of an absolute datum is presented to it, it goes through its usuarprocedure and remains point- ing at the void beyond, as if in that lay further matter 1 for contemplation. In -short, it spins for itself the ] further positive consideration of a nonentity envel* ?
Digitized by
72 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
oping the being of its datum ; and as that leads no- where, back recoils the thought toward its datum again. But there is no natural bridge between nonen- tity and this particular datum, and the thought stands oscillating to and fro, wondering *' Why was there any- thing but nonentity ; why just this universal datum and not another?" and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed, Bain's words are so untrue that in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection, that the craving for further explanation, the ontological wonder-sick- ness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer
I says, *'The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting
I clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible
I as its existence."
The notion of nonentity may thus be called the parent of the philosophic craving in its subtilest and profoundest sense. Absolute existence is absolute mystery, for its relations with the nothing remain unmediated to our understanding. One philosopher only has pretended to throw a logical bridge over this chasm. Hegel, by trying to show that nonen- tity and concrete being are linked together by a series of identities of a synthetic kind, binds every- thing conceivable into a unity, with no outlying no- tion to disturb the free rotary circulation of the mind within its bounds. Since such unchecked movement gives the feeling of rationality, he must be held, if
, he has succeeded, to have eternally and absolutely V'' quenched all rational demands.
But for those who deem HegeFs heroic effort to
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 73
have failed, nought remains but to confess that when all things have been unified to the supreme degree, the notion of a possible other than the actual may still haunt our imagination and prey upon our system. T|Tpj2nH;n|n nf hpin^ k left logically opaque to us, 6) assomething which we simply come upon an3~find, and about which (if we wish to act) we^hould pause and wonder as littJe.asTpxissible. The philosopher's logical tranquillity is thus in essence no other than the boor's. They differ only as to the point at which each refuses to let further considerations upset the absoluteness of the data he assumes. The boor does so immediately, and is liable at any moment to the ravages of many kinds of doubt. The philosopher does not do so till unity has been reached, and is warranted against the inroads of those considerations, but only practically, not essentially, secure from the blighting breath of the ultimate Why? If he cannot exorcise this question, he must ignore or blink it, and^ assuming the data of his system as something given, and the gift as ultimate, simply proceed tp a life of contemplation or of action based on it. There is no doubt that this acting on aruoftaque-ncccssity is ac- cohipanied_ by a certain-pleasure. See the reverence of Carlyle for brute fact: "There is an infinite sig- nificance in fact." " Necessity," says Diihring, and he means not rational but given necessity, " is the last and highest point that we can reach. ... It is not only the interest of ultimate and definitive knowl- edge, but also that of the feelings, to find a last repose and an ideal equilibrium in an uttermost datum which can simply not be other than it is.
Such IS the~^attitude of ordinary men in their the- ism, God's fiat being in physics and morals such an
Digitized by
74 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
uttermost datum. Such also is the attitude of all hard- minded analysts and Verstandesmenschen, Lotze, Renouvier, and Hodgson promptly say that of expe- rience as a whole no account can be given, but nei- ther seek to soften the abruptness of the confession nor to reconcile us with our impotence.
But mediating attempts may be made by more mys- tical minds. The peace of rationality may be sought through ecstasy when logic fails. To religious per sons of every shade of doctrine moments come when the world, as it is, seems so divinely orderly, and the acceptance of it by the heart so rapturously com- plete, that intellectual questions vanish; nay, the intellect itself is hushed to sleep, — as Wordsworth says, "thought is not; in enjoyment it expires.** Ontological emotion so fills the soul that ontologi- cal speculation can no longer overlap it and put her girdle of interrogation-marks round existence. Even the least religious of men must have felt with Walt Whitman, when loafing on the grass on some transparent summer morning, that ** swiftly arose and spread round him the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth." At such moments of energetic living we feel as if there were something diseased and contemptible, yea vile, in theoretic grubbing and brooding. In the eye of healthy sense the philosopher is at best a learned fool.
Since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irra- tionality which the head ascertains, the erection of its procedure into a systematized method would be a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance. But as used by mystics hitherto it has lacked universality, being available for few persons and at few times, and
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 75
even in these being apt to be followed by fits of reac- ^ tion and dryness ; and if men should agree that the mystical method is a subterfuge without logical perti- nency, a plaster but no cure, and that the idea of non- entity can never be exorcised, empiricism will be th^ ultimate philosophy. Existence then will be a brute fact to which as a whole the emotion of ontologic wonder shall rightfully cleave, but remain eternally unsatisfied. Then wonderfulness or mysteriousnessV will be an essential attribute of the nature of things, and the exhibition and emphasizing of it will con- tinue to be an ingredient in the philosophic industry of the race. Every generation will produce its Job, its Hamlet, its Faust, or its Sartor Resartus.
With this we seem to have considered the possibili- ties of purely theoretic rationality. But we saw at the outset that rationality meant only ununpakdUea^ntal function. Impediments that arise in the theoretic sphere might perhaps be avoided if the stream of mental action should leave that sphere betimes and pass into the practical. Let us therefore inquire what constitutes the feeling of rationality in its practical aspect. If thought is not to stand forever pointing at the universe in wonder, if its movement is to be diverted from the issueless channel of purely theoretic contemplation, let us ask what conception of the uni- verse will awaken active impulses capable of effecting, this diversion. A definition of the world which will! give back to the mind the free motion which has been ' blocked in the purely contemplative path may so far^ make the world seem rational again.
Well, of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand, that one which awakens the active
Digitized by VjOOQIC
76 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
impulses, or satisfies other aesthetic demands better than the other, will be accounted the more rational conception, and will deservedly prevail.
There is nothing improbable in the supposition that an analysis of the world may yield a number of formulae, all consistent with the facts. In physical science different formulae may explain the phenomena equally well, — the one-fluid and the two-fluid theories of electricity, for example. Why may it not be so with the world? Why may there not be different points of view for surveying it, within each of which all data harmonize, and which the observer may there- fore either choose between, or simply cumulate one upon another? A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats* bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms ; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. Just so a thorough- going interpretation of the world in terms of me- chanical sequence is compatible with its being inter- preted teleologically, for the mechanism itself may be designed.
If, then, there were several systems excogitated, equally satisfying to our purely logical needs, they would still have to be passed in review, and approved or rejected by our aesthetic and practical nature. Can we define the tests of rationality which these parts of our nature would use?
Philosophers long ago observed the remarkable fact that mere familiarity with things is able to pro- duce a feeling of their rationality. The empiricist school has been so much struck by this circumstance
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 77
as to have laid it down that the feeling of rationality and the feeling of familiarity are one and the same thing, and that no other kind of rationahty than this exists. The daily contemplation of phenomena juxtaposed iTTa" certaTrr"orde"r begets an acceptance of their connection, as absolute as the repose engen- dered by theoretic insight into their coherence. To explain a thing is to pass easily back to its antece- dents ; to know it is easily to foresee its consequents. Custom, which lets us do both, is thus the source of whatever rationality the thing may gain in our thought.
In the broad sense in which rationality was defined at the outset of this essay, it is perfectly apparent that custom must be one of its factors. We said that any perfectly fluent and easy thought was devoid of the sentiment of irrationality. Inasmuch then as cus- tom acquaints us with all the relations of a thing, it teaches us to pass fluently from that thing to others, and pro tanto tinges it with the rational character.
Now, there is one particular relation of greater practical importance than all the rest, — I mean the relation of a thing to its future consequences. So long as an object is unusual, our expectations are baffled; they are fully determined as soon as it becomes familiar. I therefore propose this as the first practical requisite which a philosophic concep-\ tion must satisfy : // must^ in a general way at leasts \ banish uncertainty from the future. The permanent presence of the sense of futurity in the mind has been strangely ignored by most writers, but the__fect.i§_thal: our consciousness at a., given moment is- never, iree^ from tEi ijigredifint of expectancy^ Every one knows how when a painful thing has to be undergone in the
Digitized by
78 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
near future, the vague feeling that it is impending pen- etrates all our thought with uneasiness and subtly vitiates our mood even when it does not control our attention; it keeps us from being at rest, at home in the given present. The same is true when a great happiness awaits us. But when the future is neutral and perfectly certain, * we do not mind it,' as we say, but give an undisturbed attention to the actual. JLet now this haunting sense^ of futurity be thrown joffjts r) l^^^rings or left without an object,._and immediately
^ iinpaqjnp<^^ taWpj; pn<;<;pqc;inn of j;hp rntnd But in
every novel or unclassified experience this is just what occurs; we do not know what will come
; next ; and novelty per se becomes a mental irritant, while custom per se is a mental sedative, merely because the one baffles while the other settles our
* expectations.
Every reader must feel the truth of this. What is meant by coming * to feel at home * in a new place, or with new people? It is simply that, at first, when we take up our quarters in a new room, we do not know what draughts may blow in upon our back, what doors may open, what forms may enter, what interesting objects may be found in cupboards and corners. When after a few days we have learned the range of all these possibilities, the feeling of strange- ness disappears. And so it does with people, when we have got past the point of expecting any essen- tially new manifestations from their character.
The utility of this emotional effect of expectation is perfectly obvious ; * natural selection,' in fact, was bound to bring it about sooner or later. It is of the utmost practical importance to an animal that he should have prevision of the qualities of the objects
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 79
that surround him, and especially that he should not come to rest in presence of circumstances that might be. fraught either with peril or advantage, — go to sleep, for example, on the brink of precipices, in the dens of enemies', or view with indifference some new- appearing object that might, if chased, prove an important addition to the larder. >fnvp1t-y ou^ht to irritate hjiiL^ All jumosiJty-has. thus a practical gene- si^ We need only look at the physiognomy of a dog or a horse when a new object comes into his view, his mingled fascination and fear, to see that the element of conscious insecurity or perplexed expecta- tion lies at the root of his emotion. A dog's curi- osity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of deciding what is going to happen next. That settled, curi- osity is quenched. The dog quoted by Darwin, whose behavior in presence of a newspaper moved by the wind seemed to testify to a sense * of the supernatural,' was merely exhibiting the irritation of an uncertain future. A newspaper which could move spontaneously was in itself so unexpected that the poor brute could not tell what new wonders the next moment might bring forth.
To turn back now to philosophy. An ultimate datum, even though it be logically unrationalized, will, if its quality is such as to define expectancy, be peacefully accepted by the mind; while if it leave the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not distress. Now, in the ultimate explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied have always played a fundamental part'
Digitized by
8o Essays in Popular Philosophy.
Thejtgrm set up by philosophers as primordial has t)eJrr_one which banishes the incalculable. * Sub- stance/ for example, means, as Kant says, das Beharrliche, which will be as it has been, because its being is essential and eternal. And although we may not be able to prophesy in detail the future phenomena to which the substance shall give rise, we may set our minds at rest in a general way, when we have called the substance God, Perfection, Love, or Reason, by the reflection that whatever is in store for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with the character of this term ; so that our attitude even to- ward the unexpected is in a general sense defined. Take again the notion of immortality, which for com- mon people seems to be the touchstone of every philosophic or religious creed : what is this but a way of saying that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of rationality? The wrath of science against miracles, of certain philosophers against the doctrine of free-will, has precisely the same root, — dislike to admit any ultimate factor in things which may roiit our prevision or upset the stability of our outlook.
Anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this function in the doctrine of substance : " If there be such a substratum^' says Mill, "suppose it at this instant miraculously annihilated, and let the sensa- tions continue to occur in the same order, and how would the substratum be missed? By what signs should we be able to discover that its existence had terminated ? Should we not have as much reason to believe that it still existed as we now have ? And if we should not then be warranted in believing it, how can we be so now?** Truly enough, if we have
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 8i
already securely bagged our facts in a certain order, we can dispense with any further warrant for that order. But with regard to the facts yet to come the case is far different. It does not follow that if sub- stance may be dropped from our conception of the irrecoverably past, it need be an equally empty com- plication to our notions of the future. Even if it were true that, for aught we know to the contrary, the substance might develop at any moment a wholly new set of attributes, the mere logical form of re- ferring things to a substance would still (whether rightly or wrongly) remain accompanied by a feeling of rest and future confidence. In spite of the acutest nihilistic criticism, men will therefore always have a liking for any philosophy which explains things pet substantiam.
A very natural reaction against the theosophizing conceit and hide-bound confidence in the upshot of things, which vulgarly optimistic minds display, has formed one factor of the scepticism of empiricists, who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of pos- sibilities alien to our habitual experience which the cosmos may contain, and which, for any warrant we have to the contrary, may turn it inside out to-morrow. Agnostic substantialism like that of Mr. Spencer, whose Unknowable Is not merely the unfathomable but the absolute?fra'ti6nal, on which, if consistently represented in thought, it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of rebuking a cer- tain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the ordinary philistine feels his security. But con- sidered as anything else than as reactions against an opposite excess, these philosophies of uncertainty cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to
6
Digitized by
82 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
come to rest in their presence, and will seek for solu- tions of a more reassuring kind.
We may then, I think, with perfect confidence lay down as a first point gained in our inquiry, that a prime factor in the philosophic craving is the desire to have expectancy defined ; and that no philosophy will definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner denies the possibility of gratifying this need.
We pass with this to the next great division of our topic. It is not sufficient for our satisfaction merely to know the future as determined, for it may be deter- mined in either of many ways, agreeable or disagree- able. For a philosophy to succeed on a universal scale it must define the future congruously with our spontaneous powers, A philosophy may be unim- peachable in other respects, but either of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ultimate principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle like Scho- penhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hart- mann's wicked jack-of-all-trades the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their desires and ac- tive tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to overcome the ' problem of evil,* the * mystery of pain.' There is no * problem of good.'
But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 83
relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. Better face the enemy than the eternal Void ! This is why materialism will always fail of universal adoption, however well it may fuse things into an atomistic unity, however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity. For materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the impulses which we most cherish. The real meaning of the impulses, it says, is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever. Now, what is called * extradition * IS quite as characteristic of our emotions as of our senses : both point to an object as the cause of the present feeling. What an intensely objective refer- ence lies in fear ! In like manner an enraptured man and a dreary-feeling man are not simply aware of their subjective states ; if they were, the force of their feelings would all evaporate. Both believe there is outward cause why they should feel as they do : either, ** It is a glad world ! how good life is ! " or, '* What a loathsome tedium is existence ! " Any philosophy which annihilates the validity of the ref- erence by explaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no emotional pertinency, leaves the mind with little to care or act for. This is the op- posite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In nightmare we have motives! to act, but no power ; here we have powers, but no^ motives. A nameless unheimlichkeit comes over us at the thought of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the objects of those loves and aspi- rations which are our deepest energies. The mon- strously lopsided equation of the universe and its
Digitized by
84 Essays in Popular Philosophy,
knower, which we postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled by the no less lopsided equa- tion of the universe and the doer. We demand in it a character for which our emotions and active pro- pensities shall be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his reac- tion at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast whole, — that he balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do what it expects of him. But as his abilities to do lie wholly in the line of his natu- ral propensities ; as he enjoys reacting with such emo- tions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnest- ness, and the like ; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt, — a philosophy
[) which should only legitimate emotions of the latter
! sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discon-
! tent and craving.
It is far too little recognized how entirely the intel- lect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section at a certain point, of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. The germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before consciousness is not the theoretic *What is ^ that?' but the practical * Who goes there? ' or rather,
\ as Horwicz has admirably put it, * What is to be done?* — *Was fang' ich an?* In all our discus- sions about the intelligence of lower animals, the only test we use is that of their acting as if for a purpose.
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 85
Cognition, in short, is incomplete until discharged in*-- — ^^ act ; and although it is true that the later mental de- velopment, which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice, yet the\ earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the ] active nature asserts its rights to the end. /
When the cosmos in its totality is the object offered to consciousness, the relation is in no whit altered. React on it we must in some congenial way. It was a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of invective against the practical man and his requirements. No hope for pessimism unless he is slain !
Helmholtz's immortal works on the eye and ear are to a great extent little more than a commentary on the law that practical utility wholly determines which parts of our sensations we shall be aware of, and which parts we shall_ ignore. We notice or discrimi- nate an ingredient of sense only so far as we depend upon it to modify our actions. We comprehend a. thing when we synthetize it by identity with another thing. But the other great department of our under- standing, acquaintance (the two departments being / recognized in all languages by the antithesis of such words as wissen and kennen ; scire and noscerCy etc. ) , what is that also but a synthesis, — a synthesis of a passive perception with a certain tendency to reac- tion? We are acquainted with a thing as soon as we have learned how to behave towards it, or how to meet the behavior which we expect from it. Up to that point it is still ' strange ' to us.
\''
.^^
Digitized by
86 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
If there be anything at all in this view, it follows
that however vaguely a philosopher may define the
ultimate universal datum, he cannot be said to leave
it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest degree
pretends that our emotional or active attitude toward
it should be of one sort rather than another. He
who says " life is real, life is earnest," however much
he may speak of the fundamental mysteriousness of
things, gives a distinct definition to that mysterious-
i^ess by ascribing to it the right to claim from us the
I ('particular mood called seriousness, — which means the
^^ liwillingness to live with energy, though energy bring
^ (Ipain. The same is true of him who says that all is
vanity. For indefinable as the predicate ' vanity * may
(be /;/ sCy it is clearly something that permits anaesthe- sia, mere escape from suffering, to be our rule of life. There can be no greater incongruity than for a disciple of Spencer to proclaim with one breath that the sub- stance of things is unknowable, and with the next that the thought of it should inspire us with awe, reverence, and a willingness to add our co-operative push in the direction toward which its manifestations seem to be drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but /if it make such distinct demands upon our activity we ^v^urely are not ignorant of its essential quality.
If we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common, we shall find, I think, simply this : that each and all of them have said to the human being, ** The inmost nature of the -N4-eality is congenial to powers which you possess.*' In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 87
God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked ? Take repentance : the man who can do nothing rightly can at least repent of his failures. But for paganism this faculty of repentance was a pure supernumerary, a straggler too late for the fair. Christianity took it, and made it the one power within us which appealed straight to the heart of God. And after the night of the middle ages had so long branded with obloquy even the generous impulses of the flesh, and defined the reality to be such that only slavish natures could commune with it, in what did the sursum corda of the platonizing renaissance lie but in the proclamation that the archetype of verity in things laid claim on the widest activity of our whole aesthetic being ? What were Luther's mission and Wesley's but appeals to powers which even the meanest of men might carry with them, — faith and self-despair, — but which were personal, requiring no priestly intermediation, and which brought their owner face to face with God ? What caused the wildfire influence of Rous- seau but the assurance he gave that man's nature was in harmony with the nature of things, if only the paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from between? How did Kant and Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time with cheer, except by say- ing, " Use all your powers ; that is the only obedience the universe exacts ** ? And Carlyle with his gospel of work, of fact, of veracity, how does he move us except by saying that the universe imposes no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can perform ? Emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will be is here in the enveloping now ; that man has but to obey himself, — " He who will rest in what he is^
Digitized by
I
88 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
fs a part of destiny," — is in like manner nothing but an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency of one's natural faculties.
In a word, ** Son of Man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak unto thee ! ** is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs have helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the v^ greater part of his rational need. /;/ se and per se the universal essence has hardly been more defined by any of these formulas than by the agnostic x ; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they are, are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent; that it speaks to them and will in some way recognize their reply ; that I can be a match for it if I will, and not a footless waif, — suffices to make it rational to my feel- ing in the sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, and to [}l legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more powerful
of our emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is " all . V striving is vain," will never reign supreme, for the \ i' impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the \ race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will
be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vague- ness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be i not given him.
.1
\.
But now observe a most important consequence.
Men's active impulses are so differently mixed that a . philosophy fit in this respect for Bismarck will almost •y certainly be unfit for a valetudinarian poet. In other
words, although one can lay down in advance the
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 89
rule that a philosophy which utterly denies all funda- mental ground for seriousness, for effort, for hope, which says the nature of things is radically alien to human nature, can never succeed, — one cannot in advance say what particular dose of hope, or of gnos- ticism of the nature of things, the definitely successful philosophy shall contain. In short, it is almost certain that personal temperament will here make itself felt, and that although all men will insist on being spoken to by the universe in some way, few will insist on being spoken to in just the same way. We have here, in short, the sphere of what Matthew Arnold likes to \ calllAderg-laubejlegitimdite, inexpugnable, yet doomed to eternal variations and disputes.
Take idealism and materialism as examples of what I mean, and suppose for a moment that both give a conception of equal theoretic clearness and consist- ency, and that both determine our expectations equally well. Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emo- tional constitution, materialism by another. At this very day all sentimental natures, fond of conciliation and intimacy, tend to an idealistic faith. Why? Be- cause idealism gij/ea to the. nature of things such kin-^ shigjKith-jQur .personal selves. Our own thoughts are y what we are most at home with, what we are least f afraid of. To say then that the universe essentially is thought, IS to say that I myself, potentially at least, am all. There is no radically alien corner, but an all- pervading intimacy. Now, in certain sensitively ego- tistic minds this conception of reality is sure to put on a narrow, close, sick-room air. Everything senti- mental and priggish will be consecrated by it. That element in reality which every strong man of com- mon-sense willingly feels there because it calls forth
Digitized by
90 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
powers that he owns — the rough, harsh, sea-wave, north-wind element, the denier of persons, the democ- ratizer — is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communion. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the mate- rialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an over- powering desire at moments to escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, even though they flow over us. The strife of these two kinds of mental tem- per will, I think, always be seen in philosophy. Some men will keep insisting on the reason, the atonement, that lies in the heart of things, and that we can act with; others, on the opacity of brute fact that we must react against
^ Now, there is one element of our active nature which the Christian religion has emphatically recog- nized, but which philosophers as a rule have with great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their pretension to found systems of absolute certainty. I mean the element of faith. Faith means bdiefjn^ something concerning whichjdoubj: Ts^till theoreti- (^ caily possible ; and as the test of belief is willingness to act, o^fie may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance. It is in fact the same moral quality which we call courage in practical aff*airs ; and there will be a very widespread tendency in men of vigor- ous nature to enjoy a certain amount of uncertainty in their philosophic creed, just as risk lends a zest to worldly activity. Absolutely certified philosophies
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 91
seeking the inconcussum are fruits of mental natures -j in which the passion for identity (which we saw to be but one factor of the rational appetite) plays an ab- normally exclusive part. In the average man, on the contrary, the power to trust, to risk a little beyond the literal evidence, is an essential function. Any mode of conceiving the universe which makes an appeal to this generous power, and makes the man seem as if, he were individually helping to create the actualityji v' \ '\ of the truth whose metaphysical reality he is willingW to assume, will be sure to be responded to by large numbers.
The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our men- tal attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day ; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular propo- sition,— the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-mor- row the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth wjiich no man can know ; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. As Helmholtz says : " Hier gilt nur der eine Rath : vertraue und handle ! " And Professor Bain urges : " Our only error is in propos- ing to give any reason or justification of the postu- late, or to treat it as otherwise than begged at the very outset."
With regard to all other possible truths, however, a number of our most influential contemporaries think that an attitude of faith is not only illogical but shameful. Faith in a religious dogma for which there is no outward proof, but which we are tempted to postulate for our emotional interests, just as we pos*
Digitized by
92 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
tulate the uniformity of nature for our intellectual interests, is branded by Professor Huxley as " the lowest depth of immorality." Citations of this kind from leaders of the modern Aufkldrung might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Take Professor Clif- ford's article on the 'Ethics of Belief.' He calls it
* guilt ' and * sin ' to believe even the truth without
• scientific evidence.' But what is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? Why does Clifford fearlessly proclaim his belief in the conscious-automaton theory, although the * proofs ' be- fore him are the same which make Mr. Lewes reject it? Why does he believe in primordial units of* mind- stuff' on evidence which would seem quite worthless to Professor Bain? Simply because, like every human ibeing of the slightest mental originality, he is pecu- liarly sensitive to evidence that bears in some one di- rection. It is utterly hopeless to try to exorcise such sensitiveness by calling it the disturbing subjective factor, and branding it as the root of all evil. * Sub- jective ' be it called ! and * disturbing ' to those whom it foils ! But if it helps those who, as Cicero says, " vim naturae magis sentiunt," it is good and not evil. Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. In- tellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs ; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal con- quest over the philosopher across the way. The ab- surd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probabil- ity thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose denominator and numerator alone it is swayed, is
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. ^2
ideally as inept as it is actually impossible. It is al- most incredible that men who are themselves working philosophers should pretend that any philosophy can V be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of >^ personal preference, belief, or divination. How have they succeeded in so stultifying their sense for the liv- ing facts of human nature as not to perceive that every philosopher, or man of science either, whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought, has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a sort of preliminary assurance that his notion can be made to work; and has borne his best fruit in trying to make it work? These mental instincts in different men are the spontaneous variations upon which the intellectual struggle for existence is based. The fittest conceptions survive, and with them the names of their champions shining to all futurity.
The coil is about us, struggle as we may. JThe only escape from faith is mental nullity^. What we J eSjoy most in a Huxley or a Clifford is not the pro- fessor with his learning, but the human personality ready to go in for what it feels to be right, in spite of all appearances. The. CQacrete man hasJtmLone inter- est>jr— to be right. That for him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it. Naked he is flung into the world, and between him and nature there are no rules of civilized warfare. The rules of the scientific game, burdens of proof, presumptions, experimenta crucisy complete inductions, and the like, are only binding on those who enter that game. As a matter of fact we all more or less do enter it, because it helps us to our end. But if the means presume to frustrate the end and call us cheats for being right in
Digitized by
94 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of Clifford's works, except the Ethics of Belief, forgot- ten, he might well figure in future treatises on psy- chology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he might buy therewith.
In short, if I am born with such a superior general reaction to evidence that I can guess right and act accordingly, and gain all that comes of right action, while my less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his scru- . pies and waiting for more evidence which he dares not anticipate, much as he longs to) still stands • shivering on the brink, by what law shall I be for- . bidden to reap the advantages of my superior native sensitiveness? Of course I yield to my belief in such a case as this or distrust it, alike at my peril, just as I do in any of the great practical decisions of life. If my inborn faculties are good, I am a prophet; if poor, I am a failure: nature spews me out of her mouth, and there is an end of me. In the total game of life we stake our persons all the while ; and if in its theoretic part our persons will help us to a conclu- ' sion, surely we should also stake them there, how- ever inarticulate they may be.^
* At most, the command laid upon us by science to believe nothing not yet verified by the senses is a prudential rule intended to maxim- ize our right thinking and minimize our errors in the long run. In the particular instance we must frequently lose truth by obeying it ; but on the whole we are safer if we follow it consistently, for we are sure to cover our losses with our gains. It is like those gambling and insur- ance rules based on probability, in which we secure ourselves against losses in detail by hedging on the total run. But this hedging philos* V/ophy requires that long run should be there ; and this makes it inap- .
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. g^
But in being myself so very articulate in proving what to all readers with a sense for reality will seem a platitude, am I not wasting words? We cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith. Faith is synonymg^ig with worWing |^yp(>thp<;iQ The only difference is that while some hypotheses can be refuted in five minutes, others may defy ages. A chemist who conjectures that a certain wall-paper contains arsenic, and has faith enough to lead him ^ to take the trouble to put some of it into a hydro- ( gen bottle, finds out by the results of his action whether he was right or wrong. But theories like that of Darwin, or that of the kinetic constitution of matter, may exhaust the labors of generations in their corroboration, each tester of their truth proceeding in this simple way, — that he acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory.
Now, in such questions as God, immortality, abso- . lute morality, and free-will, no non-papal believer at| the present day pretends his faith to be of an essen-j' tially different complexion ; he can always doubt hisi i creed. But his intimate persuasion is that the odds'J in its favor are strong enough to warrant him in act- ing all along on the assumption of its truth. His corroboration or repudiation by the nature of things may be deferred until the day of judgment. The
plicable to the question of religious faith as the latter comes home to the individual man. He plays the game of life not to escape losses, for he brings nothing with him to lose ; he plays it for gains ; and it is now or never with him, for the long run which exists in- • deed for humanity, is not there for him. Let him doubt, believe, or deny, he runs his risk, and has the natural right to choose which ^^^ ' \ one it shall be.
Digitized by
96 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
uttermost he now means is something like this : " I expect then to triumph with tenfold glory ; but if it should turn out, as indeed it may, that I have spent my days in a fool's paradise, why, better have been the dupe of such a dreamland than the cunning reader of a world like that which then beyond all doubt unmasks itself to view." In short, we go in against materialism very much as we should go in, had we a chance, against the second French empire or the Church of Rome, or any other system of things toward which our repugnance is vast enough to determine energetic action, but too vague to issue in distinct ar- gumentation. Our reasons are ludicrously incommen- surate with the volume of our feeling, yet on the latter , we unhesitatingly act.
Now, I wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed out, that belief (as meas- ured by action) not only does and must continually outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a confessor ; and that as regards this class of •!]truths faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essen- /tial and indispensable. The truths cannot become /.true till our faith has made them so.
Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have * been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary,
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 97
the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate ; or suppose that, having just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption un- verified by previous experience, — why, then I shall hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of wis- dom clearly is to believe what one desires ; for the be- lief is one of the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its object. There are then cases where faith creates its own verification. Believe, 1 and you shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall per- ish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly I to your advantage.
The future movements of the stars or the facts of past history are determined now once for all, whether I like them or not. They are given irrespective of my wishes, and in all that concerns truths like these subjective preference should have no part ; it can only obscure the judgment. But in every fact into which there enters an element of personal contribution on my part, as soon as this personal contribution demands a certain degree of subjective energy which, in its turn, calls for a certain amount of faith in the result, — so that, after all, the future fact is conditioned by my present faith in it, — how trebly asinine would it be for me to deny myself the use of the subjective method, the method of belief based on desire I
In every proposition whose bearing is universal (and such are all the propositions of philosophy), the acts of the subject and their consequences throughout eternity should be included in the formula. If M
7
Digitized by
98 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
represent the entire world minus the reaction of the thinker upon it, and if M + x represent the absolutely total matter of philosophic propositions {x standing fof the thinker's reaction and its results), — what would be a universal truth if the term x were of one complexion, might become egregious error if x altered its charac- ter. Let it not be said that x is too infinitesimal a component to change the character of the immense whole in which it lies imbedded. Everything depends on the point of view of the philosophic proposition in question. If we have to define the universe from the point of view of sensibility, the critical material for our judgment lies in the animal kingdom, insigni- ficant as that is, quantitatively considered. The moral definition of the world may depend on phenomena more restricted still in range. In short, many a long phrase may have its sense reversed by the addition of three letters, n-o-t; many a monstrous mass have its unstable equilibrium discharged one way or the other by a feather weight that falls.
Let us make this clear by a few examples. The phi- losophy of evolution offers us to-day a new criterion to serve as an ethical test between right and wrong. Previous criteria, it says, being subjective, have left us still floundering in variations of opinion and the status belli. Here is a criterion which is objective and fixed : That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. But we immediately see that this standard can only remain objective by leaving myself and my conduct out. If what prevails and survives does so by my help, and cannot do so without that help ; if something else will prevail in case I alter my conduct, — how can I possibly now, conscious of alter- native courses of action open before me, either of which
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. gg
I may suppose capable of altering the path of events, decide which course to take by asking what path events will follow? If they follow my direction, evi- dently my direction cannot wait on them. The only possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his standard is the obsequious method of forecasting the course society would take but for him^ and then put- ting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies of desire and interest, and with bated breath and tiptoe tread following as straight as may be at the tail, and bringing up the rear of everything. Some pious crea- tures may find a pleasure in this ; but not only does it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow (a wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead aright), but if it be treated as every ethical principle must be treated, — namely, as a rule good for all men alike, — its general observance would lead to its prac- tical refutation by bringing about a general dead- lock. Each good man hanging back and waiting for orders from the rest, absolute stagnation would ensue. Happy, then, if a few unrighteous ones contribute an initiative which sets things moving again !
All this is no caricature. That the course of destiny may be altered by individuals no wise evolu- tionist ought to doubt. Everything for him has small beginnings, has a bud which may be * nipped,' and nipped by a feeble force. Human races and tendencies follow the law, and have also small begin- nings. The best, according to evolution, is that which has the biggest endings. Now, if a present race of men, enlightened in the evolutionary philoso- phy, and able to forecast the future, were able to dis- cern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of future supremacy; were able to see that their own
Digitized by
icxD Essays in Popular Philosophy.
race would eventually be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these were left unmolested, — these present sages would have two courses open to them, either perfectly in harmony with the evolutionary test: Strangle the new race noWf and ours survives; help the new race, and it survives. In both cases the action is right as mea- sured by the evolutionary standard, — it is action for the winning side.
Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of events. But for others, leaders of opinion or potentates, and in general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure, — whenever we espouse a cause we contribute to the de- termination of the evolutionary standard of right. The truly wise disciple of this school will then admit faith as an ultimate ethical factor. Any philosophy which makes such questions as. What is the ideal type of humanity? What shall be reckoned virtues? What conduct is good? depend on the question, What is going to succeed ? — must needs fall back on personal belief as one of the ultimate conditions of the truth. For again and again success depends on energy of act ; energy again depends on faith that we shall not fail ; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right, — which faith thus verifies itself.
Take as an example the question of optimism or pessimism, which makes so much noise just now in Germany. Every human being must sometime de- cide for himself whether life is worth living. Sup- pose that in looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age, of wickedness and
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. loi
pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he yields to ^^ ^^ijh t\A the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread, a
ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus ^^^rrJi f^^jiJi adds to the mass M of mundane phenomena^ inde- ^V l^ 2! L^..^ pendent of his subjectivity, the subjective comple- ^ ^
ment x, which makes of the whole an utterly black •«cflri« m^nj A^ picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism ^Uc^ » ifcT completed, verified by his moral reaction and the deed (j^^^JI^^m^^^^ in which this ends, is true beyond a doubt. M -\- x expresses a state of things totally bad. f^ The man's J* ^ * ^^ belief supplied all that was lacking to make it so, and g^*-**^' ^^^ now that it is made so the belief was right. A^r^,*^^ «r%A«
But now suppose that with the same evil facts M^j^ 4,^S>J&Jl} the man's reaction x is exactly reversed; suppose that instead of giving way to the evil he braves it, and finds a sterner, more wonderful joy than any pas- sive pleasure can yield in triumphing over pain and defying fear ; suppose he does this successfully, and however thickly evils crowd upon him proves his dauntless subjectivity to be more than their match, — will not every one confess that the bad character of the M is here the conditio sine qua non of the good *"*• character of the xf Will not every one instantly de- clare a world fitted only for fair-weather human beings susceptible of every passive enjoyment, but without independence, courage, or fortitude, to be from a moral point of view incommensurably inferior to a world framed to elicit from the man every form of triumphant endurance and conquering moral energy? As James Hinton says, —
" Little inconveniences, exertions, pains, — these are the only things in which we rightly feel our life at all. If these be not there, existence becomes worthless, or worse; suc-
Digitized by
lAAory^^atAML.^^
1 02 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
cess in putting them all away is fatal. So it is men engage in athletic sports, spend their holidays in climbing up moun- tains, find nothing so enjoyable as that which taxes their endurance and their energy. This is the way we are made, I say. " It may or may not be a mystery or a paradox ; it is a fact. Now, this enjoyment in endurance is just according to the intensity of life : the more physical vigor and balance, the more endurance can be made an element of satisfaction. A sick man cannot stand it. The line of enjoyable suffering is not a fixed one ; it fluctuates with the perfectness of the life. That dur pains are, as they are, unendurable, awful, overwhelming, crushing, not to be borne save in misery and dumb impatience, which utter exhaustion alone makes /i^M^ patient, — that our pains are thus unendurable, means not
l/A^crv^^t-^tiUA • that they are too great, but that we are sick. We have not got our proper life. So you perceive pain is no more necessarily an evil, but an essential element of the highest good.'' 1
But the highest good can be achieved only by our getting our proper life; and that can come about only by help of a moral energy born of the faith that in some way or other v^e shall succeed in getting it if we try pertinaciously enough. This world is good, we must say, since it is what we make it, — and we shall make it good. How can we exclude from the cognition of a truth a faith which is involved in the creation of the truth? M has its character inde- terminate, susceptible of forming part of a thorough- going pessimism on the one hand, or of a meliorism, a njoral (as distinguished from a sensual) optimism on the other. All depends on the character of the
1 Life of James Hinton, pp. 172, 173. See also the excellent chap- ter on Faith and Sight in the Mystery of Matter, by J. AUanson Picton. Hinton's Mystery of Pain will undoubtedly adways remain the classical utterance on this subject.
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 103
personal contribution x. Wherever the facts to be formulated contain such a contribution, we may log- ically, legitimately, and inexpugnably believe what we desire. The belief creates its verification. The thought becomes literally father to the fact, as the wish was father to the thought.^
Let us now turn to the radical question of life, — the question whether this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe, — and see whether the method of faith may legitimately have a place there. It is really the question of materialism. Is the world a simple brute actuality, an existence de facto about which the deepest thing that can be said is that it happens so to be; or is the judgment of better or worsey of ought^ as intimately pertinent to phenom- ena as the simple judgment is or is not ? The mate- rialistic theorists say that judgments of worth are themselves mere matters of fact; that the words *good* and * bad ' have no sense apart from subjective passions and interests which we may, if we please, play fast and loose with at will, so far as any duty of ours to the non-human universe is concerned. Thus, when a materialist says it is better for him to suffer great inconvenience than to break a promise, he only means that his social interests have become so knit up with
1 Observe that in all this not a word has been said of free-wjll. It all applies as well to a predetermined as to an indeterminate universe. If M ■\- X is fixed in advance, the belief which leads to x and the de- sire which prompts the belief are also fixed. But fixed or not, these subjective states form a phenomenal condition necessarily preceding the facts ; necessarily constitutive, therefore, of the truth M ■\- x which we seek. If, however, free acts be possible, a faith in their p6ssibility, by augmenting the moral energy which gives them birth, will increase M* their frequency in a given individual.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC .
I
I04 Essays In Popular Philosophy.
keeping faith that, those interests once being granted, it is better for him to keep the promise in spite of everything. But the interests themselves are neither right nor wrong, except possibly with reference to some ulterior order of interests which themselves again are mere subjective data without character, either good or bad.
For the absolute moralists, on the contrary, the in- terests are not there merely to be felt, — they are to be believed in and obeyed. Not only is it best for my social interests to keep my promise, but best for me to have those interests, and best for the cosmos to have, this me. Like the old woman in the story who described the world as resting on a rock, and then explained that rock to be supported by another rock, and finally when pushed with questions said it was rocks all the way down, — he who believes this to be a radically moral universe must hold the moral order to rest either on an absolute and ultimate should, or on a series of shoulds all the way down.^
The practical difference between this objective sort of moralist and the other one is enormous. The sub- jectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek har- mony by toning down the sensitiveness of the feelings. Being mere data, neither good nor evil in themselves, he may pervert them or lull them to sleep by any means at his command. Truckling, compromise, time- serving, capitulations of conscience, are conventionally opprobrious names for what, if successfully carried out,
* In either case, as a later essay explains (see p. 193), the should which the moralist regards as binding upon him must be rooted in the feeling of some other thinker, or collection of thinkers, to whose de- mands he individually bows.
fQxLu^iJk^ ' .laitod by Google
The Sentiment of Rationality. 105
would be on his principles by far the easiest and most praiseworthy mode of bringing about that harmony between inner and outer relations which is all that he means by good. The absolute moralist, on the other hand, when his interests clash with the world, is not free to gain harmony by sacrificing the ideal inter- ests. According to him, these latter should be as they are and not otherwise. Resistance then, pov- erty, martyrdom if need be, tragedy in a word, — such are the solemn feasts of his inward faith. Not that the contradiction between the two men occurs every day ; in commonplace matters all moral schools agree. It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested : then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods. It cannot then be said that the question, Is this a moral world? is a meaning- less and unverifiable question because it deals with something non-phenomenal. Any question is full of meaning to which, as here, contrary answers lead to contrary behavior. And it seems as if in answering such a question as this we might proceed exactly as does the physical philosopher in testing an hypothe- sis. He deduces from the hypothesis an experimental action, x ; this he adds to the facts M already exist- ing. It fits them if the hypothesis be true ; if not, there is discord. The results of the action corroborate or refute the idea from which it flowed. So here : the verification of the theory which you may hold as to the objectively moral character of the world can con- sist only in this, — that if you proceed to act upon your theory it will be reversed by nothing that later turns up as your action's fruit ; it will harmonize so well with the entire drift of experience that the latter will, as it were, adopt it, or at most give it an ampler
Digitized by
io6 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
interpretation, without obliging you in any way to change the essence of its formulation. If this be an objectively moral universe, all acts that I make on that assumption, all expectations that I ground on it, will tend more and more completely to interdigitate with the phenomena already existing. M + x will be in accord ; and the more I live, and the more the fruits of my activity come to light, the more satisfac- tory the consensus will grow. While if it be not such a moral universe, and I mistakenly assume that it is, the course of experience will throw ever new impedi- ments in the way of my belief, and become more and more difficult to express in its language. Epicycle upon epicycle of subsidiary hypothesis will have to be invoked to give to the discrepant terms a temporary appearance of squaring with each other; but at last even this resource will fail.
If, on the other hand, I rightly assume the universe to be not moral, in what does my verification con- sist? It is that by letting moral interests sit lightly, by disbelieving that there is any duty about tkem (since duty obtains only as between them and other phenomena), and so throwing them over if I find it hard to get them satisfied, — it is that by refusing to i
take up a tragic attitude, I deal in the long-run most '
- satisfactorily with the facts of life. " All is vanity "
Cec<. ZT \riA_ is here the last word of wisdom. Even though in t4'(luum^^ certain limited series there may be a great appear- j. ^
' ance of seriousness, he who in the main treats things ' '
with a degree of good-natured scepticism and radical levity will find that the practical fruits of his epicu- rean hypothesis verify it more and more, and not only save him from pain but do honor to his sa- gacity. While, on the other hand, he who contrary
Digitized by
The Sentiment of Rationality. 107
to reality stiffens himself in the notion that certain things absolutely should be, and rejects the truth that at bottom it makes no difference what is, will find himself evermore thwarted and perplexed and be- muddled by the facts of the world, and his tragic dis- appointment will, as experience accumulates, seem to drift farther and farther away from that final atone- ment or reconciliation which certain partial tragedies often get.
Ancestkesia is the watchword of the moral sceptic brought to bay and put to his trumps. Energy is that of the moralist. Act on my creed, cries the latter, and the results of your action will prove the creed true, and that the nature of things is earnest infinitely. Act on mine, says the epicurean, and the results will prove that seriousness is but a superficial glaze upon a world of fundamentally trivial import. You and your acts and the nature of things will be alike enveloped in a single formula, a universal vanitas vanitatum.
For the sake of simplicity I have written as if the verification might occur in the life of a single philoso- pher, — which is manifestly untrue, since the theories still face each other, and the facts of the world give countenance to both. Rather should we expect, that, in a question of this scope, the experience of the en- tire human race must make the verification, and that all the evidence will not be *in' till the final integra- tion of things, when the last man has had his say and contributed his share to the still unfinished x. Then the proof will be complete ; then it will appear with- out doubt whether the moralistic x has filled up the gap which alone kept the M of the world from form- ing an even and harmonious unity, or whether the
Digitized by
io8 Essays in Popular Philosophy.
non-moralistic x has given the finishing touches which were alone needed to make the M appear outwardly as vain as it inwardly was.
But if this be so, is it not clear that the facts My taken per se^ are inadequate to justify a conclusion either way in advance of my action ? My action is the complement which, by proving congruous or not, reveals the latent nature of the mass to which it is applied. The world may in fact be likened unto a lock, whose inward nature, moral or unmoral, will never reveal itself to our simply expectant gaze. The positivists, forbidding us to make any assump- tions regarding it, condemn us to eternal ignorance, for the 'evidence' which they wait for can never come so long as we are passive. But nature has put into our hands two keys, by which we may test the lock. If we try the moral key and itfitSy it is a moral lock. If we try the unmoral key and it fits, it is an unmoral lock. I cannot possibly conceive of any- other sort of 'evidence' or 'proof than this. It is quite true that the co-operation of generations is needed to educe it. But in these matters the solidar- ity (so called) of the human race is a patent fact. The essential thing to notice is that our active pref- erence is a legitimate part of the game, — that it is our plain business as men to try one of the keys, and the one in which we most confide. If then the proof exist not till I have acted, and I must needs in acting run the risk of being wrong, how can the popular science professors be right in objurgating in me as infamous a 'credulity' which the strict logic of the situation requires ? If this really be a moral universe ; if by my acts I be a factor of its destinies ; if to believe where I may doubt be itself a moral act
Digitized by
The Sentiment. of Rationality, 109
analogous to voting for a side not yet sure to win, — by what right shall they close in upon me and steadily negate the deepest conceivable function of my being by their preposterous command that I shall stir neither hand nor foot, but remain balancing myself in eternal and insoluble doubt? Why, doubt itself is a decision of the widest practical reach, if only because we may miss by doubting what goods we might be gaining by espousing the winning side. But more than that ! it is often practically impossible to distinguish doubt from dogmatic negation. If I refuse to stop a murder because I am in doubt whether it be not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt whether my efforts will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I actively connive at my destruction. He who com- mands himself not to be credulous of God, of duty, of 0#<>*-- M-*-/ freedaai, of immortality* may again and again be oJ^JIJCj^ ^^ indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies a^^m O -^^gjj them. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally '^/T ^cl _ of immorality. Who is not for is against. The universe will have no neutrals in these questions. In theory as in practice, dodge or hedge, or talk as we like about a wise scepticism, we are really doing volunteer military service for one side or the other.
Yet obvious as this necessity practically is, thou- sands of innocent magazine readers lie paralyzed and terrified in the network of shallow negations which the leaders of opinion have thrown over their souls. All they need to be free and hearty again in the exercise of their birthright is that these fastidious vetoes should be swept away. All that the human
n I J
Digitized by
no Essays in Popular Philosophy.
heart wants is its chance. It will willingly forego certainty in universal matters if only it can be allowed to feel that in them it has that same inalienable right to run risks, which no one dreams of refusing to it in the pettiest practical affairs. And if I, in these last pages, like the mouse in the fable, have gnawed a few of the strings of the sophistical net that has been binding down its lion-strength, I shall be more than rewarded for my pains.
To sum up : No philosophy will permanently be deemed rational by all men which (in addition to 4 5* " 7 tT meeting logical demands') does not to some degree 7^ — 2'J_- pretend to determine expectancy, and in a still greater degree make a direct appeal to all those pow- g^ ^ q ^ ers of our nature^ which we hold in highest esteem. Faith, being one of these powers, will always remain a factor not to be banished from philosophic con- structions, the more so since in many ways it brings forth its own verification. In these points, then, it is hopeless to look for literal agreement among mankind.
The ultimate philosophy, we may therefore con- clude, must not be too strait-laced in form, must not in all its parts divide heresy from orthodoxy by too sharp a line. There must be left over and above the propositions to be subscribed, ubique^ semper^ et ab omnibuSy another realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic scruples and indulge its own faith at its own risks ; and all that can here be done will be to mark out distinctly the questions ^ which fall within faith's sphere.
Digitized by
i
b-*£^ f-r^ ^itit^ ^.Jjj:r ^ A^^^-^^-^s^
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
* 2
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Illll
THE BORRO¥fER WILL BE CHARGED AN OVERDUE FEE IF THIS BOOK 18 NOT RETURNED TO THE UBRARY ON OR BEFORE THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. NON-RECEIPT OF OVERDUE NOTICES DOES NOT EXEMPT THE BORRO¥fER FROM OVERDUE FEES.
Digitized by
. V
r
\